Page 57 of People In Love
I mean the boy next door has returned after a decade away, Robin says. The boy you planned to travel the world with. Who looks at you, by the way, like he wants to eat you.
He does not.
He does, he says, and his expression is neutral, nothing smug or possessive in the line of his mouth. I just wondered if it was messing with you, a bit. That’s all.
Nora watches him dig for a prawn in his own noodles. The television flicks to a new scene, and she feels warm and too full and she should just tell him. She should just say yes, she’s mixed up. She’s confused, because of what she’s found out this past week, and wouldn’t anyone feel the same, and because it’s Robin he’ll understand and talk it out and things will be fine and how they’re meant to be. But what if they’re not. What if this unpeels a layer she can’t put back, so instead she says, in a level voice: there was never anything between Bren and me.
Not officially, Robin says.
Not at all, Nora says. He’s. I’m.
These prawns are so good, tonight, Robin says. Not as salty as last time.
He keeps eating; Nora blinks, takes a moment. Then he looks up, picks up her train of thought. You said you discovered something, he prompts. This week.
Yes, she says. I found out that he … wanted me to go with him. The day he left, and everything, he phoned my house, and spoke to Freya. Told her.
That he didn’t want to go, without me.
Didn’t want to do anything without me.
That I should join him, like we’d planned, she says.Andhe explained why he had to leave so suddenly. Because of how it was, at home, for him. Which I guess I always knew, on some level, but it hurt so much that he’d never explained himself. I just figured he found it easier to ignore the whole thing. Or pretend I was the one in the wrong, for being so sensitive.
Robin is watching her as she talks. Watching her realise, now she’s saying it out loud, that she might start crying.
All this time, I’ve been mad at him for going, without saying so – and he’s been mad atme, for ignoring him, and not giving him an answer. When it was Freya, who didn’t passon his message. Got lucky, I guess, when we were both too wounded to talk about it.
Another scene starts up on the television. Nora watches it, and Robin keeps watching her, his chopsticks still poised in his hand.
That’s … terrible, he says, after a stretch of quiet.
I know, Nora says, her voice quiet, too.
But why would she do that?
She said, Nora tells him, that she couldn’t lose me, as well.
Little shrug, then. Just one shoulder, like Bren, rubbing off on her. Because Robin knows about Freya and Jon; is the only person on earth she has told, late one night when they were baring their souls and their secrets, because it’s what you do when you’re falling in love and want to know every corner of the person you’re lying in bed with. Although she has regretted telling him, sometimes. Worried what he thinks of her mother, or of Nora herself, for saying nothing. Because is it cowardly, to stay silent? To not rock the fragile boat that could so easily sink, even when there was nothing wrong, when Josie’s son was home and her husband was alive and her friend had not betrayed her, and still she took anti-psychotics, still she stopped driving, still she couldn’t cope when the boiler broke or a cat caught a dove in the back garden and she’d cry and cry and cry.
Are you … okay, Robin asks her, and Nora lifts her wet eyes to his.
I could barely look at her, she tells him, meaning Freya. And Bren and I … we’ve not spoken, since we realised. I guess neither of us knows what to say. And I just feel, she says, blinking her tears back. A lot of things.
You wouldn’t be Nora, if you didn’t, Robin says.
And she is grateful for his faith in her. For not questioning her again, about Bren. For understanding the shock ofthe phone call and thesecondbetrayal of her mother and not prying into what that means, what does it mean, she does not know, she wants to finish dinner and watch the film and just carry on as they were.
Robin does not unmute the television, and Nora does not finish her noodles. She does, however, take the last gyoza when he offers it.
I’m guessing we’re still okay for the twenty-second of April, he says, after they’ve eaten. And it is teasing, she thinks, but also a good question, and Nora says yeah, of course, without pausing to wonder whether that is a good answer. It’s fine, she says. She’s just not sure, now, whether Freya will be there.
Robin has been stacking their empty takeaway dishes, but stops at this, cocks his head. Really? he says. I know what she did was wrong, Nora, but she’s your mother.
And a liar, Nora says. Standing up, taking the stacked trays in one hand, the leftover noodles in the other. In the kitchen, she puts the latter in a Tupperware. Wondering if, by not being entirely honest with him – with herself, even, about all this –all of what– she is a liar, too.
But the evening goes on. Cutlery dropped in the dishwasher. Plastic bags in the recycling. Robin reminds her, as he rinses the foil trays, that they still haven’t seen their wedding venue. For the planning day. He’ll book a room one weekend, they’ll make a trip of it, maybe the sea air, the distance, will make everything seem better, perhaps, with Freya, but it is not Freya she’s even thinking about; her head is with Bren twelve years ago on that phone, saying what he said, wondering what she would have said back. Can you book the registry office, maybe, Robin asks, as she puts the remaining soy sauce sachets in the fridge. So we can get the legal bit locked in? I think doing that first would be nicer, if we can. So we’remarried, once we’re married.
Yes, she says, I can do that.
