Before We Met(10)

‘Malvern.’

‘Are they far apart?’ said Roisin.

‘Poles.’ He’d smiled. ‘Light years.’

‘About a hundred and fifty miles, probably,’ Hannah said. ‘Sussex is on the south coast; Malvern’s in the middle.’

‘I thought Malvern was near Scotland.’

Hannah looked at Mark and rolled her eyes. ‘Believe it or not, Roisin and I have been good friends for five years.’ He laughed.

They walked back to the house as a group, she, Laura and Ro ahead of the men, and once, turning round to say something to Ant, she’d caught Mark looking at her. The same thing had happened when, after hosing down on the patch of rough sea-grass in front of the house, they’d been in the kitchen getting the stuff ready to take back down to the beach for the evening. She’d glanced up from slicing tomatoes to ask Ro whether she should make a vinaigrette and found herself locked in eye contact with him. She’d looked away first, though these days he claimed it was the other way round.

The temperature had been in the high eighties during the day but it had dropped quickly as soon as the sun started to go down, and a surprisingly sharp on-shore breeze had started blowing. Ant and Justin, another one of his old college friends, had dug a shallow pit in the sand while the rest of them had gone along the tideline collecting driftwood and the remnants of logs brought down to the beach for bonfires on 4 July the weekend before. Mark had returned from the dunes with a branch that was seven or eight feet long, carrying it across his shoulders like a yoke.

They’d used it as a bench, sitting in a line drinking beers from the cool-box while the sun disappeared and the fire got hot enough to cook the sausages. After they’d eaten, he had stretched out on the sand, the glow from the fire catching the planes of his face, and told a long, funny story about a time he’d had his wallet stolen in Rio, gone to the police station to report it and almost ended up being arrested for the crime himself. Eyes hidden by the baseball cap she’d borrowed from Ant, Hannah had watched him, feeling a strange, jumping sensation in her stomach.

Roisin and Ant were tired and went back to the house sometime just after the last colour had faded from the sky behind the dunes, and what Hannah had suspected – that Justin was putting the moves on Laura, whether out of genuine interest or just his reflexive womanising – was confirmed when he asked her to go for a walk along the beach with him. To Hannah’s surprise, Laura had got up and dusted the sand off her shorts without hesitating, and she and Mark were left alone. He’d fed the fire another piece of driftwood and settled himself on the sand again. The feeling in her stomach intensified until it felt almost like cramp.

‘Ant told me you’re responsible for that granola ad I see every time I turn on the TV here,’ he said.

‘Cereal killers? Yes, guilty, I’m afraid. It’s a cheap gag but . . .’

‘No, it’s great – funny. It seems like it’s a big success?’

‘Well, the Grain Brothers are pleased – they’re shifting twelve times as much Harvest Bite as usual so . . .’

‘Twelve times? No bloody wonder they’re pleased.’ He picked up a stick and stirred the embers. ‘Is that what you always wanted to do – advertising?’

‘Well, it wasn’t a childhood dream but, yes, since university.’

‘What about living over here?’

‘That was a childhood dream.’

‘Really? For me, too. I used to sit in my bedroom at home devising ways I could make it happen.’

‘Now that’s what I call organised,’ she’d laughed. ‘I just hoped it would.’

They’d stayed out talking for hours, wandering round in the dark for more wood whenever the fire burned down and then returning to their exact same positions. By the time they’d crept back into the house, careful not to let the screen door slam behind them, the fold-down numbers on the seventies stove had said 02.42. They needn’t have worried about being quiet: Justin had not been in his designated sleeping spot on the sofa. Down on the beach, they’d talked about everything: serious things – to her surprise, she’d found herself telling him about her parents’ divorce – and ridiculous stuff, tales of horsemeat peddling, university stories, the family tortoise she and Tom had once smuggled with them on a family holiday to the South of France. Aside from Roisin, she couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone who seemed so interested in the details of her life: the books and music she liked, where she’d grown up and been to school, where she’d lived in London before she moved to the US, even her father’s job as an academic at Bristol University.