Фиона Гибсон – The Great Escape: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from the summer bestseller (страница 9)

Still, she thinks, approaching the redbrick former factory which houses Let’s Bounce, at least there’s Hannah and Ryan’s wedding to look forward to. Six weeks to go now. A trip to London will shake her up. She’s made a pact with herself to get out of this crappy job by then, after which … well, she isn’t quite sure what will come after that. Something to do with Spike, she suspects. Something to change her life and lift her out of the humdrum existence which has somehow sucked her in. Yes, after the wedding she’ll do it. She’ll be refreshed and energised then. But it’s far too big and scary to think about right now.

EIGHT

Hannah cycles like a maniac, legs pumping and heart banging against her ribs. It feels good being out; in fact after the interrogation over breakfast, about weddings and veils and God, for Christ’s sake, having a toenail ripped off would feel pretty damn fantastic. Even though she’s lived in London for thirteen years, Hannah can still taste the traffic fumes on her tongue. It tastes of excitement and life going on all around her. Her childhood in a tiny fishing village made her yearn for a fast-paced city life: first Glasgow, where she’d studied illustration, followed by a succession of insalubrious rented studio flats and shared houses scattered all over north London. Now, as she zips between vehicles, heading for Islington, she feels the stress of her interrogation blowing away in the light breeze.

The trouble is, Hannah has never imagined herself becoming a stepmother. She’d have been no less amazed if someone had announced that she must fly a helicopter or raise a family of baboons. Yet, when you meet a man in his mid-thirties, you can hardly fall over in a dead faint when it transpires that he has children. Ryan became a father relatively young, at twenty-three. Parenthood has occupied a huge portion of his life, making his two years with Hannah a mere dot on the map in comparison. Checking her watch as she turns into Essex Road – she’s early for work, as is often the case these days – she replays the Saturday night when Ryan Lennox dropped into her life.

It was a bitterly cold evening and Hannah had recently ended her year-long relationship with Marc-with-a-‘c’. Actually, ‘relationship’ was too grand a term for what had consisted mainly of him showing up infuriatingly late for dates, or not at all – then drunkenly buzzing the bell to her flat at 3.30 am, crying and blurting out declarations of love loud enough to wake everyone in her post code. When he’d mistaken her T-shirt drawer for the loo and peed into it, that had been the final straw. Hannah hadn’t been looking to meet anyone that night as she’d waited for her friend Mia. She was enjoying her single, Marc-free life, cycling to Catfish, working hard, knowing that nothing untoward was going to happen to her T-shirts.

She and Mia had arranged to meet in Nell’s, a cavernous bar in Frith Street. Ryan was standing at the bar, and although the place was already bustling, Hannah sensed an aura of calm around this tall, slim man in jeans, a pale shirt and fine, wire-rimmed glasses. Squeezing her way through a bunch of loud girls on a hen night, she ordered a beer and looked around for Mia. Hannah was five minutes early and, as she paid for her drink, she had an overwhelming urge to talk to this man standing a couple of metres to her right.

Sipping from her glass, Hannah conjured up possible scenarios. He was a Saturday dad having a restorative pint after showing his children armadillos or Egyptian artefacts in museums before heading home to his new wife. The wife would be astonishingly pretty, obviously (Hannah had already assessed his striking dark eyes, the nicely full mouth, his cute dimple). Or maybe he was single and putting off the miserable business of going home to a chilly flat and a meal for one. Yet neither scenario seemed right. There was no wedding ring, nor did he seem like someone who’d limp off home to peel the foil lid off a shrunken frozen lasagne. He’s probably just waiting for his girlfriend, she decided, feeling foolish for letting her thoughts run away with her.

The man glanced at Hannah as her mobile rang. ‘Han?’ Mia croaked. ‘I’m really sorry. I set off to meet you but I feel so crap, really sick, that I just had to come home …’

‘Oh, poor you,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. Just get well …’

‘But I’ve ruined your night,’ Mia wailed.

‘It doesn’t matter, honestly.’ Hannah caught the man’s eye as she finished the call.

How could she start talking to him? All her life, Hannah had stumbled into relationships with no chatting up required, and now the only thing she could think to mention was how much she hated ‘Eye of the Tiger’, which was playing rather loudly right now. But what if he liked it? She glanced at him again. He seemed thoughtful, bookish and unpretentious – the kind of man who’d prefer to eat in a casual Italian place than a poncy establishment.

Hannah chewed her lip and tried out possible conversation openers. Hi. Rotten night out there. To which he’d reply, ‘Yes.’ And then there’d be a horrible silence. I hate this record, don’t you? she’d add with a strained laugh. And he’d say, ‘Do you?’ Because by this time, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ would have stopped, and it’d be something like Marvin Gaye singing ‘What’s Going On?’, and she’d have to bluster that it was the last one she hated. ‘What was the last one?’ he’d ask, backing away from her and looking for the quickest exit route.

What on earth was wrong with her? She was single. She was thirty-three years old. Why couldn’t she act like a normal woman? It wasn’t that she lacked confidence. At work, she’d been recently promoted and was often expected to present to terrifying panels of suits. Whiteboards, PowerPoint, coming up with concepts for new ranges: she was fine with all of that. Yet she couldn’t figure out how to talk to a handsome man in a bar, even though he’d glanced at her on several occasions and, crucially, wasn’t giving the impression that he thought she was completely hideous.

Then he turned to her and said, ‘Hi.’

God, his smile was nice – sweet, warm and genuine.

‘Hi,’ Hannah said.

‘Horrible night out there.’

‘Yes, it is.’

Small pause. Hannah took a gulp of her drink.

‘Waiting for someone?’ the man asked.

‘Um, I was, but she’s just called to say she can’t make it.’ Hannah smiled broadly. ‘So I guess I’ll just finish this drink and go home.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t look like the person I’m meeting is going to show up either.’

‘Really? Who’s that?’

He grinned and paused, as if wondering how much information to divulge. ‘Er … I don’t really know,’ he said, blushing slightly. ‘I mean, I’ve never met her. We’ve just emailed a couple of times.’

‘Blind date?’

The man nodded, raising his eyebrows ominously. ‘Guardian Soulmates. I know it sounds a bit …’

‘No, not at all, it sounds fine…’ It really did. It meant he was single, read the Guardian, and was looking to meet someone. Which immediately made him a more attractive prospect than someone who showed up at 3 am, awash with tears and snot, and peed on her favourite T-shirt.

‘I’m not even sure it’s the best way to go about things,’ he added. ‘In fact, Guardian Soul-destroyers would be more apt.’ He laughed and pushed back his light brown hair self-consciously.

‘Had a few bad experiences then?’ Hannah asked with a smile.

He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say it’s been a bit of a non-event so far. Anyway, I’m Ryan …’

‘Hannah …’ And that was that. They talked, not about whatever godawful song was on the jukebox, but about their lives. By 10.30, in a cosy Italian restaurant, Hannah found herself telling Ryan about the T-shirt drawer incident while he confessed to hiding his eight-year-old daughter’s favourite story book after he calculated that he must have read it 150 times. Hannah learnt that, while Ryan’s job as an advertising copywriter sounded glamorous, his latest campaigns had been for mould-repelling tile grout and a toilet deodorisering brick that came in six different scents inspired by the wild herbs of the Corsican Maquis. ‘Seriously?’ She exploded with laughter.

‘Unfortunately, yes – we’re talking thyme, lavender, sage … the range is called “The Scented Isle”.’

‘So you can have your own Scented Isle in your toilet? I never knew that.’

‘Er, yes, if you really want one. They’re only a couple of quid …’

‘Cheaper than a package holiday,’ she suggested, noticing how Ryan’s eyes crinkled when he laughed.

‘You know,’ he added, ‘we might use that line.’

Thank God your date didn’t turn up, Hannah thought a little while later as they stepped out into the wet night and hailed a cab together. She didn’t know Ryan – not really. But she knew about his ex-wife and children and more about toilet brick fragrances than she’d ever thought possible. As he dropped her off at her flat, after they’d swapped numbers and he’d kissed her briefly but incredibly sweetly on the lips, she’d decided that she wouldn’t bother to pretend she was too busy to see him for at least a week. She’d be calling him the very next day, to hell with it.