“Time is money, Hannah. Let’s do this.” She picks up a magazine, begins flicking, and, with a newfound fear and respect for my friend, so do I.
Chapter 31
November
i can hearChristmas music playing in the supermarket as George and I do the weekly shopping together. It’s started already. Actually, I spotted Christmas crap in the shops in October but pretended I hadn’t. To be honest, it does brighten the city up quite a bit and I’ve nothing against Christmas. I love it so much that Christmas lights stay up in my flat all year round. But I can’t help thinking this year has whizzed by. At Christmastime last year a man on the other side of the world was accidentally phoning me. I smile at that. At the randomness of it. At how it turned into something so unexpected. How it almost turned into something so wonderful. And then it didn’t.
And now I’m with George. And we shop for food together. I’ve let him into every facet of my life, and he’s slowly following suit. We’ve both been very leisurely about letting each other in, both of us treading carefully after painful experiences in the past. Neither of us wants to get hurt, dumped, rush things. We’re pacing it. We’re getting there.
I’m meeting his mum in a few weekends’ time. It’s been a long time coming and George has taken some convincing, but it’s the next natural step. He’s still not sure if I should hang out with him and his mates yet. He’s taking some convincing about this too. He thinks they might hit on me, or tell me stories about him thatmight put me off. We’ll get the scarily titled “meet the parents” out of the way first, and then we’ll work on the friends group.
I’ve also not been to his flat, because George says his flatmate treats their place like a dump and George prefers staying at mine, where it’s just us in private, and where we can have sex without having to remember to be quiet. He also loves that my bathroom is clean. I don’t like to point out that my flat is spotless because I clean it, and he could do the same to his flat. It’d be nice to see where he lives. Although maybe it’s not that important anymore, because he sort of lives with me most of the week now.
He usually stays at mine about three or four nights every week, but has opted out of Saturdays in the pub with Miranda and Paul and seems to have managed to miss out on coffee with Joan weekend mornings, as he needs to be at work earlier and earlier as his client list grows.
We’ve gotten closer, sillier, happier, and we’re planning another holiday. I yearn for the hedonistic version of us—that silly flirtiness that we invoked in Asia together. George and his guidebook, suntan lotion, and laughter as we compared bad dates and drank piña coladas with umbrellas in them. And if one of us wasn’t pushing the shopping trolley around Tesco, I’m sure he’d have his hand in mine. To be honest, food shopping was a part of my life I didn’tactuallywant to let him into. Everything on the shelves I reach for, he frowns at. I have such an urge to throw packs of Hobnobs in the trolley, just to watch that little muscle by the side of his right eye go bonkers as he calculates macros and calories. But I don’t. Instead I pick them up on my way home from work. My excuse that I need biscuits for Joan wasn’t up to scratch, so I sneak them in. I’ll be hiding them in the toilet cistern next, like an addict.
We spend approximately 70 percent of our time in the fresh fruit-and-veg aisle. Which is a good thing. And George has learned the hard way not to even question how many five-liter bottles of wine go into my trolley. I yearn for a tub ofHäagen-Dazs but it’s not worth the discussion, so we go past the freezer aisle, toward the checkout. It is totally worth the calories, though. Some things aren’t. Häagen-Dazs is. But I have two wedding outfits that I need to fit into and the first one is next month, so I sigh as I pass the pralines and cream tubs and think of how good I’ll look next month in my dress.
I hadn’t expectedtwoof my closest friends to declare they were getting hitched. But Joan surprised me last month by announcing that she and Geoff would be getting married just before Christmas. They’ve been together the same amount of time that George and I have, and when we stood over the garden fence, hugging as I congratulated her, I’ll confess a part of me felt renewed on her behalf. She and Geoff are proof that old relationships and past loves don’t define them and that they can move on, start again, fall in love.
Would I get married to George after knowing him the same length of time that she and Geoff have known each other? Probably not, no. And so I test the waters with my friend with a casual “Moving fast, Joan” on the Sunday morning she tells me. We stand in the bitter cold, dunking forbidden Hobnobs into our Nespresso Palermo Kazaar. It’s about as bitter as the weather and we award it a four and a half, mainly because the coffee is warming us when nothing else is.
“Death moves fast, Hannah. We don’t have the luxury of time, like you kids.”
Death moves fast.I think about this a lot as I stand in the kitchen later on, watching George as he, in turn, watches Joe Wicks, on a YouTube video on his phone, doing something culinary with broccoli stalks I thought I’d put into the green waste a day or two ago.
“Do we have any almonds?” he chirrups.
I don’t even know what I reply, or if I reply, as he begins ransacking cupboards.Death moves fast.Should I be acceleratingthings with George? If I died tomorrow, would I have done everything I’d ever wanted to do? No, of course not. These are two stupid things to think in quick succession. I think I’m happy with where I am now, though. I stare out of the window. Behind me, George has found a pack of out-of-date almonds, has resumed watching his YouTube video and is furrowing his brow as he mutters something about tahini.
Outside it’s snowing. It’s been snowing for some time, because the little patch of concrete outside my kitchen window is smothered in a blanket of thick, fluffy white. I put down my glass of wine, open the back door, and watch it fall, uninterrupted, from the sky to the ground.
“Brr, Hannah, flipping freezing. Shut the door.”
“It’s snowing,” I point out as I watch it fall. My voice reverberates around me as the thickness of the snow muffles all sound, makes everything sound closer or further away…I can’t tell which—just different.
“So it is. Do we have any tahini?”
He knows the answer to this is no. “If you call secret Hobnobs tahini, then sure, we’ve got plenty,” I mutter, more to myself than to him.
“What?” he asks distractedly and I hear him talking to himself about alternatives.
The last time it snowed, a man thousands of miles away told me I should go outside and make snow angels. I laugh at myself for having done it then. And I’m going to do it now. Except that I’m going to make George do it too.
“Come over here,” I instruct in a sexy voice.
“Sex in the kitchen? Again, Gallagher? I can’t keep up.”
“Yes, you can,” I reply. “But no. We’re going to make snow angels.”
“Christ, no,” he says, turning back to his phone and his broccoli stalk.
“Yes, we are,” I say. “Live a little.”
“Nope.” He’s insistent. “You’ll get pneumonia.”
“I won’t,” I say as I pull on my battered Uggs. “Come on.”
