Hannah nods back, then hitches her bag up over her shoulder and makes her way through the arch the woman indicated and up a half flight of stairs.
Geraint is sitting at a table by the window, though he stands as she comes in.
“H-Hannah, hi.” The sun is shining through the window and it turns the tips of his ears pink, making it look as though he’s blushing, though she’s not sure if he is.
“Hi,” she says awkwardly. He pulls out a chair and makes a little gesture and she sits, feeling like an idiot and beginning to wonder if this was a huge mistake. She’s grateful for the privacy, but she hadn’t bargained on being tucked away at the back of the cafe like this—it’s going to be very difficult to make a quick getaway if the conversation takes a turn she doesn’t like. There’s a brief pause.
“Do you want to see the menu?” Geraint asks.
Hannah shakes her head. “No, it’s fine, thank you. I already ordered downstairs. How are you?”
It’s a stupid question, meaningless really, but she doesn’t know what else to say, and apparently neither does Geraint because he seizes on it gratefully.
“Yeah, good, I mean, really happy that you agreed to come and meet with me. I just wanted to say that—I know it was, well I mean, I wasn’t expecting—”
You didn’t really give me any choice, she thinks resentfully, but she’s finding it hard to resent him now that they’re face-to-face. He looks so anxious and unthreatening. So… nice.
“You said you’re a friend of Ryan’s?” she says at last when he runs out of steam, and Geraint nods.
“Yeah, he was working at the Herald when I started there after uni, and he was—well, I guess, you’d call him my mentor.” He looks down at his hands, his face suddenly seeming years older. “He’s such a good bloke. I felt terrible about what happened.”
“Yeah, me too,” Hannah says softly. “How”—she swallows—“how is he?”
“I mean, good, I think? It was pretty awful at first, I used to go and visit him in that horrible convalescent place, you know the one that smelled of cabbage.”
Hannah nods, but it’s a kind of lie. She doesn’t know the place Geraint is talking about. She is painfully aware of the way she and Will let Ryan down—although that’s not completely fair on Will. Left to his own devices, Will, she is fairly sure, would have kept in touch with the others, the way he’s kept up with Hugh. It was she who fled England, she who dropped ties with everyone from Pelham, refusing to go back, to dredge up memories. Will had wanted to invite Ryan and Emily to their wedding, make it a proper catch-up with save-the-date cards and a hotel in the Borders—it was Hannah who pushed for the registry office, just Hugh as best man, and her father to give her away. And Will, as he always does, agreed—not wanting to cause her pain.
But now, listening to Geraint chatting on about Ryan’s grueling journey back from his stroke, she realizes what they did, what she did, and she feels a sharp stab of something halfway between grief and guilt.
“But he’s really enjoying being back home with Bella,” Geraint finishes. “I know that’s made a huge difference. That and the fact that he can talk and type again. I think he was going up the wall not being able to speak or write, for someone like him, I mean he’s never exactly held back from giving his opinion, has he?”
Hannah laughs at that, a shaky laugh but a real one. Because it’s true. And because, black as it is, she can see the humor in poor Ryan, the person who always talked longest and loudest at any party, the person who would pin you against the wall in the kitchen to harangue you about late-stage capitalism and Engels and Marx, being silent against his own will—having to listen to all the nurses chattering on without a single I think you’ll find, or Look, love, if you haven’t read David Graeber…
“No,” she says now. “That’s true.”
There’s a long silence. Geraint stirs his coffee, staring down into the depths as though he can find a conversation starter in there if he swirls the murky liquid hard enough. He looks for a moment as if he might be about to speak, but then there are footsteps on the stairs, and they both turn to see the cafe owner coming through the doorway with a bottle of mineral water and a glass of ice balanced slightly precariously on a tray. She puts it down on the little table and then smiles at them both.
“There you are, loves. Anything else, you just give me a shout, I’m only downstairs. I’ll hear you. I’ll leave you be now.”