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

  “This is nice,” Hannah says looking around.

  Jill snorts.

  “What?” Hannah asks, determined to deal with this head-on this time.

  “Well,” Jill says. “This is nice...”

  “It is,” Hannah tells her. “I love places like this. Look at that.” She nods at a painted advert, a badly faded wall-sized mural advertising Ricard. “It’s so... It’s just so French.”

  “Can we go and explore?” Luke asks.

  “Of course,” Cliff tells him. “Just don’t get lost. Do you want a drink?”

  Luke looks puzzled. “Do they have Coke in France?”

  Everyone grins. Luke shrugs and looks embarrassed.

  “They do,” Hannah tells him, gently. “They have Coke pretty much everywhere in fact.”

  “Coke then,” Luke says, doubtfully.

  “Actually, there’s a French drink if you want something different,” Tristan suggests.

  Luke looks doubtful.

  “It tastes like Sprite.”

  “Sprite’s OK,” Luke says. “But I prefer Coke.”

  “The thing about the French version is that it’s quite fun to ask for,” Tristan tells him.

  Luke frowns.

  “It’s called Pschitt!” Tristan explains.

  “Shit?”

  “Pschitt! With a P. P-S-C-H-I-T-T. It’s supposed to be the sound you get when you open the bottle. Pschitt! See?”

  Luke wrinkles his nose. “I think I’ll just have Coke,” he says.

  Tristan shrugs. “I always quite enjoyed saying, ‘I’ll have a Pschitt!’ myself.”

  “Tristan!” Hannah protests.

  “Hey!” Tristan says. “I didn’t invent the stuff. It’s been around for years.”

  Luke smirks. “Maybe I will have a Pshitt,” he says, reddening with restrained giggles. He looks at Hannah. “Can I?”

  Hannah grins and nods. “But you have to ask for it yourself. I’m not saying it.”

  “Aï’?” Cliff asks.

  “Coke,” she replies, pulling a face.

  “You’re sure you don’t want a Pschitt as well?” he asks.

  “Totally,” she says. “Sounds gross.”

  “Vous voulez quelque chose ?” A voice, behind them. They all turn to see the barman. He’s a good looking guy in his twenties with a vaguely old-fashioned looking mop of hair drifting over one eye and an open shirt revealing a hairless chest and a gold crucifix.

  “Sorry, but... Vous parlez anglais ?” Hannah asks him.

  “I speak French,” Tristan volunteers, then, “Je parle français.”

  “Is OK,” the barman tells them. “I can speak English. A little.”

  “Great. So it’s a beer for me,” Cliff says.

  “I’ll have a Pastis,” Tristan says.

  “A glass of dry white wine,” Hannah says.

  “Me too.”

  “and... what was it you wanted Luke?” Tristan prompts.

  Luke looks about to burst with excitement at the idea of being able to order his drink. He looks at his mother, barely able to believe that he’s allowed to say it.

  “Go on then,” Hannah prompts, smiling broadly.

  “Can I have a Pschitt please?” Luke asks.

  The barman nods. “Deux vins blancs, une biere, un pastis, et un Pschitt, c’est ça ?”

  “Oui,” Tristan confirms.

  “You liked that, didn’t you?” Hannah laughs, once the barman has gone.

  Luke nods. “I think I’m going to have a Pschitt every time,” he says.

  “Well, you haven’t tasted it yet.”

  Luke shrugs, says, “Pshitt,” once more, then runs off, closely followed by Aïsha.

  “Well, I like the barman, anyway!” Tristan comments.

  “I was waiting for that,” Jill laughs.

  “Definitely dances my side of the fence, that one,” Tristan says.

  “You reckon?” Jill asks. “I can’t tell with the Frenchies. They all look a bit gay to me.”

  “How can you tell?” Cliff asks, genuinely intrigued.

  Tristan shrugs. “Gaydar,” he says.

  The barman returns with a tray of drinks, a dish of olives, another of peanuts, and a third with tiny squares of pizza.

  “I love the way they do that,” Hannah says. “I love the way you get a mini meal with your drinks.”

  “It’s nice,” Cliff agrees, taking a square of pizza. “Do they always do that in France?”

  “No,” Tristan says. “No it’s more of an Italian thing. But we’re not so far from the border here, so...”

  “So are you liking France?” Hannah asks, patting Cliff’s hand on the table. He hadn’t been keen on the idea of this holiday. He said he couldn’t see any reason to change from the usual place in Dorset.

  “It’s OK so far,” he says, then, forcing a smile, “Yes, it’s fine actually.”

  Luke reappears at the table. “We found a ping-pong table,” he says. “We found a ball in the bushes too, but there’s no bats.”

  “They probably keep them behind the bar,” Tristan says.

  Luke turns his bottle around so that he can read the label. “Pschitt!” he says. He points it at Hannah. “Yes, I saw,” she laughs. “So, go on. Taste it.”

  Luke sips at his drink.

  “Well?” she prompts.

  “It’s lemonade,” Luke says.

  “Yes, pretty much,” Tristan says. “Do you like it?”

  Luke shrugs. “It’s OK,” he says. He bumps his dad with his hip.

  “What?” Cliff asks.

  “Can you find out?” he says.

  “What about?”

  “About the bats for the ping pong.”

  Cliff laughs. “I don’t even know what the word for ping pong is in French.”

  “It’s ping-pong,” Tristan tells him, looking up from his phone. “It’s le ping-pong.”

  Cliff nods in his direction. “There you go Luke. Tris’ will sort it for you,” he says.

  “Tris?” Luke prompts doubtfully.

  “I’ll do better than that,” Tristan says. “Just let me finish...” He types something on his phone, then slips it into his pocket. “There,” he says. “Now, what did you want?”

  “Bats,” Luke says. “For the ping-pong.”

  Tristan presses his fingers to his forehead in a faux-mystic manner, rolls his eyes and says, “There. I just ordered them. Telepathically.”

  Luke raises an eyebrow, then slides into a seat and sips noisily at his Pschitt!

  Everyone is watching Tristan. He strokes his chin. “Patience,” he says.

  Luke tuts. “Can’t you just ask them?” he says. “Please Tris’.”

  Aïsha returns from the other side of the building, kicking gravel as she zigzags towards them, then slides into a chair and swigs at her drink. “Well?” she asks, looking around at the adults, and frowning.

  “Tris’ is doing magic,” Luke says.

  “Right,” Aïsha says. “Of course he is.”

  The door to the bar opens and the young barman appears, grinning broadly and carrying bats and a pack of balls. “C’est ceci que vous voulez ?” he asks.

  “Oui,” Tristan says. “Oui, c’est parfait, merci.”

  The barman proffers the bats and Luke seizes them, says, “Thanks Tris’,” and apparently both untroubled and unimpressed by the magic, runs back to where the ping-pong table is.

  Once Aïsha has followed on, Cliff asks, “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So how did you do it?” Jill asks.

  Tristan sips his drink and smiles smugly. “If you can guess I’ll buy you a drink,” he says.

  “You texted him,” Jill says.

  “Hum. But I don’t have his number.”

  “You texted that number,” Cliff says, nodding at the sign above the door.

  Tristan shakes his head. “It’s a landline,” he says. “You can’t text a landline.”

  “You phoned them,” Hannah
offers.

  Tristan pouts and shakes his head. “You saw me. I didn’t move. And I didn’t phone them.”

  “You did a mime when we were looking the other way?”

  “I reckon the barman just saw the kids around the table,” Cliff says.

  “Nope,” Tristan says, then in false French accent, “Zats not eeet.”

  “It’s definitely something to do with the phone,” Jill says. “You were fiddling with your phone.”

  “Warmer.”

  “So you did send him a message?” she says.

  “Yes. But how?”

  They sit in silence for a few seconds, then Jill says, “Oh, I know. He’s on Grindr, isn’t he. I bet he’s on Grindr.”

  “Clever girl.”

  Neither Cliff nor Hannah know what being “on Grindr” means, so Tristan passes his phone around so that they can see. The display shows rows of little thumbnail photos of men in the area, and shows how far they are from this spot. The top one is a reasonably clear photo of the barman. It says, “- 10m.”

  “That means that he’s less than ten metres away,” Tristan explains.

  When the phone gets to Cliff, he stares at the screen and frowns.

  “You look worried Cliff,” Tristan says.

  “No,” Cliff replies. “I just don’t... I mean... How does it know?”

  “Where people are?” Tristan says. “By GPS.”

  “Sure, but how does it know that they’re gay,” Cliff asks. “Or aren’t these guys necessarily gay.”

  “They are,” Tristan says. “But the phone doesn’t know. It just shows other people who are running Grindr. And seeing as it’s a gay hookup app, it’s a pretty safe bet.”

  Cliff nods, but continues to study the screen. “Some of these are just black squares,” he says.

  “They haven’t put photos up,” Tristan explains. “They don’t want anyone to know who they are.”

  “Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?” Cliff asks.

  Tristan nods. “A bit. Probably married guys cheating on their wives. But they’d send a photo if I asked. Well, they’d probably send a photo of something...”

  “I see,” Cliff says, handing back the phone. “Technology! Amazing really.”

  “There’s a straight version too,” Jill says.

  “There is,” Tristan agrees. “It’s called Blendr.”

  “Brenda?!” Hannah asks, pulling a face.

  Tristan laughs. “Not Brenda. Blendr.”

  “Oh. I thought it sounded a bit silly. Then again, so does Blendr.”

  “And that’s for what, guys who want to meet girls?” Cliff asks.

  Tristan nods.

  “Don’t tell him any more,” Hannah says. “You’ll give him ideas.”

  “I don’t think it ever really caught on,” Tristan says. “A friend tells me there are loads of guys and no women on it.”

  “Hum,” Jill says, sipping her wine. “Now that’s giving me ideas.”

  It’s just after midnight by the time they leave the bar.

  Luke is tired and, Hannah guesses, on the verge of becoming fractious. With Aïsha it’s harder to tell. Fractious is pretty much her average state of being these days.

  “I wish we brought the car,” Aïsha says.

  “We all wish that,” her mother agrees.

  “Next time you can forego alcohol and you-know-what and drive us all then,” Cliff suggests.

  “I rather like it,” Hannah says. “It’s a lovely evening, and it’s not that far. But I wouldn’t want to be Tristan walking home alone.”

  All the adults are a bit drunk, but Tristan, who has stayed behind to talk to the barman, is particularly so.

  “What makes you think he’ll be walking home alone?” Jill asks, amusement in her voice.

  “Yes, I suppose that barman chappy might give him a lift,” Cliff says, pretending to miss Jill’s point.

  “It’s a lovely clear night,” Hannah says as they enter another pool of yellow light beneath a streetlamp. A cloud of insects is frenetically buzzing around and banging into the glass cylinder as they hurl themselves at the brightness.

  “Look,” Jill says, pointing at the sky, her finger describing a figure of eight. “Is that a bird, or a bat?”

  They all pause to stare into the blackness but can see nothing. Then as they start to move again the animal – very clearly a bat – swoops back into the light.

  “Yuck,” Aïsha says. “I hope it’s not a vampire bat.”

  “It’s not,” Hannah says. “They don’t even live here, do they, Cliff?”

  “No,” Cliff agrees, even though he hasn’t the foggiest idea where vampire bats live. But he felt the way Hannah gripped his hand when the bat appeared, so he knows that she’s trying to reassure the others. Not passing on their own irrational fears to the children is something they agree on. “No, that’s just a normal bat. They’re attracted to the light because they eat the insects,” he says.

  As they move farther away from the village the gaps between the street-lamps get wider. The trees and bushes make strange unnerving shapes against the blackness of the sky. At times they can barely see the ground beneath their feet.

  “It’s creepy out here,” Aïsha says, running to catch up with the others and taking, unusually, her mother’s hand.

  “It is a bit,” Hannah agrees as Luke squashes himself between her and Cliff. “But I’m sure there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just that there’s no moon tonight.”

  “If Tris’ is going to have a holiday fling with that barman, I hope the pool guy comes back,” Jill says, off, as so often, on her own train of thought. “I don’t want to end up being the raspberry of the holiday.”

  “Gooseberry,” Hannah corrects, suppressing a smile.

  “Yeah, sorry. Gooseberry. That’s what I meant,” Jill says.

  Luke licks the back of his hand and makes a farting noise by blowing against it, one of his specialities. “That’s a raspberry,” he says.

  “Yes,” Hannah says. “Thanks for that, Luke.”

  “It’s really dark up there,” Aïsha says, nodding forwards and sounding vaguely excited but also genuinely distressed.

  They all peer out at the blackness ahead. “It’s because there’s a bend,” Hannah says. “I remember it. There was the green gate with the noisy frogs and then a bend.”

  “How can that make it darker?” Aïsha asks, her tone dismissive.

  “No, Hannah’s right,” Cliff says. “It’s because you can’t see the next streetlamp, that’s all. It’s around the corner. We should have brought the torch.”

  “Have we got one?”

  “Sure. There’s one in the boot of the car.”

  As they leave the final edge of the pool of light and head towards the void, Luke pulls his phone out and switches it on. It only casts the vaguest beam of bluish light a few feet in front of him, but it’s better than nothing.

  “Good idea Luke,” Cliff says, and both he and Aïsha do likewise. But even with the light from three phones, the lane ahead is pitch black.

  “The corner must be here somewhere,” Hannah says.

  “Yes, I think that’s it,” Cliff says pointing at what he thinks might be the grey curve of the tarmac.

  As they reach the blackest section of the bend the next streetlight comes into view, a pin-point of light in the distance. Hannah pauses and pulls Cliff and Luke to a halt with her. “Look at the stars,” she says. “Gosh, I’ve never seen so many stars.”

  They crane their necks and look at the sky, and as their eyes adjust, small stars appear between the bright ones, and then even smaller ones between those.

  “Aeroplane,” Cliff says, pointing at a flashing light to the east.

  “There’s two,” Luke says.

  “Yes, I can see two,” Hannah agrees.

  “Gosh that’s the Milky Way, isn’t it?” Cliff says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. Not in real life.”

  “What is?” Luke
asks, and Cliff crouches down behind him so that he can point and explain. “See those swirly clouds,” he says. “That’s millions of tiny stars. That’s the Milky Way.”

  “I wish we had a telescope,” Luke says.

  “Yes, that would be good,” Cliff agrees.

  “Can we get one?”

  “No, I think they’re a bit expensive. And I don’t think there are a lot of telescope shops around here.”

  “There are so many stars,” Jill says. “It makes you feel quite alone in the middle of it all.”

  “It’s cold here,” Aïsha says. “Can we go?”

  Hannah shivers and realises that this is true, but also that Aïsha sounds scared. “There’s a river or something,” she tells her. “It’s damp here, that’s why.”

  “I don’t like it,” Aïsha says, her tone more urgent now. “Can we go?”

  “Sure,” Hannah says.

  “There’s nothing to be scared of though,” Cliff tells her. “It’s just nature.” A mere second after he has spoken these words, an unseen creature in the darkness, not ten metres away, grunts loudly.

  Luke makes a short sharp, “Uh!” sound and Aïsha shrieks. The shock of each person jumping is transmitted, through held hands, to their neighbours, somehow amplifying the fear.

  They start, as a group, to walk quickly towards the distant streetlamp, but when the creature, farther behind them now, grunts again, first Aïsha and then Luke break free, sprinting ahead, squealing. Soon they are laughing hysterically.

  At the next oasis of light everyone regroups. “What the fuck was that?” Jill asks.

  “It was a monster,” Luke says, and Hannah can see from the children’s excited faces that this is already the best thing that has happened on the holiday so far.

  “I think it was a pig,” Cliff says. “A wild pig maybe.”

  “It sounded like a pig,” Hannah agrees, her own heart still racing. “But here? Do you think?”

  “Do pigs bite?” Luke asks, “Can they jump up and rip your throat out?”

  Aïsha pulls a stick from the undergrowth, presumably to defend herself with, and Luke follows suit.

  “No,” Cliff says, thinking that he would quite like a stick himself, but that it might look a bit wimpy. “No, pigs don’t bite, do they Hannah?”