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Before We Met(33)

By:Lucie Whitehouse




During supper she’d kept her BlackBerry in her bag, knowing that if she’d had it on the table, her eyes would have been going to it every few seconds. Under the circumstances, Tom wouldn’t have minded but she hated it when people did that to her: it was so rude. Anyway, she hadn’t been expecting Mark to ring again; she’d told him she might be out for dinner.

Now, though, giving her brother a final wave as the bus turned the corner, she got out her phone and saw a missed call. The number hadn’t been recognised but the caller had left a message and when she listened, she heard Mark’s voice.

Hi, sweetie. Just calling on the off chance of catching you before you meet up with Tom, if that’s what you’re doing. The fact that you’re not picking up makes me think it is. Say hello from me. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow. I love you.

The message had been left two and a half hours ago, just after eight thirty. She listened to it again in case she’d missed something – music, a woman laughing in the background – then deleted it. Probably he’d called then precisely because he knew he was unlikely to reach her.

She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She thought about arriving home, how as she walked down Quarrendon Street from the bus stop, the house would be dark and empty. What if this was it? What if her marriage was over bar the shouting?

The idea swept away the anger and brought a wave of pure desolation in its place. Tears prickled under her eyelids and she blinked quickly, refusing to cry on the number 22 bus. She tried to distract herself, think about something else, but her mind wouldn’t do it. Instead it offered a vision of a future without him, life as she currently knew it gone, no Mark, no job, no house, no plans. No love, no companionship, no more shared jokes, no warmth.

Warmth. She stopped on the word, turned it over in her mind. Yes, if he left her, that was what she’d really lose. She could rebuild the rest, find another place to live and a way to get by until she got her career back on track, but would she ever be able to replace the warmth, the colour, the sheer comfort she’d felt since she met him?

She had a sudden memory of their ‘date’ in Williamsburg, the night after he’d rumbled her in McNally Jackson. The warmth had already been there. He’d been waiting for her outside the venue wearing jeans and a pale cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow. As she’d rounded the corner he’d been on his BlackBerry but he’d looked up and seen her almost immediately, and a smile had spread across his face like sun across water.

All night she’d felt it. Three thousand miles from where she’d grown up, in a part of Brooklyn that she’d barely known, surrounded – with the exception of a few of her colleagues – by strangers, she’d felt at home. Every time she looked at Mark that night – while they had beers with Josh and Lily during the warm-up act, as they pressed a way to the front when Flynn’s band came on, as he’d danced next to her during the encore, a decent indie cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ – she’d felt warmth radiating off him. Later, outside, a few blocks from the club, he’d pulled her into the shadows at the side of a hipster boutique. The J train had clattered over the bridge above them on its way to Manhattan and the words at last, at last had gone through her head. He waited until the train was gone then put his hands round her waist and pulled her against him. When he kissed her, she’d had one thought: I want this for the rest of my life.





Chapter Eight

‘Come in, come in. This is a lovely surprise.’ Pippa stood aside to let her in. ‘Here, give me that.’ She took Hannah’s coat and slung it over the post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Come through. Excuse the mess.’ She nudged a purple stuffed elephant towards the skirting board with the toe of her boot. ‘I’m glad you rang. I’m here on my own – we’ve got Dan’s mother for the weekend and they’ve taken Charlie to the Sunday Club at the cinema. They know it’s the only way they stand a snowball in hell’s chance of getting anything decent to eat later. Paddy’s down for a nap so it’s just me.’

Hannah followed the baggy seat of Pippa’s jeans down the corridor with its white and green Victorian tiles. Every time she saw her, Hannah was struck anew by how tall Pippa was – five foot eleven, she said. Even in the battered ugg boots she had on now, she towered. There was a patch of something reddish on the back pocket of the jeans, pasta sauce maybe or ketchup, and both elbows of her navy jumper were worn into holes. Nonetheless, she looked good – insouciant, almost rakish.