Before We Met: A Novel (28 page)

She’d read reams about him before they’d met and she hadn’t expected to warm to him. His press was almost too much; the online raving about his campaign for a new smartphone bordered on fan-boy adulation. In person, however, she’d liked Marant immediately. There’d been no pretension or cooler-than-thou cultural references; instead he’d known almost as much about her work as she did about his, and he’d told her that his five-year-old son sat at the tea-table banging his knife and fork and chanting her slogan for Happy Mouth ice cream. He’d also been refreshingly frank, centring their discussion on a campaign of his that hadn’t worked very well, asking what she would have done differently.

He’d left to go to another meeting and Roger Penrose had told her then that, with the new hire, he was looking for a counterpart to Marant, someone who would grow alongside him within the agency so that, after Penrose’s own retirement, the two of them would head it up together. After five months of unemployment, the idea was so exciting that she’d felt almost drunk on it when she stepped out on to the pavement afterwards. She had to get this job.

Hannah pulled the file closer now and tried to read, but within a few seconds her eyes stopped seeing the words and her mind turned to Nick. With a rush of alarm she remembered what Mark had said about his brother blaming him, resenting his freedom. What if Nick attacked Mark, hurt him? She felt a wave of fear that she pushed down as quickly as she could.
Come on
, she told herself, c
oncentrate,
but she managed only a couple of sentences before she heard Mark’s voice again. ‘
He’s been sitting up there stewing . . . He’s convinced himself it was my fault
.’

For more than an hour she struggled but in the end she conceded defeat, closed the file and shoved it back in her bag. She left the café and headed up the Fulham Road in the opposite direction to Quarrendon Street, no real purpose in mind except putting off the moment when she went back to the empty house. Whatever she tried to do today, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself thinking about Nick or shake the odd nagging sense that there was something she was missing.

When Mark arrived home at seven, he looked exhausted and his eyes were small and strained from screen-work. ‘Shall we go to Mao Tai for supper?’ he said. ‘Let’s not cook tonight.’

‘Have you heard from him?’ she asked.

He shook his head.

The restaurant was five minutes’ walk away. As they crossed the road at the corner of Parsons Green, Mark took her hand and held it tightly. They sat at the bar, ordered martinis and drank them like medicine. Mark ordered a second round and when they moved to their table he asked for the wine list. She’d never seen him drink like this on a Wednesday night. But then, she thought, it didn’t feel like a Wednesday.

As they finished their starters, she glanced up and saw that the woman at the next table was looking at him; a couple of minutes later it happened again. For a moment, paranoid, Hannah thought something was wrong, but then she realised: the woman was looking at Mark because he looked so handsome. The martinis had smoothed the strain from his face and his eyes were dark and shiny in the candlelight. He’d left his tie at home and undone his collar, and in his tailor-made suit jacket he looked well made and urbane. His hands rested on the table, strong and straight-fingered, their backs dusted with hair. For a moment Hannah saw him as if she were a stranger and felt a burst of pride: he was hers. Then she remembered the description in the newspaper article of his parents’ small grey pebbledashed bungalow. Yes, it must have an incongruous place for Nick to have spent his childhood but it couldn’t have suited Mark either, the boy who’d grown up to become this sophisticated man.

Halfway down her second glass of wine, after the waitress had taken away the plates from the duck, Hannah stood up to go to the loo and realised how smashed she was. Before the starters, she’d had nothing to eat since breakfast, and the alcohol was coursing through her bloodstream. She held the handrail tightly on the steep front stairs.

As she washed her hands, her body felt like a piece of machinery she was operating from the outside. She leaned towards the mirror to wipe away a smudge of mascara and saw herself up close by the light of the line of little candles along the back of the vanity unit. Wasn’t candlelight supposed to be flattering? It was doing nothing for her: she looked old – old and exhausted.

Suddenly she saw it, the thing that had been nagging at her, hovering at the edge of her field of vision all day: it was Hermione’s expression when Hannah had said who she was, the fleeting but unmistakable look of horror. Why would she have been horrified? If she was Mark’s friend, however off the radar, why had she looked so alarmed to meet his wife?

Hannah splashed her face with cold water, angry with herself for having so much to drink: if there was ever a time she needed to have her wits about her, it was now. She dried her face and hands and made her way carefully downstairs again, gripping the banister. Back at the table, she dropped heavily into her chair. Mark reached for her hand. He’d topped up their glasses again.

‘Hermione,’ she said, and her voice was too loud even against the background hum. She saw him snap to attention. ‘When I went to see her at the hospital, I told her who I was – your wife – and she looked scared. Why?’

Mark pulled her closer to the table. ‘Han,’ he said quietly, ‘can we talk about this at home? Not here. I don’t want to . . .’

‘No, Mark, I need to know now. Tell me. Why did she look frightened? She covered it up really fast but it was in her eyes, I saw it.’

He looked at her for a moment then leaned in again, reducing the gap between them to a few inches. ‘She was Nick’s girlfriend.’

Through the fug of booze, it was a second or two before Hannah realised what he was telling her. ‘You mean – at the time?’

He nodded.

‘My God.’ She put her hand over her mouth. ‘I thought she was a friend of yours from Cambridge. I didn’t . . .’

‘She is. That’s how they met, through me. She liked him from day one, of course, though Nick wasn’t so bothered, but after a while he realised that other people thought she was a bit of a prize – super-bright, lovely-looking – and he made a move. They’d been going out for about six months.’

‘Was she there?’

‘At the club? No. She was on nights at the hospital; she didn’t find out till the next day when one of the girls phoned her. God, poor Herm. I’d tried to warn her but she said she could handle him. I should have tried harder. It wasn’t even the first time he’d cheated on her. He’d been shagging around for weeks – another alarm bell I should have heard.’

‘That look when I told her who I was – why would she be frightened? It’s been ten years. Surely after all this time . . .’

Mark glanced towards the next table and lowered his voice again. ‘She testified against him.’

‘What? In court?’ Hannah said stupidly.

‘She gave evidence about Nick’s . . . tastes.’ Mark was speaking so quietly now that Hannah had to lean across the table to hear him. ‘How he liked to restrain her, that he was into control. How, a couple of times, he’d gone too far, hurt her, and then wouldn’t stop, even when she begged him. She had a really rough time in the box, his defence went to town on her, but she did it. Some of the things she said . . . It was hard to listen to – literally sickening. The women on the jury – I think for them, in particular, it brought it all into focus, having someone like Hermione, who’s so articulate and together, painting this picture of . . .’

Remembering how she’d confronted the woman in the corridor at work, how aggressive she’d been, Hannah was filled with remorse.

‘Nick was livid – he could see how it was going down. I watched him. He had this expression on, all regretful denial, shock that anyone could say those things about him, but I know him, I knew what he was thinking.’ Mark swigged his wine. ‘He wouldn’t forget that in a lifetime, let alone ten years. And now he’s contacted her from prison, making threats.’

‘What kind of threats?’

‘Apparently he’s told her it’s payback time.’

Chapter Nineteen

Lifting one end then the other, Hannah dragged the sofa away from the wall. She plugged in the vacuum cleaner, came back to the centre of the room and hit the on switch. The roar billowed up around her like a dust cloud. She’d put off the vacuuming until Mark was out of bed but already this morning she’d cleaned the whole of the ground floor, dusting and straightening, sweeping and mopping. She’d even cleaned the kitchen cabinets and the cutlery drawer, taking out the silverware and laying it on the table while she disinfected the inside of the drawer, getting right into the corners for every last bit of dust.

She’d been going since five. Even cleaning the downstairs loo was better than lying in bed desperate for sleep that wouldn’t come. She’d been awake all night, her mind racing, the alcohol in her stomach swilling queasily with the fatty Chinese. Until about three Mark had been awake, too – she’d turned over several times to find him lying on his back, eyes open – but then she’d heard his breathing slow and she’d been left alone in the darkness.

Rolling back the lovely Victorian nursing chair he’d bought at a furniture auction at Christie’s, she set about the rug with zeal. It was antique, too, imported from Turkey; one evening they’d sat together on the sofa and he’d told her the stories behind all its patterns and symbols. Glancing over, she saw the little silver clock on the mantelpiece: quarter past ten. Before he’d got out of bed, she’d gone online. The journey time from Wakefield to London, she’d seen, was two hours on the train, a little over four by coach. What time would they let Nick go – or was he already out? Perhaps he was already on the National Express, heading their way. She shoved the vacuum forward again, trying to drown the idea out.

Over the racket came a different sound and, looking up, she saw Mark standing on the step through from the kitchen. He was waving his arms in front of him:
cut it out
. She hit the switch and the vacuum sucked the noise back in like a bubble-gum bubble.

‘Could you keep it down? I’m struggling to hear myself think in here.’

‘Sorry.’ She put her hands up and retied the knot in her hair. The back of her neck was damp.

‘Isn’t Lynda coming tomorrow morning? Leave her something to do. Go up and have a bath or have another go at getting some sleep.’

She shook her head. ‘Pointless.’

‘Fine, but no more hoovering.’ He unplugged the vacuum and carried it back to the cupboard under the stairs. A moment or two later she heard him pull his chair up to the kitchen table again. It was for her sake that he was working at home this morning, she knew, and she appreciated it, glad not to be alone. If he thought that his being here was calming, however, he was wrong. If anything, he was making her feel more anxious. He was trying to hide it but he was as jumpy as she was. He’d snapped at her two or three times and he’d been having difficulty focusing long before she’d started vacuuming. While she’d been cleaning the glass in the internal doors, she’d seen him stand up from the table and go to the window two or three times. When he’d come back to his computer, it had been with a look of grim determination. Each time he’d lasted five minutes at most before standing up again. Usually he had no problem concentrating – she envied that about him.

She straightened the piles of magazines on the coffee table then went through into the kitchen and sat down. On the rush mat, left over from breakfast, was the teapot – always the sign of a bad morning when neither of them could face coffee – and a tumbler grainy with Alka Seltzer residue. Mark gave her a quick look over the lid of his laptop then went back to his email.

She reached for the new copy of
Campaign
that had arrived in the post. As she tore off the polythene wrapper, his phone vibrated on the table next to him, screen alight, and she gave a start, knocking the table and slopping his tea into the saucer.

‘It’s only David,’ he said.

‘Sorry. Every time it rings I think—’

Before she finished talking, he picked up the phone. ‘Hi. No, fine, just a few things I wanted to get done here before coming in. Did you get the print-out?’ He paused, listening. ‘I’ll be in after lunch. And I’ve got drinks tonight that might be interesting, depending on how things play out this week . . . I’ll fill you in later.’

He put the phone down. Without looking up, he started typing again. Eyes barely skimming the headlines, Hannah turned a page in the magazine then another. Three seconds later the phone rang again, and she jumped again.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hannah.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

He ignored her. ‘Hi, Neesh, what’s up?’ He paused and Hannah listened to the tinny voice at the other end. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d put it in your inbox before I left. Try the pile on the cabinet in my office . . . Sometime after two, probably . . . No, I’ve got it – you’re ringing me on it, aren’t you, you nutter? I’ll see you later.’

He put the phone back on the table and looked at her. ‘Just calm down, will you, Hannah, for fuck’s sake?’

The language startled her: she could count on two hands the times she’d ever heard Mark swear before, and he’d never sworn at her. ‘I said, I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I feel like I’m waiting with my neck in the guillotine.’