Poppy and Norah stood side by side with their coffees, watching the kids go bananas on a huge sunken pirate ship jutting out of a ginormous sandpit.
Poppy was still dealing with the surrealness of the situation. She hoped it would pass soon. It had simply seemed so impossible that she’d ever get another chance to be in Norah’s life that she hadn’t even liked to hope. But they were moving past the past. Poppy couldn’t ask for more.
‘Freddie’s nose is running like a tap,’ Norah muttered to herself.
‘Probably a touch of hay fever around all the, ya know, actual hay,’ Poppy reassured her.
‘I hope so. He’s not fun with a cold. He gets very morose,’ Norah mused.
‘Morose?’
‘Yeah, he starts making plans for his own funeral. “Mummy, if I don’t wake up tomorrow, don’t give my toys away. Just put them all over me. I can sleep with them forever.” That’s a verbatim quote. Gave me the shivers.’
‘Very ancient Egyptian of him,’ Poppy smiled. ‘Luna goes full diva when she’s sick. Demanding only the finest snacks, the best made-up games, movies that don’t exist.’
‘That don’t exist?’ Norah repeated.
‘She has this tendency to think that Netflix caters to her whims,’ Poppy explained. ‘If she dreams up a story about a unicorn that makes friends with a koala, she fully expects it to be there.’
‘And when she finds out it’s not?’
‘She’s usually philosophical about it, but now and again, full meltdown.’
‘God, the meltdowns,’ Norah said, clutching her coffee a little tighter.
Poppy turned in surprise. ‘Does Freddie have them? He seems so chill.’
‘He’s just on best behaviour around Luna,’ Norah explained. ‘But he can throw a wobbler with the best of them.’
Poppy related to that. She felt she was very much on her best behaviour today. She was trying hard not to say something stupid around Norah. She didn’t even know exactly what it was she was trying not to say. But it felt as though a mistake lurked, patiently waiting to be made.
They sat in comfortable silence for a few moments, sipping their drinks and watching the kids play.
‘Oh, what happened with Cherry, by the way? Do you know?’ Norah asked.
Poppy smiled. ‘Her mum is fine. It turned out to be an insane case of heartburn. She just has to quit eating cheese, but she’s gonna be fine.’
‘Jesus, what a relief for Cherry,’ Norah exclaimed.
‘Yeah. I know everyone has to die eventually, but I’m glad Cherry gets to have her mum that bit longer,’ Poppy noted.
She thought it was a pretty bland comment, but it seemed to send Norah into a thoughtful silence.
‘Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you didn’t have a kid?’ she asked a few minutes later.
Though the question had come a little out of left field, Poppy wanted to give her a considered answer.
‘I guess I’ve thought about it before,’ she replied cautiously. ‘But not really seriously. I mean, it’s hard. But I couldn’t have been more deliberate in the choice. So how could I complain?’
Norah paused as though she was wondering whether to press. ‘How deliberate?’
Poppy was kind of glad she was fishing. She wanted to be able to tell her. ‘I inseminated myself.’
‘With... Someone?’ Norah asked tentatively.
‘No. Just me. I’d been single for a while. And it was always something I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure if it was a perfect time, and I’d always hoped there’d be someone doing it with me, but my mum’s health wasn’t good. I wanted her to get to meet her grandkid. So I went for it.’
Norah was fascinated. ‘Wow. That must have been tough. Doing it solo.’
‘Yeah, it was,’ Poppy admitted. It had been extremely tough at times.
Her mum loved her granddaughter but couldn’t help her health being what it was. But Poppy had been able to afford a part-time nanny, which had made it feel physically possible, if quite lonely. But around the time that Luna went to school, the money had dried up, and things became tough in a different way.
Poppy supposed that was how it always was. Every choice led you down a tough road. You became a pop star, and you realised you hated it. You let a shitty career die, but you didn’t know what came next. You wanted a kid, but it was never the right time, and you worried it wasn’t on the cards. You did it anyway, and it was more work than you could imagine. You left behind an old hard, and you were immediately handed a brand new hard.
Like her new job. The café had saved her arse, but it wasn’t forever. She had a lot of time in front of her, and she couldn’t expect her child to fulfil her in every way. If she did, one day Luna would grow up and leave, and then what would Poppy do? Be one of those sad people waiting by the phone for her increasingly busy adult child to call?
Poppy was lucky her mother wasn’t like that. She’d had her own life after Poppy left. Poppy had to give that to her daughter. Show her how to be a full person with wants and dreams and all that crap. Only, she wasn’t her mother. She didn’t know how to do it yet.
‘You ever wonder about child-free life?’ she asked Norah.
‘Now and again,’ Norah said. ‘But I can’t imagine a world without him. So, like you, not really. Though I was less deliberate about it than you were.’
‘Oh?’ Poppy asked, hoping she didn’t sound as intrigued as she was. ‘I’m interested, but by no means nosy,’ was the tone she was striving for.
‘I got knocked up, being honest. I’d been seeing Max for about six months. I was like, “It’s too soon to get serious. What the hell are we going to do?” But he thought it could work. So we went for it,’ Norah told her plainly.
Poppy was slightly amazed at the way Norah was spilling like this. It pleased her but scared her, too. The pressure was mounting to say the right thing. To tell Norah that things would get better and that she’d find a way to make it work. But she didn’t want to offer a meaningless platitude. She wanted to say something real to her.
