Before We Met(73)

The silence poured in around them. Hannah looked over his head into the yard, where the wind was riffling the last brittle leaves of the creeper on the back wall, exposing their undersides and the bare brickwork underneath.

‘If he needs one point eight million,’ she said quietly, ‘what good’s my forty-seven thousand?’

Mark glanced at her then looked away. His face was full of shame. ‘I’ve got some money of my own,’ he said, ‘about seventy thousand, and I’ve borrowed some more against the house. I’m going to put it together and offer it to him if he’ll agree to redraw the paperwork before we have to open the books. An incentive. Otherwise, why would he do it? I wouldn’t – take my name off legal documents? No way.’

‘But if you explained to him about the deal, that you could pay him as soon as it all went through . . .’

‘Nick doesn’t care about the deal. I have to pay him one way or the other. He doesn’t give a toss about things working out for me – in fact, he’d be thrilled if he managed to derail it all. The only way I can do this is to make it advantageous to him to agree. If he does the paperwork now, I give him two hundred and fifty thousand, then afterwards I’ll give him two million, not one point eight.’

Two million. ‘And he’s said yes to this?’

‘Not yet.’

‘But you’ve told him?’

There was the sound of footsteps on the front path then the snap of the letterbox, a fall of letters on to the doormat. Mark waited until the footsteps had receded, as if he was afraid the postman would overhear. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You have to believe me. I can’t tell you how how shitty I feel. Because your account’s annual, I thought I could put the money back when we did the deal and you’d never even need to know. The idea of you checking your balance and seeing—’

‘Why didn’t you just ask me for it? I would have given it to you.’

He covered his face with his hands again and after a few seconds she realised he was crying. The hard knot of feeling inside her loosened and she left the counter and came to stand behind him. He sensed her there – she saw him stiffen, expecting what? – but she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘I would have had to tell you why I needed it,’ he said, still facing away. ‘The whole story – Patty, everything – and I couldn’t.’

Her fingers tightened their grip. ‘It’s okay,’ she said.

‘I’ve been such a dick, Han. Such a total dick. Now I just want things to be straight between us, out in the open – no more lies.’ He hesitated. ‘I wasn’t in New York this weekend.’

‘I know.’

He started to turn but the pressure of her fingers kept him facing away from her.

‘You weren’t at your usual hotel. I called to talk to you and they told me you weren’t there. Obviously something was going on. That’s why I assumed it was an affair.’

‘You really thought I would cheat on you?’

‘I didn’t want to believe it, part of me never did, but when you weren’t at the hotel and—’ She remembered her promise to Neesha and stopped herself.

Mark gave a strangled kind of laugh. ‘I was trying to track down this guy who I thought would lend me the money,’ he said. ‘We had a meeting set up for Friday at his place in the Berkshires but he cancelled and then he kept giving me the run-around. I spent most of the weekend waiting in a B&B with no bloody mobile reception. I was going to ask him for a loan, pay Nick off and be done with it.’

‘What guy?’ Hannah felt a new rush of alarm. Who could you go to for that sort of money?

‘It doesn’t matter – I didn’t even see him in the end. And now that you know, some of the pressure’s off. At least I don’t have to carry it around on my own any more, waiting for it all to blow up in my face.’ Tentatively, he leaned back and rested his head against her stomach. After a moment, she put her other hand on his shoulder. Bending, she touched her nose to his hair.

‘I’ve been to see Nick, too,’ he said. ‘More lies. I told you I was in Frankfurt but I drove up to Wakefield to talk to him.’

Suddenly Hannah felt laughter well up inside her. Wakefield – Nick was in Wakefield Prison. Yorkshire. She’d seen those service-station receipts from the M1 and imagined a boutique hotel, all log fires and antique roll-top baths, and really Mark had been visiting his brother in jail. It was hysterical, she thought, hysterical – the laughter exploded out of her, startlingly loud. Mark stood up and put his arms around her, holding her while she shook. When she stopped, as abruptly as she’d begun, Hannah looked up at him. His dark eyes were shining with tears. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he said, ‘that you thought I was having an affair – that because of him I nearly fucked this up, you and me . . .’