Hannah #2
Hannah couldn’t help but look around sometimes and think, Really? This guy? For you?
But then, Jill wasn’t a rocket scientist. She was a secondary-school teacher.
Nicole didn’t even work in the airline industry – she was a systems analyst at a bank, whatever that meant – and the closest Niamh had come to being a drummer in a band was the summer job she’d had in Golden Discs.
Tara was a civil servant. (If they ever forgot this, they’d soon be reminded by her habit of referring to her colleagues by their paygrades, as in I was out with Dee last night – she’s a five.) Hannah didn’t know if her friends had changed their minds or got distracted, or if even they knew, but mundane, ordinary lives had come for them all.
Immediately after college they’d taken jobs here, in Dublin.
Then came the engagements – four in two years – which of course meant four weddings had to follow, and scattered in between were the acquisitions of four first homes.
So now there were roots and routines and mortgage payments, which meant the moment for adventures – gap years, backpacking, living abroad – had passed.
The music had stopped and they’d scrambled for seats and got them, yes, but in the mad dash had they ever stopped to consider whether they wanted to sit down?
If there’d been a conversation over the last few years that didn’t involve rings or estate agents or table plans, Hannah had forgotten it.
But that was OK. These were her oldest friends, the girls she’d grown up with, enjoying major life events.
She was happy if they were happy. She listened and encouraged and advised and consoled and cheered, even though she couldn’t relate because she was renting, and would be for the foreseeable because she was a self-employed, single woman sinking what little she had into a business she was trying to get off the ground.
But she was also secretly looking forward to this phase being over so they could get back to talking about other, more interesting things.
And maybe, occasionally, her life.
She didn’t have the diamond, the wedding or the house.
She had her business, which was never really discussed in any depth.
Her friends would ask, ‘So how’s it all going?
’ and listen politely while she gave the headline answer – but after that, the chat would swiftly move on to something else.
She had feigned enthusiastic interest in the choosing of four wedding cakes, but when she finally found her first brick-and-mortar location, her friends couldn’t do the same for her.
They’d asked when it might open and murmured, ‘That’s great.
’ Then, evidently out of ideas for follow-ups, there’d been a lull in the conversation, and Nicole jumped in to announce that she was pregnant.
Hannah accepted that you couldn’t equate starting a business with starting a family – of course not – but, at times, she found herself genuinely perplexed as to why it was apparently more interesting to talk at length about something nearly everyone did than to hear about something only a few got to experience.
Her story was fascinating enough to share on a podcast, feature in the Independent’s business section and take centre stage at the Women’s Network annual conference, but in conversations around wine and cheese in someone’s kitchen, at a high-top cluttered with cocktails or over the remnants of a bottomless brunch, it seemed like only the women with men, rings and Mini-Mes were allowed to headline.
Hannah had been collecting other friends, ones who lived lives more like hers, pushing to achieve and blazing their own paths.
She began to notice that when she met with them, she never stopped talking – or laughing.
But when she met with the Girls, as she still called them, she mostly just listened and came away feeling worse than when she’d arrived.
It was hard to ignore the growing distance. She was standing on a different tectonic plate, slowly drifting away from these women she’d known nearly all her life, but still not wanting to let them go.
And at least they didn’t interrogate her about her terminal singlehood.
In fact, it was rarely mentioned. The last time had been a few months ago when she’d met Tara for an early evening drink in town.
Three Negronis later, in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely, Tara had blurted out, ‘So do you, like, want to meet someone?’ Once Hannah had recovered from the conversational whiplash, she said that she wanted to want to, sometimes, but dating was exhausting and she needed her energy for getting the things she knew for sure she did want.
Tara had made a hmm noise. ‘So you’re not, like, sad?’
‘Sad?’
‘I meant lonely.’ She said this quickly, a correction, as if lonely were better.
‘Why would I be lonely?’
‘Because, you know, you’re alone.’
‘I prefer independent,’ Hannah said tightly.
‘It must be hard, though.’
‘It’s not.’
But Tara didn’t look convinced.
‘I’m fine,’ Hannah told her. ‘Honestly. I’m completely fine.’