Then. Now. Always.

by Isabelle Broom

  Nancy is sending someone a message on her phone, but I can’t see who it is from here. She hasn’t cried for at least three hours now, which is a huge improvement on the earlier part of the day. I’m vaguely aware of the fact that I should get us both some food, or at least a taxi home, but both tasks feel impossible. What it would be nice to do is have a quick nap. Yes, that would help, I think blearily. And the top of the table is so comfortable now that my head is on it.

  ‘Hannah!’

  I sit up so fast that I almost smack the top of my head on Tom’s chin, and he has to swerve out of the way.

  ‘Bloody hell, Hannah!’

  I start laughing, I can’t help it, and Nancy joins in, although she definitely looks more sheepish than amused. She can certainly hold her booze, too, I’ll give her that. She’s been matching each of my beers with a variety of colourful cocktails, but she doesn’t seem anywhere near as wasted as I am.

  ‘Thomas!’ I declare, grabbing his hand and steering him into a vacant chair. ‘Have a drink!’

  ‘I think you’ve had enough for everyone in here,’ he mutters, not unkindly.

  ‘Where’s Theo?’ is my predictable next question, and Tom shakes his head.

  ‘Gone back to the villa to celebrate.’

  ‘Celebrate what?’ I demand, fear snaking its way through the reeds of drunkenness in my brain like a pike.

  ‘The filming went really well today,’ he says, and I get the sense that there’s a ‘but’ he isn’t adding.

  Before I can press him, though, Tom has a question of his own.

  ‘How long have you two been drinking?’

  Nancy giggles again at this and gives him the benefit of those huge, dark eyes of hers.

  ‘A few hours,’ she simpers, her eyes not leaving his as she sucks on her straw. It would usually piss me off, but today I’m impressed. If only I could learn how to flirt so openly and with such confidence. Then again, I remind myself happily, I’ve already managed to get my man.

  ‘I miss Theo,’ I sigh out loud, and Tom rolls his eyes.

  ‘I think it’s best if he doesn’t see you in this state,’ he points out, but that just makes me grumpy.

  ‘No!’ I cry, loud enough to cause a few heads to turn in our direction. ‘I’m going to go to the villa – and you can’t stop me!’

  ‘Au contraire,’ Tom says, putting a big hand on my arm and gently forcing me to sit back down.

  ‘Trust me, Hannah,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to go there, not tonight.’

  ‘Maybe I’m a little drunk – so what?’ I grumble, putting my head back down on the table. It really is very comfortable.

  The next thing I’m aware of is Tom helping me up the steps of the bar to the street, where by some miracle there’s a taxi waiting. Nancy gets in first and leans her head against the window, and Tom sits between us, giving the driver instructions in very bad broken Spanish. I want to take the mickey out of him, but for some reason talking has become an enormous effort. Once at the apartment, Tom makes me wait at the top of the stairs while he helps Nancy down to the door first, then comes back and orders me to climb on his back.

  ‘You’ll kill yourself on these stairs one day,’ he warns as we make our way down, but this just makes me laugh all over again.

  ‘Let’s have another beer,’ I say as soon as we’re inside, heading to the fridge only to begin swearing in earnest. Claudette has drunk my entire stash. Of course she has.

  ‘Bloody Claudette!’ I rage, slamming the fridge door and seeing Tom wince as all the items inside fall over.

  ‘I need to be sick,’ announces Nancy, and vanishes into the bathroom.

  ‘Don’t make that face,’ I scold, as Tom does a convincing impression of a wounded ferret. ‘Nancy and me are friends now! Sisters! Isn’t that what you wanted?’

  He eyes me with distrust.

  ‘Why now? Why today?’

  It’s a good question, and I think about answering until I spy a packet of crisps on the coffee table.

  ‘Cheese and onion!’ I cry, falling on the bag and stuffing a handful into my mouth. ‘My favourite.’

  I can’t understand why Tom looks so upset. We’ve been drunk together too many times to recount, and he knows how much I love crisps. Why isn’t he happy for me?

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ I tell him as I chew. ‘Nancy, I mean. She’s just had a few too many.’

  ‘She’s not as bad as you,’ he says grimly, and I narrow my eyes at him.

  ‘You’re no fun these days,’ I reply, kicking off my flip-flop only to have it fly straight up in the air and hit me in the face. Tom doesn’t even laugh.

  ‘What happened to my fun friend, Tom?’ I ask him. ‘Where did he go? Go and get him. I miss him.’

  Tom sighs at this and sits down beside me.

  ‘I’m right here,’ he says, searching my face with his eyes. He’s wearing a blue polo shirt today that makes him look very handsome, and he’s even swapped those terrible floral shorts for a plain black pair. He must have gone shopping by himself, because I certainly didn’t take him. Wonders will never cease.

  ‘I miss you,’ I say again, not entirely sure where the words are coming from, then pick up his nearest hand in both of mine.

  ‘You don’t have to miss me, I’m right here,’ he says, so quietly that I almost don’t hear him, and for a second I wish I could kiss him. It would be easier than trying to find all the words I want to say to him – words which are, at the moment, lingering hidden at the bottom of a well filled with beer in my head.

  ‘Hannah …’ he begins, but the sound of the toilet flushing distracts him. Nancy appears in the bathroom doorway looking even more ill than she did this morning, and in a moment Tom is beside her, ushering her towards the bedroom. I should go and help him really, check that Nancy is okay and tell her how glad I am that we spent the day together, but the sofa is so darn comfortable.

  I’ll just lie down here for a few minutes, I think. Just until Tom comes back, and then I’ll tell him how sorry I am for being so hammered, and how happy I am that we’re best friends again, just as we’ve always been, like we’re supposed to be. The thought is enough to comfort me, and before long my eyes close and everything dissolves into sleep.

  Alas, as is always the case when you drink like Oliver Reed with an unquenchable thirst all day long and forget to alternate your beers with water, I wake up a few hours later with an achingly full bladder and a throat like knotted old rope. Claudette’s bedroom door is shut, but my own is ajar, and I’m definitely not prepared for what I see when I peer through the crack into the gloom.

  There on my bed, his arms wrapped around her and contented expressions of slumber on both their faces, are Nancy and Tom. I’m not sure whether it’s the result of suddenly sobering up or if I’m just still very drunk, but when I tiptoe back to the sofa and pull a blanket over myself, I find that I cannot stop crying.

  28

  I wake abruptly to the sound of very loud and very insistent knocking.

  ‘What the hell?’ I grumble, staggering up and immediately squinting as a shaft of sunlight rattles through my hungover brain like a circular saw.

  ‘OKAY!’ I yell through the wooden door, pushing my hair off my face. The banging is so loud that it’s scaring me, which in turn is making me angry. Sliding the security chain across first, I inch open the door and arrange my features into a glare.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  Carlos looks mutinous out on the steps, his curly mop pushed back with a plastic hairband and a bottle of beer dangling from one hand. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that he’s been up all night, and the smell of alcohol on his breath makes me take a step backwards.

  ‘Can I come inside, Hannah?’ he says slowly, but it doesn’t sound like a question.

  ‘What do you want, Carlos?’ I ask. His eyes are bloodshot as he looks at me, and I can sense a quiet disgruntlement radiating off him. He takes a deep breath before replying, and as he moves slightl
y to the left I catch sight of Ignacio behind him. He is also holding a half-empty bottle of beer and – rather more worryingly – a motorcycle helmet.

  ‘Where is Claudette?’ Carlos demands, pushing in vain against the door. Thank God he’s one of the small Spanish men, and not a great hairy beast like Diego.

  ‘In bed, I assume,’ I tell him, but he doesn’t seem to understand and shakes his head.

  ‘No! Where is she?’

  ‘Hang on,’ I say, slamming the door shut in his face and heading straight to Claudette’s room. She can blooming well deal with her own drunk Spanish boyfriend.

  The empty bed stares back at me vacantly, unmade but not slept in recently either. I suddenly feel very sick indeed.

  ‘She’s not here,’ I say through the gap a few moments later.

  Carlos throws his hands up in the air and begins to recite what I can only assume are some very bad words indeed in Spanish. While he’s taken up with his tantrum, Ignacio steps forward and smiles at me beseechingly.

  ‘Nancy?’ he asks hopefully.

  I shake my head. ‘She’s ill,’ I tell him, then resort to miming someone puking when he looks puzzled. There’s no way I’m letting either one of these leathered idiots across the threshold.

  ‘NANCY!’ Ignacio shouts over the top of my head, and I glare at him until my head starts to throb.

  ‘Shhhh! She needs to sleep – and you two are drunk. Go away and sober up.’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ Carlos mocks, putting on a stupid girly voice. I think about Tom asleep in the bedroom with Nancy and contemplate calling for him to come and help me – but that would only exacerbate the problem. If Ignacio thinks that Tom has been spooning with his beloved, Lord only knows how he’ll react. At the moment, the two of them are just being idiots, but there’s an edge with drunkenness that can very quickly descend into something nasty, and I’m not keen on finding out just how bad things could get.

  ‘I’m going to shut the door now,’ I tell them, trying my best to sound authoritative, but Ignacio sticks his arm through the gap and tries to reach for the chain.

  ‘Get off!’ I demand, slapping his hand until he pulls it back.

  ‘I love her!’ he cries, just as I push the door shut for the second time. ‘Nancy! I love you more than nothing in the world!’

  Nothing in the world? Wow. What a compliment, I think, amused by Ignacio’s declaration despite my hammering heart. I can hear the two of them talking on the other side of the door, but I have no idea what they’re saying. In the end, thankfully, I hear the sound of their trainers heading back up the stone steps, and a few minutes later the splutter of a moped engine firing up.

  ‘Have they gone?’

  Wheeling around, I find Nancy standing a few feet behind me. Her hair is a mess and she’s clutching one of the apartment’s scratchy brown blankets around herself.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ I tell her. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Awful.’ She gives me a half-smile. ‘You?’

  ‘Like my head’s been used as a bongo.’

  ‘I’ve got some paracetamol in my bag,’ she offers, and I nod a thanks, following her back down the hallway and heading into the kitchen to get us both a glass of water.

  ‘Are you not having any?’ I ask when she comes back with just two tablets, but Nancy shakes her head.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Must have been that tactical chunder you had,’ I say, then regret it immediately because the mere thought makes me want to hurl too.

  ‘Is Tom not up yet?’ I enquire casually, and Nancy wraps the blanket around her shoulders a fraction tighter.

  ‘He went to get breakfast about half an hour ago.’

  Just as she says it, we hear the sound of the key in the lock and a grunt as the chain prevents the door from opening. I hurry across to let Tom in, immediately clocking a paper bag in one of his hands.

  ‘Oh good, you’re up,’ he says to me. ‘Put the kettle on, would you?’

  I do as I’m told, not because I would ever let Tom tell me what to do or even because I remotely want a cup of tea, but just because I’ve slipped into a sort of numb trance. The same question keeps repeating itself over and over in my mind: where is Claudette?

  Nancy goes into the bedroom to get dressed, and Tom joins me in the kitchen, his kindly face a picture of concern.

  ‘I’m worried about Nancy,’ he whispers, passing me the sugar.

  ‘She’s just hungover,’ I hiss back.

  If Claudette didn’t stay with Carlos last night, and she wasn’t here, then where was she?

  ‘What were you talking about yesterday?’ Tom asks, and I squint at him in confusion.

  ‘Oh, you mean Nancy,’ I say, the events of the previous day swimming to the front of my mind with regretful clarity. ‘I told her the truth about my dad. She, er … She didn’t know the whole story, you know, about him leaving my mum for hers.’

  I assume Tom will condemn me for this, but instead he just looks wistful.

  ‘I think it’s a good thing that the two of you talked it out,’ he says eventually, stirring the tea when it becomes apparent that I’m not going to. ‘You needed a good heart-to-heart.’

  I suppose he’s right about that, but I can’t muster up enough energy to say anything in response.

  ‘Though I suppose it could have stirred things up, unsettled her,’ he adds, and I nod slowly.

  Where the hell is Claudette? She can’t be where I think she is. She just can’t be.

  ‘Like I said, she’s always been my dad’s little princess,’ I tell him quietly, leaving him in the kitchen while I wander away to find my phone. There’s only six per cent battery left, but I don’t have any messages waiting for me – not from Theo or from our absent French friend. My guts are now churning so much that I have to sit down.

  ‘But she’s been out of sorts since she arrived,’ Tom persists, sitting down beside me on the sofa. ‘Since before she found out that your dad behaved like an arse.’

  I force myself to stop thinking about Claudette.

  ‘She was snogging Diego a few hours after she landed,’ I point out, not unkindly, but I still notice the hurt on Tom’s face.

  ‘But is that out of character?’ he demands.

  I should have the answer. Nancy is my half-sister after all, but in truth I have no idea. My opinion of her is based on how she was when we were teenagers and what I’ve seen during my secret social-media stakeouts. I haven’t actually spent any quality time with her since I started university, which was ten whole years ago. Aside from birthdays and that awful graduation lunch my dad made us all go on, I’ve barely seen her.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I admit then, turning my eyes to Tom. ‘I’ve been such a terrible sister, haven’t I?’

  ‘Oh Han.’ Tom pulls me against him as the tears threaten. It’s really not like me to cry all over him, not ever. Well, not unless they’re tears of laughter, which they so often are when the two of us are together.

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ he soothes, squeezing me until I have to pull back in order to breathe. ‘It’s not been easy for either of you.’

  ‘When did you get to be so wise?’ I grumble, and he laughs gently.

  ‘A compliment from Hannah Hodges – bloody hell, girl, you must have drunk a lot last night.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I mutter, but he’s got me smiling again.

  The bedroom door opens and Tom lets go of me before Nancy reappears. I try not to be offended, but my insides are twisting like honeysuckle around a trellis. An image of Claudette at Theo’s villa assaults me – the two of them toasting the success of the day’s filming, drinking a whole bottle of wine then opening another. But she wouldn’t have stayed over with him, would she? He would never have let her, not now he’s with me.

  Tom has picked up a bag of magdalena cakes for breakfast, and I break one into pieces now and absent-mindedly post it into my mouth. They’re incredibly sweet and moist, but light, t
oo. It’s just a shame that everything tastes like old feet on my hungover, bitter tongue.

  Nancy seems to be struggling with hers, too, and is now folding the paper case into quarters rather than eating the actual cake. Tom, who wolfed his own down in three mouthfuls, is looking at the two of us like a concerned parent.

  ‘Come on, eat up!’ he chivvies, and I smile weakly at him over the rim of my mug. ‘We have to be up in the square to begin filming in half an hour,’ he reminds me, and I groan in dismay.

  ‘I think I’ll stay here today,’ Nancy puts in, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. ‘I’m not really feeling up to it.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ Tom is quick to ask. ‘Something different to eat, or some painkillers?’

  She smiles. ‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine. Just need to sleep it off.’

  ‘Well, don’t answer the door if those idiots come back,’ I say, and then explain to Tom what happened with Carlos and Ignacio.

  ‘Nothing in the world?’ he asks when I’m through, clearly amused.

  ‘I know,’ I agree, traipsing to the kitchen to dump my empty cup in the sink. ‘His English isn’t the greatest. But he was trying, to be fair to him.’

  ‘I’ll be back to check on you in a few hours,’ I tell Nancy twenty minutes later. A shower and change of clothes has gone some way towards making me feel less of a slug, but a solid fist of dread is still clamped over my heart.

  The door has barely shut behind us before Tom starts up again.

  ‘She’s not eating either,’ he says, refusing my offer of help in carrying the camera bag. ‘She’s definitely been sick more than once, too. I think she might be bulimic.’

  ‘She’s not bulimic!’ I argue. ‘She’s just hungover.’

  ‘But last night, when we got back here, she said, “I need to be sick,” ’ Tom persists. ‘Not “I think” or “I feel”, she used the word “need”.’

  ‘Don’t you think you could be reading too much into it because you fancy her?’ I reply, careful not to sound too accusatory. ‘Isn’t it more likely that she’s a bit of a lightweight who suffers from bad hangovers?’