‘But it’s only my saying it’s not odd that makes it not odd, that’s what you’re really saying.’
‘Argh!’ Tom clutched his head and squeezed his eyes shut as if in sudden terrible pain. ‘Stop the mind-fucking – I’m a simple creature, I mean no harm.’
Nonetheless, it was patently obvious that he did think it was odd and it rankled with Hannah because privately she agreed with him. Why didn’t she know anything about the only extant member of her fiancé’s family other than that he was a year younger, lived in London, and it sounded like he’d had a few different jobs? Whenever she let herself think about it for longer than a minute or two at a time, she found herself starting down all kinds of lines of paranoid enquiry: was Mark ashamed of his brother for some reason? Or could he be ashamed of her, Hannah? Was that why he didn’t want to introduce them? If it was late at night and she was on her own and she’d had a couple of glasses of wine, she started wondering what kind of person could be so alienated from a brother with whom he claimed just not to get on that they didn’t see each other at all, even when their parents had died quite recently. Unless something actually bad had happened between them, surely they’d see each other for some sort of mutual support or just to feel connected to the memory of their family?
In the end, by the second weekend in January, the whole issue had achieved critical mass and Hannah knew she’d have to have it out with him whether he liked it or not. So on Saturday night she’d cooked a complicated pork recipe, plied him with half a bottle of Sancerre and prepared herself for the facial shutdown. Sure enough, it was almost immediate.
‘Nick,’ he said, glaring at her, all the easy warmth of seconds before gone from his eyes. ‘Is he all you think about? You’re obsessed.’
‘Obsessed?’ She’d pulled back from the table, amazed. ‘I’ve asked you about him twice before – twice, Mark. We’re engaged, we’re getting married in April – is it weird that I’m curious about your family? He’ll be my brother-in-law. I’ll be related to—’
‘No,’ he said, standing and dropping his napkin on the table. ‘No, he won’t. He’ll be your brother-in-law in the same way that he’s my brother – technically, legally, whatever. But that’s it, that’s all. I won’t be pushed into having a relationship with him just because you’ve got some idea in your head. There’s nothing there for you, Hannah. I don’t want him in our lives and I don’t want to talk about it any more. Got it?’
She’d watched in amazement as he opened the cupboard by the front door and yanked his coat out, setting off a cacophony of jangling from the empty hangers. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Out. I won’t sit here and be cross-examined.’
‘I’m not cross-examining you. All I wanted was to —’
‘I told you when you asked the last time that I didn’t want to talk about it. Couldn’t you respect that? Couldn’t you do that one thing for me? Was it really too much to ask?’ He’d looked at Hannah as if he were assessing her and finding her wanting then he’d turned and gone, slamming the door behind him.
She’d sat at the table for some time, blood pounding in her ears. They’d snapped at each other once or twice before when one of them or both had been tired and stressed but nothing like this, not even close: they’d never argued; neither of them had ever stormed off. She was shocked – actually, stunned was more accurate. Mark was so self-contained, so in control, and slamming out of the apartment was so . . . teenage. She’d tried to make herself smile at the image, Mark as moody teenager, but the smile died on her lips. He was angry with her, really angry. In her head she reran the conversation, what there had been of it. All she’d said, her carefully rehearsed opening gambit, was: ‘Mark, will you tell me about Nick?’ That was it, all it had taken to trigger this.
Where had he gone? It was cold outside, on the radio earlier there had been talk of snow, and it was ten thirty. Well, she thought, standing and picking up the empty plates that already seemed to belong to a different era, one in which they’d been happy and she hadn’t screwed it all up by prying, there was nothing she could do about it until he came back. She wasn’t going to text him, grovelling, apologising for asking a simple question. If he didn’t get on with his brother, why didn’t he just tell her why rather than turning it into a huge issue? If she was going to marry him, she had to be able to ask questions like this. She couldn’t let herself be intimidated into silence.