Page 12 of Second Verse

‘What for?’ Norah asked as they headed down the dark city street towards the car.

‘What’s wrong?’ Max asked, finally twigging the bad vibe.

‘What’swrong?’ Norah spat back, a rage building in her that had been aired in the session. There wasn’t the time. Max had sucked up the whole session with his many,manygrievances. ‘What’s wrong was the whole last hour.’

‘I thought that was good,’ Max said, shocked and hurt. ‘We reallytalked, for the first time in a long time.’

Norah could only laugh.

‘What is it?’ Max asked.

‘You’d like to know what’s wrong withme?’ Norah asked.

‘Yes?’ he said nervously.

‘Funny, you didn’t seem to give ashitin there,’ she said, thumbing in the direction of the counselling office.

Max was confounded. ‘I thought we did great. Really opened things up.’

‘The counsellor made a point of saying that one person couldn’t be solely responsible for every problem in this relationship. Did you even hear that?’ Norah checked.

‘Of course. I know I’m not perfect.’

‘What areyourimperfections?’ Norah asked.

Max paused. ‘I don’t always remember to take the rubbish out on time.’

Norah stared at him agog. ‘You said I was emotionally cold. And you think that’s equal to missing the odd rubbish collection?’

‘If you had stuff to say, you should have said it,’ Max said, irate.

‘When? You barely drew breath!’

‘I’ve been holding on to a lot of stuff. I needed to vent. I thought that’s what we were there for.’

‘I thought we were there to talk toeach other. Not just vomit grievances,’ Norah fired back.

Max looked wobbly. For a second, Norah thought she’d gotten through to him. But then he shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what I did.’

No, nothing. He couldn’t see past his nose. He never could. Why had Norah overlooked that? She had to be honest with herself. She’d always known this about him. Hadn’t she just thought it was who he was and decided to be OK with it?

Well, the question had now become, could shekeepdoing that? And for how long?

They got home, and Jane was waiting. Jane was fifteen, a third cousin on Norah’s mother’s side, who she’d known since she was in nappies. Not that she’d ever seemed young. She had been an old soul since she could speak. Her mother, Lauren, claimed her first words were, ‘I’m tired of this,’ while playing with Duplo.

‘Freddie isn’t asleep, but he’s pretending to be. I keep catching him reading with a little torch,’ Jane told them.

‘Don’t worry about that. It’s a system we’ve worked out,’ Norah said. ‘I pretend I don’t know, and he gets to feel like a rebel while he works on his reading.’

Norah went into her purse and pulled out some money, handing it over. ‘Can you do parents' evening next Tuesday?’

‘Yes, but I have to be back by eight thirty at the latest. My mum wants me to meet her new boyfriend, and she’s being quite neurotic about it. If I’m late, she’s going to read it as an unwillingness to make space for this man.’

Norah wasn’t sure how to address the bulk of that, so she stuck to the practicalities. ‘No problem. We probably won’t even need that long.’

Jane packed up her homework and headed out.

‘Wow, so Lauren’s dating again?’ Max noted.

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