I doubt stainless steel would set off the alarms, she says.
You mean, Bren says, touching the charm, it isn’t pure silver?
It’s whatever the hell I could afford off the market at sixteen.
And look at you now, Bren says. Selling ceramic pots for seventy quid, and antique writing sets for three figures.
I sell them, Nora points out, I don’tbuythem.
Still, Bren says.
You looked at our website? she says, after a moment, and he says sure. It’s really awesome, Nora, what you’ve built. What you’re doing.
He doesn’t quiteknowwhat she’s doing, but it seems the right thing to say. She blushes, looks down at her shoes. And then she says this is our stop and they both struggle to get down the stairs of the moving bus; disembark to an uncrowded street, calmer winds, today. Nora leads him past some green lakes and over a small hill, the air fresh, conversation easier, and then they’re joining the back of a short queue, passing a sign that declares it’s the Hampstead Mixed Bathing Pond.
A pond? Bren says.
I book my slot every week, Nora says, but there’s probably space for you, this time of year. I only do a few lengths, so you can wait here, if you’d prefer.
And let you have all the cold-water fun?
She shrugs, says well, like you said, it’s not like you have any swim stuff.
There’re ways round that, Bren says. Nora moves forward in the queue, says you can’t swim naked, Bren.
She blushes again, even as she says it. At the very idea of him embarrassing her in public, with his nomadic, unashamed attitude, the way he gets on planes, jumps off cliffs, does what Bren does, without a care. Or perhaps she’s blushing at the idea of him naked, full stop.
Whatdoyou take me for, he asks her, in mock outrage.
It’s a good question, she says, but then she’s showing her phone to the ticket office and he’s pulling out his wallet, paying for a slot. She doesn’t wait for him but heads straight for the women’s changing block, as though set on showing him he’s not about to thwart her plans by being here. Which is fine. Again, only fair. Bren ignores the signs for the men’s and follows the other guys to the entrance, finds himself by an expanse of open water. Large clouds overhead. Ducks and swans, heads bobbing in the wet green. An unexpected oasis in the city, like a cenote or lagoon.
He takes it all in, then strips down to his boxers.
Folds his clothes beneath a bench, thinking, sure.
He’d hoped to have lunch with her if he was lucky. A sandwich, a hot chocolate, perhaps, bought as a peace offering. But instead Nora has brought him here, to swim in the throes of the English winter in an outdoor pond, where there is sky, and water, and magic in the mundane. Something flits across his heart like a match being struck, as he rubs his elbows to keep warm. Why she stayed behind, he will never know.
And then she is there in her olive-green swimsuit with her hair in a pineapple-like knot on her head, and rather than acknowledge him standing there in his pants she makes her way to the jetty and down the metal steps.
You’re not in paradise any more, she calls, her voice unwavering as she pushes back into the water.
It’s not like it’s balmy waters in New Zealand, Bren says, and to prove his point, he takes a running jump straight off the side and surfaces with his hair plastered to his forehead, saying, fuck me, it’sbaltic, and there it is again, her sparkling, waterfall laugh, and it’s the best sound, he remembers now, how on earth did he ever forget.
_
They swim just a few lengths before getting out; all she has time for, but also all she needs, she explains, to get that shiny good feeling, does he feel it? In the summer, Nora tells him, she dries off on the grass afterwards, but seeing as it’s the end of February and they can see their breath on the air, they wriggle back into their clothes and buy hot drinks from the coffee roaster by the overground. Now that it’s damp, her hair is a deep flaxen gold. It drips onto the shoulder pads of her coat even though she’d towelled it dry, Bren’s boxers stuffed, sodden, into his pocket.
That was fun, she says. Like old times.
Affection overt in her voice, now. They used to swim secretly in the river behind their cottages; Josie said that they mustn’t, Freya said it was fine. His dad, with a wink, saying listen to your mother, you two.
Do you really have to get back so soon, Bren asks her, as Nora checks her phone. Hiss of the coffee machine, people talking. Warm, honeyed feeling spreading through him, after the cold. And when she says yes, he says but don’t you own the place?
Co-own, she says. With Shay.
The purple hair girl?
Nora nods, goes to pay for their drinks, and when Bren intervenes she refuses. It’s the least I can do, she says, tapping her card to the reader. After you swam in your underwear.
