Before We Met(27)
The boy turned to look out of the window, adjusting his arm beneath the fake-fur trim of his girlfriend’s hood. The bus was now inching its way past Harvey Nichols, where the windows were already dressed for Christmas. Against a backdrop of glittering silver cloth, a mannequin in an exquisite gothic lace dress swung on a trapeze with an insouciance suggesting she was already several glasses into the bottle of champagne dangling from her stiff plastic fingers. In the next window along, another sat astride a golden reindeer in nothing but flimsy silk underwear and heels, a male mannequin in full evening dress, shoes and all, pressed indecently close behind her, the sex pest at an absinthe-fuelled office party.
How long was it now until Christmas? Six weeks or thereabouts. God, she’d barely given it a thought. Last year, they – she and Mark – had spent the holidays with her mother in Malvern. As children, she and Tom had alternated between their parents, spending Christmas Eve and the day itself with one, moving to the other’s house for Boxing Day and the rest of the long week that stretched towards New Year’s Eve, changing the order the following year. Since they’d been adults, however, and especially while she’d been in America, Hannah had felt that she should spend the day itself with her mother. Dad had Maggie, and Chessa and Rachel, her two daughters from her first marriage, who always turned up in what Dad called their ‘charabancs’ with their own blonde daughters, two apiece, and their husbands, and the collection of semi-wild dogs that Chessa serially adopted from animal-rescue centres.
Though her own plans hadn’t been negotiable – it was Tom’s turn to spend Christmas with Lydia’s family, and her mother would be left alone if she didn’t go – Hannah had hesitated to ask Mark to come with her last year. She’d wanted to spend the holiday with him but had struggled to imagine him in the little red-brick railway worker’s cottage which her mother had moved into after the divorce and had barely changed since, where even the air seemed trapped, heavy with regret and the sense of a life tentative and half-lived. The previous year, lying on the bed in her old teenage bedroom, the sound of The Archers seeping up through the kitchen ceiling, the word moribund had come into Hannah’s mind. What would Mark, with all his energy, think of the place? But then, she’d thought, her mother’s house was part of her, Hannah’s, life, too. It was where she’d spent half her childhood. If they were going to have a future, she had to trust Mark and let him in.
She’d waited until a Friday at the very end of November, when she’d met him at JFK and they were lying in bed in her apartment, catching up on each other’s news and ignoring the rumbling in their stomachs that indicated it was time to get up, face the cold and go round the corner for hotdogs at Westville, their habitual post-airport, post-bed spot. She’d broached the subject gingerly but Mark had pulled her on to his chest, tucked her hair behind her ears so that it was out of his face and said simply, ‘I’d love to come with you.’
‘Really?’ she’d said, sounding very surprised.
‘Of course. I was beginning to feel offended you hadn’t asked.’
‘Oh.’ That idea hadn’t occurred to her.
‘I’m joking. But of course I want to spend Christmas with you, and I want to meet your mother. Both your parents.’
Happy – and relieved – she’d kissed him and he’d slipped his hands down her spine and kissed her in return. ‘I want to know you,’ he’d said.
‘You do know me.’ She’d sounded indignant, hating the implication that he didn’t already, the distance between them that implied.
‘Really know you: the difficult bits as well as all the fun stuff.’ He kissed her again, for longer this time. ‘I want to see where you grew up – I want to get to know your mother. And I like the idea of being there. Not just with you but – you know what I mean. I know you don’t find Christmas easy. If I’m there, maybe I can . . .’
To her shame, Hannah had felt a lump form in her throat. ‘It’s not that I don’t . . . It’s just that Mum’s always so sad.’ Her voice croaked slightly and she coughed to disguise it. ‘She tries to hide it but it’s worse at Christmas, especially because she knows my dad’s mobbed with people and . . .’
Mark had tipped her sideways so she was resting inside his arm, her head on his shoulder. She’d felt his breath in the parting of her hair. They’d lain like that for a couple of minutes, neither of them talking, until it dawned on her how selfishly she’d thought about the whole issue.