The Half-Life Of Hannah (Hannah series Book 1) Read online

  Nick Alexander

  Nick Alexander grew up in the seaside town of Margate, UK. He has travelled widely and lived in the UK, the USA and France, where he resides today.

  Nick’s first five novels – the Fifty Reasons series – were self- published from 2004 onwards and went on to become some of the UK’s best-selling gay literature. His crossover titles, The Case of the Missing Boyfriend and sequel The French House each reached #1 in Amazon’s UK chart.

  The Half Life Of Hannah, Nick’s ninth novel, has sold more than 290,000 copies to date and the hotly anticipated sequel, Other Halves was released in December 2013.

  For more information please visit the author’s website on www.nick-alexander.com

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Rosemary – without your constant encouragement nothing would ever never get finished, and without your friendship this planet would be a much darker place. Thanks to Allan for his eagle-eyed copy-editing skills and to Jerôme for his help with the French text. Thanks to all my readers for sticking with me and showing so much enthusiasm about every new project – you make it all worthwhile. Finally, thanks to Black and White Publishing for making this physical book a reality.

  The Half-Life Of Hannah

  a novel by Nick Alexander

  ONE

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah says, aware that she doesn’t sound very sorry at all, “but that’s what it says. It says to go straight down this track.”

  The Mégane slithers to a halt on the gravel. Cliff sighs. “How can it be up there?” he asks. “I mean, seriously, how?”

  They have spent fourteen hours in the car since they left Farnham, of which seven already today. Tempers are getting frayed. Hannah peers along the gravelly farm track to where it vanishes into the trees. “Maybe it’s at the end of the track,” she offers, both unconvinced and unconvincing. “Maybe it’s in the middle of the forest.”

  Cliff pulls on the handbrake and wrenches the GPS from her grasp. “Only it isn’t. And we’ve still got seven miles to go,” he says. “It can’t be seven miles down a track, can it?”

  Hannah rubs the bridge of her nose and turns to look out of the side window at the rolling fields, at the pine forests in the distance. It’s stunning scenery, but she can’t enjoy it. Not yet. She discreetly takes a deep breath. She doesn’t want Cliff to think it’s a confrontational sigh. Not at a time like this.

  “That is what it says, though,” Cliff admits, jabbing at the screen. “I don’t know what you’ve done to it.”

  “Cliff, I haven’t done anything to it,” Hannah says quietly, struggling, now, to hide the exasperation in her voice.

  “If we had just left it where it was, stuck to the windscreen, I could have followed it myself,” Cliff says.

  “If you were able to look at a GPS without veering onto the wrong side of the road every time, that would be a good idea,” Hannah points out, forcing a false laugh into her voice to mask her rising anger. “But you can’t. And anyway, we have followed it. Right up this track.”

  “Veering onto the right side of the road,” Cliff corrects her. “Not the wrong one.”

  “The left side, not the right side,” Luke offers from the rear seat, laughing at his own wit.

  “Well, the correct side then,” Cliff admits. “You know what I mean. And anyway, it’s not my fault if the frogs all drive on the wrong side of the road.”

  Luke undoes his seatbelt and leans forward. “We’re the ones who drive on the wrong side, Dad,” he says. “The English swapped sides so that they could stab people better with their swords.” He demonstrates this by wielding his phone – Cliff’s old iPhone – with flourish.

  Aware that in some way, Luke, by contradicting Cliff, has sided with her, Hannah feels a bubble of warmth for him. She reaches back to ruffle his hair. “Is that true sweetheart?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I saw it on the telly-box.” The term ‘telly-box’ came from his uncle Tristan, and because it’s cute, they all use it now.

  “Well, if you saw it on the telly-box!” Cliff says drily, still stabbing at the buttons on the GPS.

  “It was on QI,” Luke tells him.

  “That’s all very interesting, I’m sure,” Cliff says. “But it doesn’t much help us here.”

  Stephen Fry is revered in the Parker household as the font of all knowledge. So Luke has won. Even Cliff isn’t going to argue with The Fry.

  “But what do we do?” Cliff continues. “Do we carry on up here until we get stuck, or...”

  “I’m hungry,” Luke says.

  “Have one of those biscuits,” Hannah tells him a little abruptly – her tone a coded warning – then to Cliff, “It does look a bit muddy.”

  “So I turn back,” Cliff says. “That’s what you’re saying now?”

  Hannah shrugs, still angry about the implication that this is somehow her fault. “We should have bought a map,” she says. “I said we needed to buy a map back in that petrol-station.”

  “This is a map,” Cliff replies, tapping the top of the GPS. “It has a map of every bloody road in France.”

  “I’ll tell you what then, Darling,” Hannah says in her special faux-kind voice. “Why don’t you look at your map of every-bloody-road-in-France, and work out how to get there?”

  Cliff fiddles with the box for another minute or so and then sighs. “I don’t know how,” he admits. “It keeps coming back with the same bloody route.”

  “You just have to go back to the main road and drive,” Luke offers. “It will recalculate a new route.”

  “Will it?” Cliff asks. “Or will it just keep telling us to turn around?”

  “It will for a bit, but then it will recalculate,” Luke says. “That’s what happens in Drive Apocalypse anyway.”

  “Only this isn’t a game. We’re not in Drive Apocalypse,” Cliff says.

  “Well, we kind of are,” Hannah points out, wittily, she thinks, not that anyone notices.

  Luke’s phone makes a honking noise. He checks the screen. “Jill and Tristan have arrived,” he says. “So it must be possible.”

  “Maybe they have a map,” Hannah suggests. “Maybe they have a proper actual map printed on a bit of dead tree.”

  “Dead tree! You’re funny Mum!” Luke says, laughing at her wit, and she loves him even more.

  “Are you sure that isn’t costing a fortune sweetheart?” Hannah asks him. “I saw Watchdog and they said that you have to be really careful about...”

  “Not to receive,” Luke says, interrupting. “It costs to send. But they were on about Internet anyway and I’ve switched it off. Can I send a text back saying we’re lost? Maybe Tristan can come and find us. It’s only fifty pee to send an SMS.”

  “No! There’s no point,” Cliff replies gruffly, imagining the shame of having to be saved by a gay guy. “We’ll be there in a minute anyway.”

  “In a day, more like,” Luke says, sarcastically.

  Hannah shoots him a warning glance, and he sinks back into his seat and pulls the biscuits from the seat pocket.

  “So we turn around?” Cliff asks, then, after a pause, “Anyone?”

  Hannah shrugs. She’s no longer in the mood to be helpful. “You’re the one with maps of the whole of France, Darling,” she says. Because she feels bad for repeating that same dig twice, however, she adds, “But yes. You’re right. We probably should, shouldn’t we?”

  Cliff sighs deeply and hands the GPS not back to Hannah, but over his shoulder to Luke. She grinds her teeth at the betrayal.

  “OK, I’m gonna reverse back and then turn around. In the meantime, see if you can work it out Son, OK?”


  “If anyone can solve it, Luke can,” Hannah says with apparent generosity, yet praying secretly that Luke, too, will fuck it up.

  TWO

  Cliff

  I met Cliff when I was twenty. I was a late-starter, romance wise, so Cliff was only my second boyfriend.

  I got back from that oh-so disastrous holiday in Amsterdam with anarchist boyfriend Ben, and met Cliff on my second night back.

  I was in a wine bar with my friend Shelley telling her all about splitting up with Ben when Cliff sent us both drinks. It seemed old-fashioned and chivalrous, and after three weeks of Ben’s selfishness, exactly what the doctor ordered.

  Cliff was three years older than I and already working as an accountant. He was well dressed and polite and an almost mirror opposite of dope-smoking, unpredictable Ben. He seemed much older than I, much older than Ben, and I found that maturity attractive.

  I often think that if I hadn’t been rebounding from Ben, I never would have given Cliff a second glance. That’s not to say that Cliff was unattractive – he wasn’t. He was a tall, well built young man who played squash and tennis and had two-weekly appointments at the barber’s to keep his new-romantic mop in shape. It’s just that I had been more attracted by the goths and the bikers up until that point.

  But glance, I did, and by the time he had bought both Shelley and me a couple of rounds of rum and Coke, given us a lift home in his Ford Sierra and had treated us to chips and curry-sauce on the way, he had pretty much snared me.

  Shelley declared him ‘boring’ even back then, and I suppose that if there was one criticism that could be levelled at Cliff, boring would be it. But excitement, I reckon, is overrated. Kindness and generosity, an ability to provide, a stable temperament... I think these qualities are underrated in these days of unbridled individualism.

  So, though I suppose life hasn’t exactly been a roller-coaster with Cliff, it has been fine. It has been perfectly fine. And I know plenty of women my age – my sister included – who would give their right arms for a bit of ‘perfectly fine.’

  THREE

  When they get to the Villa, there are no signs of Tristan’s car at all.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” Cliff asks, apparently, inexplicably, directing his question at Hannah.

  She shrugs. “Luke has the GPS,” she reminds him.

  “This is it,” Luke says, demonstrating his conviction by climbing down from the car and pushing open the heavy forged-steel gate.

  “But what if it isn’t?” Hannah says, releasing her own seatbelt. “What if there’s a guard-dog?” She opens the car door and extracts herself from the seat, noting, as she does so, that after an eight hour car journey, this isn’t as easy as it would have been even ten years before. “Luke!” she calls out, nervously heading past the gate. “Wait!”

  “Hellooo!” A voice to her right. “Sweetie!” Hannah spins to find Jill’s head peeping over the edge of an orange cotton hammock suspended between two trees.

  “See!” Luke declares gleefully as he runs over to his aunt. “I told you.”

  “Hi Luke,” Jill says brightly.

  “I told them this was the right place but they didn’t believe me,” Luke tells her.

  Hannah spins and beckons towards the Mégane, then, nodding exaggeratedly at Cliff’s questions, silently mimed behind the windscreen, she shouts, “Yes. Yes! This is it! They’re here! I don’t know where Tristan’s parked, but Jill’s here.”

  “Tristan and Aïsha have gone food shopping,” Jill tells her, waving what looks suspiciously like a joint in the air.

  As the car crunches up the driveway, Hannah crosses the lawn and ruffles Luke’s hair. “Can you go help your dad?” she asks.

  “Sure,” Luke says, then, already distracted from this idea, “Hey, where’s the pool? They said there was a pool.”

  “It’s around the other side,” Jill says, her joint leaving a fragrant trail in the air as she gestures. “It’s...” But Luke is already out of earshot.

  “It’s empty,” she tells her sister more quietly, reaching out now with her left hand to take Hannah’s fingers between her own.

  “Empty? What, dry?”

  Jill nods and pulls a despondent face. “‘Fraid so,” she says. “How are you, Sis’? How was the drive?”

  “Is that a joint?” Hannah asks her.

  Jill smiles and shrugs as if she sees no reason for embarrassment. “You want some?” She asks, proffering the joint.

  Hannah pulls her hand away and frowns at her. “I do hope you didn’t bring that with you through customs,” she says. “Not with Aïsha in the car.”

  “Of course,” Jill says. “We put it in Aï’s teddy bear.”

  Hannah opens her lips to express fury, but Luke has returned. “The pool’s empty,” he says breathlessly. “It’s got a dead bird in it. A pigeon I think.”

  “Well, don’t touch it,” Hannah tells him. “They have all sorts of diseases.”

  “I can’t touch it Mum!” Luke says, now starting to rock Jill’s hammock. “It’s at the bottom of the pool.”

  “I’m sure Dad’ll get the pool sorted,” Hannah tells him. “Now go help him, will you?”

  Once Luke has run off, she nods at Jill’s joint again. “You’re out of control, Jill,” she says quietly. “You and I will have words about this later when the kids are in bed.”

  Jill grins at her and shrugs. “I don’t doubt it,” she says.

  The Mégane parked, Cliff climbs out and places one hand in the small of his back. “Jees!” he says.

  “Long drive?” Jill asks him.

  “Endless,” Hannah says quietly, so that only Jill will hear her. “Absolutely bloody endless. I came close to ramming the bloody GPS down his throat.”

  Cliff crosses the scrubby lawn to join the women. “Nice place,” he says, and Hannah realises that she hasn’t properly looked yet. She looks around now, taking in the pink stucco villa, the olive orchard, the hammock, the shady patio, the wooden pergola, the sound of cicadas. She takes a deep breath of the baked, earthy air. “It is,” she says. “It’s gorgeous.”

  Jill attempts to extract herself from the hammock, then reaches out again for her sister’s hand. “Help me,” she says, then, “It’s lovely.”

  Once she has been pulled upright, she keeps her sister’s hand and tugs her towards the villa. “The inside is pretty funky too. Come see,” she says.

  The interior of the villa is dark, and cool. It feels, in fact, almost cold after the scorching Mediterranean sunshine outside. The tiled floor shines and the rooms smell rich and waxy from furniture polish. As Luke runs echoing from room to room, Jill leads them on a guided tour, announcing, as if it weren’t obvious – as if this were her villa – that this is the bathroom, and this is the kitchen.

  Cliff is struggling to restrain himself from commenting, “Really? So that’s a kitchen, huh?” He finds Hannah’s sister endlessly annoying – unreasonably so. And rarely do they spend time together without some flashpoint being reached. Generally it’s a conflict between Cliff’s cartesian logic and Jill’s random new-wave spirituality that’s at the origin of the disaccord. But he has promised himself (and Hannah) that she will not get to him on this trip. He’s determined to be nice to her. He will rise above it all.

  “So where’s Tristan?” he asks her, mainly to stop her listing things – cupboards, shower, washbasin – that they can all see, and identify, perfectly well for themselves.

  “They’ve gone to get food,” Hannah informs him.

  “He’s a shopaholic,” Jill says. “He got excited when he spotted the hypermarket on the way in.”

  “Well, we do need food,” Cliff points out.

  “Yes, but you know what he’s like,” Jill says. “He’ll come back with one each of every most expensive food item on sale. It’s an absolute obsession with him.”

  “Yum,” Hannah says. “I love Tristan’s food.”

  “Well, he is a chef,” Cliff says as Jill opens
another door revealing a blue bedroom. “My room,” she declares, then, “and it’s got nothing to do with his being a chef. He’s the same whatever kind of shop it is. Clothes, food, gadgets, men... It’s just consumerism with Tris. It’s just more, more, more.”

  Cliff thinks it’s unfair to criticise the guy for going to buy food for them all, but Hannah catches his eye and shoots him her doe-eyed look – a plea – so he asks instead, “So where’s our room?”

  When the bags have been carried in, Hannah heads for a shower, Jill returns to the hammock and another joint, and Cliff and Luke head off to search, in vain, for the filler valve for the pool.

  By the time Tristan returns, techno blaring, his red Wrangler jeep slithering to a halt on the gravel, they are all installed on the patio drinking – for want of anything else – glasses of tap water.

  The silence when Tristan cuts the engine, and with it the music, is total. Even the cicadas have been stunned into silence.

  They all stand and move towards the car. Luke runs straight to the passenger door. “Hi Aï’!” he says enthusiastically as his cousin climbs out. “The pool’s empty, did you see?”

  “Yeah,” Aïsha replies. “There’s a dead bird in it too. I put a photo on Facebook.”

  Of course you have, Hannah thinks, checking out her niece's black Doctor Marten boots, her black fingernails, her purple lip-gloss.

  Luke frowns. “Mum says Internet’s too expensive in France,” he says, to which Aïsha just shrugs. Aïsha’s Mum doesn’t worry about such things, and Aïsha wouldn’t care if she did.

  Cliff watches as Tristan hugs Hannah, and then holds a hand out in front of him to preclude any idea that he and Tristan might do the same thing. It’s not that he doesn’t like Tristan (though he’s never quite sure that he does) nor the fact that Tristan is gay (though he has confused feelings about that too). It’s just that Cliff doesn’t hug men. Ever.