I’ll have to check with Robin, first, Nora says. He’s been working a lot lately.
He can spare a day, surely, Josie says. Especially on a weekend! Tell him I’m making a cake, and your mum’s cooking. Not tofu, though – she promised.
Billow of Josie’s laughter then; Nora thinking of her mother’s wild eyes, the last time she saw her; the way she’s not replied to any of her texts since.
Could you wear a nice dress, for the occasion? Josie says. Maybe that linen one with the puffy sleeves, and the stitched sunflowers?
Sure, Nora says. Oddly specific, she thinks, but sure.
And Nora?
Yes?
It’s all going to be okay. I know you don’t believe me, pet. But all being together, like old times? And airing our truths? That’s the only way to make things lighter, I think. Going forward.
Nora stares at the blank laptop screen, unsure of how to respond. But then Josie hangs up and she is left with her questions in her throat, Shay’s off-key singing on the shop floor, and a sense that something, in the ether, is changing.
_
Although a change had occurred, already, after Devon. As soon as she’d returned to work, things between her and Robin fragile – cracked – but not broken. Because she didn’t want them broken, did she? Didhe? After she’d said no, to the venue, but afterhe’d– not lied, exactly – but hadn’t shared the whole truth?
Questions plaguing her, like a tangle of dead ends as she rode the train into London, trying to unpick the yarn of her life. Bren, now home. Robin, her home. Confusion where, surely, there should’ve been clarity.
She had walked into the café and Shay had taken one look at her and told her to go home, saying she couldn’t interact with customers with a face like that, and Nora had crumbled; told her all about the venue weekend. How she couldn’t be at home right now, but couldn’t go anywhere else, either, not to Freya’s, not to Josie’s, and Shay had listened to every word then said take personal leave here, then, with an endless supply of mochas and Great Dane therapy and my moral support shrouded in tough love.
Nora had hugged her, for that. Misty-eyed.
And Shay had held her. Her purple hair smelling of papaya shampoo and ground coffee, as she told her that things would be fine – she’d figure it out – and did she want a pain au raisin, they were stale, from yesterday, needed eating.
Nora had said no to the pastry, but taken Shay’s advice. Dried her eyes and gone home early. Promised to come back with a clearer head.
She thinks about that now, as she leans her head against the glass of the train window, the lino workshop now over. Thinks about how she arrived back at the flat to take a few hours for herself. Let herself in only to hear Robin’s voice, when he’d told her he’d be on a photo shoot that day; how she’d frozen, with her key in the lock, and listened; yes, no, I know, keep the deposit, it’s fine.
She slipped off her shoes. Lingered with her guilt in the hall and felt sad that she had to, when she had never held back from him before. Though they had, it seemed, hidden parts of themselves from one another, and that was a part of her confusion, here; that fog that had crept in, and wasn’t lifting.
More words, from Robin, as she waited. Sorry, thank you, okay.
But can anyone be one hundred percent themselves, with someone, she wondered, as she stood there in the hallwaypainted the colour she had chosen, and doubted; sometimes liked in the right light. Their shoes by the door. His brogues, her boots. Converse embroidered with tiny stars that she’d been wearing when they first met at a house party, when they’d talked about Cy Twombly andFantasiaand he’d asked her out for a drink which turned into a croissant and a walk by the canal and a romance she hadn’t seen coming.
But that, she thought – as she stood listening to Robin saying yeah, I’ll be in touch – is what it is to be human.
Not entirely sure.
Shedding skins, growing new ones. Not always knowing but working it out. Wondering about two things – two lives, two decisions – all at once, while at the same time? Not wanting to be anywhere else.
This landed, for her, as she heard Robin say goodbye. Heard him slam his laptop shut, make some kind of wounded, un-Robin-like noise, and leave via the back door.
And now her train slows to the stop before her own and she watches strangers getting off, without really seeing, her mind elsewhere. Remembering how she moved through to the kitchen, after he’d left, and saw his notepad lying open on the table. The one he usually carried everywhere. The one he’d filled with names, two months ago, for their engagement party. All the people they knew and loved, before things got so fraught and confused. And she was going to turn away, respect his privacy, but then she caught sight of something she couldn’t unsee.
The name of an a cappella group they had both loved, at art school.
Which was something you weren’t meant to admit. Loving a cappella. At art school.
And beneath that, there was another name of a pizza van they’d queued for once, at a music festival. The best pizza ofher life, she’d declared, and he’d said that was quite a statement, and she’d said this is quite a pizza.
Tears rising, now, as the train starts to move again and she thinks back to the notes that had gone on and on, like the guest list he’d written at the start of it all. Ideas he’d scrawled down. Things about her that she didn’t know he’d noticed. Scraps for his speech or their vows, things she’d said or photographs he’d taken that could play a part in the day he’d always wanted, bare feet, pink rhinestones, quotes from their favourite films,take me with you, for laughs, for luck, for the unknown.
Tears back then, too, as she read that line. The specific, earnest, not-wanting-to-forget-ness of it, as she sat down to read the rest. Their lives distilled in Robin’s handwriting, moments that had happened, were still happening, on that paper, in their house. Pages and pages and pages of it. She alights from the train as she relives it all, stories about their velvet sofa and disused garden shed. The galleries they went to for late-night openings. Henry’s bakery down the road – could he make their butter cake, he’d wondered, Nora’s favourite, three tiers, four? – and Bren, he had written his name too, followed by three question marks. Best man, he’d written in a new colour, as if adding it after it had been made official. Best person, he’d written as well, ask him to speak, ask Freya to speak, too, a surprise!
