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Hannah shook her head emphatically. ‘This change isn’t about anyone else. It’s all for me.’It is, she thought.Rob isn’t the destination, he’s just a lesson learned along the way.
‘Well, that’s exactly how it should be. Good for you.’ Janice stood up and opened her arms and Hannah moved in for a hug.
‘Thank you,’ said Hannah, leaning into Janice’s shoulder as she felt the weight pressing on her shoulders lift just a little.
‘So, now you’ve quit your job and scored me an epic promotion,’ said Sam, sloshing more wine into Hannah’s glass from the bottle in the ice bucket on the table, ‘are you finally going to tell me what happened in Spain?’
Hannah shrugged, looking around at the busy bar. She and Graham used to come in here sometimes, on the rare occasions they had something to celebrate. The last time had been her thirtieth birthday, after a tense dinner at the gastropub next door where Graham had kicked off because the waiter didn’t write down the details of his various allergies. Graham hated waiters who didn’t write stuff down; in his opinion people with memories that good should work for MI6. Hannah had pointed out that maybe the waiter DID work for MI6, and being a waiter was his undercover mission. Graham had asked her why she always needed the final word and the evening had pretty much gone downhill from there.
‘Nothing much to tell,’ she said now. ‘Played tennis, met a guy, went on a road trip with him for a week, nothing happened.’
‘Shit, that’s intense. You got a picture? I need to get a look at Mr Nothing Happened.’
Hannah picked up her phone and opened up the Club Colina website, taking her time so Sam didn’t realise it was a shortcut on her homepage. Rob’s picture appeared on the coaches’ page, along with a couple of paragraphs of blurb about his various sporting and coaching achievements. He was wearing his white Club Colina tennis shirt and blue shorts, his tanned biceps glowing in the sunshine and his sunglasses propped on his head.
‘Here,’ she said, handing Sam the phone.
‘Holy fucking Mary mother of Jesus,’ said Sam. ‘He looks like the love child of all the Hemsworths.’
‘I know,’ said Hannah with a grin.
‘You went on a road trip with a Hemsworth for a week, and nothing happened?’
‘Oh, loads happened on the road trip, but not between Rob and me.’
‘No kissing? Quick hand job? Cheeky finger?’
‘Nope,’ said Hannah, feeling her face flush. ‘We nearly kissed at one point, but Scrumpy got in the way.’
‘You chose cider over THAT?’
Hannah laughed. ‘No, Scrumpy is a dog Rob rescued on our travels.’
‘Shit, he’s a Hemsworth who rescues dogs? I think I might be in love.’
Hannah smiled but said nothing.
‘So no kissing. Not even a lingering snog when you said goodbye?’ Sam zoomed in on the photo, taking in every square inch of Rob’s tanned thighs.
Hannah looked away guiltily, feeling like she was no longer entirely in control of this conversation.
‘You did say goodbye, right?’ asked Sam, ducking his head to catch her eye.
She shook her head guiltily. ‘No. I just left. Spent a few days hiking on my own, then got a plane home feeling awful.’
‘Wow,’ said Sam, holding up the palms of his hands. ‘So when did you last talk to him?’
‘The Friday before I left, when I told him, his family and my family to fuck off.’
Sam boggled at her, his mouth hanging open. ‘OK, I feel like I’ve missed several episodes of this soap opera.’
‘I’ve made it sound more dramatic than it was.’ The phrase rang a bell even as she said the words – had she said them to her dad on Joyce’s terrace, or on the hill, when she was telling him about the night she’d gone to Rob’s room and inadvertently got him fired? That night had been a turning point for Hannah; a moment of spontaneous madness when she’d decided to invite Rob on her road trip. It had felt empowering and exciting at the time, and she wondered if she’d ever have that feeling again.
‘Right, but you definitely can’t leave things like that.’
‘Why not?’ said Hannah, pushing the pain in her chest down into her abdomen. ‘I’ll probably never see him again.’
‘Because you were OBVIOUSLY crazy about each other,’ said Jess, appearing at the table with Trish and Gaynor and dumping another bottle of wine and three glasses on the table.
