Page 54 of People In Love
Nine, since she fell for Robin, though there has always been a part of her that felt something was unresolved, something restless inside her, and now she knows why. Because what Bren has told her changes everything. But it shouldn’t, because it’s less than two months now, until she’s married.
Two halves, to make up a heart.
Two people, taking up hers.
And who knows how much time has passed in this kitchen – could be an hour, could be less – but then she hears footfall on gravel and her mother calling her name, Nora? when she sees her shoes by the door. And then she’s tramping into the kitchen without removing her own, bright yellow flowers in the crooks of her arms.
Again, with the spontaneity! Freya says. She is wearing a kaftan over her thermals, tonight, and has a few twigs in her hair; she must have been pilfering crops from the local daffodil farm. Not a Sunday, is it?
She lays the daffodils on the side and starts pulling jam jars off the shelves, filling them with water from the tap. Nora, while she does so, finds her voice. Says no.
What’s up then, darl?
A complex question; a complex answer. Nora has been trying to find the right words since she’d left Bren in the restaurant, before their food arrived. Unable to eat, unable to think straight. On the train and on the bus and for god knows how long at this wobbling table. Wondering how to lay out all the hurt and assumptions and whys, the room pressing in on her, the lucky cat waving back and forth. Taunting.
Freya glances round, plucking a stem or two from the bouquets.
Has something happened? she asks, but Nora can’t answer.
Is it Robin? her mother presses. Or the wedding?
No, Nora says, her anger, dammed behind years of silence, now surging forward. No, it’s nothing to do with thewedding.
Okay, Freya says, in a suit-yourself kind of voice, turning back to her jam jars once more. I was just asking.
Were you? Or were you implying, yet again, that there’s some kind of problem with me wanting to marry the man I love?
It is like she is reminding herself of this.
Like she has to say it out loud.
Is this a chat for the greenh –
I don’t want to go near your damn greenhouse! Nora bursts out, and Freya turns, her eyebrows arched into her hair. You pretend you’re all wise and stoic, you tell me tocome back to my centreand breathe out all the bullshit but you know what, Freya? You’re the one that’s full of it.
Nora’s voice is not measured, like she’d wanted. She wants to throw plates and jam jars and lucky cats, but words, it seems, are the easiest choice. Freya looks bewildered. What was that, Nora knows she is thinking. What is this.
We’ve been over this, Freya says. And I’ve made my peace with it. Marriage isn’t for me, but –
Right, Nora says, her anger a crashing wave now, salt in her wounds as she saysyoujust prefer having affairs with men who are already married.
There is no sound, after she’s said this.
Not a breath from either of them.
And Nora’s adrenaline retreats, now that she cannot take it back, now that she’s put it out there, finally, but she forces herself to keep staring at her mother, who stares right back, her face white.
I know, Freya, Nora says. I saw you and Jon, that time. In our bathroom.
Whatever you thought you saw –
Don’t do that, Nora says, and her mother sees how serious this is, hears it, in her daughter’s voice, and stops talking. But Nora has only begun. All of it finally rushing out, even though this wasn’t what brought her here, not what she came to throw out into the room like the plates she still wants to smash, the sea shells, the greenhouse walls, this farce her mother has built for them both, their family friends, all lies.
Don’t pretend, Nora says. I know what I saw. I don’t know what it was, between you, and actually, I don’twantto know – don’t want to think about it – but you definitely weren’t just friends.
And with this, it seems, Freya can’t argue.
But I’m not here to get into that, Nora says, because she isn’t; she’d made a choice, long ago, to lock all that away, but the lid has been blown off, tonight. Collateral damage. I’m here, she says, to ask you something else.
