Hannah made a face. ‘I don’t think he meant itthatway. It was more like he’d swallowed a self-help book. He said there was “residual trauma” from my childhood that I needed to push past.’
‘Right,’ Charlie said, grimacing slightly. ‘What did you say to that?’
‘I explained that me and my daddy issues were quite happy together for now, and we didn’t need three people in the marriage,’ Hannah said, to a gurgle of laughter from Charlie, who – in the aftermath of her split from Neil – had justified numerous shopping sprees with the argument: ‘Princess Diana had a revenge wardrobe, so why shouldn’t I?’
Happywas probably pushing it, but Hannah had long since made an uneasy peace with her father’s uselessness. He’d left her mother to raise four children single-handed on a nurse’s salary when Hannah and Ed were nine, Livi was two and Claire, their middle sister, was five. After that, Mike Matthews had sailed in and out of their lives as and when it suited him, his carelessness affecting Hannah and Ed the most.
As the siblings who clearly remembered having some relationship with him, they were more wounded by missed birthdays, forgotten school plays and aborted day trips. Hannah had cut her father off entirely when he failed to materialise at the joint twenty-first party Mum had thrown for her and Ed. While he’d made several attempts to broker peace since, she still had very little contact with him, having finally faced the reality that – no matter what he promised her – he would always be prone to abandoning their plans in favour of a more interesting or advantageous offer.
‘That’s it, then?’ Charlie asked. ‘No chance Marc will talk you round?’
‘None,’ Hannah said. ‘Not least because he’s nowhere near as good with words as he thinks he is. Honestly, I don’t know what possessed me to go out with him in the first place. It was a bad decision – very much on the shitting-where-you-eat spectrum, when you think how often couples want him for weddings.’
‘He’s fit and rich,’ Charlie said, shrugging. ‘You’re only human.’
‘I suppose,’ Hannah conceded. With his tousled dark blond hair, designer wardrobe and rakish smile, Marc was certainly attractive, and the ‘good times only’ vibe she’d initially got from him had seemed ideal. Yes, he fancied himself as a bit of a heartbreaker – but since Hannah’s heart wasn’t on offer, this hadn’t troubled her. ‘However,’ she continued, ‘he’s also an egomaniac with very poor chat. I won’t miss him quizzing me on which ofhis own recordsis the most significant lyrical achievement.’ Before they began dating, Hannah had felt sure Marc’s need for adulation had been exaggerated in the snippets of edited footage she’d seen from his stint on reality TV showIn the Housea few years back. Now, she knew better.
‘Ha!’ Charlie giggled. ‘Surely it’s “Lara’s Lies”.’ She briefly broke into song: ‘Lara, you liar, my world is on fire, your words were the match, now my heart’s on the pyre .?.?.’
‘Oh god, stop!’ Hannah begged. ‘Probably shouldn’t knock it, though, it was a big hit in Malaysia. And royalties from his Southeast Asian record sales paid for his house.’
‘Proof that, throughout the world, there is no accounting for taste,’ Charlie said.
They laughed again, then both turned to their laptops.
Some useful work and another round of coffees later, Hannah saw a TikTok notification light up her phone screen. After squinting at it for a second, she opened the post,then held the phone aloft for Charlie to see – albeit with the sound turned down.
‘What am I looking at?’ Charlie said. She had a red biro tucked behind her ear and had been scribbling in her notebook for the past thirty minutes with a black, fine-tipped Sharpie. From across the table, Hannah could see she’d been sketching ideas for new dishes. The red leather Moleskine notebook Charlie always used for this purpose was a work of art in its own right – full of deftly drawn illustrations that only seemed lovelier when morphed into delicious 3D.
‘Marc’s latest TikTok post,’ Hannah said, her voice tight with annoyance.
‘Er. Why?’
‘You’ll understand in a second. Look at the subtitles.’
‘Oh,’ Charlie whispered, leaning in closer. A moment later, she nodded in understanding: it was an acoustic, stripped-back performance of one of Marc’s band’s biggest hits, ‘Not Giving Up On You’. ‘Yikes,’ she said, ‘bit on the nose, isn’t it?’
‘Just a tad,’ Hannah agreed. ‘The caption says:Call me an old romantic, but when you know it’s right, you don’t let go. Still so much love for her. Hashtag: not giving up on you, hashtag: still my girl, hashtag: love songs.’
‘Nooo,’ Charlie murmured, horrified.
‘Yes,’ Hannah said grimly. ‘Love, for god’s sake – we only went on a handful of dates! And there’s already a load of comments.’
She tapped her phone screen to display them, then passed the handset to Charlie so she could read them properly.
‘Oh,Christ,’ Charlie breathed after a few seconds of scrolling. Mixed in with the inevitable ‘Awww hun, sorry 4 u’ and ‘She doesn’t deserve you babe, you’ll move on’ and ‘You’re gorge, she must be mad!’ posts, there were darker ones. ‘Tell us who hurt you, honey’, ‘Ho needs to recognise what she had in u’ and ‘Stupid bitch needs sorting out’. They’d made Hannah feel a bit sick, and appeared to be having the same effect on Charlie, whose mouth had dropped open in shock.
‘Marc’s replied to a couple of the nasty ones, at least,’ Hannah said stoutly. ‘Asked people to calm down and stay respectful.’
‘Big of him,’ Charlie said, scowling and handing back the phone, ‘since it’s his fault the comments evenexist. What an arsehole.’
‘Two minutes ago you were describing him as fit,’ Hannah reminded her, ‘and on Saturday you were all for me going on a mystery holiday with him.’
‘Mea culpa,’ Charlie said, holding both palms up. ‘I thought he was a harmless idiot, but he’s a walking red flag.’
‘To be fair, he’s telling them to calm down,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s not like he’s egging them on.’
Charlie shook her head, as though Hannah were being deliberately obtuse. Her raven-dark curls swung with the motion, and for roughly the thousandth time Hannah thought how beautiful her friend was. Charlie had the looks of a young Elizabeth Taylor and the culinary nous of Julia Child. It was little wonder Neil had begged for a second chance with her, and no surprise that Charlie, whose self-belief was inversely proportional to her tolerance for other people’s twattery, had refused to give him one. ‘You and Ibothknow that’s not how the internet works,’ she said. ‘Surely you’re online enough to be aware there’s a dark side.’
