Before We Met: A Novel Read online

  Mark’s assistant was a beautiful half-French, half-Indian woman who’d been brought up in South Africa but educated at the London School of Economics, where she’d met and married her husband, Steven. She was twenty-seven and Mark had recently started letting her manage her own small projects, afraid that she would leave unless she was promoted quickly. Pierre, her son, had arrived about ten years earlier than she’d planned to have him, she’d told Hannah at DataPro’s summer drinks party, but she was as ambitious as she’d always been. Mark had said that if she was as efficient a project manager as she was an assistant, he expected her to be one of the most senior on the team within five years.

  The phone rang. After six or seven rings, however, the answering service clicked in and Neesha’s voice asked the caller to leave a message.

  Hannah coughed, her throat suddenly dry. ‘Hi, Neesha,’ she said. ‘It’s Hannah Reilly. I’m sorry to call you at the weekend but I wonder if you could give me a ring when you get this?’

  After a couple of slices of toast and a skim of the news online, she went upstairs and put on her running kit. She didn’t particularly like running – Oh, be honest, Hannah, said her internal voice, you hate it – but over the past three or four months, she had made it part of what she thought of privately as her sanity routine. She had a frightening awareness of how easy it would be to become depressed about her situation without a structure to her days that involved some form of discipline and physical exercise. Not her life with Mark, obviously – when she’d talked to him about it, he’d asked if she was unhappy with him and she’d looked at him as if he was nuts – but work, or her lack of it.

  Though they’d been married for nearly eight months now, she’d stayed on in New York for three months after their wedding. Mark had increased the amount of time he spent working in DataPro’s American office and they’d talked about him making it his base full-time, flying over to visit the London office instead. His new partner, David, would take over from him there. After a month or so, however, talk of the move had become less and less frequent, and then Mark arrived one Friday evening looking guilty. He’d made her one of his custom martinis – vodka, with cranberry bitters – and told her that the consultants they’d hired to advise them on streamlining overheads during the turndown had strongly recommended closing the US office. He’d gone over the figures again and again, Mark said, and he knew it made sense.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she’d asked, feeling her heart plummet.

  ‘It was their number one recommendation – the only one that would make any real difference to our operating costs, actually. I hate it, too – having a New York office was always a goal of mine, as you know – but really, we can handle the US business from London. We don’t need a physical presence here. I’m so sorry, Han.’

  His salary was bigger than hers by a factor of about five, and she was just an employee, not the owner of a company like he was. There was also the question of visas – they were both British so living in London was by far the easiest option – and while her apartment in the West Village had been rented, he’d already owned this house. She knew before he said it that if they were going to live together, everything argued that she should make the move. So, after some fruitless efforts to convince Leon, her old boss, that she should open a London office for him, Hannah resigned from her job and, five months ago, had packed up her apartment and shipped her belongings back here, her seven years of living and working in New York finished. Until she’d met Mark, she’d thought she’d live there for the rest of her life.

  Quite apart from how much she wanted to be with him, though, she was surprised by how much she was enjoying being back in London. Even before she’d met Mark, she’d come back quite frequently to see her brother and her parents and to keep in touch with friends, but after two or three years she’d begun to feel like a tourist, someone who saw all the nice things – restaurants, galleries, the new bars her friends took her to – but had no real connection to the place, no day-to-day relationship with it.

  That feeling had nearly evaporated now, and it was lovely to regain some of the British traditions she’d used to miss. Last week, she and Mark had walked over to Bishops Park to watch the fireworks on Bonfire Night. Impressive as the Macy’s 4 July fireworks were, for her they didn’t have the same emotional resonance, the layered memories of all the local fireworks she’d gone to with her parents when she and Tom were children, with toffee apples and the lighting of the huge bonfire that they’d watched burgeon with garden waste and broken pallets and lengths of rotten fencing in the weeks beforehand until it reached fifteen or twenty feet high. Bishops Park wasn’t the same, of course – no bonfire, for one thing, because of city fire regulations – but damp November grass smelled the same here as in Worcestershire, and she’d loved watching the Thames at the park’s edge as it slipped silently past them in the dark, its surface catching glints of blue and green and red from the explosions overhead.

  Down in the hall again, she sat at the bottom of the stairs to put her trainers on then let herself out of the house, zipping the door key into her jacket pocket. The low hedge behind the front wall was wet with the rain that had fallen overnight and a perfect cobweb on the gatepost was strung with drops like glass beads. She opened the gate carefully so as not to disturb it.

  She walked up Quarrendon Street, taking long strides to stretch her legs. She was getting to know some of the neighbours now, at least by sight, and nodded to the man from number twenty-three who was coming down the pavement with the Telegraph and a bag of what she guessed were croissants from the delicatessen tucked under his arm. With his quizzical expression and the grey hair that touched the velvet collar of his three-quarter-length camel coat, he reminded her of Bill Nighy. He was typical of the residents here: either wealthy families, who walked their children, in immaculate uniforms and straw boaters, to the nearby private preparatory school each morning, or well-preserved empty-nesters. It was an unusual place for a bachelor in his twenties to have bought a house – there were far hipper areas than Fulham – and while it was very expensive, it wasn’t flash at all. Mark could have chosen some vast renovated loft in Docklands or the East End, all glass and chrome and huge leather sofas, but instead he’d gone for a traditional Victorian family house. She loved him for it.

  She crossed New King’s Road and started jogging gently along the pavement. The trees that shielded the wedding-cake Regency houses from the road here were dripping heavily, the water pattering on to the fallen leaves plastered over the ground in a soaked homogenous layer.

  Hannah had known it would be difficult to get another job, especially one like the one she’d had in New York, but she’d wildly underestimated how difficult. She’d thought that with her American experience and a reputation for coming up with campaigns that had done well on both sides of the Atlantic, she’d be able to find a new position within three to four months, even with the economic climate as it was. ‘People will always hire the best candidates,’ Mark had said the first time they’d discussed it. ‘It might take a little while for something you want to open up, but don’t worry about not getting a job. People are going to want to hire you – they’ll be fighting to do it.’

  Except they weren’t. It had been five months, and though she’d had three final-round interviews, she hadn’t received a single offer. At first, feeling confident, she’d only applied for jobs on a level with her old one with Leon but, as three months and then four had passed, she’d started to lower her sights. She told herself that it was only logical – the UK was in recession, jobs were scarce, perhaps she’d been arrogant to think she could immediately be hired again into a similar position; after all, she’d worked her way up with Leon over the years – but when she didn’t get those jobs either, she’d started to think that she was the problem.

  ‘No,’ Mark had said last Sunday, while they were out walking in Richmond Park. He’d reached for her hand and tucked it in under his arm, pulling her against the heavy navy wool
of his pea coat. She’d pressed closer and watched the two clouds of their breath as they mingled. Though it was only the beginning of November, there had been a heavy frost overnight and the ground was crisp underfoot. The tips of Mark’s ears were pink where they stuck out from under his woollen hat.

  ‘It’s just the recession,’ he said. ‘You know you’re good, and the right job will come along. It’s like everything – you wait and wait until you don’t think you can wait any more and then, just when you think you’re going to explode or jump off Beachy Head, it finally happens.’

  ‘What would you know about Beachy Head, Mr Tycoon by Twenty-five?’ she’d said, prodding him in the side with her elbow, but she knew he was right about the waiting game. She’d been lucky after university – ‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ Mark always said – and got one of the few graduate places at J. Walter Thompson, but she’d been stuck in the job she’d had after that, with a smaller agency, for almost a year after she’d decided she had to leave or die of boredom. She couldn’t, she’d thought at the time, do another campaign for dog food without going off her nut. The job with Leon had rescued her from that, thank God, but now she was in the same situation again. Worse, actually: at least then she’d had a job, even if it had been peddling horsemeat. Now with every week that passed, she was conscious of the growing distance between her and paid employment, the diminishing relevance of her most recent campaigns. Her currency was devaluing.

  Hannah’s breath came faster as she approached Eel Brook Common and picked up her pace. She wove around the double barrier that discouraged cyclists from using the park and went on to the grass. The ground was sodden and hard-going but she made herself do two sides of the rectangle before she stopped by the little playground in the top corner. She was getting better but she was never going to be a natural runner, one of those people zipping round now at twice her speed, their breathing barely audible. She was fit but she didn’t have the right body shape for it, that was her theory; she was sure that if she were one of these straight-up-and-down types, it would feel much easier. Mark had suggested she join a gym instead, but while she didn’t have a job, she didn’t feel comfortable paying £80 a month in membership fees. He’d laughed and told her to remember that they were married and what was his was hers, but she still couldn’t do it.

  She unzipped her pocket and took out her phone to check if she’d missed a call. Nothing. She looked at the time: ten twenty. With the five-hour time difference it would be hours yet before she could reasonably ring any of their friends in New York to ask if they’d heard from him, especially on a Saturday. She’d have to wait until at least one thirty. She put the phone back in her pocket and stretched her arms behind her head, feeling the tension in her neck and shoulder muscles. Six feet away, a chunky black Labrador snuffled contentedly through an abandoned bag of chips until his owner looked up from her conversation and called him sharply away.

  Conscious of the cold, she started moving again. In the week, exercise helped her feel like she had a purpose, or at least something to do. She spent hours every day reading the trade press, looking at other people’s new campaigns online, emailing her contacts to see if anyone had heard of new vacancies, but if she let her focus slip for longer than a few minutes, she felt the day become a long featureless slope of hours down which she could slide without anything to stop her. The same would happen today if she let it. She was disciplining herself not to job-search at the weekends, to maintain a distinction from the working week, however artificial, but she had to find something to do today to distract herself from the growing sense that something was wrong.

  After two arduous laps she headed home, checked her phone and laptop again then went upstairs for a shower. Mark had had the bathroom redone at the same time as the kitchen and while it wasn’t huge, it was without a question the most glamorous one she’d ever seen in a private house. All the units – the shower, the bath, the two matching sinks – were sleek and white, the contrast coming from the grey porcelain floor tiles and the dark, almost black, wood whose name he’d told her but she’d forgotten. Was it wenge? She wasn’t sure. With its three beautiful tall orchids and the towels that looked fresh from the White Company every time they came out of the tumble dryer, it might have looked like a hotel bathroom, but because Mark had kept the original features – the architraves and the Victorian patterned glass in the window – he’d avoided that and instead the room looked stylish and luxurious.

  As she was towel-drying her hair, her phone rang on top of the chest outside the door. Bending to pick it up, she glanced at the clock by the bed. Eleven: probably too early if he was still in New York. It would be Neesha.

  ‘Hannah?’

  Mark. She felt a wash of intense relief. ‘You’re alive,’ she said, breathing out. ‘Thank God – I was beginning to wonder if you’d left funeral instructions.’ She carried the phone over to the bed and sat down. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t call last night. God, the whole thing was a disaster – honestly, Han, it was like a farce. First, the guy was stuck in traffic so he was three-quarters of an hour late and I’d pretty much missed the plane before we even started but we’d been trying to set up the meeting for six months so I decided just to suck it up and get on a later flight. In the end, we were at breakfast until almost nine thirty and I got a cab direct to the airport but of course the traffic was terrible and when I finally got there, all the flights were full, totally chocka. I kept trying till nearly three in case any seats came free but then I threw in the towel and came back into the city.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me?’

  ‘I was going to in the cab but then David called with a problem that took ages to sort out and I thought it’d be better anyway to ring you when I knew what flight I was going to be on. Then, at JFK, I went to get my phone out to call you and I realised I’d left it in the taxi. Didn’t notice the number of the taxi, obviously, so there’s no chance of getting it back – all my contacts, photos, everything.’

  ‘Bugger.’ With a corner of the towel she mopped away a rivulet of water that was running down the back of her neck. Now she felt a burst of annoyance with him. She’d driven out to Heathrow in the middle of a storm, spent over two hours there – last night she’d been picturing transatlantic air disasters, for God’s sake. ‘Why didn’t you ring me from a pay phone?’ she said, the annoyance not entirely masked.

  ‘I’m embarrassed to admit it,’ he said, sounding sheepish even at a distance of three thousand miles, ‘but I don’t know your number by heart. Without my phone, I’m stuffed.’

  She thought about it. She wasn’t sure of his number either, actually, apart from the 675 at the end. Once she’d programmed it in to her BlackBerry, she’d never had any need to memorise it. ‘You could have emailed.’

  ‘I was going to, but when I got back to the hotel, the WiFi was down – see what I mean about a farce? Then, I’m ashamed to say, I sat down for a moment and fell asleep in the chair. When I woke up it was already midnight your time and I thought you’d be in bed.’ He sighed. ‘The WiFi’s back up this morning, though – that’s how I’ve got your number now. I remembered you’d put it in that email to Pippa about dinner a few weeks back. God, I’m such an old man. My neck – I was in the chair for about three hours with my head over to one side; I don’t think I even moved.’

  Hannah felt her irritation start to subside. He’d been working hard lately, even by his own standards. With the recession, business at DataPro was steady rather than bullish, and Mark was making sure of every client by providing the best customer service possible as well as the industry-leading software design that had made the company what it was. And on top of that, there was the issue of the buy-out. A month ago he and David had been approached by an American company, one of their biggest competitors, and though she’d thought that Mark would dismiss out of hand the idea of selling, he’d been at first intrigued and then excited by it.

  ‘The way I s
ee it,’ he’d said over breakfast a couple of days after the initial approach, ‘it could be a huge opportunity.’ He’d paused in the middle of buttering a slice of toast, knife poised in mid-air. ‘I’ve been running DataPro since I was twenty-three – the idea of doing something else is exciting. Actually, it’s exhilarating. If we cash out, I could use the money to set up something entirely different. But, you know, I’m forty now, I’m married . . .’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘I had no idea. Lucky woman.’

  ‘Lucky or tolerant – depends who you ask.’ He smiled at her. ‘But I’d like to spend more time with you, less at the office. And perhaps there’ll be other people for me to take into account in the not-too-distant future . . .’

  ‘Other . . .? Oh.’ Suddenly there was a serious look in his eyes and she’d glanced away and reached for the coffee pot, taken aback by his intensity. She wanted children, she was pretty sure she did, but she was working up to the idea. She was still getting used to the fact that she was married – sometimes, when she was alone, she’d think about it and feel almost startled. How had it happened? Not much more than a year ago she’d been single.

  ‘So when do you think you’ll be back?’ she asked now. ‘Can you get on a flight today? Have you phoned the airline?’

  ‘Well, actually, that’s the thing. The guy I saw yesterday is keen to sign up with us, I think, but he wants me to meet his partner. He – the partner – has been in California this week so he wasn’t around yesterday or Thursday, but he’ll be in New York on Monday and he’s suggested we all meet then.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I know. Yesterday I said I couldn’t, but having messed up the weekend anyway it makes sense now just to stay and do it, rather than making another trip, especially if I can get the thing signed there and then. They’re talking about Monday afternoon, so if I did that, I could get a red-eye and be home on Tuesday morning. Would you mind?’