Before We Met(79)

He’d left to go to another meeting and Roger Penrose had told her then that, with the new hire, he was looking for a counterpart to Marant, someone who would grow alongside him within the agency so that, after Penrose’s own retirement, the two of them would head it up together. After five months of unemployment, the idea was so exciting that she’d felt almost drunk on it when she stepped out on to the pavement afterwards. She had to get this job.

Hannah pulled the file closer now and tried to read, but within a few seconds her eyes stopped seeing the words and her mind turned to Nick. With a rush of alarm she remembered what Mark had said about his brother blaming him, resenting his freedom. What if Nick attacked Mark, hurt him? She felt a wave of fear that she pushed down as quickly as she could. Come on, she told herself, concentrate, but she managed only a couple of sentences before she heard Mark’s voice again. ‘He’s been sitting up there stewing . . . He’s convinced himself it was my fault.’

For more than an hour she struggled but in the end she conceded defeat, closed the file and shoved it back in her bag. She left the café and headed up the Fulham Road in the opposite direction to Quarrendon Street, no real purpose in mind except putting off the moment when she went back to the empty house. Whatever she tried to do today, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself thinking about Nick or shake the odd nagging sense that there was something she was missing.



When Mark arrived home at seven, he looked exhausted and his eyes were small and strained from screen-work. ‘Shall we go to Mao Tai for supper?’ he said. ‘Let’s not cook tonight.’

‘Have you heard from him?’ she asked.

He shook his head.

The restaurant was five minutes’ walk away. As they crossed the road at the corner of Parsons Green, Mark took her hand and held it tightly. They sat at the bar, ordered martinis and drank them like medicine. Mark ordered a second round and when they moved to their table he asked for the wine list. She’d never seen him drink like this on a Wednesday night. But then, she thought, it didn’t feel like a Wednesday.

As they finished their starters, she glanced up and saw that the woman at the next table was looking at him; a couple of minutes later it happened again. For a moment, paranoid, Hannah thought something was wrong, but then she realised: the woman was looking at Mark because he looked so handsome. The martinis had smoothed the strain from his face and his eyes were dark and shiny in the candlelight. He’d left his tie at home and undone his collar, and in his tailor-made suit jacket he looked well made and urbane. His hands rested on the table, strong and straight-fingered, their backs dusted with hair. For a moment Hannah saw him as if she were a stranger and felt a burst of pride: he was hers. Then she remembered the description in the newspaper article of his parents’ small grey pebbledashed bungalow. Yes, it must have an incongruous place for Nick to have spent his childhood but it couldn’t have suited Mark either, the boy who’d grown up to become this sophisticated man.

Halfway down her second glass of wine, after the waitress had taken away the plates from the duck, Hannah stood up to go to the loo and realised how smashed she was. Before the starters, she’d had nothing to eat since breakfast, and the alcohol was coursing through her bloodstream. She held the handrail tightly on the steep front stairs.

As she washed her hands, her body felt like a piece of machinery she was operating from the outside. She leaned towards the mirror to wipe away a smudge of mascara and saw herself up close by the light of the line of little candles along the back of the vanity unit. Wasn’t candlelight supposed to be flattering? It was doing nothing for her: she looked old – old and exhausted.

Suddenly she saw it, the thing that had been nagging at her, hovering at the edge of her field of vision all day: it was Hermione’s expression when Hannah had said who she was, the fleeting but unmistakable look of horror. Why would she have been horrified? If she was Mark’s friend, however off the radar, why had she looked so alarmed to meet his wife?

Hannah splashed her face with cold water, angry with herself for having so much to drink: if there was ever a time she needed to have her wits about her, it was now. She dried her face and hands and made her way carefully downstairs again, gripping the banister. Back at the table, she dropped heavily into her chair. Mark reached for her hand. He’d topped up their glasses again.

‘Hermione,’ she said, and her voice was too loud even against the background hum. She saw him snap to attention. ‘When I went to see her at the hospital, I told her who I was – your wife – and she looked scared. Why?’