“Hannah!”
They hug. Hannah inhales Hugh’s expensive cologne and feels the umbrella he’s holding digging into her back. Her bump presses between them in a slightly disconcerting way. She is still getting used to the baby asserting itself in these situations. She can’t imagine how it’s going to be when she’s eight months. Then Hugh releases her, and they step back, surveying each other in the golden glow filtering through the fan light above the door.
“Well,” Hugh says at last, “no need to ask how you are, I can see you’re blooming.”
Hannah blushes at that, although she can’t put her finger on why exactly.
“Thank you. You look very well yourself.”
“I can’t complain,” Hugh says. He hooks his umbrella over his arm and tosses his fringe out of his eyes. “Where shall we go? I know a nice little bar around the corner, the Jolie Beaujolais. It’ll probably be a bit noisy at this time, but the owner knows me, so he’ll be able to get you a seat.”
“I can still stand for an hour, Hugh,” she says, half-offended, half-touched by his solicitude. “I’m pregnant, not ill.”
“I know you, Hannah Jones,” Hugh says, waving a finger. “You’ll have been standing all day in that bookshop; the least I can do is get you a chair now.”
“Well, thank you,” she says, smiling. “And honestly, the Jolie whatever it was sounds great, I really don’t mind where we go.”
Hugh links his arm with hers and they walk companionably down the street, Hugh matching his stride to hers. Glancing sideways at him, Hannah can’t help but smile. He looks like such a caricature of the English civil servant, straight out of Central Casting for a John le Carré film with his camel-hair coat, suit, hooked umbrella, and horn-rimmed glasses. He’s even wearing his old school tie with the Carne crest. Only a bowler hat could finish the ensemble. But Hugh has always been good at playing a part—in a different way from April, of course, but even at Oxford, he always had the air of someone who was playing at being the quintessential student he had seen in films like Brideshead Revisited or Chariots of Fire.
“How’s work?” she asks, as they round the corner. It is beginning to drizzle, and Hugh opens up the umbrella and holds it above them both with his free hand.
“Good,” he says, smiling down at her. “Profitable. No one’s suing me this year.”
Hannah laughs. Last year a disgruntled client sued Hugh’s practice over her new nose not being sufficiently different from her old one, but she lost, after Hugh was able to produce a recording of their preop discussion where she requested that any changes be “very, very subtle… almost indistinguishable from my current nose.” Apparently she got what she asked for.
“How was Ryan?” he asks in return, and Hannah bites her lip. She should have known this was coming. In some ways she had been hoping for it—it’s the natural way to segue into the subject she really wants to discuss, but this feels too soon. She had imagined bringing up April when Hugh had a drink in his hand.
“He was… good,” she says, after a pause. “Surprisingly good. I hadn’t seen him for a while, I felt really bad when I realized how much time had passed. He said you’d kept in touch?”
“Just every now and again,” Hugh says. His voice is kind; Hannah knows he’s trying not to add to her guilt. “I think perhaps it was easier for him to talk to me, you know, being a medical man and all that.”
Hannah nods, grateful that he’s letting her off the hook, and then Hugh turns abruptly down a little alleyway between two tall stone buildings, where a lighted sign flickers above a stairwell. LE JOLIE BEAUJOLAIS, Hannah reads as they descend a short flight of stairs and find themselves in an almost aggressively French-themed bar, complete with Toulouse-Lautrec drawings on the wall, Gauloises drinks coasters, and row upon row of shining wineglasses and bottles. LE BEAUJOLAIS NOUVEAU EST ARRIVé! says a sign above the bar.
It’s hot and very, very full, but after a shouted conversation with the man behind the bar, true to Hugh’s promise, a tiny table is found for them in the corner. Hannah is ushered onto a velvet-covered banquette, and Hugh hitches his pressed suit trousers and sits opposite on a stool. The barman wipes their table with a theatrical flourish, puts a fresh candle in the wax-spattered bottle between them, and then hands them two menus.
“Thank you so much!” Hannah says to the barman above the noise of the crowd. He gives a little Gallic bow.