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

by Nick Alexander

  A single final tear of relief slides down her cheek, and then against all expectation she falls asleep.

  THIRTY

  Luke, still vaguely under sedation, falls asleep in the car.

  “He has been amazing,” Hannah says, glancing back at him.

  “Yes,” Cliff agrees. “Yes, I’m so proud. Can you imagine what Aïsha would have been like?”

  “No,” Hannah says. “No, I can’t. Tristan said she couldn’t stop crying as it is.”

  “This morning? Yes. It’s true.”

  “Is her heel OK?”

  “I think so. It was nothing really – just a scratch. They’ve gone,” Cliff says. “You know that, right?”

  “Gone?”

  “Uh-uh. Tristan took them to the station when we got back. I think there were too many bad vibrations for her or something. That’s what Tris’ said.”

  Like boiling milk, Hannah’s anger froths, rises, and overflows. “What a cow,” she says. “She didn’t even wait to see if Luke was OK!” Hannah hesitates, then asks, “When you say, gone, you mean...?”

  “Oh, just for one night. They went to Nice. Change of scene, she said.”

  “Oh, right,” Hannah says, swallowing, and trying to force herself to calm down. “God, I thought you meant that she’d gone completely. As in gone home.”

  “All the same, she could have phoned,” Cliff says. “She might have shown a little concern.”

  Hannah shakes her head and sighs. “I think I’m getting to the point where...” she says.

  “Yes?”

  She shrugs. There’s no point feeding Cliff’s Jill-phobia. “Oh, nothing. It’s just Jill, isn’t it. So they’ve gone to Nice, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “A nice little treat for Aïsha to reward her for all her good behaviour.”

  “Well, quite.”

  They drive in silence for a moment until an advertisement for new-build apartments with a price displayed in Euros prompts Hannah to ask, “So, how much did it cost? Are we broke?”

  Cliff laughs. “The hospital? No, it was fine actually. I had to pay the, what is it they call it? The, you know, patient’s contribution.”

  “The co-pay.”

  “Yes, that’s it. It was twenty percent. And apparently we can even try to claim that back.”

  “And how much was that then?”

  “Three hundred-ish. Out of one thousand two hundred and sixty or something.”

  “That’s pretty reasonable,” Hannah says.

  “Quite interesting seeing the bill – I’ll show you later. The anaesthetist was almost half of it. It’s a good job you got the euro-card before we left. Otherwise we would have had to pay the whole lot.”

  “Good old Europe,” Hannah says.

  “Yes, for once,” Cliff agrees.

  As Hannah climbs out, the sudden movement makes her feel so dizzy that she has to lean against the car to steady herself. “God, I just realised. I haven’t eaten all day,” she says.

  “I’ll carry Luke in,” Cliff says.

  But Luke is awake. “I’m fine,” he says, already emerging from the car.

  Tristan comes to greet them. “Hey kids,” he says. “Everything OK?”

  Hannah, still leaning against the car, looks at him and smiles weakly. “I think my blood sugar’s low,” she says. “I forgot to have lunch. Could you make me a quick sandwich or something.”

  “I can do that,” Cliff says. “What do you want? Ham? Cheese? Tuna?”

  “There’s no need, Cliff,” Tristan says. “I...”

  “Just let me make my wife a sandwich, will you?” Cliff says.

  Hannah notes, but chooses to ignore, the tension between the two men. She simply doesn’t have the energy to care right now.

  When they reach the patio however, it’s clear why sandwiches aren’t needed. The table is covered with food.

  “Oh Tris’,” Hannah says. “You didn’t have to do all of this.” The truth is that she would rather have had a quick sandwich and gone to bed.

  “If you’d rather just have a sandwich, I’ll make you one,” Cliff offers, and Hannah wonders briefly if he has read her mind.

  “No, it’s fine,” Hannah says. “This is lovely.”

  “I thought you’d be hungry,” Tristan says.

  “Yes, well, I am, I’m starving.”

  “I’m hungry too,” Luke says.

  “So tell me what happened?” Hannah says, once they are all served and seated. “I still don’t really know.”

  “Aïsha dive bombed me,” Luke says.

  “So it is Aïsha’s fault entirely, or...?”

  Luke shrugs. “Well, I kind of dive bombed her first,” he admits.

  “Right.”

  “She was asleep on the air bed like you was when I squirted you.”

  “Like you were,” Hannah says.

  “Yeah.”

  “So you sort of started it, did you?” Hannah asks.

  Luke shrugs again. “Yeah,” he says. “I suppose so.”

  Dinner over, Luke, unusually, admits that he is tired, so Hannah takes him to bed. “You were so, so brave today,” she tells him as she undresses him.

  “I wish we took photos,” Luke says. “For school. Stephen Hill had his appendix out, but this is way cooler.”

  “I didn’t think. I’m sorry,” she says, arranging the bedclothes over him.

  Luke yawns. “It’s weird having only one eye though,” he says.

  “Well, it won’t be for long,” Hannah tells him. “You’re lucky it’s not for life.”

  Hannah sits for thirty seconds watching him breathe, then says, “I was so proud of you, you know. You were so brave.”

  But Luke is already asleep.

  “Wow, that was quick, even for you,” she says quietly.

  She sits and watches her son sleeping for five minutes, and then, without undressing, or even brushing her teeth, she climbs onto the bed beside him. He’s almost too old for her to do this now. Indeed, if he were awake, it’s fifty-fifty these days whether he would snuggle against her or tell her to leave. But today counts as special circumstances. She loves him so much she simply can’t bring herself to go.

  ***

  When Hannah wakes up the next morning, Luke is gone. She drags herself from his bed and staggers to the bathroom. She feels as if she has been sedated herself.

  In the mirror she examines her face: she has a deep imprint from the seam of the pillow right across her left cheek. “Foxy,” she murmurs with irony. She runs a finger along the indent before bending over the sink and washing her face vigorously.

  Outside on the patio, she finds Cliff, Luke and Tristan having breakfast.

  “You’re up before me,” she says, kissing Luke’s head as she passes behind him. “How is my little soldier this morning?”

  “Tired,” Luke says.

  “That will be the anaesthetic,” Hannah says.

  “No, it’s your fault. You took all the bed. I had to sleep with Dad. And he snores.”

  “Oops,” Hannah says. “Sorry. I meant to move but I fell asleep.”

  “That’s what you always say,” Luke says. “I couldn’t even wake you up.”

  “Sorry,” Hannah says, pulling a guilty face.

  “Tris’ says I look like a pirate,” Luke says proudly.

  Hannah laughs. “He’s right. You do.”

  “So do you a bit,” Tristan says.

  Hannah runs a finger across her cheek. “What this?”

  Tristan nods.

  “I know,” she says. “It’s awful, isn’t it.”

  “I went to the pharmacy,” Tristan tells her, pushing a paper bag across the table towards her.

  “I was perfectly happy to go,” Cliff says. “But Tristan wouldn’t let me.”

  “Well, you don’t speak French,” Tristan points out.

  “I would have managed.”

  “I doubt that. I had a ten minute argument to get these,” Tristan says.


  “Really?” Hannah asks, peering inside the bag. “Why?”

  “Lack of ID,” Tristan says. “My name didn’t match with the prescription or something. But I used my famous powers of persuasion on them. No one can resist.”

  “My ID would have matched, wouldn’t it?” Cliff says. “I wouldn’t have had that problem.”

  Hannah yawns and rubs her brow. She looks between Tristan and Cliff’s faces and wonders why they are being so competitive this morning and vaguely recalls some bitchiness last night.

  “I’d like to have seen you try,” Tristan is saying.

  “Boys. Boys!” Hannah interrupts. “It really doesn’t matter who got them, does it?” She fishes in the bag and pulls out a box of blister-packed pills, then a bottle of eye-wash, another of eye drops and a package of fresh eye-patches.

  “The pills are two at breakfast today,” Tristan says. “He’s already taken those...”

  “Antibiotics?”

  “Yes. And then one every morning. You have to do the eye drops and change the dressing three times a day.”

  “Will that hurt?” Luke asks.

  “No, I don’t think it will hurt at all,” Hannah says. “And anyway, it’s only today and tomorrow, right Tris’?”

  “Right. Just two days the guy at the hospital said.”

  “He did,” Cliff agrees. “I remember. I was there too.”

  After breakfast, Cliff carries a batch of plates in and begins to unload and then stack the dishwasher. Tristan continues to carry the rest of the breakfast things back indoors.

  “So what’s going on with you two?” Hannah asks him quietly when he returns. The kitchen window is closed and Hannah’s pretty sure that Cliff cannot hear them.

  “Who?” Tristan says, pausing with a jar of marmalade in one hand.

  “You and Cliff.”

  “Nothing,” Tristan says. “Why?”

  “Nothing,” Hannah says.

  “Nothing!” Tristan repeats more definitively. “Anyway, why ask me? Ask Cliff.”

  Hannah sighs. Until that last phrase, she had been prepared to believe him. Now she knows something’s wrong. “Luke! Where are you going?” she shouts. Luke is heading off in the direction of the pool. He’s wearing swimming shorts.

  “The pool,” he says. “I won’t wear the mask.”

  “Well, you can’t, can you?” Hannah says. “It’s broken and binned.”

  “So is it OK?”

  Hannah stands. “Come with me and let me change that dressing. And then you can as long as you don’t get it wet. You’ll have to keep your head out of the water, OK?” She ushers Luke back indoors.

  As they pass the kitchen, Cliff looks up from the dishwasher and asks, “Is everything OK?”

  “Fine,” Hannah replies. “I’m just going to change Luke’s dressing.”

  “I can do that if you want,” Cliff says.

  “No thanks. We’re fine,” Hannah says, pulling a puzzled face as they continue down the corridor.

  Luke’s bedroom is already too hot – the sunshine is streaming in. She pulls the shutters closed with a clack and then sits him on the bed and gently starts to pull back the dressing.

  “Ouch,” Luke protests.

  “I’m sorry, it’s a bit stuck,” Hannah tells him.

  “Owww!” Luke says in a voice that confirms to her that it doesn’t really hurt at all.

  “There, that’s it. How’s that?”

  Luke shrugs.

  “Well, open your eye,” she prompts.

  Luke opens his injured eye and closes the good one. “It’s all blurry,” he says.

  “Yes, it’s a bit gunky,” Hannah tells him, fiddling in the paper bag. “That’s why we have this to clean it.”

  She opens the bottle of eye-wash and fills the plastic eye-bath with the solution. “So tip your head forward onto... that’s right,” she says. “And now tip your head back. That’s it. And now open your eyes and hold this in place... that’s right.”

  “Do I open both of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s cold,” Luke says.

  “Yes.”

  “Like swimming underwater.”

  “Yes. It doesn’t hurt though, does it?”

  “Only here,” Luke says, using the hand that was supposed to be holding the eye-bath in place to point to his eyebrow and spilling the solution down his chest.

  Hannah and Luke both laugh. “Sorry,” Luke says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hannah tells him, scooping a dirty t-shirt from the floor and using it to dry Luke’s chest. “So how’s that now? Can you see better?”

  “Yeah. It’s OK,” Luke says.

  “OK, OK?” Hannah asks. “Or OK, perfect?”

  “OK perfect. Like normal.”

  “Good.”

  “So do I still have to have the patch?”

  “You do I’m afraid. But only until tomorrow night.”

  “That’s OK,” Luke says. “I don’t mind.”

  Hannah opens the box containing the eye-drops. “Now, tip your head back and keep it there,” she says, fiddling with the plastic seal around the bottle.

  At the sound of a car door, followed by their gate opening and closing, Hannah stands, and, still fiddling with the packaging, she crosses the room and peers out through the slats.

  She sees a grey hatchback parked beyond the gate and a man closing the gate behind him. He turns and looks straight at her, but she can tell from his blank expression that he can’t see her.

  He has gone grey. That is the first thing that she notices. She could have deduced as much had she thought about it. After all, Cliff has been grey for years. He has grown a little goatee beard as well. It suits him.

  Beyond the shutters, Hannah watches as James crosses his arms behind his head and stretches. He’s wearing what looks like hiking gear. Walking boots, lightweight shorts with lots of pockets, a sleeveless checkered shirt. He looks fit and rugged and to her eyes – in a Brokeback Mountain kind of way – a little bit gay.

  “Mum?” Luke says.

  Without averting her gaze, Hannah raises one hand behind her and says, her voice distant, “Yes. Just wait a minute, sweetheart. I can’t get this open.”

  She watches James as he peers inside the Mégane, no doubt looking for clues to confirm that he’s in the right place. He must see something which reassures him, because he then crosses the gravel until he’s standing just feet away from her – she actually sniffs the air in case she might catch the scent of him.

  He cross-links his hands, stretches again, purses his lips, exhales slowly, and then starting to walk towards the front of the house, calls out, with theatrical bravado, “Hello? Hello? Anybody home?”

  “Mum!” Luke says again.

  Hannah turns back to see Luke with his head still tilted back.

  “Sorry,” she says, returning to the bed and finally wrestling the cap from the bottle of eye-drops. “So open your eye and look up at the ceiling... There.”

  “Yuck,” Luke says. “I can taste it.”

  “Yes, that’s funny, isn’t it,” Hannah says.

  “It’s stingy.”

  “Yes, just a bit. But it will be OK in a minute.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Who was who?”

  “I heard someone outside.”

  “I’m not sure,” Hannah lies. “Let’s get this dressing on and then we can go and see. How does that sound?”

  Luke’s eye re-bandaged, Hannah says, “OK Luke. Off you go. I’ll just put these things away and I’ll be out. And don’t get it wet, OK?”

  Luke runs off and Hannah sits back down on the bed and rests her temple against her fingertips. She sits and stares at her feet. She wiggles her toes.

  From the other side of the house she can hear the men’s voices but not their words.

  She takes a series of long deep breaths, and then, on an exhalation she breathes, “OK!” and stands.

  Out on the patio, Cliff, Tristan and Luke
are standing with their backs to her, almost as if to prevent James, opposite, from entering. It looks like some kind of rugby defence.

  James, facing her, is the first to see her arrive, and she sees him look past Cliff; she sees his eyes wrinkle as he smiles.

  “... that you found it,” Cliff is saying.

  “I just used the GPS,” James replies. “Brought me straight here.”

  James nods at Hannah and grins, and Cliff turns to see her. “Ah, there she is!” he says, stepping to one side to make room.

  Hannah moves forward so that she is between Cliff and Tristan and bristles a little at the implied possession when Cliff lays an arm around her shoulders and says, “My wonderful wife.”

  “Hi James,” Hannah says. “You’re looking very...”

  “Yes?”

  “Very alive actually.”

  James laughs. “Why thank-you?” he says. “You’re looking very alive too?”

  “Gosh, you do sound Australian,” Hannah says.

  “Well, it has been ten years?” James replies. “More than ten years?” His voice goes up at the end of each sentence as if, perhaps, he’s unsure of what he’s saying, as if it’s a question.

  “Yes,” Hannah says. “Yes, I know. Well, now I know.”

  Why am I being so bitchy? she thinks. “Would you like something? Tea? Coffee? Juice?”

  “Keep going?” James says / asks.

  “Beer, wine?” Hannah offers.

  James nods. “Sure, a beer would be great?”

  Hannah heads to the kitchen and pulls a single beer from the chill-box at the bottom.

  She pauses and watches through the window, now ajar, as the men discuss the pros and cons of GPS. Men, she thinks. Fifteen years apart and they’re discussing GPS. She studies James’ face as he talks animatedly, notices again the incredible blue of his eyes, and then he glances indoors and sees her watching and, slightly flustered, she returns outside and hands him the beer.

  “You aren’t expecting me to drink alone?” James says.

  Cliff glances at his watch. “It’s a bit early for me,” he says.

  “For me too,” Tristan agrees.

  “I’m still on Ozzie time,” James says. “Hannah! Have a beer with me so I don’t feel so lonely?”