‘Miss... Potter?’ Poppy said, unsure if she had the teacher’s name right.

But the sigh that fell from Norah’s lips made it clear she had it bang on. Norah’s child was obviously in the same class, which was not something Norah considered good or even neutral news.

‘Right. Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around,’ Norah said. She turned and walked off before anyone could stop her.

Susan, who was as dense as plutonium and had missed all the tension completely, went right back to banging on about the Northwood Parents and Teachers’ Association. And if Poppy hadn’t cared much about that before, she gave negative shits about it now.

Poppy was back where she had started, and she’d come back to find the one person in the world she hadn’t expected to see. And the one person that (in the dark recesses of her mind) she’d kind of hoped to see again one day. But not today. Not here. Not now.  

Three

Norah walked home along the suburban leafy streets of Northwood in a daze. A car could have hit her and she might not even have noticed. What the hell was she doing here? She was supposed to be living somewhere fancy now, somewhere that former pop stars retired to, her face filled with Botox, her arse filled with silicon. She should be in one of those small, expensive British villages that attracted the rich and celebrated after they finished being famous and wanted a life of quiet luxury for the second half of their monied lives.

Why would she ever come back here? Northwood was not a bad place. It was a fine enough place, actually, and Norah felt lucky to live here in a lot of ways, but it had its limits. The small square was the centre of the area, and it contained a café, an orthodontist, a butcher, a greengrocer, and a newsagent. If you wanted a supermarket, it was a ten-minute drive away. Not exactly rich with amenities.

There was nothing for Poppy to come back for. Her parents were gone. Her dad had died when she’d been a kid (Poppy and Norah had that in common), and her mother had died a couple of years ago, from what Norah understood from her own mum.

And she had a kid now? They might have been preggers at the same time. How weird was that? Norah wondered who had provided the other half of the DNA. Was Poppy married? Norah had done great at never finding anything out about Poppy’s life despite how easy it would have been. But she had filters on everything with Poppy’s name, so that had helped.

But that wasn’t going to be possible now. They would be running into each other at the school gates twice a day, five times a week, for the foreseeable. And oh Christ, what if they became friends?

There was nothing for it. Norah would just have to move. She could tell Max she wanted a fresh start or something. He might go for that. Freddie would be unhappy initially, but he’d make friends soon enough at a new school. It wasn’t crazy. It was a sane reaction. Yeah, so normal and healthy to run from the area at top speed rather than having to interact with Poppy Jennings.

Only things weren’t good right now with Max. And it was a well-known fact that moving was high on the list of the most stressful things you could go through. She wasn’t sure if she and Max could stand up to that kind of strain. It could well be the thing that led to another thing high on that list—divorce.

She took a deep breath and tried to find her way to rational thought again. It helped a little. So she had to see Poppy? So what? It wouldn’t kill her, would it?

Right?

Norah let herself into the house, a small two-bed on Grange Street, two minutes from the square. ‘Max?’ she called.

He didn’t reply. He’d gone to work, thank fuck. She couldn’t deal with any more of him for a while. She needed to breathe. She couldn’t believe that it was only five to nine and she’d already discussed divorce and run into a hated foe. The way it was going, a flaming meteor would fly through the back window by lunch.

She went into the kitchen and made coffee, her stupid brain forcing her to relive the excruciating moment of the meeting, second by second. She couldn’t believe that she’d pretended she didn’t remember Poppy. She hadn’t been fooled for a second, and Norah appeared stupid in front of her. And she looked like warmed-over shit, another humiliation.

And Poppy was perfect. Perfect hair, perfect clothes. That’s who she was now—that woman. Though she wasn’t a far cry from the girl with the messy ponytail and loose plaid shirt carrying her battered acoustic guitar wherever she went, she was a tidier, adult version.

No Botox. It hadn’t been needed. She’d aged into an even better version of her youthful beauty. She was still in possession of porcelain-perfect skin with that natural ruddy glow in her cheeks. Her crystal blue eyes still twinkled. Her rosy mouth still carried mischief in its heart shape. She barely even looked tired, which was absurd with a child that age.

She was probably one of the mums who was always full of energy to plan exciting activities that were both educational and fun, always carrying a Tupperware full of fresh vegetables for her child to snack on, and always on time. She was already aligned with Susan within five minutes of arrival because Susan knew her own. She knew a perfect mum when she saw one.

Norah had never been that. She was always a bit late, always slovenly, always caught by surprise by World Book Day or Red Nose Day or any of the other days that were defined by sending your kid to school in some carefully handcrafted outfit you didn’t have the time to be fucking about with the night before.

Norah sat down at the kitchen table with her coffee. She’d have to open her laptop in a minute for work, but she felt so beaten that she couldn’t face it yet. Poppy was back. And she was doing exactly what she’d done before, making Norah look a fool.

Norah eventually sighed and logged onto her customer service job at Flowers-To-Your-Door, a flower delivery service. The queue was already pretty deep.

Hi, I’m Norah. How can I help? she asked the first customer.

He proceeded to rant about how his delivery of roses was late for his mother’s birthday, causing her to have a full panic attack because she thought he’d forgotten. Norah thought the guy had bigger problems than late posies, but she offered him half his money back.

The next few complaints were not quite as dramatic, merely dreary. Norah could easily phone it in while thinking about other things. That was a mercy some days. But not today. She didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts today.

She didn’t want to think about that.

Twenty Years Ago

Norah was late for school.

It was her mother’s fault. She was consumed with what to do with the leftovers from the funeral. Should she throw them out, try to give them to someone, or should they freeze them? Norah knew her mother didn’t want an answer; she just wanted to talk at Norah.

Norah had stood nodding and mirroring like a parrot, saying things like, ‘Mmm, that is a lot of sausage rolls,’ until her mother released her.

Norah thought it was possible that in other families, they would have cried together over this monumental loss. But that was for functional types. In Norah’s house, they processed together via trivialities. If her mum was crying, she did it privately. Norah did the same. The shower was a good place for it, masking both sound and moist eyes.

But anyway, that was the reason that Norah was walking into Art and Design at twenty past nine. Mrs Kane noticed but only gave her a nod. The teachers had been told to ‘understand’ about her current situation. Norah didn’t know how far that understanding would extend.

It had been three weeks since her dad had departed the planet, but when would the grace period run out? Would she be expected to get her shit together after the funeral? When was the grieving meant to be over? When was everything supposed to be normal?

Norah sat down next to her friend, Joy. She looked over in surprise. ‘Oh. You came. Thought you might have fucked it off today.’

Joy was a casual friend, more due to table geography than anything else. She was slightly disconnected, but she was certainly unique, and Norah appreciated that about her. Joy had a very particular artistic style she called Contemporary Despair, where she took gothic figures of the past and put them in situations of modern ennui. She was currently painting a picture of Edgar Allan Poe trying to assemble Ikea furniture. Needless to say, her parents had not correctly anticipated their daughter’s personality at the time of naming.

‘I got waylaid,’ Norah explained vaguely.

She got out her latest project, a graphic novel she’d been working on for months. She was a bit stalled with it currently. It was the story of a girl who accidentally dug up an ancient alien artefact in her back garden that gave her super strength. Norah had started it without knowing where it went.

She felt stupid for attempting it now. But she’d gotten ambitious, and there was no going back. She’d put too much time into it. She couldn’t afford to drop it. There wasn’t time to start a fresh project without her grade going to shit. And she needed this grade. It was gonna take her to art school.

‘Yeah?’ Joy asked.

‘Yeah. Needed to chat to my mum about stuff,’ Norah told her.

Joy looked like she wanted to say something about that. But then she seemed to chicken out and went back to adding shade to an Allen key that Edgar was squeezing hard enough to draw blood from his palm.

Sometime later, paused mid-stroke and said, ‘Oh, that girl asked for you, by the way,’ she said.

‘What girl?’ Norah frowned.

‘That girl who does the thing.’

‘I know exactly who you mean now,’ Norah said dryly.

Joy frowned, trying to summon anything that might place this mystery figure. ‘You know, she’s like... That guitar player.’

That lit a bulb. ‘Oh, do you mean, um, Poppy?’ Norah asked, confused.

Poppy lived on her street; their mothers knew each other. They’d been friends when they were little. But then they were placed in different classes at eight. Poppy had been considered a wee bit tricky for their new and anxious teacher, her lack of attention span and general distractibility making her a bit of an obstruction to the lesson plan. She’d been shifted to a more experienced teacher who knew how to handle her mercurial nature, and they had gone their own ways.