‘I’m going to look for an apartment in Bristol. My mother is great, and she loves having me, but I can’t stay with her forever.’ Hannah wasn’t sure why she lied. An ingrained habit she’d acquired in the years after her father had left. Years when she’d show up to school with bruises and tell the teachers that she’d tripped over the unruly dog they didn’t possess rather than tell the truth for fear her mother would be taken away and Hannah would be doubly abandoned.
‘I’m surprised you moved in with her at all.’
‘I didn’t want to be on my own and there wasn’t anyone else I could go to.’ And I wanted to appear desperate and vulnerable.
They were lying naked on the bed. The bedlinen had been cast aside, as had their clothes as soon as they’d pushed through the door in a tangle of hands, lips, and hot breath. The same hotel with the same receptionist who’d been on the desk the first evening, shooting critical daggers in Hannah’s direction as they’d checked in.
‘The divorce must have been tough.’
‘It was. Ivan is a nice guy but we were never suited and, in the end, we were making each other miserable.’
I curled into Mark’s arm, feeling warm and content. I heard his breathing slow and knew he’d fallen into a post-orgasmic sleep. Lying was such second nature to me that I did it even when it didn’t matter. And it certainly didn’t matter that I’d lied about Ivan, who didn’t count any more.
What he’d done to me that day, the violence of it, it seemed to have reached deep inside me and hit a reset button to make me re-evaluate my life. The one I had lived, the remainder I hoped to have. That’s what he did to me that day. He made me see my life in all its tawdriness.
I’d spent all of my adult life trying to find what I’d lost when I was ten, seeking out older men, trading my body to feel loved. The older men I’d gravitated towards when I’d been younger were less kind now that I was older. Less kind. Or downright violent. Like Ivan.
Seeing my life with new eyes had sent me spiralling in despair until the day I’d found Mark’s photo. He had saved me and he hadn’t even known I was in danger.
The last twenty years meant nothing. Neither did his wife. She wasn’t making him happy and I knew I could. He loved me; he’d just forgotten he did. I’d keep reminding him until he remembered, until he’d put the twenty years we’d lost behind him.
I ran my hand over his belly, pulling gently on the hairs that grew thicker the lower I went and my tugging became more demanding until he groaned and caught my hand.
We were so good together.
And I was happy again.