What?
Nora texted me to say they’re heading to the venue this weekend. For a planning day, or something, and his mother is still talking but Bren is not listening and he shakes his head because it’s all wrong, he knows it’s all wrong.
Sweetheart, his mother says, but he says no, it’s fine, she’ll see. Because he’s seen something in Nora, ever since he’s been home. Felt how she’d held herself when he’d kissed her head at the bus stop, heard her laughter at their in-jokes and her fury at his bad habits and how she couldn’t say no, couldn’t tell him he was crazy, five days before, when he said she could come away with him. Because he is not crazy. He is not. He does not stay indoors and nurse old scars, he gets out there, he forges forward, he tastes real life and reaches for more and does not think before he jumps and he knows, in this stifled, hopeful heart he’s carried, for all these years, that it’s time for Nora to do the same.
THIRTEEN
First weekend of April, and the storm’s long gone. Buds of blossom, push of crocuses through the soil. They book train tickets and get up early and go, pull into a station backed by a red-brick building, mounds of green beyond the tracks. On the platform Nora takes a photograph on her phone and sends it to Josie, ignoring the unopened messages from Freya. Ignoring the fact that there are none from Bren. That there hasn’t been, since the weekend before, with the rain and her bath and –
So this is Devon, she says, as she and Robin roll their suitcases to the taxi rank. Seagulls circling. Smell of salt and tarmac and chips.
Nice, huh, Robin says, as he waves at a cab driver leaning against his car door, and she repeats the word back at him. Nice. Because it is. Because she has nothing more to say. She feels both excited and confused about being here when they’d promised each other a small, affordable wedding and yet it’s cost them over two hundred pounds just to travel here, to wander round the venue they’ve already paid a deposit for to be cajoled into spending more on the ‘extras’. Robin was sharing theseextraswith her on the train down; additional charges for the fairy lights in the trees and the linen napkins which cost more than the cotton napkins and the florist that can wrap ivy garlands around the wooden beams which reallyelevates the space when they’d said they wouldn’t have flowers at all. Ivy isn’t a flower, though, is it, Robin reasoned. It’s just greenery. And then he’d promptly leant his head against the train window and napped for the rest of the journey.
Through winding back roads, the taxi takes them to their cabin in someone’s garden, miles from anything except a country pub, several large houses and their wedding venue, a two-mile walk away. They pay the driver, struggle with the lock box and stumble in, before heading straight to the pub for lunch. Their venue visit is later in the afternoon; best to see it at golden hour, they’d been told. As if the shade of light would romanticise them into spending more money, wanting things they were sure they would not.
Prickling thoughts like this, in Nora’s mind, as she asks Robin for a rum and Coke. He goes to the bar, she looks at the paper menu. Then her phone. Please, Nora, Josie has replied to her photograph. Will you just call your mother?
She turns the phone over and Robin comes back. He is drinking a Guinness, when he never drinks Guinness, which she says to him. Feel a bit ropey after the train, he says. Need the iron. Winks, as he lifts it to his lips, and she doesn’t tell him that was Jon’s drink, doesn’t tell him the thick black of it makes her feel sick, that it seems like a sign, him drinking that, right now. Instead she sits back and looks out the window at the square of pub garden and Robin has to ask her what’s wrong.
Nothing, she says.
Everything.
Bren, her best man. Best friend. Who had said she could walk away with him, and what does that actually mean, she wonders, for the hundredth time, as she raises her glass to her lips, ice clinking softly against the lime. Does it mean he wants tobewith her, or that he just wants to recapture their youth, see the world together? And isn’t that maddening, initself? Refuels some kind of rage in her that she’s misdirected at him, for so long, after what Freya did. More fury, then, at her mother, as she puts her glass down. Fury that feels like shame because Jon and Josie were married, in love, like her and Robin are right here in this pub with his thumb stroking hers, saying what a menu, but Freya messedthatup too, those vows, and what if that is in Nora, as well? This propensity to ruin things?
Something’s not right, Robin says, once they’ve ordered the burrata, and she looks up at him, flushed, but he’s still reading the starters. Figs aren’t in season, he says; maybe they should’ve just ordered the focaccia. What, he asks, seeing her face.
Nothing, she says, again.
You’ve been saying nothing a lot, lately.
Same as you, she says, because he has also been unusually quiet since Bren’s unprompted visit, the weekend prior. They are not themselves, she thinks, but then she says it out loud. Robin drinks some of his stout, wipes the foam from his lip.
No, he agrees, rubbing his elbow. Maybe you’d feel moreyourself, he says, if you cleared the air with Freya.
Nora bristles.
I’ve seen all the messages you’re ignoring, he says. And I see you messaging Josie, instead, because you know she’ll pass things along. It’s okay to miss her, Nora.
I don’tmissher, Nora says. I’m too angry.
But the wedding is so soon, he says. Don’t you want –
I want to stop talking about this, please, she says, and she is surprised at herself; sees Robin’s own surprise reflected back at her. He stops stroking her hand. They drink their drinks. A dog barks loudly from the bar.Wonton, the owner barks back.
Their eyes meet again across the table; small smiles, not showing their teeth.
Wonton?
Add it, Nora says, because they keep track of pets they’ve met who are named after foods. Cookie, and Crumble, sure. Rolo. But also a cat called Crème Fraiche. Dogs named Brie, and Bagel, and Toast, and – Nora’s personal favourite – Aubie, short for Aubergine.
Not sure we’d go for Wonton, Robin says, reaching for Nora’s phone to tap it into her notes app. But after he’s added it to the list, he keeps looking at the phone, then says sorry, Nora. I can’t let this go.
He turns the phone back to her, shows her the thirty-six notifications next to Freya’s name. She’s your mum, he says.
Appeasing note in his voice, which makes Nora push back her chair because she’s tired, she wishesshecould let this go but she can’t, and how does he not get how painful this is when he knows about the affair, knows about the phone call, knows –
You’re being a child, avoiding her like this, Robin tells her, in a voice that sounds like he’s tired, too. Done with whatever is happening, here. It won’t just go away, he calls after her as she makes her way to the bathroom; as the door to the ladies’ swings shut, behind her.
