Page 24 of Second Verse

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Was she angry?’

‘I don’t know,’ Poppy said, aware of how utterly useless she was being. ‘Should I go?’

Norah sighed. ‘Probably.’

‘OK. I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘If this is gonna be a problem...’

Norah shook her head. ‘I mean... I think she was just shocked. I can understand that.’ She gave a nervous giggle. ‘I’m kind of shocked myself.’

Poppy nodded and kept nodding for longer than was normal or necessary. ‘Yeah, right, shock. Yeah. It’s all... Yes.’ She finally managed to stop her head from going up and down and climbed off the bed. She realised her clothes were somewhat askew, and she tucked and smoothed until she felt vaguely together. ‘Sorry. I mean, notsorry. About all of it. Just that last bit. That wasn’t good. The rest of it was... nice.’

Norah looked up at her. ‘Nice?’ she repeated. She looked slightly offended.

‘It wasawesome,’ Poppy said quickly, which felt like an overcorrect. She needed to get out of here before she could completely fumble this. Why was she acting so bloody goofy? ‘Let’s talk tomorrow.’

Norah smiled. ‘OK. Tomorrow.’

She left the bedroom carefully, looking around in case Mrs Cauldwell was waiting to beat her to death with a frying pan. But the hallway was dead silent, and Poppy fled without further incident.

Eleven

Now

Well, that was that. Norah wasn’t gonna be able to go back to The Sugar Cube now. If she wanted a lunch out, she’d have to go to the newsagent for a prepackaged parody of a sandwich.

That was annoying. She liked The Sugar Cube. How much territory was she prepared to surrender to Poppy? What if Poppy turned up in Tesco? Would she quit eating altogether?

No. The Sugar Cube was one of those little pleasures that made Norah’s life bearable. She couldn’t let it go.

It was funny that it took a bagel to turn Norah’s thinking around, but that was her red line. She was going to have to figure out how to be a normal person around Poppy. There was no better time to start on that because it was almost time to get Freddie. She was going to see Norah at the school gates imminently.

She grabbed Freddie’s post-school snacks out of the cupboard and headed to the school, arriving at the gates just in time to see Poppy pull up in her car across the road. She got out and jogged across the road.

Norah braced herself. ‘Hello,’ she greeted Poppy.

Poppy looked around her like Norah was talking to someone else. ‘Oh, me? Hi.’

‘Your shift finished?’ Norah asked, trying to do an impression of how normal people sounded.

‘Uh, yeah. How about you?’ she asked anxiously as they headed through the gates and across the playground.

‘Yeah, I work from home.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Customer service online.’

‘Oh,’ Poppy said, a chuckle escaping her.

‘Is that funny?’ Norah asked defensively.

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