Norah didn’t know what to say. Because she had said that stuff, but it wasn’t the whole truth. But she didn’t know how to walk this back from that. If she said she didn’t mean it, she was a liar. If she said she’d changed her mind, she was a flake.
‘FREDDIE! SLOW DOWN!’ Luna suddenly screamed.
‘I CAN’T!’ Freddie yelled back.
‘Bloody sugar. It’s like we gave them cocaine,’ Norah muttered, just looking for something normal to say.
‘Have you ever had cocaine?’ Poppy asked, amused.
‘No, but I had a coffee once with eight shots in it,’ Norah told her philosophically. ‘I got a lot done that day. None of it done very well, but it was done.’
Poppy laughed softly, and then she went quiet. Eventually, she sighed deeply and said, ‘I think your mum is right. I should stay away for a bit.’
Norah’s heart sank. ‘Poppy...’
‘You need time to know what you want. I think Luna and I should probably head out.’
Norah nodded, hiding her disappointment. She’d hoped for... What had she hoped for?
That wasn’t so hard to pinpoint. What she’d hoped for was that an obstruction could be removed. Norah couldn’t pretend what had happened between them at eighteen didn’t matter anymore, and time had made it irrelevant. It mattered. It just did. If they could clear the clog, Norah thought that she could let herself feel exactly what she felt and do with those feelings what she wanted to do with them.
But Poppy didn’t want to unclog. So Norah’s satisfaction was, as ever, thwarted.
‘If you gotta go, you gotta go,’ Norah said.
Poppy nodded. ‘Luna!’ she called to her daughter as she stood and tossed her empty ice cream container in a nearby rubbish bin.
Luna looked over and sensed her fun about to be put to a halt. ‘Not yet!’
‘Now, please,’ Poppy said firmly.
‘Five more minutes?’ the kid begged.
‘Luna,’ Poppy warned.
Luna looked at her mother’s face and got the message. ‘OK, OK!’ Luna said. She waited until her end of the seesaw hit the ground and jumped off.
Freddie promptly smacked down on his side with an ‘Ugh!’
And off they went.
‘Mummy, can you take over?’ Freddie asked.
Norah poured the remaining melt of her ice cream into her mouth and chucked the container. She headed over to the seesaw. She could see Poppy and Luna walking in the distance.
I’m in love with her, Norah realised. But, of course, it was too late. It was always too late.
Thirty-Seven
It was the annual summer fayre at Northwood School, and the joint was jumpin’.
The air was filled with the aromas of popcorn and hot dogs and the sounds of kids having a good time. At the heart of the playground, a huge neon pink bouncy castle stood tall, the centrepiece of the day. Next to it, there was a teacup ride, going a bit faster than the little kids on it might have liked as their parents waved from the sidelines, capturing the heartfelt screams of terror on their iPhones.
On the far side of the yard, an animal corner had been set up. It was filled with reptiles of all shapes and sizes, displayed in glass enclosures under the shade of a large tent. Children pressed their snotty noses against the glass while a woman in a safari hat explained facts about the snakes and lizards contained within.
Dotted around the edge of the fayre were a variety of stalls, and families moved from stall to stall, trying their luck at the tombola, eating hot dogs, and browsing through the handmade crafts for sale.
‘Susan’s outdone herself,’ said Poppy to herself, looking around. ‘I’ll give her that.’
‘What does “outdone herself” mean?’ Luna asked, eating popcorn by the fistful.
‘It means she’s made this fair great,’ Poppy told her.
‘Who did?’ Luna asked.
‘Susan. She runs the PTA.’
‘What’s the PTA?’ Luna asked.
‘The Parent-Teacher Association. They make sure there’s money for cool things like trips and fairs. And Komodo dragons, apparently.’
‘What’s a Komodo—’
‘Hey, you wanna go on the bouncy castle?’ Poppy asked, gesturing at the big pink palace.
‘YES!’ Luna screamed, already slipping her shoes off.
The morose grey-haired woman running the bouncy castle took money from Poppy as Luna jumped around with a lot of other kids. Roughly twenty, by Poppy’s count.
