Page 18 of People In Love
A handsome thirty-year-old? Bren suggests, and Freya snorts, but it stops her staring, at least. Gives Bren a chance to nod towards her porch door and say, let’s get your shopping inside, shall we?
Years of intrepid travel, Freya says, and all you can think about is getting my yoghurt in the fridge?
I am my mother’s son, he says, and she snorts again. Opens the car boot, passes him more bags – these two are for your mum, she says – did you remember the almond milk, he does not ask – then she waves him through her porch door, says he may as well make himself useful, now he’s here. Those top cupboards won’t reach themselves.
Inside, scent of jasmine, ylang-ylang, just like before. Seashells hanging on strings, densely patterned wallpaper, a new rug, he thinks, in the hall. He puts the bags on the table in the kitchen and it rocks forward onto its bad leg. Satisfying,somehow. And kind of maddening, too, that it still hasn’t been fixed.
Freya, it seems, is already over the shock of seeing him. She slings her coat onto a chair and starts bustling around, unpacking the groceries so that Bren can, in turn, take a look at her. Kimono over her dungarees. Hair greying, but only slightly; she’s ten years younger than his own mother. Just as lean and wild-haired and nimble as ever, the kitchen still crammed with jam jars. The beckoning cat waves at him from the window sill. There were hundreds of them in Japan, stacked in shop windows, at the entrances of temples. This one is swinging its left paw; inviting friendship, he thinks, if he remembers correctly, and not money and fortune, though it could be the other way around.
Tea, Bren? Your mum’s bits are all long-life, so they can wait.
Why not, he says, so she fills the kettle and takes it to the stove, asks him how long he’s been back. He glances at the clock on the wall, hot pink, flamingos for hands. About twenty-six hours, he says.
And where’d you come from?
New Zealand, he says, and she says ah, yes, Nora did say.
Her kimono flows behind her, cape-like, as she moves between the cupboards.
You’ve spoken to her, then, Bren says, as he lowers himself into one of her mismatched wooden chairs.
I speak to her most days. She is my only offspring, after all.
This feels pointed, but Bren doesn’t bite. Mostly because it’s fair.
So you’ve spoken to her today? he asks, trying to sound offhand, and Freya throws him a packet of biscuits.
Either open them or put them in that top cupboard, she says. And no, not yet. I’m working the late shift, tonight,so she’s not coming for dinner, and I expect she’s hideously hungover after …
She twirls to face him, her kimono spinning like a flamenco skirt.
You went to herparty?
Bren opens the biscuits.
You came all the way back from NewZealandto go to Nora’sengagementparty?
Well yeah, Bren says, pulling out a digestive. What’s wrong with that?
The question, Bren, is what’s right with it?
The weight of this reframing creaks between them, like the broken leg of the table. Still there, after all these years.
It just felt like time, he says.
I’ll say! Freya says. After twelve years!
Bren takes a bite, then swallows. Freya shakes herself like a disgruntled hen puffing out her feathers, then returns to unpacking her shopping; not, however, about to let it go.
I’d understand you flying home for her actualwedding, she goes on. Oh buck and fugger, I already had carrots. But last night was just a little soirée, wasn’t it?
There were loads of people there, actually, Bren says. We barely got a chance to talk.
You flew around the world for her party and didn’t talk to her once you got there?
She didn’t seem to want to, he admits.
At this point, the kettle starts shrieking. Freya tells him to pass her two cups, behind him – but he remembers, needs no instruction, has already pulled two mugs from their wall hooks. She fusses around, pours the water, then hands him his mug with the tea bag still in it. No milk. No offer of any, either, dairy, almond or otherwise.
