The man came out from behind the desk and Hannah stepped away from the glass. Anyone who saw her peering in like this would think she was one of those oddballs who got their kicks hanging round hospitals and doctors. For a moment she saw herself as if from the outside: what would the person she’d been on Saturday morning, only three days ago, think of this one, standing with her nose literally pressed against the glass for a view into the world of the woman who was sleeping with her husband? She experienced a burst of self-loathing so intense it was almost a taste in her mouth, and turned to go. Just as she did, however, a woman whose clipped approaching footsteps she’d been vaguely aware of came to a stop just behind her.
‘Excuse me. Sorry.’ She reached past to the disinfectant gel dispenser then pressed the entry button. When she was buzzed in, Hannah took some gel and followed her.
The woman went straight to the nurses’ station. Hannah hung back until she’d been directed to a patient in one of the individual rooms then approached the desk herself. The nurse behind it, a woman in her fifties with grey-blonde hair pinned into a nub of a ponytail, looked at her over a pair of gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, in a brisk voice.
‘It’s just a question, actually. I wondered if Hermione Alleyn was in today?’
‘Ms Alleyn?’ On the desk behind her the telephone started ringing. The nurse looked at it then at a colleague, who pulled a quick apologetic expression over the shoulder of the visitor she’d been collared by. The nurse looked back at Hannah. ‘May I ask why you want to know?’
‘I . . .’ For a moment her mind emptied. The nurse raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m from the florist,’ said Hannah. ‘I’ve got a delivery for her downstairs but, well, it’s big and I wanted to make sure I was in the right place and she was actually here before . . .’
The telephone stopped ringing but started again almost immediately. The nurse gave it another harried glance. ‘Fine, yes. She’s in today but she’s in theatre at the moment. The list isn’t long so I should think they’ll be done shortly. If you bring the flowers up, we can keep them behind the desk here.’
‘Great, thanks.’ Hannah nodded and made her way to the door again. She tugged at the handle three or four times before seeing the release pad on the wall at wheelchair height. Back outside in the corridor, she walked until she was out of view from the glass panels.
Her mind was racing. What was going on? Hermione Alleyn was here. She was here and working in the operating theatre, which meant that wherever Mark actually was – New York, Rome, Ulan Bator – she wasn’t with him. Unless, Hannah thought, this was the wrong woman after all. She remembered the Cambridge connection, though, the fact that they would have been at St Botolph’s at the same time – what was the likelihood Mark would know two Hermione Alleyns? No, it had to be her, this one. So what did that mean? That he was in London somewhere, holed up at her house and waiting for her to come home? No: not his style. And anyway, if he were in London, he’d be at the office, wouldn’t he? There was no way he’d be here and not go to work, especially with a buy-out imminent.
Just for a minute she let herself consider the possibility that he wasn’t having an affair, that Hermione had been calling him for some other reason. What? What could they be talking about? But then, if she was just an old friend from Cambridge, why had Hannah never heard of her? Why had Mark never mentioned her? And why had Neesha been so defensive? He always closes his door when he speaks to her.
A little further on, near the end of the corridor, there was a shallow alcove with a bench in it. Blue winter light spilled from the window behind on to the floor. Sitting there, Hannah thought, she’d be more or less out of sight of anyone approaching but she’d have a good view. She’d wait until Hermione came up from theatre and talk to her then. She wasn’t going to leave here now until she found out was going on.
She walked to the bench and sat down, positioning herself at the far end so she could see clearly. The ward hadn’t seemed especially busy but a steady stream of people came and went, staff and visitors, and her head snapped up at each new set of footsteps, the tap-tap of heels and the softer whisper of men’s shoes, the squeak of trainers. She remembered waiting in the arrivals hall at JFK, how she used to watch the doors like a puppy waiting for its owner to come home, and was filled with disgust at herself. What a stupid bloody idiot she’d been.
Her bag vibrated against her thigh and when she got out her BlackBerry, she saw Mark’s name in her inbox.
Han sweetheart, I’m so sorry we didn’t manage to talk over the weekend. I’m getting some work done this morning, the meeting’s at two this afternoon, and then I’m JFK-bound, coming home. Can’t wait to see you – I’ve missed you like mad. Prepare to be squeezed to within an inch of your life . . .
She read it again, and then, incensed – I’ve missed you like mad? – she deleted it and tossed the phone back into her bag. When she looked up again, a woman in surgical greens with brown hair cut into a shoulder-length bob was coming through the double doors at the far end of the corridor, walking with energetic, economical steps that were barely audible even when she was ten feet away. She was frowning slightly, squinting against the cold light that streamed through the windows and made her look even more tired, but it was the woman Hannah had seen online, no doubt about it, slightly protruding ears and all. As she approached the doors to the ward, Hannah stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder and moved quickly to intercept her. ‘Excuse me? Hermione Alleyn?’
The woman stopped and the frown was replaced by an expression of polite professionalism. She gave a small smile carefully calibrated – after years of being accosted by anxious relatives, Hannah guessed – to look approachable but not too much so. She was sucking a mint that did nothing to mask the smell of cigarette smoke that hung around her.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Hannah Reilly,’ she said, watching the woman carefully. The neutral expression, however, remained.
‘Mark’s wife.’
A second passed and then a look of pure horror crossed Hermione Alleyn’s face. It was fleeting but unmistakable: her eyes widened and stared but then, just as quickly, she recovered herself and smiled. ‘Mark? God, how is he? Is he here?’ She looked around, as if expecting to see him coming along the corridor.
Hannah felt a hot rush of anger. How dare she? How much of a moron did they think she was? ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother with the pretence. I know something’s going on.’
Another momentary flicker of panic and then composure again. ‘Going on? I don’t know what . . .’
‘Between you two. I know you’re . . . in touch.’ She paused a second, gave the innuendo room to breathe. ‘I know you’ve been calling him at his office – his assistant told me. And I know he’s been lying to me about his whereabouts.’
Hermione shook her head a little. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick somewhere. There’s nothing going on between Mark and me. We were at college together in Cambridge – you know that already, I’m sure – but that’s all the . . .’
‘Don’t,’ Hannah said, her voice coming out louder than she’d expected. It echoed off the corridor’s shiny surfaces and Hermione glanced around, nervous, no doubt, in case her colleagues heard. Well, stuff her, thought Hannah. Why should she lower her voice? She wasn’t going to sit back and take this. ‘Just don’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough of being lied to and patronised – it’s time for the truth. Something’s going on and I’m not going to leave here until I find out what it is.’
There was a click and the ward door came open. The dark head of the man in the grey shirt appeared. ‘Hermione?’
‘Hi, Robbie.’
‘Hi.’ His eyes moved quickly between them. ‘I . . . Everything all right?’
‘Fine.’ Hermione gave a single terse nod. ‘Thanks. I’ll be there in a second.’
Robbie looked at Hannah appraisingly then
bobbed his head back in. He stepped aside but she could see the elbow of his shirt through the glass panel. Hermione saw it as well. She stepped away from the door and put her hand on Hannah’s arm, drawing her back. ‘Okay, look,’ she said quietly, ‘you’re right, we have been in touch a couple of times recently.’
Hannah felt the confirmation as a physical sensation, cold washing over her.
‘No, it’s not that – it’s not what you think.’
‘Then what is it?’
Hermione cast an anxious glance down the corridor. ‘We were talking about Nick.’
‘Nick?’ Nicola, said the voice in her ear. It’s not her, it’s someone else, a mutual friend, an old flame.
Hermione, though, was looking at her as if she were stupid. ‘His brother,’ she said.
‘His brother? What? They don’t even talk. Why would you . . .?’
‘Because,’ Hermione said, as if it were obvious, ‘he’s about to get out of prison, isn’t he?’
Chapter Eleven
‘What about your brother?’ she’d asked that Friday night.
Her head had been on Mark’s shoulder, his skin warm and faintly damp against her cheek from the heat they’d generated in bed and the overzealous steam heating in her old building. She’d felt a tiny tug of suction as he’d turned and dislodged her, a kiss goodbye.
‘What about him?’
Happy that he was coming to Malvern for Christmas and keen to avoid making him sad by probing too deeply into his family when he’d just agreed to be thrust into the centre of hers – whom she still had the luxury of moaning about – Hannah had let the subject drop at the time, but the following morning when she’d been making scrambled eggs in her glamorous corridor of a kitchen, coffee pot balanced precariously on top of the microwave to make space for two plates side by side on the tiny patch of countertop, the White Stripes playing on wfuv with backing vocals from Mark in the shower next door, she’d thought about how his face had changed. His relaxed openness had vanished in a second, replaced by a barrier. When he’d looked at her, his eyes had been hard. What about him?
What had he told her about his brother before that? She’d stirred the eggs and tried to think back. She remembered the conversation very early on, the second time they’d met up deliberately in the city, when he’d told her that he’d lost both his parents when he was in his twenties, his father of complications after a stomach operation, his mother only a year later of breast cancer detected too late. They’d been at the Mulberry Street Bar then, his suggestion because she’d told him she loved Donnie Brasco and he couldn’t believe she didn’t know that scenes of it had been shot there. The temperature had been pushing a hundred all day and they’d sat at one of the high pedestal tables and drank glasses of beer that ran with condensation despite the roaring air con. ‘How about siblings?’ she’d asked him. ‘Do you have any?’
For a moment Mark seemed to hesitate and she’d watched as he circled the dregs of his beer round the bottom of the glass.
‘One. A brother. Nick.’ He’d looked up, expression neutral.
‘Are you close?’
A headshake. ‘We’re not really in touch, even.’
‘Oh.’ Hannah had been surprised: she’d only met Mark a handful of times but he hadn’t struck her as the type to have tempestuous family relationships.
‘There’s no drama,’ he said, ‘we’re just very different people.’
‘Is he older or younger?’
‘Younger but only a year. My mother didn’t know you could get pregnant while you were breastfeeding. That was her story, anyway.’ He’d grinned, the light coming back into his eyes, and reached for Hannah’s empty glass. ‘Same again?’
He’d returned from the bar with a snippet of gossip he’d just overheard and the conversation had taken a different tack. At that point, so soon after meeting him, she hadn’t felt it was right to press him for more information than he wanted to give, but now, the end of November, they’d been together five months and he was coming for Christmas. It wasn’t a flirtation any more, a short-lived fun thing; it was a real relationship. The idea sent a buzz through her: it was good but, she admitted to herself, terrifying too.
She should talk to him about his brother, she decided that morning in the kitchen, find a time over the weekend when he was relaxed and she wouldn’t seem to be putting him under pressure. In the end, she’d bided her time until Sunday evening when they were wandering back along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights from a protracted lunch at Ant and Roisin’s. Mark had stopped and leaned against the railings to look at the shimmering Miramax-logo view of Lower Manhattan across the river, the traffic on the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway pounding along the road tucked out of view beneath their feet. He loved this view, he’d said before, because to him it was the classic image of ambition and scale and achievement. Now he reached across and slid his hand into the back pocket of Hannah’s jeans. She glanced up at him, spent a second appreciating his profile against the lights of the city behind. Remembering his sudden shutdown on Friday night she hesitated then decided she was being ridiculous. What had he said that evening in the Mulberry Street Bar? There’s no drama. We’re just very different people.
‘Your brother,’ she’d said, as a truck thundered beneath them, making the pavement shake. ‘What’s he like? What does he do?’
Mark had pulled his hand out of her pocket and shoved it into his jacket instead. He smiled, brown eyes black in the streetlight. ‘Let’s move,’ he said, tipping his head in the direction they were going. ‘It’s too cold to stand around. Shall we walk back across the bridge, burn off some of that roast lamb?’
Had he even heard her? He must have – the truck hadn’t been that loud. He reached for her hand and Hannah gave it to him, but she was puzzled. If he’d heard, why not answer? If there really was no drama, why this weirdness?
‘What time’s your breakfast meeting tomorrow?’ he’d asked.
‘Eight, not horrendous.’ She swerved to avoid a King Charles spaniel that had slipped its leash and was haring down the promenade towards them as if fleeing a forest fire. ‘Mark, look, your brother – do you find it difficult to talk about him?’
This time she knew he’d heard her. For several seconds, however, he said nothing and kept walking. She’d waited, not prepared to talk into the silence and risk provoking him or giving him the opportunity to avoid the question. She’d glanced sideways and saw that his face was shuttered again, his mouth set.
‘It’s not difficult for me to talk about him,’ he’d said eventually, and his voice was calm, well modulated. ‘I’d just prefer not to, okay? He lives in London, he’s done a few things, work-wise. There’s nothing much else to say. You have issues with your mother, I don’t particularly get on with my brother; you talk about it, I choose not to. Perhaps it’s a man–woman thing.’
The gender stereotype surprised Hannah, it was so unlike him, but she let it pass in the hope of staying on-topic. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I just . . .’
‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it,’ he’d said, and his tone had made it clear that for him, the subject was closed.
The walk home to her apartment had taken an hour and a half, and for the whole length of it she’d been aware of a distance yawning between them. They did what they usually did on a long walk, pointed out new restaurants that looked good, interesting buildings or people, but where usually the observations segued into broader conversations or sparked off new thoughts, that night they’d been like pieces of polite conversation traded by people who’d just been introduced. Back at the apartment he’d suggested watching the episode of 60 Minutes he’d recorded while they’d been out, and then he’d brushed his teeth. After the lights had gone off, he’d shifted up behind her in bed and put his arm round her waist, but he hadn’t made any further move and she was glad.
He’d been in London for the two following weekends and by the one after that, after three weeks without seeing each other, the su
bject of Nick had moved towards the outer edge of her radar. Then had come Christmas, and Mark’s proposal, and every member of her family – her parents and Maggie, even Chessa and Rachel – had asked about his.
‘If you say there’s nothing odd about it, I believe you,’ said Tom, when she’d told him about Nick, how she hadn’t met him and didn’t seem likely to at any point in the foreseeable future.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Don’t say it like that.’
‘Like what? I’m saying I trust your judgement: if you say it’s not odd, it’s not odd.’
‘But it’s only my saying it’s not odd that makes it not odd, that’s what you’re really saying.’
‘Argh!’ Tom clutched his head and squeezed his eyes shut as if in sudden terrible pain. ‘Stop the mind-fucking – I’m a simple creature, I mean no harm.’
Nonetheless, it was patently obvious that he did think it was odd and it rankled with Hannah because privately she agreed with him. Why didn’t she know anything about the only extant member of her fiancé’s family other than that he was a year younger, lived in London, and it sounded like he’d had a few different jobs? Whenever she let herself think about it for longer than a minute or two at a time, she found herself starting down all kinds of lines of paranoid enquiry: was Mark ashamed of his brother for some reason? Or could he be ashamed of her, Hannah? Was that why he didn’t want to introduce them? If it was late at night and she was on her own and she’d had a couple of glasses of wine, she started wondering what kind of person could be so alienated from a brother with whom he claimed just not to get on that they didn’t see each other at all, even when their parents had died quite recently. Unless something actually bad had happened between them, surely they’d see each other for some sort of mutual support or just to feel connected to the memory of their family?
Before We Met: A Novel Page 13