‘Hello,’ Norah said, trying to work out what her mouth should do. She settled on a flat smile.

‘I wanted to check in on you,’ Poppy said. ‘Last night was... Is your mum OK?’

Norah laughed snarkily. ‘Well, she was acting totally normal this morning, put out my breakfast like usual, said bye and went to work.’

‘So, full denial?’ Poppy said.

‘It’s just the Cauldwell way,’ Norah shrugged.

Poppy sighed. ‘Wow. If that had been my mum, she’d have sat down on the bed and demanded to talk it out with both of us there and then.’

Norah snorted. ‘That sounds like a nightmare, if I’m honest.’

‘It’s just the Jennings way,’ Poppy said with a better, more sincere smile.

They laughed together then, and that felt good. Easier.

‘Do you think you’ll talk to her about it?’ Poppy asked.

Norah mulled that over. ‘Going on experience, in about six months, we’ll talk about it for one minute, and then it will never come up again.’

Poppy nodded and then swallowed. ‘Do you think we should talk about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Norah admitted. ‘I’m all over the place right now.’

‘Me too,’ Poppy said. ‘But I just wanted to say it’s OK. If that’s it, I wouldn’t stop being your friend.’

Norah found herself suddenly even more afraid. Was that all Poppy wanted? Had she tried it out with Norah and decided, ‘Ya know what? That’s about all I need from her. Job done.’ Had Norah been disappointing?

That turned Norah’s stomach because she hadn’t been disappointed. All kinds of crazy thoughts had slipped into her head last night during that kissing session. Norah recalled that she had gotten so turned on that she had made a decision that she wanted to lose her virginity to Poppy. If her mother hadn’t walked in, she would have gone ahead and done just that, if Poppy had been willing.

‘Is that what you want?’ Norah asked. ‘To just be friends.’

Poppy’s brow creased. ‘No,’ she admitted quietly, touching the back of her neck anxiously.

Norah let out a small sigh of relief. She knew this was the moment to stop panicking, or it was going to be over before it started. She needed to make herself brave, or she’d never kiss Poppy again. She couldn’t have that. What had happened was good. In her gut, she knew that much.

‘I don’t think I do either,’ she said to Poppy.

Poppy’s eyes widened in utter surprise. ‘Oh!’

‘You didn’t think I was going to say that?’

‘No,’ Poppy admitted. ‘I honestly thought... I had this feeling that you were going to say you were getting busy with exams coming up, something like that.’

‘God, that is how I would handle it,’ Norah admitted, revolted with herself. She was more her mother’s daughter than she’d have liked to admit. 

‘So, is this... Are we...’ Poppy said, gesturing with her hands as though she was going to be able to conjure the exact right word out of thin air.

After watching it go on for a few seconds, Norah decided she’d better lend a hand. ‘It’s... Well, we could... It’s... We...’

Jesus, what word was the word for this? The exact right word that walked the line between wanting to be together without any pressure whatsoever. Nobody wanted to say too much or too little.

But Poppy had her own way around the linguistic hole. She started laughing. ‘Can I just say... the reason I’m bad at this is that boys just... ask you out. Or you snog them, and then they assume you’re their girlfriend unless you tell them otherwise. I’ve never had to do this bit before.’

Norah smiled. ‘Me neither.’

‘I don’t mind it, though,’ Poppy grinned. ‘It's kind of nice to be... nervous.’ Poppy’s grin slid away abruptly. ‘Sorry, that sounded stupid.’

‘I think it’s nice, too,’ Norah assured her.

Easy, breezy Poppy was sweating this. It scared Norah a little, but it also electrified her. She wanted to kiss her right there in the hallway—not that she really would, but the thought was exciting.

Norah couldn’t believe that twenty-four hours ago, she hadn’t known she wanted this. And now she couldn’t stop looking at her lips.

‘What shall we do?’ Poppy asked.

‘Ummm....’

‘I mean, should we... Go out? Together? Date... stuff?’ Poppy asked.

‘Maybe we can just do things like normal?’ Norah said. ‘I like it the way it is.’

Poppy nodded, looking happy. ‘You’re right. It was already good, wasn’t it?’

Just then, the art teacher, Mrs Simmons, popped her head out. ‘Excuse me, but we don’t have drop-in hours, Poppy Jennings. Get along to where you should be and stop distracting my students.’

Poppy rolled her eyes at Mrs Simmons. ‘Jesus, chill. I’m going.’

Mrs Simmons looked at Norah—who was far less inclined to be sassy—and raised an eyebrow.

Norah felt the pressure of that eyebrow intensely. She said, ‘Bye’ to Poppy very quickly and went back in, Mrs Simmons shutting the door behind her with finality.

Norah returned to her table and happened to glance back at the window. To her delight, Poppy’s face reappeared to give her one last wave goodbye. Norah waved back, and Poppy ducked away.

The rest of the session passed without incident. Except that Joy kept asking why she was smiling like that.

Twelve

Now

Poppy was sitting on a child’s size seat looking at a poster about believing in yourself. There was a giant owl on the poster. Poppy didn’t know what owls had to do with self-belief. Owls were bookish animals. They weren’t go-getters. A salmon would have made more sense. All that struggling upstream business was a much better visual metaphor.

But Poppy wasn’t just in the school corridor to critique the posters, she was here for parent's evening. She was due in to speak to the teacher now-ish. The teaching assistant, Mrs Bauer, popped her weary head out. ‘Mrs Jennings?’

‘It’s Miss, actually,’ Poppy corrected, standing.

‘No, sorry,’ Mrs Bauer said apologetically. ‘I just came to say there’s going to be a delay. We’re talking to Julip’s dad and it’s... running long.’