The Half-Life Of Hannah (Hannah series Book 1)

by Nick Alexander

  “I don’t cook so much these days,” he replies. “Since we opened the fourth restaurant in Hoxton, I spend more time just managing the business really. Choosing menus, replacing staff, accounts... It’s pretty hectic.”

  “Of course,” Hannah says.

  “So I quite like it really.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And anyway, this is hardly what I’d call cooking,” Tristan adds.

  Hannah pulls a face at this. A mixed salad, fresh salsa, homemade vinaigrette and a twelve-egg Spanish tortilla is about as challenging as her cooking ever gets.

  “Jill’s back,” Tristan says, and Hannah looks up from the sink and sees that this is so.

  Jill, beyond the open kitchen window, turns to face them, then pushing chairs out of her way makes her way towards them. Finally she leans on the windowsill, peering in at them and looking despondent.

  “That was quick,” Hannah says.

  “Even for you,” Tristan adds cheekily.

  “Excruciating,” Jill declares. “Why didn’t you just stop me?”

  Tristan lays down his egg beater and crosses to join Hannah at the sink. Hannah can smell his aftershave – a warm vanilla-honey smell. She wonders if it would be impolite to ask him what it is so that she can buy it for Cliff. “What happened?” he asks.

  “I followed him down the track. He was rabbiting away in French. Of course it might as well be Chinese for all the good it did me.”

  “And?”

  “Their place is about a hundred yards away behind those big trees. It’s not much more than a shack. A big shed really.”

  “They?” Hannah asks.

  “Well, he lives with his mother, doesn’t he? I think he lives there anyway. She certainly does. She’s about a hundred. No teeth.” Jill pulls her lips down and mimes having no teeth just in case there was some doubt.

  “His mother!” Tristan says. He claps his hands. “Love it!”

  “So I ended up with them both rabbiting on at me in French. It was just... it was embarrassing really. And all a bit Hitchcock, to be honest.”

  “But did you get a bit of slap and tickle?” Tristan asks.

  “Nothing. Not even a kiss. Well, I got to kiss the old dear. Which was lovely, of course. She made us coffee, that Turkish stuff where they boil it for hours and then serve you the dregs.”

  “Nice.”

  “I still have the bits caught in my teeth. The cups were dirty too,” Jill pulls a face. “Honestly, it was awful.”

  “And then?”

  “And then... Wonder Boy climbed into his little Fiat rust bucket and drove off. To do someone else’s pool I think. He took the stuff with him anyway.”

  Hannah breaks into a broad grin. “He left you with the mother? How funny.”

  “He left me with the mother,” Jill confirms. “I still didn’t know what she was banging on about. In the end, I just waved at her and left. She was still yakking as I walked away.”

  “It could only happen to you, Jill,” Tristan says, returning to the stove.

  Aïsha appears behind Jill. She’s wearing shorts and a black T-shirt. Water is pooling around her feet. “What could only happen to you?” she asks.

  “You’re soaked!” Jill says, turning to appraise her daughter and reaching out to take the hem of the T-shirt between finger and thumb. “Why are your clothes soaked? You’ll catch your death!”

  “We’re swimming,” Aïsha says. “The water’s freezing but if you stay on the lilo and don’t move, it’s all-right. You just drift around.”

  “Why are you wearing this when you have a perfectly good swimming costume?” Jill asks.

  Aïsha shrugs. “This is fine,” she says. “But can you get me a towel? I want to go to the loo and I’m dripping.”

  “It’s not fine,” Jill says. “I’ll get you a towel but...”

  Hannah hands a towel through the window.

  “Oh, thanks Han’,” she says, passing it on to her daughter. “Here. Dry yourself off and then go and put your bikini on.”

  “I don’t know where it is,” Aïsha says.

  “It’s in your suitcase. Where else would it be?”

  Hannah leans across the sink and reaches through the window to gently touch Jill’s shoulder. “Jill,” she says, quietly.

  “Hang on,” Jill says, gesturing behind her. “Aïsha. Aïsha!” she shouts as her daughter disappears inside the house.

  “Jill!” Hannah says again.

  Jill glances back at her. “Hang on, Han’,” she says. “Just let me deal with this and...”

  “She doesn’t want to wear the bikini,” Hannah says forcefully but quiet enough that Aïsha won’t hear her.

  “I don’t care what she wants,” Jill says. “She chose it. She can wear it. I’m not made of money.”

  “She’s embarrassed, Jill,” Hannah says.

  Jill freezes. She pulls a face. “Embarrassed? How can she be embarrassed? She chose it.”

  “She’s embarrassed about her body. Give her a break.”

  Jill wrinkles her nose. “She’s got nothing to be embarrassed about. I mean she’s packing a few extra pounds, but it’s just puppy fat. That will go soon enough.”

  Hannah sighs deeply. “You don’t get it, do you, Jill? Just stop and think. Remember when you were thirteen.”

  Jill pauses. “I don’t remember last night, babe, let alone when I was thirteen.”

  “I remember,” Hannah says. “I remember you putting masking tape around your boobs because you didn’t want to tell Mum you needed a bra.”

  “You didn’t!” Tristan exclaims, looking up from his frying pan.

  “Just... cook, Tris’,” Jill says, making a little shooing gesture, then to Hannah, “OK,” she says. “Point taken.”

  “She’s getting breasts,” Hannah whispers. “It’s a shock.”

  “Yes, yes, I get it,” Jill says. She shakes her head. “God, am I a terrible mother do you think?”

  Hannah shakes her head. “No,” she says. “No, you’re fine. You’re just a bit too close to be able to see sometimes. We all are.”

  Jill nods, then she laughs. “I’ll tell you what,” she says. “It didn’t half hurt when you pulled off the tape. I remember that.”

  After lunch, Hannah, persuaded by Luke, lowers herself onto one of the air-beds. Initially the icy water lapping over the edges makes this excruciating, but, as Aïsha explained, by lying totally still the pain ceases. The water already around her warms up, and the cold water of the pool remains at bay.

  As the bed drifts in a seemingly random fashion she watches a single cloud in the blue sky skirting away to the east, now circling above her as the bed spins. She senses invisible waves of air moving across her body. She wonders if this is what a water bed feels like, and decides that she must ask Jill. She’s pretty sure that Jill must have come across a water-bed at some point. Or Tristan. Tristan might even have one at home. She can hear a bird tweeting somewhere, and the rustle of the wind in the leaves and then...

  Hannah gasps in shock and sits up causing more icy water to flood around her waist. A fresh jet of spray hits her face and she rolls for protection from the bed and into the pool, gasping at the temperature shock as her sun-baked body is enveloped by the water.

  “Luke!” she shrieks, now finding her feet and wading as fast as she can towards the ladder.

  Luke, her assailant with a hose-pipe, is radiant with glee. “Yes!” he declares, still pointing the jet at her back.

  “You cheeky little bugger!” Hannah shouts. “I was asleep. I was fast-a-bloody-sleep and having a lovely dream.” She climbs the ladder and starts to run around the pool towards her son who drops the hosepipe and flees, giggling maniacally.

  Hannah chases him barefoot around the back of the house and on towards the patio, in truth enjoying the chase. She feels for the first time as if she’s on holiday. She feels young and exhilarated and awake. It’s only in these fleeting moments of wakefulness that she re
alises that she spends most of her life asleep.

  Catching sight of Jill climbing back over the fence at the rear of the garden, and making a mental note to question her later, she runs on. “You wait until I catch you, boy,” she shouts.

  Luke, looking behind him to check on her progress, runs straight into Cliff, who unsure as to whether Hannah’s pursuit is in anger or jest, grabs Luke by the waist.

  “Let me go!” he shouts, writhing and kicking at Cliff’s shins.

  “Hey!” Cliff says, holding him at arm’s length and laughing.

  “Hold onto him,” Hannah says. “The cheeky monkey squirted me!”

  By the time she reaches them she is out of breath. “I was fast asleep and he squirted me with the hosepipe!” she explains, trying, but failing to grab Luke’s flailing feet.

  Aïsha, drawn by the noise, has now joined them. She grabs one of Luke’s feet, and Hannah manages to seize the remaining one.

  “That’s not fair,” Luke whines, now hesitating between throwing a genuine temper tantrum and allowing this to remain something he calls fun.

  “Well nor is squirting your mother with a hose pipe when she’s asleep,” Hannah laughs, as the three of them manhandle him back to the pool.

  “We’re gonna throw you in,” Aïsha chants, and Hannah, always hypersensitive to Luke’s moods, notes that he caves in, sees that he has decided to go along with this, and knows that she doesn’t therefore have to cave-in herself.

  “One, Two, Three!” Cliff shouts and they drop him, ever so gently, into the pool.

  “I’ll get you back,” Luke says, now surfaced and hanging on the side of an air-bed, apparently oblivious to the cold.

  “I think you already did, Luke,” Hannah says. “Thanks,” she says, smiling at Aïsha and Cliff as they walk back to the house.

  “Any time,” Aïsha says, restraining a smile.

  “Actually, it’s good he woke you,” Cliff tells Hannah. “You’ve gone a bit pink.”

  “God, have I?” she says, touching her arm and sensing the heat of her skin. “I forgot to put any cream on.”

  “You’re not burnt, but I think you’ve had enough,” Cliff tells her.

  That evening, Tristan leaves them to their own devices. He has “stuff to do,” he declares mysteriously.

  Hannah knows, from the fact that Jill doesn’t question him, that he must have told her where he is going, but as the Jeep crunches out of the driveway, she denies this. “I’ve really no idea,” she says. “He’s probably just bored. You know how high-maintenance he is. He’s probably gone off to find a club or something.”

  “You’d go with him if that was it,” Hannah points out.

  Jill shrugs. “Maybe it’s not the kind of club I’m allowed in,” she says.

  Hannah looks around, and seeing that both Aïsha and Luke are absent, she asks, “Anyway, where were you earlier on?”

  Jill frowns.

  “I saw you climbing back over the fence.”

  “Oh, that,” Jill says. “There’s a track going down the hill. A hiking trail. I went to see where it goes. There’s a little river down there. I’ll show you later if you want.”

  “Right,” Hannah says, somehow unconvinced despite Jill’s oscar-worthy performance.

  “So the chef’s taken the night off, huh?” Cliff is looking out at them through the kitchen window.

  “He has,” Hannah says.

  “So are we staying here or going out for dinner?” he asks. “Because if we’re staying I’m opening this.” He brandishes a bottle of white wine to demonstrate what this refers to. “But if I have to drive, I’ll hold off.”

  “If we’re staying, it’s just pasta with pesto sauce,” Hannah says. “But if you’d rather go find a pizzeria that’s fine with me.”

  “I’m OK with pasta,” Cliff says. “Jill?”

  “Sure. Pasta’s fine.”

  “I thought we might take them to the water-park tomorrow,” Cliff says quietly, confidentially. “Luke’s been on and on about it. It’s near Antibes, so if we stay in tonight, we could have lunch out tomorrow and then take them to the water-slide place.”

  Hannah nods. “Sure,” she says. “That sounds good.” She turns to Jill. “Do you think Aïsha will be up for it or is that too babyish for her now?”

  “Um... no, she’ll be fine. She won’t be enthusiastic, but she’ll be fine. She’ll enjoy it once she gets there. Just don’t say anything about how much fun it will be. Over-expectation freaks her out.”

  “Good. So that’s settled then,” Hannah says. “Pasta it is. I’ll go cook.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Jill says.

  “To the water-park?”

  “No. Not my scene. I meant I’ll help you cook.”

  Hannah shakes her head. “I’m boiling pasta and pouring on the sauce,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”

  Hannah sleeps badly that night. For some reason the pasta and white wine keep repeating on her. Cliff, as ever, snores soundly at her side.

  Shortly after she finally does manage to fall asleep, she is awakened by the sound of Tristan’s jeep returning. The alarm clock reads 03:08.

  What seems like a few seconds later, she is awakened by another sound, this time the crunch of feet on gravel. She checks the clock again and is surprised to see that it is almost five.

  She silently climbs from the bed and crosses to the window. Frogs are croaking loudly somewhere in the distance, cicadas are clicketing lazily. As she peers through the slats of the shutters she sees someone start to move again, heading now towards the rear of the house. With only the tiniest hint of moonlight it’s impossible to see who it is, but judging from his sure-footed plod, she’s pretty sure that it’s the pool guy. She wonders if he has been visiting someone. Surely he wouldn’t be checking on the pool at five am, would he?

  As she climbs back into bed, she wonders who he has been visiting. As sleep takes over again she wonders if, had she left their shutters open, the pool guy would have visited her. That would have been a shock for Cliff. She laughs at the thought in her sleep.

  THIRTEEN

  The drive to Antibes takes just over an hour. Luke spends the journey pointlessly naming everything he sees, as if an Esso petrol station or a McDonald’s becomes a point of interest simply for being situated in France. Aïsha, for her part, is listening to music on her phone. Hannah knows, from experience, that not only is it not likely to be something they would all want to listen to – she favours a genre called glam-metal, awful – but that even a suggestion that they might want to try would be an embarrassment for poor Aïsha.

  “Someone was creeping around in the garden last night,” she tells Cliff once they are safely installed on an unchallenging stretch of main road.

  “Really?” he says. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were fast asleep,” Hannah says.

  “Was it Tristan coming back?”

  “No, this was later. About five am.”

  “The gardener maybe?”

  “That’s what I thought, but what would he be doing nosing around at dawn?”

  “Maybe he’s just an early bird,” Cliff says. “Maybe he came over to switch the pool filter on or something. But next time, wake me up if you’re worried.”

  Hannah smiles to herself at this suggestion. She has, on occasion, attempted this in the past. Cliff invariably groans and rolls over without even a pause in the rhythm of his snoring.

  They find Antibes without drama – heading to the coast is simply a case of following the signposts. They leave the Mégane in a big sea-front car-park and head into the tiny streets of the old town. The day is already heating up and Hannah can sense that the kids won’t tolerate wandering around for long. They are already onto the next thing, already anticipating the water slides.

  Hannah and Cliff walk through the shady streets peering into shop windows, sniffing at kitsch lavender cushions and listening to the sounds of water falling from fountains whil
st Luke and Aïsha drag their feet ten yards behind them, talking constantly about what features may or may not reside in the park.

  Hannah would love to be able to explain to her son that though the water-slide may represent a ten on his personal preference chart, a walk through a beautiful, sunlit, foreign town whilst licking a velvety Italian ice-cream should be at least a nine. She would love to be able to convey the concept that the present is all that you ever have in life, and that these moments of magic are too precious to be ignored because you’re too busy thinking about the next thing. But there are no words, of course, to express this to an eleven-year old.

  “Just enjoy your ice-cream and shut up about the park for a minute, can’t you?” is as close as she gets. If she can’t fix Luke’s present, she can at least try to stop him wrecking hers.

  “He’s OK,” Cliff says, rubbing her shoulder. “He’s just excited.”

  And Hannah knows that he’s right. She’s just suffering from lack of sleep.

  When they reach the edge of the historic town centre, they sit and have an outrageously expensive round of Cokes, then climb up onto the ramparts and circle the town in the other direction.

  “The sea is so blue!” Hannah says.

  “Well, of course it’s blue,” Luke says.

  “Don’t be rude, Luke,” Hannah reproaches him. “It’s not always that blue. It’s not always azure blue.” These flashes of cheekiness scare her a little. They warn her that she needs to prepare herself for a time when Luke will become like Aïsha. It’s happening already; these bursts of insolence are creeping in. For the moment, it’s only an occasional burst, but she suspects that soon enough it will become a twenty-four-seven feature of their lives.

  On the harbour wall, Cliff takes their photo standing inside a huge iron sculpture of a head made out of a latticework of apparently random words, and then the parents cave-in to the kids’ demands and rather than choosing a nice relaxing restaurant somewhere, they buy sandwiches that can be eaten en-route for the water park. “It wouldn’t be any fun anyway,” Cliff points out. “Not with these two champing at the bit.”