She sat down on a bench and sank her face into her hands. It was shock, she told herself, that was all. She was shocked that Tom could talk to her like that; that he had these negative thoughts about her. She’d thought that he loved her, respected her. How wrong could she be? She’d felt a surge of defensive bitterness then. Stuff him – stuff him. If that was what he thought of her, then he could go to hell.
The last burst of fury kept her warm for a minute or two but then it, too, was gone and she heard the other voice, the one she’d been walking so furiously to shut out. He’s right, it said, and you know it. You messed up, it hurt, and you’re too cowardly to put yourself on the line again.
In her coat pocket she felt her BlackBerry buzzing for the eighth or ninth time and ignored it.
Bruce – when was the last time anyone had even said his name in her presence? It was years, three or four at least. But it had been seven years now since they’d split up. Since you dumped him.
Bruce was one of her brother’s best friends, one of the small but tight group of mates he’d made when he started at university in London. Hannah had liked him as soon as she met him, the first time Tom had invited him and Ben and Adam up to Malvern for the weekend to go camping. She’d thought Bruce liked her, too, from the way he’d smiled at her and included her, asked what she was reading, but she hadn’t stood a chance then: she was sixteen to his nineteen, years that made the difference between school and university, uniform and jeans every day, a child and an adult.
When she was at university herself, though, three years later, she’d come down to London for Tom’s birthday party, a bash in the upstairs room of a pub somewhere in Brixton, and they’d talked the whole evening. At the end of the night he’d kissed her and asked for her number, and the following weekend he’d driven down to Bristol in his clapped-out Vauxhall Corsa, Maude, to see her. They’d been together for six years after that until she’d sensed that he was ready to do ‘the grown-up thing’, as she’d called it, her voice dripping sarcasm. ‘I don’t want to “settle down”,’ she’d shouted at him. ‘I’m twenty-five, not forty. Where’s the adventure? Where are the wild nights on a beach in Brazil? Where’s the achievement? Where’s my life?’
So she’d ended it and then watched as, within two years, he’d married someone much more successful than she was – apparently she was nice, too; Tom refused to say he didn’t like her – and had a son. She had been on Facebook in a quiet moment at the office when she’d seen him and the baby, Arran, tagged in a mutual friend’s photograph, and the pain had felt like someone had taken the paperknife off her desk and jabbed it up under her ribs.
Since then she’d been careful not to get too close to anyone. She liked men, their company, flirting, sex, but she couldn’t allow herself, she thought, to get into a situation like that again. She had stuff to do – to prove. She couldn’t let herself be sidelined by biology. Even the thought of it made her feel trapped, actually physically breathless. So instead she had fun. She met people, hung out with them for a few weeks, and then she moved on. They enjoyed it, she enjoyed it, no one got hurt. What was wrong with that?
In front of her, the Hudson glinted blackly, the lights of Hoboken glittering out of reach on the other side. She wrapped her arms across her chest, the heat she’d worked up inside her jacket dissipating fast. Coward, said the voice, louder now. You think you’re brave and independent, but really you’re just afraid.
In the end, so cold she couldn’t feel her fingers, she’d stood up and walked slowly back to the apartment. She’d found her brother sitting on the stoop smoking the last of the packet of cigarettes he’d bought that morning. She’d climbed the steps between the glossy potted magnolias and sat down next to him, not pressing against him as she had on the bridge but three or four inches apart. A single yellow cab cruised along the street below them with its off-duty light on. After a minute or so, Tom had reached across and taken hold of her hand.
‘It’s still what I think,’ he said.
‘I know.’ She’d gestured to him to give her the cigarette. She took two or three revolting puffs, felt her head spin then gave it back. ‘You’re right anyway,’ she said. ‘I am a coward.’
‘That bit wasn’t fair. I—’
‘It was – no, it was. I’m afraid of . . . relying on anyone, being dependent. Not in control.’ She’d never realised it consciously herself before, let alone said it aloud.