Page 61 of People In Love
Sunday morning, and you’re alone. Wedding emails sent, payments pending, and you’re all caught up on edits so think you’ll get some other things done while Nora swims. While she clears her head, runs some errands, and you decide to do something that’ll cheer her up once she’s back. Coffee drunk, Crunchy Nut crunched, then you put on your messy jeans – paint-streaked, frayed at the knees – and head out the back door into the yard.
It can’t be called a garden, really, because there is no grass; just a square of land bricked over and sprouting weeds, but it is still yours, nonetheless. Yours and hers. Clovers push through the cracks in the ground, and there’s a hole in the fence that backs onto the alleyway, a glimpse of wheelie bins, tarmac, more weeds.
You’ve made fond memories out here, though, you think, as you manoeuvre the ladders out of the shed. A shed you’d always intended to convert into a studio, but is instead crammed with tools and stacks of old sketchbooks, reels of fabric turned damp from winter. Right there is where you like to drink white wine spritzers, come the summer. Nora in a sunhat, thumbing through the paperbacks Shayhas lent her while you twiddle on your laptop, editing to the white noise of trains and traffic. Planes, sometimes, because you live slap bam in the Luton flight path, inhaling all sorts of aircraft fumes, Freya lamented, toxins, aldehydes, you name it. Today, though, there’s none of that. No sunhats or pollutants, no laptop or mother-in-law-to-be predicting your untimely death from noxious gases in the air. Just you on an ordinary day cleaning the gutters, as you’ve promised you would, too many times. Climbing the ladders with garden gloves on and the clouds fast-moving. A storm is coming but you do not remember this, at first. The sky has been clear all morning, and then out of nowhere, it isn’t.
It breaks, with the force of a glacier collapsing, as if in slow motion.
And the wind is wild but you’re almost there, you don’t do things by halves, so you hold on, intent on finishing the job. Wanting to unclog the remaining leaves but then the rain is so heavy you have to give up. The ladder wobbles, you say whoa there, out loud to no one. Laugh at yourself, like you’re talking to a horse, down Bessie, and the ladder tilts back again. Safe. On the way down though, classic, you slip because of the rain or the wind or perhaps both and you fall onto the wet brick, not all that far, but the sound is like shock, a hard solid crack, and that shock is felt in your elbow and your head and your ribs and the pain is so extreme you’re sure the former has been broken, fuck, fuckit fuck.
You don’t say those words, though; just lie there, dumb in the rain.
No laughing at yourself now. But the weather is almost biblical, so you have no choice but to get up, and there’s no blood, just a graze, a pulsing in your head. Glad it wasn’t worse. Glad that nobody saw. Glad that, while tender, your elbow does actually seem fine, moves the way it’s supposed to, shot of sharp pain again as you flex your wrist, but the rain only gets worse so you hurry to put the ladders away. Chuck the dirt you’ve unclogged into a bucket before it pools into a soup of more mulch and then you’re inside and changing into dry clothes and feeling agitated that this sacred free Sunday, of all the duty-bound Sundays spent at Freya’s, is now a washout. And that Nora still isn’t home; she’s been longer than you’d thought. Your elbow smarts with pain, and you are not one for bad moods but it looks like you’re in one; you make an angry noise through your nose.
You check your elbow in the bathroom mirror as your head pulses. It’s red, looks tender, that’s all. You want a hug. You want to lie down. You want to be hugged while you lie down, and you are going to tell Nora what happened, in passing, as part of your low-key, fake-firelit afternoon, a movie, maybe some wine, but then she comes through the door with someone else. With Bren.
And that agitation in you sparks again at the sight of him, when he’s never bothered you before, via anecdote or in person, because he’s just Bren, Nora’s old pal, Nora’s slightly sloppy, kind of aloof, short-arse childhood sweetheart who was never actually her sweetheart. These thoughts surprise you, flying through your mind like darts.
It’s still raining, hard, when they both bundle into your flat.
The pair of them soaked to the bone.
Hi, Nora says, sounding breathless. Look who I found, outside.
Brief silence, while the pair of them drip onto the carpet. Not that you likely look any better, with your wet hair and swollen arm; there is a moment when your gaze meets Nora’s and a current passes between you, a look without words, but you try to keep things relaxed. Robin-like. Good swim? you ask her, ignoring, for a moment, the fact that Bren is here.
Two swims, in the end, she says. In the lido and this crazy rain.
Storm Beatrix, you say, going to the airing cupboard and pulling out two towels. Good to see you, you say to Bren, though you don’t look him in the eye.
Are you … okay, Nora asks, as you help peel off her jacket. And you say sure; that she’ll want a bath, presumably?
A bath? Bren says, as he tousles his hair with the towel you’d passed him. At one o’clock in the afternoon?
Do not underestimate the wrath of a cold Nora, you tell him – or rather, you tell the coat hooks near his head, because it’s still an affront to have him here on yourSunday, your private afternoon with the wine and the cleaned gutters and therefore potential sofa sex if you were lucky, so you don’tfeellike looking at him, this gate-crashing friend of hers whose gate-crashing is wearing a little thin, now, if you’re honest.
Nora is nodding, says it’s true. She gets mean when she’s cold.
I find that hard to believe, Bren says, and you both say no you wouldn’t, and you think you see Nora cringe, a little, as you speak in unison. At how married you are, already.
Would you like a hot drink, you ask Bren, thinking that you definitely need one, yourself; a soothing herbal something, camomile or passion flower, to ease these darts of agitation inside you. You work hard to keep your voice jovial, though, uncaring. And you see Nora noticing. See her realise that you do care that he’s here, ever so slightly, but aren’t about to show it.
Maybe just some dry clothes? she suggests.
I don’t need – Bren begins, but you speak over him, say sure, you’ll find him something. Mi casa es tu casa.
Apparently.
In the bedroom, the rain thrashes at the windows like a pressure washer. You get on your knees and start hunting through your drawers for some clothes that might fit him, but they’ll all drown him, who are you kidding.Surprised at yourself once again for these mean thoughts. Kind of like Nora when she’s too cold, or hungry. And then she’s in the room with you, closing the door, sitting on the bed with her sockless feet, saying I didn’t plan this, Robin. I swear.
Okay.
We’ve not spoken since …
The missed phone call that would’ve changed the trajectory of your lives?
I never said that, Nora says.
I know; I’m saying it. But it’s fine. It’s … great that he’s here.
