She should talk to him about his brother, she decided that morning in the kitchen, find a time over the weekend when he was relaxed and she wouldn’t seem to be putting him under pressure. In the end, she’d bided her time until Sunday evening when they were wandering back along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights from a protracted lunch at Ant and Roisin’s. Mark had stopped and leaned against the railings to look at the shimmering Miramax-logo view of Lower Manhattan across the river, the traffic on the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway pounding along the road tucked out of view beneath their feet. He loved this view, he’d said before, because to him it was the classic image of ambition and scale and achievement. Now he reached across and slid his hand into the back pocket of Hannah’s jeans. She glanced up at him, spent a second appreciating his profile against the lights of the city behind. Remembering his sudden shutdown on Friday night she hesitated then decided she was being ridiculous. What had he said that evening in the Mulberry Street Bar? There’s no drama. We’re just very different people.
‘Your brother,’ she’d said, as a truck thundered beneath them, making the pavement shake. ‘What’s he like? What does he do?’
Mark had pulled his hand out of her pocket and shoved it into his jacket instead. He smiled, brown eyes black in the streetlight. ‘Let’s move,’ he said, tipping his head in the direction they were going. ‘It’s too cold to stand around. Shall we walk back across the bridge, burn off some of that roast lamb?’
Had he even heard her? He must have – the truck hadn’t been that loud. He reached for her hand and Hannah gave it to him, but she was puzzled. If he’d heard, why not answer? If there really was no drama, why this weirdness?
‘What time’s your breakfast meeting tomorrow?’ he’d asked.
‘Eight, not horrendous.’ She swerved to avoid a King Charles spaniel that had slipped its leash and was haring down the promenade towards them as if fleeing a forest fire. ‘Mark, look, your brother – do you find it difficult to talk about him?’
This time she knew he’d heard her. For several seconds, however, he said nothing and kept walking. She’d waited, not prepared to talk into the silence and risk provoking him or giving him the opportunity to avoid the question. She’d glanced sideways and saw that his face was shuttered again, his mouth set.
‘It’s not difficult for me to talk about him,’ he’d said eventually, and his voice was calm, well modulated. ‘I’d just prefer not to, okay? He lives in London, he’s done a few things, work-wise. There’s nothing much else to say. You have issues with your mother, I don’t particularly get on with my brother; you talk about it, I choose not to. Perhaps it’s a man–woman thing.’
The gender stereotype surprised Hannah, it was so unlike him, but she let it pass in the hope of staying on-topic. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I just . . .’
‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it,’ he’d said, and his tone had made it clear that for him, the subject was closed.
The walk home to her apartment had taken an hour and a half, and for the whole length of it she’d been aware of a distance yawning between them. They did what they usually did on a long walk, pointed out new restaurants that looked good, interesting buildings or people, but where usually the observations segued into broader conversations or sparked off new thoughts, that night they’d been like pieces of polite conversation traded by people who’d just been introduced. Back at the apartment he’d suggested watching the episode of 60 Minutes he’d recorded while they’d been out, and then he’d brushed his teeth. After the lights had gone off, he’d shifted up behind her in bed and put his arm round her waist, but he hadn’t made any further move and she was glad.
He’d been in London for the two following weekends and by the one after that, after three weeks without seeing each other, the subject of Nick had moved towards the outer edge of her radar. Then had come Christmas, and Mark’s proposal, and every member of her family – her parents and Maggie, even Chessa and Rachel – had asked about his.
‘If you say there’s nothing odd about it, I believe you,’ said Tom, when she’d told him about Nick, how she hadn’t met him and didn’t seem likely to at any point in the foreseeable future.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Don’t say it like that.’
‘Like what? I’m saying I trust your judgement: if you say it’s not odd, it’s not odd.’