Nora read these words penned by Robin’s hand. She felt them, deep in her heart. Does, still, as she gets off the train at her station, and wipes the tears from her eyes.
Because it would’ve been reasonable to want to avoid Bren Ferguson, after everything. To resent Freya for her disapproval, pity Nora for her sad, sorry show of a family that Robin, instead, wanted to bring into the light.
She’d turned another page, in the kitchen. On and on itwent. Nine years of a life shared. Not simply imagined or wondered about, occurring over a screen or in an inbox, somewhere in her head or teenage past, holding on to something that never was. She’d put her hand on the page, touched the dried ink, and felt that clarity – not appearing, as such, but simply emerging through the fog. Knowing, as if she didn’t already, what she had to do. What she was going to show him, without words; with the heartfelt effort he’d always wanted to show her. Moon out, now, as she walks home up the hill. Holding on to her own secret, for a while longer. Saving it for the right time. For laughs, for luck.
For the unknown.
_
Easter weekend rises gold and clear, the light like set honey. Come Sunday, Nora puts on the dress that Josie requested, something linen she’d adorned with yellow sequins along the neckline. Robin is quiet as he dresses in a white shirt and chinos, something far subtler than he’d usually choose. He hasn’t shaved for a week, or more. Still won’t look her in the eye.
I love you, she tells him, as they lock up the house.
You too, he says.
They get on a train and then the bus, a reduced service because it is Easter Sunday, and as they travel, Nora feels like she’s blinking in the light of the real world after being shut in the back room of the café for two weeks. Working on her plan, with Shay’s encouragement – urge, then, to reach for Robin’s hand – but he folds his arms, turns away.
She has the desire to tell him everything, right then, but has to stop herself.
Not today.
Today is the day she has to face her mother for the first time in weeks. The day she’ll see Josie, too, for the first time since her son came home. The day she’ll be seeing Bren after he asked her to come away with him.
And she’s aware, as the bus pulls them towards the village, that she’s not yet given him an answer on that.
Aware she’s avoided him, while she sorted through her own thoughts and prioritised Robin’s feelings; aware, too, that today won’t be the day to talk things through with Bren, either. Not with their mothers around, she thinks, as she walks up the driveway with Robin by her side, not at this awkward half-family gathering, not on this day that’s – she realises, as she passes the old parked Volvo – the first time they’ve all been together since Jon died, right there.
Hot shiver, at this.
Blur of emotions as they push open the porch door.
Not knowing – never knowing – what to do with her memories of that man.
She must be in the garden, she says to Robin, when they aren’t greeted by her mother in the hall. No whirling kimono or squawk of delight; just the wind chimes above their heads. They move through her childhood home as a pair, bracing themselves for awkwardness. For tension at the table. Forced camaraderie, full plates and polite conversation as the wine flows and the gravy pours but the laughter, surely, finds its way out, because they are family, at the end of the day; Robin’s notes had reminded her of that.
And so – in spite of Jon and Freya’s secret affair, and Bren’s big question she still needs to answer, and Robin’s growing distance even though he is standing right beside her – Nora compartmentalises.
Walks through the kitchen onto the sun-patched decking and puts the pudding she’s brought down on the table.Because they are all separate entities, these things. Separate problems, like the gate that divides – or adjoins – their gardens, and she has no idea that they are all about to come to a head. Three hearts. Six, even. Split open, like atoms, before dessert.
_
Bren goes for a walk before lunch. He can feel in his feet that today is a big day. Pins and needles, an itch to move, to shake out what has been clenched tight inside him all night – or indeed, for the nineteen nights since he saw Nora last. His mother told him Robin was invited, today, so it’s not like there’ll be a big scene, he wouldn’t want that, but surely there will besomething, eye contact, shared words, touch of her hand to his beneath the table. Small beats, instead, that tell him yes. I’ve felt it too, this electricity between us, and I have to sort things out, first, but then? I’m coming with you.
A thrill, then, as Bren imagines it. The conversation he’s been imagining for days now, mostly because his mother had also told him something else, in passing.
That Nora had not booked her wedding venue.
Which meant his sense that something was brewing, here, solidified.
They’ll be fine, his mother told him, misreading his expression as concern. And they would be, Bren knew. Maybe not immediately – he knows it won’t be easy for Nora, dismantling the life she’s built, especially as there is no bad guy, here, no one person in the wrong. But not being wrong does not make yourighttogether. That’s what he’ll say to her, when it’s time.
When she admits things are ending, with Robin.
This is what he thinks about, as he prepares to see her again. As he walks through the fields to the village with thebad coffee, and heads for the photograph of the old cricket team, which he actually looks at, for a period of time, without having to turn away. That red hair, lighter than his. Kind eyes that he didn’t inherit, he doesn’t think. And then he finds a bench and decides to jump, like he’d told Nora to, weeks ago, he is sick of waiting around and he always trusts his gut, he wants to trust inthem. Him and Nora. The way she looked at him when he showed up at her door. Leaned into his kiss at the bus stop, didn’t buy a dress or book her venue because she feels, surely, what he feels – so he clicks into his flight app and he hits the button to pay now, to give her something she can trust in, too: him, ready and waiting for her, instead of a missed opportunity long ago. Two tickets, for the pair of them, for a month’s time. Spinning wheel, payment processed.
Euphoria.
He looks back at the photo of his dad.
