Before We Met(29)

‘Han,’ he said, turning to her, ‘I think you should stop messing around.’

‘Messing . . . ? What are you talking about?’

‘With men. Relationships. You’re wasting your time.’

She laughed. ‘Have you been talking to Mum? Has she put you up to this?’

Tom’s expression stayed utterly serious. ‘No. This has got nothing to do with her. This is what I think.’

‘Oh, no,’ she’d groaned and thrust her hands deeper into her pockets. ‘Et tu, Brute? Just because I’m thirty-three – there’s more to life than marriage and babies, you know.’

‘I do know. But that doesn’t mean those things aren’t worth having. You know I’m proud of you, I think your career’s amazing, we all do, but . . .’

‘But what?’ The wind whipped her voice away, made nothing of the steely note she’d put into it.

‘It’s a waste if you don’t have someone to appreciate it with.’

‘Oh, come on . . .’

‘I mean it. I want you to be happy.’

‘I am happy!’

‘But you could be happier. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone any more, Hannah. You don’t need to prove you can do everything on your own. I know it’s all to do with Mum, and making sure you’re never in her position, but—’

‘It’s got nothing to do with her,’ Hannah had replied, her voice suddenly savage. ‘Nothing. I’d never be like she is.’

‘Reacting against her is still a response to her – it’s still . . .’

‘I’m not reacting against her,’ she cut him off. ‘I’m not trying to prove anything – anything at all. This is about me. Me. This is my choice. This is how I want to live.’

‘Bullshit,’ her brother said, and the expression in his eyes was hard. ‘It’s about her, and you’re being a coward.’

She’d felt fury bubble up inside her. ‘My God, I don’t believe this. What the hell . . . ?’

‘You’re being a coward. You fucked things up with Bruce and now you’re too much of a coward to try again.’

She’d taken several steps backwards, away from him, and collided with a man taking photographs of his girlfriend. Hannah was too disorientated to apologise. Instead, she stared at her brother, not trusting herself to speak. Bruce – even then, years later, three thousand miles away, the name was like a punch in the guts. ‘That’s what you think of me, is it?’ she said. ‘That’s really what you think?’

‘Yes,’ Tom had replied.

She’d felt a flare of pure rage. Hands shaking, she reached into her bag, detached her house keys from their leather strap and threw them at him. Caught off guard, he made a grab for them, but too late. They fell to the floor, where they settled in a perilous gap between the planks. ‘Take them,’ she said. ‘You can have the apartment tonight. If that’s what you think of me, I couldn’t stand to be under the same roof as you.’

She’d expected him to soften, to move towards her and say something placatory, but instead he’d looked at her, his face hard. ‘What will you do?’ he said. ‘Go to a bar and pick up some bloke to use for a few weeks until you realise you might actually like him?’

She’d stared back, as angry as she’d ever been in her life, then turned and started walking away, sticking her middle finger up over her shoulder. ‘Fuck you,’ she’d shouted, her voice eddying on the wind. ‘Just . . . fuck you.’

She’d waited for the quick footsteps behind her, the hand on her shoulder, but they hadn’t come. Disciplining herself to look straight ahead, she’d marched back alone the way they’d just walked together, needing to run but thwarted by one ambling knot of tourists after another until she’d wanted to scream. Twice she’d strayed into the bike lane and almost lost an arm.

At the foot of the bridge she paused for a moment. What was she doing? Where was she going? Conscious that he might be watching and see her hesitate, she plunged across the road, crossed Broadway and headed into Tribeca. She’d walked until the cold made her face numb and her teeth started to ache, barely thinking, walking just to keep moving, with no plan or destination. She criss-crossed Tribeca, then SoHo, doubling back on herself, taking one street after another, the beat of her feet against the pavement drowning out the swirl of thoughts in her head. Finally, as the last of the daylight drained from the sky, she’d found herself in Hudson River Park, where the anger finally burned itself out.