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

  The two men shake hands. “So we have food!” Cliff says, glancing at the bags piled on the back seat of the Jeep. “Well done.”

  “We do,” Tristan replies, starting to lift the bags from the car and to hand them out.

  “We have wine, more to the point!” Jill laughs, swiping a bottle of rosé from a passing bag, and heading off towards the kitchen with it, without, Hannah notices, carrying anything else.

  “Cool car, Tris,” Luke says, taking two bags from his adopted uncle.

  “Thanks, Luke,” Tristan replies. He’s genuinely pleased that someone noticed. “It’s brand new. Only three-thousand miles on the clock. Actually not even that. Lovely to drive.”

  Hannah takes two bags to carry in and notes that Aïsha is already slinking behind the villa. She thinks, Like mother, like daughter. She feels a little jolt of pain for her little boy who, though only two years younger than his cousin, won’t, she knows, understand that this growing chasm between them has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact of Aïsha’s adolescence. For the next five years, being cool will trump everything else for Aïsha, whether it be love, friendship or even fun. As a parent, you just have to pray they get over it. Because Hannah has known a few people who got stuck that way, and they were unbearable.

  By the time the bags have reached the kitchen, Jill has a glass of wine in her hand.

  “You might like to offer everyone else a drink, too,” Tristan tells her – his voice polite, without judgement. Both Hannah and Cliff are thankful that it was he, not them, that said it.

  Between sips of her own, Jill has served everyone with drinks. The kids have Cokes, and the adults have dewy glasses of fragrant rosé with ice-cubes that clink against the sides of the glass every time they gesture.

  Tristan appears with a plate of salmon toasts. “Wow,” Hannah says.

  “Those look gorgeous,” Jill agrees.

  “I spreaded the cheese,” Luke tells them.

  “He’s a very good spreader,” Tristan says, smiling. “Very precise. No corners were missed.”

  “Cheese?” Hannah questions, taking a slice and lifting one corner of the salmon.

  “Yes. There’s cream cheese underneath,” Tristan tells her. “Saint Moret.”

  “And this is rocket, right?” Jill asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Love rocket,” she says.

  There’s something cloying in everyone’s tone that vaguely irritates Cliff. He thinks that everyone is making just a little bit too much fuss. They are, after all, just slices of toast with salmon on. But he’s glad that Tristan is cooking. Hannah only has about five recipes which she rotates so religiously that you can pretty safely bet what you’ll be eating each day based on what came the day before. Salmon toasts makes a change.

  “This is the life,” Hannah says, nibbling at a slice, and then sipping at her wine. “I thought we’d never get here at one point, I swear.”

  “If it had been up to her, we wouldn’t have,” Cliff says.

  Hannah shoots him a glare. The argument is on the tip of her tongue. But she can’t quite decide whether to put it out there and get it over with or say nothing and hope to forget.

  Thankfully, Cliff gets it. “Only joking, sweetheart,” he says, putting down his glass so that he can squeeze her knee.

  “We had some trouble with the GPS,” Hannah explains. “It directed us up a farm track.”

  “We got that too, didn’t we?” Jill says, addressing first Aïsha, who shrugs, perhaps because she doesn’t remember, or perhaps because, with her earphones in she can’t hear what anyone’s saying. Jill turns to Tristan instead.

  “We had to use Google maps instead,” he says.

  Hannah nods discreetly at Cliff in a you see? manner.

  “Anyway, just relax now,” Tristan says. “We’re all here safe and sound, and I’m gonna fix dinner for you all tonight, so...”

  “What are you making?” Aïsha asks, revealing that she can hear even with the earbuds in.

  “A hot Niçoise salad,” Tristan says. “Any objections?”

  Aïsha shrugs.

  “A hot salad?” Cliff asks, his tone dubious.

  “It’s not really a salad. As long as you’re OK with tuna it’ll be fine,” Tristan says.

  “I like tuna,” Luke volunteers.

  “Yes,” Hannah confirms. “We all like tuna. That sounds lovely.” She catches Jill rolling her eyes. “What?” she asks.

  Jill just smiles and shakes her head. “Sounds lovely,” she repeats, and Hannah isn’t sure if she’s agreeing with her or somehow mocking her.

  Just as Tristan has left the table, a stranger appears from the rear of the house. Hannah jumps when she sees him and Jill sits up very straight and flicks her hair back. Cliff sees Jill do this and moves his chair so that he can study the man. He is tall and muscular with closely cropped hair, olive skin and thick, dark stubble. He’s wearing muddy dungarees (with no shirt underneath) and mustard builder’s boots.

  “Bonsoir,” he says. “Vous deviez arriver demain, non ?”

  At the foreign sounds, Aïsha and Luke turn wide-eyed to their parents in faith that they will somehow understand. The three adults glance at each other.

  “Pardon ?” Hannah says, one of only ten French words in her vocabulary.

  “Vous deviez arriver demain,” the man says, again. “Mais ce n’est pas grave. Je l’ai mis à remplir.” He nods at the table, and adds, “Bon appétit.”

  “Bon appétit,” Hannah repeats. She knows, at least, what that means.

  The guy frowns at her as if her words have confused him, then nods, says, “Merci !” and returns the way he came.

  “Who was that?” Cliff asks.

  “How should I know?” Hannah says. “I didn’t understand a word.”

  “He’s hot,” Jill says. “We should have called Tristan.”

  “Really? Do you think he’s gay?” Hannah asks.

  “No! Tris’ speaks French, silly,” Jill replies, laughing.

  “Oh. Of course. Luke, go watch where he goes. Discreetly.”

  Luke stands uncertainly. “What, like spy on him?”

  “Yes. You can be our secret agent,” Hannah says, smiling and giving him a little push.

  “I wonder what he wanted,” Cliff says.

  “As far as I’m concerned, he can have anything he wants,” Jill says lasciviously, and Aïsha, for the first time today, smiles – a smile that quickly morphs into a blush. She lowers her head and stares at the screen of her phone.

  “Yeah, I guess he was quite pretty,” Hannah agrees. “If you like a bit of rough.”

  “You know I do,” Jill says.

  Cliff watches this exchange and feels a pique of jealousy. Because, of course, he never looked like that, not even in his youth. And he has always wondered what it would feel like, how easy life would be, if one did. He wonders what it must be like to walk into any room and see desire on the faces of all of the women (and a few of the men). Because you can go to college and get first class degrees, you can build a business and be an expert in investments and tax schedules worldwide, you can provide generously for your family and your ageing parents, and be well off enough to help any member of the extended family that might happen to need it... But the women will always want the guy with the muscles, the guy with the stubble, the guy with dirty dungarees and the buttocks. And quite honestly he would have swapped all of his achievements to look like that if he had had the choice. He shuffles in his seat, and then takes a hefty swig of wine.

  “He climbed over the fence,” Luke declares when he returns.

  Hannah glances at the height of the fence. “Really?” she asks.

  Luke nods. “There’s a low bit around the back. With a big brick on the ground. He climbed over there and went off down the track.”

  “A neighbour maybe?” Hannah suggests.

  “The owner perhaps?” Jill ventures.

  “Gardener more like,” Cliff says. />
  “There’s a hosepipe filling the pool up,” Luke says. “And the dead bird is gone too, so I reckon he’s the pool guy.”

  “Well, Goodbye Old Guy, and Hello Pool Guy,” Jill says, and Hannah rolls her eyes.

  “What did happen with whatsisname?” Hannah asks and Cliff, despite his best efforts, rubs an eyebrow as if to presage the headache the conversation will give him.

  Jill sighs deeply. “Saïd?” she says, “well...”

  FOUR

  Jill

  I love Jill. Of course I do – she’s my sister. When you have a single sibling there’s really no other choice. But is she annoying? Of course she is.

  I’m perfectly aware how irritating poor Cliff finds her, and I empathise entirely. But she’s my sister. She comes with the terrain. And Cliff, thank God, understands this.

  I’m pretty much immune to it all, myself. My little sister’s capricious nature has been washing over me since age two, after all.

  Jill is selfish and contradictory, hypocritical and sometimes arrogant. She changes her beliefs so often that you’d need an encyclopaedia of spiritual movements to keep up (if you wanted to – I don’t.) And she gets through men so fast that it’s impossible to keep up. I sometimes wonder if she’s addicted to men, or if she hates them. It’s a surprisingly fine line.

  But Jill has another side too, of course. And as her sister, I suppose that I just try to concentrate more on that.

  As is often the case, so much of Jill’s brittle exterior is bravado. I’ve seen her cry over every breakup. I know that there have been times when, if it were not for her daughter, she might have killed herself through sheer loneliness. And I know that, just as I am always there for her, she would, if push came to shove, always be there for me. And let’s face it, there aren’t that many people in a life that you can say that about.

  Luke loves her – kids will always gravitate towards adults with the most relaxed parenting techniques.

  I worry about her smoking dope in front of the kids, and I worry about her talking about rave-parties and sex in front of them. But in a way, I’m also glad that Luke sees – through Jill – this side of life too. There’s a big, bad, exciting world out there, and I wouldn’t want Luke to grow up thinking, like so many mollycoddled kids, that life ends where Eastenders begins.

  I suppose, if I’m being honest, that I’m grateful for the excitement – albeit second hand – that Jill brings to my own life, too. I complain and tut, and purse my lips, but I love to hear about Jill’s adventures, her trips to ashrams, her parties on ‘e’, and her forays into sadomasochism. It’s like having your own personal Madonna.

  Am I jealous of Jill? Certainly. Would I swap any part of my life for any part of hers? Never.

  I know, too, that, obtusely, Jill is jealous of me. She craves love and stability and reassurance, but, being incapable of acting in a manner that might bring those things to the table, she will always crave them.

  We have never fallen out for more than a day or so, both because I’m very easy-going (Jill calls me Little Miss Sunshine behind my back) but also because ours being one of only three stable relationships in her life – her daughter, Tristan, and myself – Jill simply can’t do without me.

  Tristan isn’t the easiest person to get on with either. He is so similar to Jill in so many ways that the slightest argument between them generally reaches epic proportions within minutes. When they do fall out – and it happens frequently – Jill is not only heartbroken, but, I think, scared. She is too competitive to get on with other women, and too predatory to get on with men. Thus gay Tristan is pretty much her only hope. So for all of these reasons (and because he supplies her with drugs) she will compromise in any way, will jump through any philosophical hoop to make up with him.

  If only she applied the same determination to her romantic entanglements she would, I think, have a much happier life. But then, perhaps, I, of all people understand that if she did, it wouldn’t be such an exciting one either.

  FIVE

  Tristan appears, three plates of food balanced on his right arm, just as Jill is finishing her whinge-fest about Saïd.

  “Saïd again?” he asks as he moves precisely around the table. “I’m glad I missed that one.”

  “Hey, she asked, OK?” Jill says.

  “I did,” Hannah admits. “He doesn’t sound like a very nice character. Did you meet him?”

  “Sure,” Tristan says, placing her plate before her and giving it a quarter turn, presumably for aesthetic effect. “He was nice enough to me. Which from an observant muslim is as much as any gay man can ask.”

  “This looks amazing,” Hannah says. “Luke, go fetch Aïsha, will you?” But Aïsha appears at that exact moment.

  “Oh, there you are. Come and sit down,” Jill tells her daughter, tapping the seat beside her.

  Instead, or probably in reaction to this, Aïsha chooses to take Tristan’s seat at the table instead. Jill simply reaches over and swaps Tristan’s wine-glass with Aïsha’s Coke.

  “I’m always amazed when I see you do that,” Jill says as Tristan returns with the second batch of plates on one arm.

  “Once a waiter, always a waiter,” he says, placing the dishes before them with renewed flourish. “It’s pretty easy once you learn how.”

  “So is this a dish you serve at your restaurant?” Cliff asks, slicing into the tuna steak and noting the raw red colour of the interior. He likes his tuna cooked personally, but you’d have to be a braver man than Cliff to criticise Tristan’s handiwork.

  “Yes,” Tristan says. “Yes, this is on the lunchtime menu at Rez.” He glances at Cliff who attempts, but fails to manifest an expression of blank contentment.

  “That’s how it’s eaten,” he tells Cliff nodding at the tuna. “It’s blue-fin, the same as they use in sushi. The same as they use raw in sushi.”

  “Dad hates sushi, don’t you?” Luke says.

  “No,” Cliff says. “Not at all. I don’t hate it.”

  “Aren’t blue-fin almost extinct or something?” Jill asks. “I think I saw a program.”

  “No. This is atlantic blue-fin, not southern,” Tristan tells her, slicing into his own and forking a mouthful. “Southern blue-fin is hundreds of pounds a kilo. You’d never cook it.”

  Cliff forks some vegetables, and to avoid eating the fish – just yet – he asks, “So this is what, spinach?”

  “Yep. All the other ingredients are the same as a Niçoise salad,” Tristan tells him. “Only cooked.”

  “Mine’s not cooked,” Luke says, and everyone else at the table is secretly grateful for his innocence. “There’s blood oozing out of it,” he continues.

  “It’s supposed to be like that,” Hannah tells him, even though she’s having the same drama. “Just eat up, otherwise it won’t be a hot niçoise salad at all.”

  “It’ll be a cold one, won’t it,” Luke says.

  Tristan puts down his fork, sits back in his chair, and then sips his wine. He looks around the table. He looks bemused.

  Everyone freezes.

  Tristan slips into a grin, laughs, says, “OK!” and jumps back up. Before anyone can even ask why, he is whizzing around the table whisking people’s plates from before them.

  “Tris!” Jill protests, but it’s too late. Her plate is already in the kitchen.

  When he returns for the second three dishes, Tristan says, “Your faces! Unbearable! I shall cook the fuckers to death. And you had better eat them.”

  Once he has gone, Hannah glances at Jill who raises one eyebrow, then at Cliff who winks at her.

  “The pool isn’t filling very quick,” Luke says whilst they wait. “Will it be full by tomorrow?”

  “Quickly,” Hannah corrects him. “It isn’t filling very quick-lee.”

  “No, it won’t be full by tomorrow,” Cliff, who the question was directed at, replies.

  Jill tuts. “Of course it will,” she says.

  Cliff shrugs. “I think you’re underes
timating the amount of water needed to fill a pool like that,” he tells her. “It holds thousands of gallons.”

  “And you, the power of positive thought,” Jill says. “If we all believe it will, then it will. Belief becomes reality. Don’t be so negative.”

  Cliff pinches the bridge of his nose as he considers whether to discuss the likely effects of positive thought on the flow-rate from a tap. Or not. Luckily he is saved by the return of Tristan, who plonks, far less elegantly this time, his plate in front of him. “Thanks Tristan,” he says. “I know it’s wrong of me, but I’ve always struggled a bit with raw fish.”

  “You didn’t spit in them, did you?” Jill asks, feigning real concern.

  “Jill,” Aïsha protests.

  “It’s OK,” Tristan explains. “It’s an ‘in’ joke. And no, I didn’t.”

  “Tris’ reckons you should never send food back. The chefs spit on it,” Jill says.

  “Not always,” Tristan laughs. “It’s not unknown. But I don’t. And didn’t.”

  “This is gorgeous now,” Cliff says, honestly. “Thanks.” He frowns at the thought that the phrase would have been better without the word now but it’s too late.

  “It was a bit on the raw side,” Tristan offers. “It’s how I like it, but well, I can’t expect everyone to have exactly the same tastes as me. Can I, Cliff?”

  Cliff notices that Tristan is staring at him, specifically, as he says this last sentence. He looks down at his plate, pierces the poached egg with his fork, and watches as the yellow of the yolk floods out over the surrounding area. He hates it when Tristan does that cute stuff.

  After dinner they sit around the cosy glow of the oil lamps and sip glasses of Cognac.

  Aïsha and Luke are in the hammock together battling each other on the Nintendo.

  “They’re doing well,” Hannah points out. “It’s a good sign.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jill tells her. “It won’t last.”

  “What happened to the power of positive thought?” Cliff asks.

  “Oh you know what they’re like,” Jill says. “They always argue. It’s because he’s Libra and Aïsha’s Aries. They’re fundamentally incompatible.”