Page 10

Great. Freddiehadto be a sweetie pie, didn’t he? But it didn’t change anything. They’d have to be friends on their own time. Poppy and Norah could have no part in their friendship. It was simply not possible.

Twenty Years Ago

‘It’s not on anywhere round here,’ Poppy complained.

‘You could watch it on DVD?’ Norah suggested.

‘I need to see it on the big screen. This isThe Roomwe’re talking about. It’s the Mona Lisa of awful movies,’ Poppy said passionately.

‘Wait. It might come on?’ Norah said.

Poppy sighed and went back to strumming.

It had been a few months since Poppy had been sent to comfort Norah and failed utterly. The only thing Poppy could do was hang out with her and provide a distraction. So that was what she did. She was glad of the break from her usual friends/bandmates anyway. Shit was getting annoying with them lately. Too much ego bullshit. She was more comfortable with Norah.

Sometimes Poppy dragged Norah to bad movies, but often they just sat together in Norah’s bedroom while Norah drew and Poppy strummed her battered acoustic. Usually, Poppy needed to be alone to feel uninhibited enough to noodle with compositions, but somehow, Norah sitting and drawing in the background was kind of nice. The sound of her pencils scratching against paper became a background rhythm.

Though this had started as a favour to her mother, it wasn’t that now. Norah was her friend. It had happened so easily that Poppy wondered if it was because they’d known eachother when they were little. Maybe they were still the same kids underneath it all. It was a nice thought.

‘Hey, what’s that tune?’ Norah asked suddenly. ‘It sounds kind of familiar.’

‘It’s not a song, just me fucking around,’ Poppy said.

‘Oh, I thought...’ Norah stopped and smiled. ‘You know, it just sounded so catchy; I thought I knew it.’

Poppy smiled back. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘You’ve been playing it for weeks.’

‘I don’t even have lyrics for it,’ Poppy dismissed.

‘When you do, I wanna hear it,’ Norah told her.

‘I might not even get that far, Cauldwell.’

‘You write for your band, don’t you?’

‘This one won’t be for them. Slightly too upbeat,’ Poppy said with a dismissive hand wave. ‘We’re very strict. Alt rock only. If Thom Yorke wouldn’t like it, then we don’t play it.’

‘They’ll be missing out,’ Norah observed. She was struck by a thought. ‘Hey, would you rather be able to see people’s dreams or read their emotions as a colour aura around them?’

‘How well can I see the dreams?’

‘You can watch them like they’re on TV.’

‘How specific are the emotions? Can I see that someone is sad yet slightly horny at the same time?’ Poppy checked.

Norah thought it over. ‘Sure.’

Poppy considered. ‘I’m gonna go with the dreams.’

‘That’s so the wrong answer,’ Norah said with a chuckle.

‘You want the emotions?’ Poppy said, aghast. ‘You wouldn’t want to watch someone’s personal nightmare, wherethey’re, like, trapped in a world where squirrels are the size of t-rexes?’

‘If you had the colour thing, no one could ever lie to you,’ Norah pointed out. ‘You’d know exactly where their heads were at.’

‘I don’t want to know when people are lying to me, thanks,’ Poppy said. ‘What if you told me you liked my song just now, and then your aura was pity coloured?’