Hannah #2
The tour didn’t take long. Downstairs there were two reception rooms, a kitchen and a coffin-like toilet under the stairs.
Behind the house was a small walled yard.
Upstairs there was a bedroom and a bathroom resplendent with a seventies salmon-pink suite and cracked tiles stencilled with seashells.
Every room wasn’t just empty but stripped.
There was no furniture, no curtain rails, no lampshades.
All the previous occupants had left behind was a hideous carpet that ran all through the house, a paisley swirl of blue and yellow.
Even though it’d been a warm day in a warm week, a damp chill had permeated the entire space.
‘Who lived here?’ she asked.
They were back where they’d started, in the kitchen. Jason was twisting the champagne’s cage loose. He’d already set two paper cups – branded Shreddr ones – on the countertop.
‘No one, for a while,’ he said. ‘The person who sold it had inherited it, I was told.’ He popped the cork and began to pour. ‘You haven’t said what you think of it.’
‘It’s great. Or it will be. Clearly, it needs some love.’
‘I’m going to knock through that wall.’ He pointed to the one separating the kitchen from the darker of the two reception rooms. ‘Potentially move the bathroom across the hall upstairs and make a second, single bedroom. And then, I’m going to live in it.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ she said.
He handed her a cup and then knocked them together.
‘Here’s to your house,’ she said.
Jason’s face fell.
‘What’s wrong?’
Now his body was crumbling – head down, shoulders slumped, bending over the counter – like he was a building rigged with explosives and someone had just pressed the button to start the demolition.
‘What—?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said miserably. ‘I’m so sorry.’
In her mind’s eye, she watched a parade of possible horrors. He was broke. He was breaking up with her. He was sick.
‘What is it?’
He bit his lip. ‘I was going to say, “Here’s to our house.” But I …
I can’t. Because there’s something I have to tell you, Han.
I wasn’t planning on doing this now but I can’t stand it a moment longer.
I can’t stand you not knowing. It felt too soon, in the beginning, and then all of a sudden, it felt too late. ’
His voice was starting to sound muffled, far away, as if she was underwater and he was on the shore.
‘I’m married,’ he whispered.
Hannah was falling. Sinking. She couldn’t breathe.
‘Miserably,’ he added. ‘And I’m leaving her. But it’s … it’s not that simple, and so I haven’t yet.’
Outwardly, she was frozen, rigid with shock, and that’s how she remained as the truth came out – slowly at first, drip by torturous drip, before threatening to drown her in a torrent.
Jason told her that when he was twenty-five, he’d married a girl he’d met when he was eighteen.
That by the day of their wedding, whatever love he’d thought he felt was already gone, but he’d made his choice.
She’d made choices too, because of him. He didn’t think he could leave her.
He didn’t recognize the gnawing emptiness as his own unhappiness trying to get his attention.
He thought it was how you felt when you still hadn’t figured out your purpose in life.
He began to worry he was depressed. His doctor recommended regular exercise. He joined a gym, where a guy in a T-shirt with GOALDIGGER printed across the chest showed him how to use the machines.
Thomas was five years younger than Jason but knew exactly what he wanted from life.
His dream was to start a meal-prep delivery company.
It was all he ever talked about. T was so clear, so focused, so driven, while Jason was only beginning to understand that he could – and should – want.
He was so goddamn energized while Jason felt like he was sleepwalking through life.
T’s energy was contagious. Soon, the company was all they ever talked about.
Meal-prep delivery was nudged aside for a healthy fast-food restaurant.
Shreddr opened its first location. Jason started waking up in the morning feeling excited about the day for the first time in his life.
‘The company became my life,’ he said. ‘I was barely at home. And I started thinking, I can live like this. This is enough. Not everything has to be perfect – it can’t be. But then I met you and—’
‘Stop.’
It was the first word Hannah had uttered since he’d started confessing, even though the whole time she’d been silently screaming it, over and over, in her head.
She was on the kitchen floor now, even though she didn’t remember sitting down. Her back was against the fridge, her knees pulled tightly into her chest. Jason was kneeling, at a right angle to her, holding her hand.
She pulled away.
‘Have you told her? Does she know?’
He hesitated, which was her answer.
‘Oh, fuck this.’
‘It’s complicated, Hannah.’
She clambered to her feet and turned to go.
‘I moved out,’ he said, standing up too.
‘I told her I needed some space. Because I do, that’s true.
I need to figure out how to get out of this – because if we divorce, she’ll get half of everything.
Of our business. T’s and mine. I can’t just walk away, Han.
I have to be smart about this. I want there to be something left for us, enough for us to start our lives together.
I don’t love her and I’m not with her. I’m just trying to navigate a legal situation, that’s all. ’
‘You lied to me.’
‘By omission.’
‘Jason, for fuck’s sake. Don’t you dare—’
‘OK, OK, yeah.’ He held up his hands. ‘Sorry, I did. I lied. I did. I didn’t want to. Especially not to you. But in the beginning, I didn’t want anything to put us at risk. And then I didn’t want to say, “By the way I used to be married—”’
‘You are married.’
‘Not in any sense that isn’t a piece of paper I signed long ago in a church belonging to a religion I don’t even believe in. I don’t love her. I don’t think I ever did.’ He paused. ‘I love you.’
It was the first time he’d said it and he was saying it now, during this.
How fucking dare he.
‘Just shut up,’ Hannah said. ‘Just stop talking.’
She walked away from him, to the patio door, yanked it open and went outside. It was warm, quiet, golden hour – a different world to inside the house. She gulped down fresh air, lifted her face to the sun and tried to organize her warring emotions.
There was grief, because a death had just occurred. The Jason she knew was gone and there was nothing that could ever bring him back. He’d never even existed. She was in love with a man who never was.
Anger, because she’d fallen for it. She could say hindsight was twenty-twenty, that it was all so obvious, looking back, but it had been obvious at the time. She’d just refused to see it.
Jealousy, hot and molten, corroded her insides. He had a whole existence in another universe, with another woman. She could never catch up. And he’d already proposed. Said I do. Bought our home. So many firsts for her wouldn’t be firsts for him at all.
Heartache. A heavy sadness dragging on her limbs. An actual pain in her chest.
Shame, even though she hadn’t known she was a mistress.
Love, inexplicably, still.
‘I’m so sorry, Han.’ Jason had come outside and was standing behind her.
‘Do you have kids?’
‘What? No. I wouldn’t lie about that.’
But she didn’t know what he’d lie about now.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’
A sigh. ‘Erin.’
A name made this real. It made her real.
‘Does she know about this house?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure she doesn’t know about me?’
‘Positive. She …’ But he trailed off.
‘What?’
‘Look, I don’t want to talk about this with you, it’s not your problem. But my wife … she’s not, you know, the most stable person. She has a temper. Nothing physical, not like that, just … Well, the smallest things, they set her off. What I’m saying is, if she knew, I’d know about it.’
But Hannah was thinking about her customer with the headache.
She and Esther had kept coming back to it for days afterwards.
What the hell had been going on there? The woman was clearly going through something.
She’d bought a truly shit anniversary gift for her husband.
Esther hadn’t heard the conversation about the candle – she’d been on the other side of the shop – but she’d witnessed the cold change in the woman’s demeanour, the way she’d grabbed the bag without so much as a thank-you and strode out of the shop.
Hannah had been worried that she’d inadvertently offended her and any day now a review explaining why would pop up online, but Esther thought the husband was a cheater and joked that she’d chosen the shaving kit because it had blades inside.
I didn’t know they made divorce cards.
‘What does she look like?’ Hannah asked. ‘Your wife?’