Hannah
And then she didn’t tell anybody anything.
Even as the increasingly long days of the week finally delivered her to another fever-dream of a weekend together.
Even when there were enough of them to make a month, two months, three.
Even as time started to feel like it was speeding up, flashing past, and she felt as if she’d clasped Jason’s hand and was running to the edge of a cliff with him – and then over the side, falling, but it was good, it was a rush, the water below was clear and calm and warm, and she could trust him not to let go of her – she still didn’t tell anyone that she was seeing him, or even that he existed in the sphere of her life.
Her messages to them – she’d long given up attempting phone calls – were never read until Monday, when the response would be something like Family!
Sorry!, which would make her feel bad both for interrupting this ring-fenced part of her friends’ lives and for not being important enough to be allowed inside its perimeter.
And she played along. If plans had to be made, she was deferential. Her role was to be flexible to the point of breaking and never ever to be stressed or upset about changed plans.
No worries! Next time! All good!
Well, now, it was working in her favour. Hannah could let Jason take up all the empty space in her days, in her thoughts, on the other side of her bed, and not feel any pressure to tell anyone about it.
She’d even managed to leave the country, travel to Paris, spend two nights there with him and travel back again without anyone knowing that she’d even left the house.
She thought she’d been caught when her mother called while they were strolling through the Tuileries, but she apparently didn’t notice the longer, foreign ringtone, or didn’t realize what it meant.
Jason had surprised her with the trip. Hannah had thought they were going to stay in some castle-hotel in Kildare, but he drove them to the airport instead. She’d been about to point out that his plan had a fatal flaw – she hadn’t brought her passport – when he produced it from a pocket.
He’d slipped it out of her apartment the weekend before, he said.
The clandestine nature of their relationship was why, the first time she referred to him as her boyfriend, it was in a conversation with a stranger.
Early one morning in April, Hannah was unpacking a new collection of trinket trays when Esther nudged her with an elbow and whispered, ‘Possible problem, by the cards. I think she’s drunk.’
She followed Esther’s gaze to the woman slowly turning the carousel of greeting cards near the door with a glazed expression.
She was dressed well – a trench coat with a peek of check at the cuffs, pricey trainers, labelled handbag – but her face was pale and haggard, her hair greasy and uncombed.
She seemed unsteady on her feet and was currently trying to stab a card back into the display.
‘I’ll go,’ Hannah said.
When she got close, she saw that the card the woman had managed, by this point, to almost bend in two had a cartoon cactus on the front. It was their Happy Divorce card. The cartoon’s caption read, Don’t worry about that little prick.
‘Can I help you with anything?’
The woman startled at the sound of Hannah’s voice, then turned to stare at her with wide, bloodshot eyes.
‘Sorry, I …’
‘Here, let me.’
Hannah gently took the card from the woman’s hands and slipped it behind a stack of others. She’d come back and get it later. It was ruined stock.
‘Sorry,’ the woman said again. She rubbed at her temple. ‘I just have this thumping headache.’
‘Would you like me to call an ambulance?’
‘Oh God, no.’ She looked horrified. ‘No, no, it’s not … It’s just a migraine.’
‘Come with me.’
Hannah put a hand on the woman’s back and gently guided her to the couch at the rear of the shop.
It had started life as part of a homewares display, but was now mostly used to park bored husbands and tired, elderly mothers at the weekends.
She filled a glass of water, then fished two paracetamol out of what they called the Drugs Drawer, a stash of hangover remedies and period-pain busters.
There was probably some liability law that advised against offering painkillers to customers, but the woman took them gratefully, gulping them back with most of the water.
‘I didn’t know they made divorce cards,’ she said then.
Hannah smiled. ‘They make cards for everything now.’
‘I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘The headache – it just came on so suddenly.’
‘Is there someone we could call who could come and meet you?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Do you’ve far to go? Probably best not to drive home.’
‘No, I … I got the bus in. I’ll get a taxi.’
‘Well, stay here as long as you need to. Can I get you a cup of tea? Or coffee? Something to eat? Or I could call the taxi for you?’
‘No, but …’ The woman bit her lip. ‘I came into town for my husband. To get him something. For our … our anniversary. Ten years.’
‘Tin,’ Hannah said.
The woman frowned, confused. ‘What?’
‘Tin is the traditional ten-year anniversary gift. Tin or aluminium. Or a diamond, but I’d say let him get that.’
Hannah smiled, but the woman didn’t smile back.
‘Do you have anything? In here?’
‘Ah, maybe … Why don’t you stay here and I’ll go look?’
‘Just something small,’ the woman called after her. ‘A token.’
There was a travel-sized shaving kit that came in a tin. A framed print of a tin of sardines. A tin of speciality coffee beans, paired with a Moka pot – so both tin and aluminium, for bonus points.
The woman went with the shaving kit, which Hannah thought was the worst one. It was also, by far, the cheapest.
Just as she finished wrapping it, she came to the register.
‘I’m feeling better now,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem at all.’
The woman sniffed the air. ‘That scent. What is it?’
‘The candle, I’d say.’ There was a sea-salt candle burning on the counter, the same one that Hannah had put in a basket for Jason’s chain-smoking aunt.
He’d taken it home, to his apartment in Cherrywood, and apparently taken a shine to it.
The first time Hannah went there, she recognized the scent straight away.
Since then, she’d started burning it at home, too, so it was now the scent of their weekends.
That’s why she liked to burn it in the shop, a reminder that these were just the days in between.
And a secret, because no one else knew that was why.
‘It’s nice, isn’t it? My boyfriend is obsessed with it. ’
My boyfriend.
Where had that come from?
She’d never called him that before, not even in her own head.
But actually … she liked it. She wanted to say it again, more, often.
She wanted to hear Jason refer to her as my girlfriend.
Because even though she was an independent woman and a boss-bitch and a feminist warrior, and all the other strong, spiky, ferocious things every woman was under pressure to be, always, it felt good to belong to someone, to be someone’s, to want and need and be wanted and needed back.
That’s what Hannah was thinking about, in that moment.
Not why the woman in front of her had had a physical reaction to the word, how she had flashed even paler, coldly staring before hastily recovering.
Or why she palmed the credit card she’d had in her hand and, instead, dug in her bag for cash.
Why she took her stiff Curated-branded bag, turned on her heel and left the shop in silence.
At the beginning of May, Jason finally took her to see the house.
Five months after going sale agreed, he’d only just got the keys. Blame a solicitor who’d misplaced the deeds and an owner living abroad. As they drove south across the city in bright evening sun, a sweating bottle of champagne rolled around on the back seat of his car.
He hadn’t told her much about the house, which turned out to be a Victorian red-brick end-of-terrace cottage hidden down a laneway off Dundrum’s main street.
If this was where he was going to live, she liked what his choice said about him.
It wasn’t a shiny, cookie-cutter new build, but a characterful, historic property that would need making his own and then a lot of looking after.
It was in the heart of a bustling village, so he’d sought out community.
And it was small, but enough; he hadn’t bought more house than he needed.
But then, she didn’t actually know if he was planning on living in it.
He’d never said, and she didn’t ask. What if he said yes, that was his plan, and then asked her to move in with him?
She liked things exactly as they were now.
She loved her apartment, loved living alone.
And she wanted to buy a house for herself, to live in by herself, because that was the experience she’d dreamed of having for so much longer than the length of time she’d known him.
But … couples lived together. If things continued like this, that’s where they’d end up.
At this point, she didn’t know what she’d do if she had to do something, if she was forced into making a decision. It was better to stay as they were, content in this suspended animation. She liked it here.
It was fun.
‘Just to warn you,’ he said at the doorstep, ‘you’re really going to have to use your imagination.’
‘What am I trying to imagine?’
‘I’ll tell you after the tour.’