Before We Met: A Novel (12 page)

‘No. I mean, yes, of course, but . . . Everything’s fine, honestly. I’ll find a job sooner or later. Everything’s fine.’

He made a single upward nod, unconvinced, she knew, but not about to push it if she wasn’t ready or willing to tell him. She pincered some beef, opened her mouth to eat it then put the chopsticks down. Across the table she saw him watch her as she took a long pull on the beer instead.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘If I tell you something, do you promise me you won’t judge?’

He frowned, dimly insulted. ‘Of course. Anyway, whatever it is, I can’t think any less of you than I already do.’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘No, of course I won’t judge you. What have you done?’

‘It’s not me. It’s . . . It’s something with Mark. It might be nothing. I’m almost certain it’s nothing.’

Now Tom put down his chopsticks. ‘What?’

Come on, Hannah, he’s your brother
. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I was expecting him to come home last night and he didn’t.’

She told him the whole story, everything she’d discovered over the course of the day. He listened in silence, the vertical lines back between his eyebrows. When she told him about her savings, his eyebrows deepened momentarily into a dark V before, realising she’d noticed, he consciously straightened them again. When she’d finished, he was quiet.

‘Well?’ she said, the silence making her more nervous. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’ll be something to do with the business, won’t it?’ he said.

She sat back in her chair, relief flooding her. ‘That’s what I thought. There’s probably some cash-flow issue and he’s using the mortgage money and his and my savings to tide them over while . . .’ She trailed off, remembering the path her thoughts had taken in the office. The relief ebbed away. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t think it’s that. I think they’re doing okay.’ She thought of something new and lowered her voice, as if eavesdroppers from the business-software industry were seated at the tables around them, listening as if their lives depended on it. ‘This is really confidential – don’t ever let on to Mark I’ve told you – but they’ve been approached by one of their big rivals for a takeover, a buy-out. That wouldn’t happen, surely, if the business was tanking? So they must be doing all right. They’ve got new clients, and I know they’re being careful about spending in the recession, cutting overheads – it’s the whole reason why I’m not in New York any more. Also, David thought we were in Rome, didn’t he?’

‘Does Mark tell him everything?’

‘I don’t know. Why lie to him, though, if he’s involved?’

Tom grimaced slightly, acknowledging her logic.

Hannah thought about the service stations. ‘And,’ she said, ‘what about the trips up the M1, if that is what they were? Why did Mark tell me he was in Germany if he wasn’t?’

‘What’s this M1 thing? Where do you think he was going?’

She shrugged. ‘No idea.’ She put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. ‘Look, will you tell me if I’m being mad? I keep thinking about Mum, what she was like in the weeks before Dad left – before she drove him away, should I say? – and how I’m behaving exactly the same: sneaking about in Mark’s office, reading his bank statements.’ She lifted her head again and looked her brother in the eye. ‘Am I nuts or do you think he’s having an affair?’

Again Tom was quiet. Hannah waited. Please, she thought, lie. Just once, Tom, lie to me.

During supper she’d kept her BlackBerry in her bag, knowing that if she’d had it on the table, her eyes would have been going to it every few seconds. Under the circumstances, Tom wouldn’t have minded but she hated it when people did that to her: it was so rude. Anyway, she hadn’t been expecting Mark to ring again; she’d told him she might be out for dinner.

Now, though, giving her brother a final wave as the bus turned the corner, she got out her phone and saw a missed call. The number hadn’t been recognised but the caller had left a message and when she listened, she heard Mark’s voice.

Hi, sweetie. Just calling on the off chance of catching you before you meet up with Tom, if that’s what you’re doing. The fact that you’re not picking up makes me think it is. Say hello from me. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow. I love you
.

The message had been left two and a half hours ago, just after eight thirty. She listened to it again in case she’d missed something – music, a woman laughing in the background – then deleted it. Probably he’d called then precisely because he knew he was unlikely to reach her.

She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She thought about arriving home, how as she walked down Quarrendon Street from the bus stop, the house would be dark and empty. What if this was it? What if her marriage was over bar the shouting?

The idea swept away the anger and brought a wave of pure desolation in its place. Tears prickled under her eyelids and she blinked quickly, refusing to cry on the number 22 bus. She tried to distract herself, think about something else, but her mind wouldn’t do it. Instead it offered a vision of a future without him, life as she currently knew it gone, no Mark, no job, no house, no plans. No love, no companionship, no more shared jokes, no warmth.

Warmth
. She stopped on the word, turned it over in her mind. Yes, if he left her, that was what she’d really lose. She could rebuild the rest, find another place to live and a way to get by until she got her career back on track, but would she ever be able to replace the warmth, the colour, the sheer comfort she’d felt since she met him?

She had a sudden memory of their ‘date’ in Williamsburg, the night after he’d rumbled her in McNally Jackson. The warmth had already been there. He’d been waiting for her outside the venue wearing jeans and a pale cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow. As she’d rounded the corner he’d been on his BlackBerry but he’d looked up and seen her almost immediately, and a smile had spread across his face like sun across water.

All night she’d felt it. Three thousand miles from where she’d grown up, in a part of Brooklyn that she’d barely known, surrounded – with the exception of a few of her colleagues – by strangers, she’d felt at home. Every time she looked at Mark that night – while they had beers with Josh and Lily during the warm-up act, as they pressed a way to the front when Flynn’s band came on, as he’d danced next to her during the encore, a decent indie cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ – she’d felt warmth radiating off him. Later, outside, a few blocks from the club, he’d pulled her into the shadows at the side of a hipster boutique. The J train had clattered over the bridge above them on its way to Manhattan and the words
at last, at last
had gone through her head. He waited until the train was gone then put his hands round her waist and pulled her against him. When he kissed her, she’d had one thought:
I want this for the rest of my life
.

Chapter Eight

‘Come in, come in. This is a lovely surprise.’ Pippa stood aside to let her in. ‘Here, give me that.’ She took Hannah’s coat and slung it over the post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Come through. Excuse the mess.’ She nudged a purple stuffed elephant towards the skirting board with the toe of her boot. ‘I’m glad you rang. I’m here on my own – we’ve got Dan’s mother for the weekend and they’ve taken Charlie to the Sunday Club at the cinema. They know it’s the only way they stand a snowball in hell’s chance of getting anything decent to eat later. Paddy’s down for a nap so it’s just me.’

Hannah followed the baggy seat of Pippa’s jeans down the corridor with its white and green Victorian tiles. Every time she saw her, Hannah was struck anew by how tall Pippa was – five foot eleven, she said. Even in the battered ugg boots she had on now, she towered. There was a patch of something reddish on the back pocket of the jeans, pasta sauce maybe or ketchup, and both elbows of her navy jumper were worn into holes. Nonetheless, she looked good – insouciant, almost rakish.

In the kitchen Hannah took a stool at the counter while Pippa filled the coffee pot. The kitchen was about the same size as the one at Quarrendon Street and had similar double doors leading into a garden that was slightly bigger. While Hannah had managed to wrestle theirs under control, however, Pippa’s was left wild. ‘I’d love it to be a bit more civilised,’ she’d said the first time Hannah had come round, reaching out to snap off a skinny runner from the rose that scrambled up the back of the house, ‘but, you know, twenty-four hours in a day and all that.’ Today a primary-coloured jumble of plastic toys collected the rain that had started to fall about an hour ago, and a ride-on tractor lay on its side, its moulded wheels gradually filling.

There was more chaos inside. Washing up was piled in the sink, and a bevy of old coffee cups had collected on the counter next to a net of sprouts. A polythene bag of muddy potatoes rested atop a pile of Sunday papers that was already devolving into a shaggy-edged nest. Next to it, perilously close to a small pool of spilled orange juice, was a handful of A4 sketches for
The Witches of Wandsworth
, the cartoon strip Pippa drew for the magazine given out free at Tube stations on Friday mornings. Her other strip,
Harrised
, adventures from the life of Emily, a woman terrorised by her three-year-old son, appeared in one of the big women’s glossies. The end of the kitchen table bore evidence of potato printing – bowls of drying paint and a jam-jar of cloudy blue water – and a bowl of something mashed was browning on the tray of Paddy’s high chair.

Pippa handed over a mug of coffee and nudged a carton of milk across the countertop. ‘It’s a good thing you rang. I said I’d stay behind and get some stuff done but I got sucked into this straight after they left and I haven’t done a thing.’ She tapped the cover of the thriller lying face down by the side of the chopping board. ‘Have you read any of his? Don’t: they’re like crack. I bought this one yesterday afternoon at Nomad and I’ve barely spoken to anyone since. Dan had a go at me this morning for ignoring his mother.’ She pulled a face. ‘Do you mind if I carry on with this while we chat?’ She tipped a colander of French beans on to the board and started regimenting them into lines, ready to top and tail.

‘Anything I can do?’

‘No, don’t worry. So you were over doing a bit of shopping?’

‘Just a birthday present I needed to pick up.’ Here come the lies, Hannah thought. ‘I quite often use Putney High Street. I like the compactness – everything close together.’

‘It’s good, isn’t it? Much better than having to drag into town. Well, whenever you’re over here, give me a ring. I’m always around at weekends.’

‘Thanks, I will. Same when you’re over our side of the river.’

Pippa looked up from the beans and smiled. She was the one of Mark’s British friends Hannah had immediately liked the best. Pippa and Dan had been at Cambridge with him, and it was Dan Mark had called first with the news that he and Hannah were getting married. All the wives and girlfriends of his friends were nice people and they’d made her feel welcome, but Pippa was the one Hannah felt most connection with. That she didn’t take herself at all seriously was a big part of it. A couple of the others – Marie, in particular – seemed to have had a sense of humour bypass in the labour ward and talked about their children with an awe usually reserved for irascible deities, apparently terrified of being struck by lightning should they so much as glance at a non-organic banana in Waitrose. Pippa had managed to remain human, despite Paddy and Charlie being only one and four.

‘Booze,’ she’d said frankly, when Hannah had asked her secret. ‘The hardest thing about having a baby is the not drinking. I tell you, all I wanted when I was pregnant was a very large gin and tonic, and people looked at me like I was Stalin if I as much as said it. And all these toddlers who are sugar-free, gluten-free –
vegan
, for Christ’s sake: the first time they have a cup of lemonade and a chocolate biscuit, their heads’ll explode. Sometimes I listen to all these earnest conversations – I know they mean well, I do – but it makes me just want to . . . I don’t know, drink five martinis and stand on the table smoking and flashing my knickers.’

Now, though, Hannah wondered what she was going to say – how she could even start. In the car on the way over she’d rehearsed two or three possible opening gambits but, here in the relaxed fug of Pippa’s kitchen, she couldn’t see how any of them would work. Pippa was sharp: she’d be on to her straight away. And the last thing Hannah wanted was for any of this to get back to Mark. But Pippa was her best shot, and if any of his friends would know what was going on, it was Dan.

‘So, what’s up?’ Pippa asked. ‘How are things?’

‘Oh, fine – good. Still haven’t managed to find gainful employment, but I’m trying.’

‘Bloody economy. I was talking to the
Post
about doing something for them but their budget’s just been cut. Or that’s what they’re telling me, anyway.’ She grinned. ‘How’s Mark? Is he away this weekend?’

‘New York.’ Or Rome. He could be in Paraguay for all she knew, Hannah thought. She felt a new surge of determination. She had to do it – she had to say something. ‘Actually, Pip, I wondered . . . Taking the opportunity while he’s not about . . . I don’t know whether Dan’s mentioned anything or whether Mark’s said anything to you himself, but I’m a bit worried about him.’

Pippa looked up from sweeping the bean-ends into the waste disposal.