The Great Escape Read online

  ‘Oh, right.’ Ryan smiles at Hannah, his eyes meeting hers, making her stomach flip as it always does when he looks at her like that. ‘Well,’ he adds, turning to Josh, ‘speaking of the wedding, we should all go shopping next weekend and pick you both something to wear.’

  ‘But it’s ages away,’ Josh replies. ‘It’s weeks.’

  ‘Yes, I know there’s still six weeks to go. But you’ll be at Mum’s the next three, and then we’ll be cutting it fine, really, to get things organised …’

  ‘Eddie’s birthday’s on Saturday,’ Josh mumbles. ‘We’re going bowling.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ryan says. ‘Right. Well, that’s nice. Maybe we could do it on Sunday instead.’

  ‘And we’re staying over till Sunday,’ Josh adds, ‘like all day.’

  ‘Are you? Oh …’ Hannah can detect the stress creeping across Ryan’s forehead, and longs to ask Josh why he’s being so bloody difficult when all his dad wants to do is festoon him with new clothes. However, she suspects that that would be even more outrageous than admitting she doesn’t follow Christianity. Anyway, perhaps Ryan doesn’t mind this rudeness, or has become immune to it over the years. Maybe he thinks Josh and Daisy’s behaviour is perfectly fine and it’s the wedding that’s stressing him out. They’ve planned it together, with the intention of keeping it low-key and simple. But the guest list has grown, and Ryan’s new suit came back from being altered with the trousers so short they flapped pathetically around his ankles. He’s been worrying about the food when Hannah would be perfectly content with a pile of sausage rolls dumped on the table if that’d put a smile on his kids’ faces. Now, what started as Ryan blurting out, ‘I want to marry you, Han, and spend my whole life with you’ has morphed into something stressful and dark, like a storm cloud billowing towards them.

  ‘And I’ve got stuff to wear anyway,’ Josh mumbles, looking down at his crumb-strewn plate.

  ‘I know, but I thought you might like something new.’ Regaining his composure, Ryan rolls his eyes good-naturedly at Hannah. How he manages to scrabble together these reserves of patience, she has no idea. Perhaps it just happens when you have children. You suddenly develop this bottomless well of kindness and goodwill.

  ‘You’re not going to turn down your dad’s offer of new clothes, are you, Josh?’ Hannah asks lightly.

  ‘Well, I’ve got plenty of T-shirts and jeans.’

  ‘Right, so which T-shirt were you thinking of?’ Ryan asks with a snort.

  ‘Dunno. My dark green one maybe.’

  ‘The one with the rip in the shoulder?’ Ryan laughs. ‘Sure, that’ll look great in the photos, Josh.’

  Josh stares at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Photos?’

  ‘Yes, wedding photos, like people usually have when they get married,’ Ryan says with exaggerated patience.

  ‘What’s wrong with my T-shirt?’

  ‘Well, apart from the rip, it does tend to whiff a bit even when it’s been washed,’ his father explains, ‘like something’s actually embedded in its fibres and will never come out, even if I boil-wash it which I’ve done on several occasions …’

  Daisy starts giggling. ‘You smell, Josh. That horrible T-shirt stinks of BO and even washing powder can’t get it out.’

  ‘And it’s age nine-to-ten,’ Ryan reminds him, ‘and you’re fourteen, Josh, if I remember rightly. Now, I know you’re fond of that T-shirt but we could be radical and buy you something in the right size.’

  ‘Oh, Josh can wear whatever he likes,’ Hannah cuts in. ‘It’s not going to be formal, is it, Ryan?’ She smiles at his son. ‘It’s probably best to wear what you feel happy and comfortable in.’

  ‘He’s not wearing that T-shirt,’ Ryan mutters.

  ‘I just don’t think it’s worth falling out over …’ Hannah glances at Josh. Instead of responding, and being grateful to her for not trying to cram him into a suit, he takes a big gulp of orange juice, wipes his lips on his cuff and allows his mouth to hang open, as if airing its interior. Trying to decipher these kids is a bit like learning to drive, Hannah decides as Ryan shoos them upstairs to fetch their schoolbags. In fact it’s harder than driving because at least she was able to pay for a teacher. As far as Hannah is aware, there’s no British School of How to Handle Daisy and Josh.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ Hannah tells Ryan, trying to quash the trace of relief from her voice.

  ‘Okay. Have a good day, darling.’ He steps forward and pulls her close, smelling freshly showered and delicious.

  ‘What are you wearing to the wedding?’ Daisy has reappeared in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Me?’ Ryan springs away from Hannah. ‘Erm, a suit, Daisy. A new one that’s being altered for me.’

  ‘I meant Hannah, Daddy.’ Daisy gives them a fake smile.

  ‘Oh, just a simple dress,’ says Hannah quickly.

  ‘Aren’t you wearing a veil?’

  Hannah pauses. ‘No, but Lou, one of my best friends from—’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because I don’t like them! ‘Well, veils are lovely but my friend Lou from college is an amazing jeweller and she’s made me this beautiful silver tiara with—’

  ‘Mum’s wedding dress was pretty, wasn’t it, Dad?’ Daisy beams at her father.

  ‘Er, yes. It was very nice …’ Ryan turns away and swills out the washing-up bowl noisily.

  ‘Mum’s dress,’ Daisy continues, eyes fixed determinedly on Hannah, ‘was white and low at the front like this.’ She draws an invisible V-shape to indicate a plunging neckline.

  ‘Well, that sounds gorgeous.’ Hannah smiles tightly.

  ‘And it was long with millions of sparkly beads sewn on, and the veil was so massive two people had to walk behind and carry it through the church, didn’t they, Dad? So it didn’t drag on the floor and get dirty. Didn’t they, Dad?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ Ryan croaks, now scraping the remains of the kids’ breakfasts into the bin.

  ‘Wow,’ Hannah says hollowly. Why don’t we get out the album, she thinks darkly, then we can all gather round and ooh and ahh over Petra’s incredible dress before I go to work, and I can show you how crappy and plain I’m going to look in my dumpy little shift that I must have chosen in a fit of madness …

  ‘Mummy looked beautiful,’ Daisy breathes.

  ‘I’m sure she did.’

  Sorry, Ryan mouths from the sink. Taking a deep breath, Hannah pauses for a moment, focusing on the area behind Daisy, where the family-sized super-deluxe fridge stands proudly, with its ice maker gadget which once spurted frozen crystals in her face, causing Daisy and Josh to keel over with helpless laughter. It had never done that before, Daisy had informed her when she and her brother had finally managed to compose themselves. Well, of course it hadn’t. Petra had chosen it – she’d picked virtually every appliance and piece of furniture – and at times like that, Hannah couldn’t help feeling that the whole house was against her. ‘D’you want to see a picture of Mummy’s dress?’ Daisy enquires.

  ‘Daisy!’ Ryan barks. ‘Could you hurry up and get your shoes on?’

  ‘But, Dad …’

  ‘Sometime, maybe,’ Hannah says briskly, ‘but I’d better get off to work now. I’m running late as it is.’

  SEVEN

  As Lou pulls on her uniform – a brown nylon tabard bearing the soft play centre’s ‘Let’s Bounce’ logo across the chest – it occurs to her that the person who designed it might possibly be a pervert. Lou turns this thought over in her mind almost daily, and as she’s been working at Let’s Bounce for nearly a year, that makes it – well, at 8.30 am she’s incapable of working out the exact figure off the top of her head. But it’s something in the region of 230 times, which she fears is verging on obsessional. It can’t be normal to allow dark thoughts about play centre uniforms to occupy such a large part of her brain.

  Yet that vile piece of clothing really ticks all the boxes, Lou thinks, teasing her curly auburn hair with a long-toothed comb and sweeping on powder and lip
gloss at the dressing table mirror. No one, apart from people who go in for medieval jousting contests, wear tabards. Even worse, Dave, her boss, insists that said garment is worn on arrival at work and has even ticked off Lou’s friend Steph for not modelling hers on the bus on the way in. ‘You’re all walking advertisements,’ he’s fond of reminding the staff during his ‘motivational talks’.

  In their bed behind her, Spike emits a long mmmmmm sound, and Lou turns to see a faint smile flicker across his lips. His eyes are closed, his dark lashes dusting his lightly-tanned skin like tiny brushes, his strong, defined jaw bearing its customary blur of dark stubble. Looks as if he’s having a pleasurable dream, lucky sod. Lou’s friends often tease her about living with a man with a super-charged libido, and she knows she should feel flattered that he’s so up for it, especially as they’ve been together for sixteen years. In fact, if anything, Spike’s sexual appetite has intensified as he’s grown older. Maybe it’s the tabard, Lou thinks wryly. ‘You up, babe?’ Spike has awoken from his reverie.

  ‘Yep. Running a bit late actually.’ Lou pads over to the bed and dispenses a speedy kiss on his slightly clammy forehead. ‘Gotta go,’ she adds, grabbing her bag from the floor, pulling on her tabard-concealing black trenchcoat and hurrying out of the flat, down one flight of dusty wooden stairs and into the hazy April morning.

  It feels good to be outside. The flat seems even dingier when Spike isn’t working, which happens to be most of the time. It’s been six months since he last had a job, and the more time Spike spends in bed, or comatose on the sofa, the staler their surroundings become. Some mornings, like today, Lou is almost grateful to be escaping to Let’s Bounce. Although she loves Spike, and he’s still handsome and ridiculously youthful-looking at forty-eight, Lou can’t help worrying that his lethargy might engulf her completely until it’s too late to fight her way out.

  Is sitting on your arse all day actually contagious? she wonders as she walks briskly to work. Does it become progressively worse, until the sufferer is unable to separate himself from the sofa apart from occasionally staggering to the loo? Spike can’t even be bothered to drop used teabags into the kitchen bin. He just lobs them into the sink, and every time she removes them – unwilling to start an argument over something as petty as teabags – Lou is seized by an urge to pelt them in his face.

  She marches on, now feeling more annoyed with herself than Spike for allowing yesterday to slip away in a fug of TV and housework instead of making the most of her one day off. She always imagines Sadie and Barney taking their babies to some beautiful spot in the Cambridgeshire countryside for a picnic on Sundays. And Hannah and Ryan probably take his kids on a family walk in some particularly photogenic part of London – Primrose Hill or Hampstead Heath – like characters in a Richard Curtis movie. Lou sees expensive white wine being lifted from a coolbox and Ryan’s kids chatting nicely with Hannah, laughing at her jokes and feeling lucky that their dad has found himself such a cool girlfriend. And here’s Lou in York – not that she’s blaming York for the situation she’s found herself in – wearing a synthetic tabard on her way to extract stray nappies heavily laden with pee from the ballpool.

  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 h
orrible 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.