“Hannah?” she repeats, a fresh bout of tears already welling up. “Did you say little Hannah?”
“Yes,” James says, his own voice quivering and his eyes glistening. “Yes, I named her after you.”
James turns sideways on the log, and the sadness in his eyes makes Hannah melt into fresh tears. He hugs her, and after a few minutes, her sobs fade and she dries her eyes on her sleeve again and stands. “Let’s walk for a bit,” she says.
They head, in silence, deeper into the forest, and as they do so, the pines become taller and taller, the trunks ever more massive, the air quieter, stiller.
“I love pine trees,” Hannah says for no reason other than it feels good to say one normal sentence today.
“Yes,” James agrees. “It’s always so quiet. Dead almost.”
“It is.”
“So what happens now do you think?” James asks.
“I don’t know,” Hannah says, then after a few seconds silence, she adds, “But I suppose you need to leave. And I need to work out if I can forgive Cliff.”
“Forgive him for...?”
“Well, he lied to me about so many things,” Hannah says. “He said you were dead. He stole my post. I can still barely believe that. I wonder if he kept them all.”
“But you still love him despite it all?”
Hannah can’t answer that now. She’s not sure right now if she ever loved Cliff, but she’s also unsure of her judgement. In the end, she just shrugs and says, “Love...”
They walk on a little farther, startling a bird, which screeches in turn startling them. As the path narrows, James’ hand bumps against hers. The contact is so light, so vague, that it could almost go unnoticed, but it happens again and again, and each time Hannah senses the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. The fifth time, she stops walking and turns to face James. “What are you doing James?” she asks, her voice flat, almost robotic with constrained emotion.
“I still want to kiss you,” he says. “Isn’t that crazy?”
Hannah sighs deeply and shakes her head. “No,” she says. “That’s not crazy at all.”
He’s going to leave soon, she thinks. He’s going to leave, and I’ll probably never see him again before I die. She glances left and right and leans in.
James half-smiles and then their lips touch and his arms come up to hold her. Momentarily, everything is all-right with the world. Just for an instant, she is home.
They kiss delicately and then Hannah opens her lips and lets James’ tongue slip inside, exploring her mouth. They start to kiss more passionately, start to grind their bodies together. She becomes aware of James’ hands slipping inside her t-shirt, becomes aware of the roughness of his fingers against her shoulders. And then suddenly, James pulls away and rests his head, instead on her shoulder. “God, I want you so bad, Hannah,” he whispers.
“I know,” she replies – her own legs have gone so weak she’s struggling to stand.
“Is it too late for us?” James asks, and Hannah, in spite of herself, bursts out laughing. “Of course it’s too late for us,” she says. “I’ve spent half my life with your brother. We have a child.”
She senses James’ body shudder against her strangely and then he says, “Spend the other half with me, Hannah,” and she realises that he is trying not to cry. “Tell that stupid brother of mine to get lost,” James says, “and come with me.”
Hannah laughs again. She can’t help herself. The absurdity of this time-warp they are stuck in strikes her as too ridiculous for words. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen James,” she says. “If it was going to happen, it would have happened fifteen years ago.”
“But I want you so bad,” James says, pulling her tight again, so tight that she’s aware of his erection pressing against her through their clothes. She wonders if, just for half an hour, she can be someone else. She wonders if, just here, just now, just for a bit, she can do what Tristan or Jill, or half of the other people on planet Earth would probably do.
She’s considering both this and the folly of even considering this when a large, aged Labrador pads up to their feet and starts nuzzling their legs. James breaks free and crouches down. “Hello buddy,” he says. “Where have you come from?” and Hannah hates that dog, could kill that dog for destroying the moment.
A few seconds later, the owner, a short man with a vast pot-belly comes into view. “Milou !” he shouts. “Ici !”
Hannah and James smile falsely and nod at the man, and, as he passes, he apologises for the dog. “Désolé,” he says, “mais il aime tout le monde.”
“He gave me a funny look,” Hannah says, once the man has waddled on. “Do I look shocking?”
“Your eye-stuff has gone a bit crazy,” James says.
“Panda eyes?”
James nods, then leans in to kiss Hannah again, but this time she turns her head. That moment has passed.
“Hannah?” James asks.
“I think that’s enough for now,” she says, pushing him gently way.
“For now?” James says.
“For forever probably,” Hannah tells him.
“Probably,” James repeats.
“Just stop it,” Hannah says.
“Sorry.”
“I think we should go back now,” she tells him, suddenly business-like. “And I think you should leave.”
James nods sadly and blinks acquiescence.
“This is enough,” she says. “This is just... enough.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding again.
As they turn to walk back to the house James reaches for her hand, and she lets him take it.
“We can keep in touch this time though, right?” James says squeezing her fingers.
“I guess,” Hannah says.
“And if, you know...” James says, “things change for you.”
“Yes,” Hannah says. “Yes, if anything changes...”
“Do you have email?” James asks.
“I use Cliff’s, so, no, not really,” Hannah replies.
“Maybe you could get your own?”
“Yes,” Hannah says with a sigh. “Yes, that would seem like a good idea, all things considered.”
Once they hit the road, they separate and Hannah pauses and asks, “Do you have your keys with you? The car keys?”
“Sure,” James says. “But I have to get my stuff from the house.”
“Right,” Hannah says. “Maybe I can go and get that for you. It might be better if you don’t come inside. Just in case it all kicks off again.”
“Sure,” James says. “I can just wait in the car, if you want. If you think you’ll be all-right.”
“I’ll be all-right as long as you don’t come in,” she says, then, swiping at her cheek, “Is it raining?”
“Yes, I just got hit too,” James says.
Another drop hits Hannah’s forehead and then another her leg, and then suddenly they are running towards the house through a deluge.
When they reach the property they open the gates and James climbs into his car, calling to Hannah to get in as well.
She jumps into the passenger seat and pulls the door closed behind her. She is already drenched. The rain drumming on the roof gives her a sense of déjà vu that is so powerful it makes her come up in goosebumps.
“God,” James says. “Do you remember?”
Hannah nods. “That’s exactly what I was just thinking.”
“I should have driven away there and then,” James says. “I wanted to, you know.”
“Yes, you said. But it was a whole lifetime ago now.”
“Well, half a lifetime ago,” James says.
“Yes. So. I’ll go get your bag from your room.”
“My wallet’s on the side too,” James says. “Are you sure you don’t want me to...”
“Really, no,” Hannah insists.
“And you’ll be OK. He won’t... you know...” Hannah creases her brow, so James explains, “He was holding you before.
He seemed pretty aggressive. Will you be OK?”
“Of course,” Hannah says. “He’s my husband, James. He’s not going to hurt me.”
“Right. So, my wallet, bag, the phone charger is plugged in next to the bed. My bathroom bag – the grey one. I think that’s about it.”
“I’ll scan around for anything else,” Hannah says. “Where will you go?”
James shrugs. “It’s getting late,” he says. “And this is hardly ideal...” he nods at the water cascading down the windscreen.
“There’s a bar-hotel place at the end of the road,” Hannah tells him. “We went there for drinks the other night.”
“This road?”
“Yes. It’s half a mile after that bend. Just straight down. You can’t miss it.”
“I’ll go there then,” James says, “then head down to the coast tomorrow morning for a few days. My flight back’s not until Saturday.”
“Right,” Hannah says. “So, wish me luck.”
“Yes, good luck,” James says. “And if you need anything, just shout or something.”
“I’ll be fine.”
She climbs from the car and runs to the house. The raindrops are the biggest she has ever seen, each one almost a puddle of its own.
Inside the house is dark and, with the exception of the white noise of the rain falling outside, completely silent.
She checks the kitchen and then seeing that their own bedroom door is closed, she takes her shoes off and creeps to the bathroom, then to Aïsha’s room where she stuffs James’ wallet, phone charger and toiletry bag into the rucksack before heading back to the patio.
Then she heaves the bag over one shoulder, and runs, still barefoot, back across the gravel to the car.
James has the hatchback open, and is standing beneath it, using it for shelter. He takes the bag from her and drops it in the boot.
“Your wallet’s in there,” Hannah says, aware that the rain is still lashing her legs. “Everything’s in there, I think.”
“If you find anything else, you know where I am,” James says.
“Yes.”
“And if you want to see me for any other reason,” he says, looking searchingly into her eyes.
Hannah nods and swallows. “Yes,” she says. “But I won’t. You know I won’t.”
“If you change your mind...”
“Stop it, James. Just leave, will you?”
“Right. Oh! Here,” James says, rifling in one of the smaller pockets of his rucksack and producing a business card. “It’s a bit formal, but it has my email and stuff on it.”
“Thanks,” Hannah says, sliding the card into the damp pocket of her shorts. “I’ll get an account set up and I’ll send you a message – an email.”
“Is that a promise?” James asks.
“It is,” she says, then, “Right!”
They look into each other’s eyes, and then both sigh simultaneously.
“Hannah,” James starts, but she interrupts him.
“Don’t,” she says. “Please, just go, will you?”
James swallows with difficulty, then nods. “Fine,” he says. “Right.”
He opens his arms, embraces her in a final hug, and then closes the hatch and runs to the driver’s door. “Go inside!” he shouts through a gap in the window. “You’re soaked.”
“I don’t care!” Hannah says. “It’s warm. It’s like a warm shower.”
James smiles sadly at her, shakes his head, and starts the engine. And then with the tiniest of waves, he is gone.
Hannah closes the gates and leans on them to watch as the Clio shrinks in size, and then finally vanishes around the bend.
In those last twenty seconds before it disappears from view, she considers running after him, she considers screaming, and she considers sinking to her knees to writhe in the mud. But though they all seem like possibilities, she can’t imagine herself doing any of them. She is, she realises, a prisoner of her own body, trapped by her genes, or her conditioning, or her upbringing, or expectation or whatever it is that makes Hannah, Hannah.
She’s thirty-eight, and if at thirty-eight you’re still not Jill and you’re still not Tristan, then you might as well get used to it. Because ultimately, that is the greatest revelation of all. That even now, even after all the years of dreaming, of wanting, she is not Tristan, and she is not Jill, and she is not anyone who can recklessly seize unexpected opportunities. She is Hannah. She is Hannah Parker. And standing in the pouring rain once every ten years is about as crazy as it gets.
The water running down her neck makes her shiver. She glances down and sees that her t-shirt is drenched and transparent and is clinging to her breasts.
She looks left and right to check that no one has seen, and then turns and walks briskly back to the house.
THIRTY-NINE
Hannah dries herself in the bathroom. She washes her face and removes her blurred make-up. Not wanting to face Cliff yet, she changes into dry clothes from the laundry basket – the t-shirt and shorts she was wearing yesterday.
She heads through to the lounge, now dark as evening, and sits on the cold leather sofa and watches the rain plummeting from the overflowing guttering beyond the French windows.
For half an hour, she sits like this, and for half an hour she has no thoughts at all.
Eventually, she hears the bedroom door open, then Cliff’s footsteps. She doesn’t turn around, just continues to sit staring at the rain. She waits for him to speak.
“I take it you were with him,” Cliff finally says, still standing behind her.
“Yes,” Hannah says, but the word comes out as a croak, so she has to clear her throat and say it again. “Yes.”
After a few seconds silence, Cliff asks, “So what are you going to do?”
Knowing that he can’t see her face, she allows herself to frown deeply. The question makes no sense to her.
After a while, she hears Cliff head into the kitchen and pull a beer from the refrigerator. As he comes into view he cracks the ring-pull and takes a sip. He sits in the armchair and looks out at the garden. “Rain,” he says.
“Yes,” Hannah agrees.
“So what are you going to do?” Cliff asks again.
Hannah stares at him blankly. She still doesn’t understand the question, but it seems somehow important not to reveal this.
“Are you going to leave me?” Cliff asks.
Still, she stares at him, transfixed. So that’s an option, is it? she thinks. Presumably if Cliff thinks she might leave him then it’s a possibility. “I can’t believe how much you lied to me,” she says, the first logical sentence that springs to mind.
“He told you then?”
Hannah nods. “Did you keep them?”
“The letters?”
Hannah nods again.
“No,” Cliff says. “No, I didn’t keep them.”
“But you read them?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Did you read my letters, Cliff?”
Cliff shrugs. “He’s my brother. I wanted to know he was OK despite everything.”
Hannah nods. “I did too,” she points out, simply.
Cliff fidgets in his seat.
“And he wasn’t OK, was he?”
“Sometimes he was, and sometimes he wasn’t.”
“You had no right,” Hannah tells him. “You had no right to steal my post.”
Cliff shrugs. “He had no right to send you letters like that,” he says.
“Maybe,” Hannah says. “But all the same...”
She turns back to watch the rain falling, and sees, from the corner of her eye, that Cliff is doing the same.
“So are you going to leave me?” he asks again. “Are you leaving me for James?”
It strikes Hannah, that every time he says it, it becomes a little more real. That every time he repeats it, the option becomes a little more plausible. She expected him to apologise. She expected him to fight for her. She expected to have no option but to
patch things up and carry on, because that, in life, is what generally seems to happen. But instead, he seems almost to be willing her to go. The conversation feels unreal, somehow. Like a bad script from a dodgy TV drama.
“It’s weird,” Hannah says, “but you don’t sound like you care.”
Cliff’s brow creases. He stands and crosses the room to join her on the sofa. “Of course I care,” he says. “I just have this feeling that you want out.”
Hannah stares at him beside her. There’s something still wrong with the script, something false. But she can’t put her finger on it. And she doesn’t want him this close. She doesn’t want him this close at all.
“Do you want out?” she asks, squinting at him as if attempting to peer into his soul. “Is that it?”
“Of course I don’t,” Cliff says. “We have a son together. I couldn’t even imagine...”
Hannah nods, vaguely convinced by this.
But then Cliff adds, “But if you’re not happy. If you need something that I can’t give you...” And there it is again. That false note.
As displacement activity, because she simply doesn’t know what to say next, and because his physical proximity is somehow embarrassing her, she heads to the bathroom.
She locks the door, lowers the seat, and sits and stares at the door. Beyond the tiny open window, the noise of the rain falling into the pool is impressively loud. The temperature has plummeted since the rain began, and the air drifting from outside is almost cold now.
So, does she want something Cliff can’t give her? It’s almost as if she lacks the circuitry required to work out what she wants, what she needs – as if fifteen years of worrying about other people’s needs, of looking after Jill and Luke and Cliff, fifteen years of trying to make sure that everyone else is OK – has left her bereft of any sense of what she wants herself, what she herself needs.
And if she did want James, rather than Cliff, is that really an option? Jill seems to think it is. Tristan thinks so too. James says it is, and now, even Cliff apparently agrees, has virtually offered it up on a plate.
Beside her, on the sink, she sees Cliff’s iPhone - forgotten in the bathroom.
She picks it up and plays with it absent-mindedly, but then she remembers Tristan’s strange comment. “Check his phone,” he said.
The Half-Life Of Hannah (Hannah series Book 1) Page 24
