And so he turns it up, without meaning to. In the living room, as Robin makes coffee in the kitchen, after dinner.
The fairy lights have vanished. Furniture pushed back into the centre of the room, the makeshift dance floor long gone. Bren sits in an armchair as Nora settles opposite, on the sofa.
Third time lucky, Bren says, and she pulls a crocheted cushion onto her lap, waiting for him to explain. We’ve not been normal since I got back, have we? he says. At the party, or the pond. I was hoping tonight would be the night.
Nora lifts a stray thread off the cushion cover. Says right. That she wishes. Well.
A habit of hers, not finishing her sentences; one that Bren thought she’d have grown out of, by now.
I don’t want to argue, Bren says. If you’ve got something to say, Nora, can you just say it? So we can get back to normal?
I think, she says, and there’s a crash from the kitchen so that they both flinch, and Robin calls out, sorry, butterfingers! As you were! And they look back at each other, Nora flushing red again, this time, Bren thinks, because she is marrying someone who has – whosays– butterfingers.
You think what? Bren prompts.
I think our versions of normal are very different, she says.
Well, obviously, Bren says. Don’t take that the wrong way, he adds, holding his palms up. Just because my mum stays home and sees no one –
She sees people!
She sees you and Freya and the postman, Bren says. But just because that’sherlife doesn’t mean I’m judging yours, he says, gesturing around the room. It’s great, for you, what you have going, here. As much as it pains me to say it.
Nora holds his eyes, then. Mesmerising, as ever, one blue, the other a kind of green-brown; there’s a name for it, he knows, a colour he can’t recall. Words gone from his brain, when she looks at him like that.
She looks, but says nothing, so he keeps talking. Tries to explain.
It’s just not what I pictured, for us, he says, glancing at the rug and the bookcase and the pictures on the walls. Voice level, to show he’s not being accusatory; just nostalgic. Remember, Nora, how we said we’d not buythings, but acquire stories and sunburn and scars, and I did that, I’m doing that, but look, here, at what’s yours.
Reliving this, though he does not say it out loud.
And he thinks he knows what she’ll say; thinks she’ll ask, whatdidyou picture, then, but instead she says: there was no us once you left, Bren.
There is no clock in here. No ticking between them, no sound. Just this thing that they’ve danced around for years, which hadn’t seemed to matter when he was thousands of miles away, but here, now, with those eyes on his and the smell of her so close – body lotion, Christmas, clementines – he finds that he wants to knowwhyshe didn’t come with him. Is burning to know, in fact, why she didn’t give him a single reason why not, and yet answered his calls and his emails as if things never needed to be explained, as if he should just get over it, get over her, which he did, didn’t he,he did.
I’ve missed you so much, Nora says next.
Her voice, so quiet.
Sometimes I miss you so much I forget what I’m doing, she says. But I’m alsosofurious with you, Bren.
There. She’s said it. And it’s what he’d expected, in a way, after how she’d acted at the party and the ponds and over dinner, but it’s alsonotexpected, after twelve years of friendly dispassion. Something new rises between them now that it’s out there: a joint, moon-like hurt, impossibly big and full.
I don’t think you get to be, Bren tells her.
They keep looking at each other. Are still looking as Robin walks in with a tray declaring that he comes bearing hot drinks, and biscotti – do you like biscotti? Who doesn’t like biscotti! Handing Bren a coffee, placing Nora’s hot chocolate on the side table. Dark, it looks, at least eighty-five percent; which will be bitter, Bren knows, as she raises it to her mouth. Bitter and, he’d have thought, not at all to her taste. Not the flavour he’d expect her to choose.
_
So, Bren, Robin says, stretching his long legs out on the rug. Please do pepper us with honeymoon ideas.
It’s getting late, and Bren thinks he should probably leave. He’s uncomfortably full, doesn’t want the biscotti, but eats it anyway. Dunks it in his coffee, feels it give beneath his teeth.Honeymoon. The term as sickly sweet as the biscuit.
It depends, he says, as he chews; Nora’s eyes no longer on him, but on her own cup. Their prior exchange resounding like a bell.
On what you like, he goes on. What you’d want from it, how much time you’d have.
A standard two weeks I think, Robin says, looking at Nora, who dips her chin in a nod. She’s wrapped both hands around her mug, seems withdrawn.
