Before We Met(43)

Hannah felt a weight settle on her shoulders, as if a lead cape had been slung round them. ‘A woman?’

‘Yes.’

In the space of a second, she felt her conviction crumble. She’d been wrong – she’d been deluding herself: it was an affair. ‘How long?’ she said. ‘How long has it been going on?’

‘Not very.’ Neesha shook her head quickly, eager to play it down. ‘A few weeks – a month, maximum.’

‘Have you seen her? Has she been here – in the office?’

Neesha shook her head again.

‘What’s her name?’

‘I—’

‘You know, you must do. You said: you answer his telephone – you screen his calls. What’s her name?’

Neesha looked really upset, as if she might actually cry, but Hannah couldn’t stop. ‘I’m not going to tell him,’ she said. ‘I’ve promised you.’

‘All right, all right . . . Please. She’s called Hermione.’

Hermione. Hannah’s brain made an instant search of every woman Mark had ever mentioned, every story he’d ever told, and came up empty. ‘Hermione what?’

‘I—’

‘Neesha.’ Hannah heard the desperation in her own voice and it startled her. ‘Please,’ she said more gently. ‘Help me.’

‘Alan.’

‘Alan? What, like the man’s name?’

‘Al—lane. Spelled like alley, with an “n” at the end.’ Neesha looked at the doors then back at Hannah, beseeching her. ‘That’s all I know, I swear to you. I don’t know who she is. I’ve got no idea. He always closes his door when he speaks to her.’



Hannah walked back to the car wide-eyed with shock, barely conscious of her feet moving. A blur of herringbone brick paving became tarmac as she came out on to Manbre Road again. Frozen shrubs in the border; a postman emptying the box on the corner, his breath white. She was trying to get the car key into the lock when reason told her to stop: there was no way she could drive like this; she’d have an accident, run someone over.

Moving as slowly as if she were underwater, she left the car and walked to the café on the corner of Fulham Palace Road. She bought a cup of coffee and carried it with unsteady hands to a table in the corner, where she hunched on the edge of a wicker armchair, her eyes fixed on a sugar bowl that shimmered and swam. The café was busy but no one came to ask if they could take her spare seat. Clearly she looked as unhinged as she felt.

She focused on the bright buckets of hothouse flowers for sale to visitors to Charing Cross Hospital across the road. Peonies, the pink-tipped buds still tightly furled, tulips in crimson and yolk yellow, delicate purple freesias. She’d been wrong; her instincts – no, her judgement – had been wrong. Mark. Mark, who put snow-chains on her car and bought her buttery flapjacks from the delicatessen because he knew she loved them.

Hermione Alleyn. She turned the name over, testing it. Was she an old friend, someone who had always been there, lurking, waiting, or was she new? DataPro gave Mark so many opportunities to meet people – at clients’ offices, in hotel bars and airport lounges. She felt sick as she imagined him on a plane, a woman arriving at the empty seat next to his, her grateful smile as he helped put her bag in the overhead locker.

Now she pieced it all together. The story about his phone was a lie, clearly, to make sure she didn’t ring him. This Hermione Alleyn must have been in the bathroom or something when he’d called and left his messages. They probably were in Rome or somewhere equally romantic and perfect for long, dirty weekends. What had been up the M1? Some lovely Yorkshire boutique hotel with open fires, heavy cotton sheets and roll-top baths? And what was the money for – her money? A house? A flat where they could meet? She’d dismissed the idea before but now she reconsidered. This was Mark: he didn’t do things by halves; he was extravagant, expansive. If he wanted a love-nest, Hannah thought scornfully, it wouldn’t occur to him to rent one.

Was he going to leave, ask for a divorce? The idea caused a twist in her guts, then another rush of nausea that left her cold afterwards. What did it matter if he did? What difference did it make? Even if he went on as if nothing had changed, she couldn’t stay with him now.

But how could she leave? asked the voice in her head. She had no income and no savings. She was broke. The mug of coffee going cold on the table represented nearly a whole per cent of her net worth. She’d have to go to her brother, she realised, ask him if she could have his tiny back bedroom until she got herself straightened out. She’d have to live on her credit card, get some sort of job, any job, until she could find one in advertising. She could do it, she told herself. She’d go back to her old life and rely on herself. She’d listened to what Tom had said in New York – she’d trusted someone and let him trust her – and she’d fucked it up.