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I put the phone in his hand.
‘It hasn’t.’
And it was true: I wasn’t upset. I was angry and I wanted answers, but I wasn’t upset. I didn’t feel gutted about it. I wasn’t panicking about losing him. And what that meant about him and me, about the future we’d planned together, I couldn’t even begin to think about now.
‘Is that your boyfriend?’ he asked, looking at the photo.
‘Yeah,’ I said, laughing lightly.
‘And who is he with, this blonde-haired girl?’
‘Alison.’
It was hard to imagine that Si would throw away everything we had to start something with her. And then, for the first time, I thought: would I consider it? Would I ever be the one to leave him?
‘Alison,’ said Léo, as though he was mulling the name over. ‘And you don’t like that they talk?’
I nibbled on my thumbnail. ‘I wouldn’t usually care. Except that he got a text from her. Last night on the train, before I moved seats.’
He put his phone in his pocket. ‘What did it say?’
‘Something about needing to talk to him.’
‘Well they are at a wedding, non? There are things to organise.’
‘That’s what I’d thought, too, initially. But then when we were at Sylvie’s, I hacked his email account and read his messages,’ I said, visibly cringing.
He raised his eyebrows at me, surprised. ‘Hannah! I did not imagine you to be the jealous type.’
‘I’m not usually. And I know I shouldn’t have read his stupid messages; he’ll go mad when he finds out.’
‘So why did you do it?’
I put my head back, looking up at the ceiling, as though I was going to find the answers up there. ‘You’d be amazed what the prospect of marrying someone can do to you. Everything becomes much more urgent. There’s things you need answers to. I found myself thinking: can I really spend the rest of my life with this person I’m not sure I trust?’
He glanced across at me. ‘You know I’m never going to trust you with my phone again, right?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Don’t worry, my French wouldn’t be good enough to decipher your messages, anyway.’
He tidied up his table, putting the plastic wine cup inside the paper cup containing the remnants of tea. ‘Are you really going to marry this guy, Hannah?’ he asked.
It was bizarre how my feelings about our relationship had changed in such a short space of time. Yesterday Si and I were wandering hand in hand across the Rialto Bridge and today I was crossing my fingers that he didn’t propose to me before I’d had a chance to work out if I still wanted him to.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, looking down at my hands. It felt too dangerous to look at him, somehow, as though if we made eye contact, that would be the end of it. There would be no going back.
‘Hannah?’ he said.
I bit my lip. ‘Yes?’
‘Before we get to Amsterdam, and you rush off to your wedding, there is something I wanted to say.’
He lifted my chin with the crook of his finger. My breath caught in my throat. I looked at the floor, the walls of the train, anywhere but at him.
‘What is it?’ I said, my voice barely audible.
‘I cannot say this to the side of your head.’
I looked at him, suppressing a smile.
