Page 38 of People In Love
And I still don’t understand why, you say, as you pull off the Marigolds and leave them hanging over the kitchen tap to dry. Discuss it, once more, as she puts on her moisturiser, quiet, then, as you each read a chapter of your books. Turn the lights off, bubbling with how thrilled you are. How excited you are for the months – andindeed, the rest of your life – ahead, and you are thinking this as you drift into that flickering film-like lucidity as she lies there beside you, looking up at the ceiling. Too still, as though she is firmly awake, but before you can ask if everything’s all right, you’re gone, and a dream has taken you under.
SEVEN
Bren missed the last train, is walking home when Nora calls him. He’d spent half an hour on a platform bench while he waited for a cab, who wouldn’t take him as far as the middle-of-nowhere village, butwouldtake him to the town where he went to school where, from there, he could either call another, or walk the two hours home.
He’d decided on the latter. Felt restless anyway, eager to move. It is two in the morning now, but he still feels wired. Draws his hands into his coat sleeves for warmth as he follows the river back home.
There is something sinister about the water in the dark, he thinks, tar-like, slow-moving. Stars and snowdrops aglow, everything else dark and still. Even the fizzing he had felt, over dinner, has petered out, at last. Whatever that was about.
But then his phone is vibrating in his pocket as he ducks under a willow, and he pulls it out and it’s her and he’s fizzing all over again, sliding to answer, saying, hello?
Did you mean it, she asks, as Bren keeps walking along the canal. Boots on the hard mud path, vision adjusted to the dark.
Sorry, Nora, he says. Could you be more specific?
Kind of snarky, but, he reasons, also fair.
The path converges into a strip of long grass, wet againsthis boots; they’re supposed to be waterproof, but already his socks feel damp. He should probably re-proof them, was planning to do so in New Zealand, and yet here he is in England, walking home via the river he used to swim in with his best friend who is calling him, after midnight, making him feel things he was sure he wasn’t going to.
Will you stay for the wedding, she asks, and he doesn’t answer just yet. Imagines the flush up her neck. Wonders where she is. In bed, maybe, beside that guy. Beside Robin.
I don’t want you to be there if you don’t want to be, Nora says.
I could say the same to you, he says, and she says what?
He keeps walking through the dark, thinking. The stars keep being stars.
You never wanted to get married, Nora, he says. Last time I checked.
And when was the last time you checked?
She does not sound angry, or even amused. It’s a neutral question, and a good one, at that. It’s not like they’ve swapped notes on that stuff, in recent years. In all fairness, he’d never intended to stay abroad for this long, either. But look what happened. Look where time took him. He left. She stayed. Life went on, anyway.
We were kids, she says, as if reading his thoughts, and he senses, now, that she must be alone. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know that I’d meet. That I’d feel.
Like marriage material?
Marriage is such an awful word, Nora says. It evensoundsstale.
I agree, Bren says, which is why I’m confused you’ve gone for it.
She falls quiet again, but things feel easier this time, not so tense. It’s the dark, Bren thinks, as he passes a canal lock, twosleeping swans on the grass. It’s the phone, rather than being in-person. It’s the beer and the wine and too much dinner, it’s the shared musings on stale words, strange lives.
Have you been talking to Freya? she asks.
Just the once, Bren says. But I do have my own thoughts on these things.
Turns out, Nora says, so do I.
The grass thins into a more packed-down path. Dirt, haphazard stones. He passes an old mill, then a concrete bridge that he does not cross. A small gravel-flecked road that he does, before he rejoins the towpath.
So why are you calling, exactly? Bren says. Just to check I’m cool with you getting married, after all?
To ask if you’ll really be there, Nora says. Like you said you would be.
Bren moves the phone from one ear to the other, his hands so cold it almost hurts. Thinking that, while his knowledge of psychology is based onThe Sopranos, and a few friendly chats with a half-girlfriend that was never really a girlfriend – just a fellow redhead taking a break in Bali, ahead of her psychotherapy training – he knows deflection when he hears it. Is quite the master of it, himself.
When I was in New Zealand, he tells her, the first time round? I worked at the bungee centre for a while, on the Kawarau River.
