Paper Chains (6 page)

‘Oh.’ Hannah paused. ‘What if I don’t know how?’

India felt like screaming. Instead she spoke evenly, ‘Well the obvious thing would be for you to tell me the truth. But since it’s clear you’re not going to do that, we’ll have to figure out something else.’

She stood still, thinking, and was taken aback when Hannah suddenly spoke up. ‘Do you want to come back to my flat? We could have sort of a girls’ night. Pizza, wine, maybe watch a movie? Or is that lame?’ Hannah looked visibly frightened as she waited for India’s response.

‘YES!’ India exclaimed. ‘I mean, yes to the girls’ night, not yes it’s lame,’ she clarified. She immediately linked her arm through Hannah’s and they set off walking. As they passed a collection of cardboard boxes, haphazardly stacked to create a small shelter for a homeless man tucked inside, Hannah pulled away from India. ‘Hang on one sec,’ she said. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a packaged oat and raisin bar and walked over to the boxes. Kneeling down, she pressed the bar into the man’s hand.

‘Thanks, love,’ croaked the voice that was connected to the hand. ‘Liked those crisps you brought me yesterday, though,’ the voice added.

‘I’ll get another packet for you tomorrow,’ Hannah promised. Then she stood and rejoined India.

‘What was that all about?’ India asked as they continued on down the road.

‘That’s Fred,’ Hannah replied. ‘Offered him my muesli bar once on the way home from the museum and I’ve just sort of been dropping something off to him every day since. I like him, he’s always so friendly. I remember once back home I tried to buy a homeless woman a sausage sandwich for her lunch and she spat on me and told me to piss off unless I had any money or cigarettes for her.’

‘Seriously?’ India exclaimed. Then she grinned. ‘Ahh, Hannah, you’re a good kid, aren’t you? Sorry about shaking you before; you’re just a bit infuriating, that’s all.’

They picked up a bottle of wine and a large margarita pizza on the way back to Hannah’s flat. ‘I don’t have a DVD player,’ Hannah apologised as they headed up the creaking stairs, ‘but there’s usually an old movie on Channel 4 or 5 every night.’

Once inside, Hannah rushed to tidy up the few items of clothing that were strewn around the single-room flat, bundling everything up and tossing it onto the bed. Then they set themselves down on the floor with the pizza box open between them and a couple of plastic wine goblets, filled with generous amounts of the red wine they had just bought. After flicking through the channels, they settled on a nineties romantic comedy. They chatted through the ad breaks and India felt pleased as she watched Hannah begin to relax and ease into her own skin.
Maybe it was time to ask her some more probing questions?

Hannah was beginning to enjoy herself. She didn’t know how she had come to invite India back to her place for a girls’ night. A
girls’
night! As if she even knew what one of those involved. It had been far too long since she’d had girlfriends.

But she’d had the feeling that India was getting fed up. Their friendship was completely one-sided, with India pretty much carrying her.

Take, take, take.
She needed to put some effort in. She needed to give a little.

Hannah hadn’t had any close friends since she had left her first high school at the end of year nine when her parents had split up. Her mum had immediately pulled her out of Plumpton High and moved them to a small apartment in Neutral Bay and enrolled her at North Sydney Girls’ High.

None of the girls at her new school were keen to accept a girl from out west into any of their cliquey little groups and mostly seemed to look down on her and her Doc Martens boots. She tried to remain friends with her old group from Plumpton, even sneaking out one night to visit that nightclub in Penrith with them, despite the fact that they were only sixteen at the time – but she soon drifted apart from them as well. While the North Shore girls looked down on her, her old friends began to think that she was most probably beginning to look down on them, and so Hannah remained stuck in the middle, friendless and lonely.

Hannah wasn’t particularly close to her family either. She and her father got along okay – they just didn’t have much to talk about. Perhaps an unspoken blame still hung in the air between them from when her father had first left her mother. And although his new wife had always been perfectly nice, Hannah had just never really known how to build any sort of relationship with her. Hannah thought back to the fantasies she used to have when she was fifteen and her parents had first divorced. Her dad was quick to remarry and Hannah had always suspected that he must have been having an affair with this new woman, because otherwise their relationship had moved awfully fast from meeting to marrying. His new wife, Carol, had three children already, one older than Hannah, one younger than her, and then there was Amy. Amy was the exact same age as Hannah – down to the month even. And for years Hannah had felt certain that Amy had replaced her in her dad’s eyes. She was beautiful – in that typical blonde hair and blue eyes kind of way – and funny and talented. Hannah would spend hours at a time imagining a world where she and Amy swapped places. She fantasised about what it would be like to have a big sister who would lend her funky clothes and jewellery, who would give her advice about boys and maybe even buy her alcohol for parties. And of course, a younger brother who would look up to her and adore her. She imagined that the three of them would share secrets, would be best friends, and one day, when they were all in their twenties, they would go backpacking around Europe together! She would move into their gorgeous two-storey house by Coogee Beach, with its hardwood floors and fresh white paint and she would become the clever, talented one. She would learn to surf and be tanned golden brown and she would have both a mum
and
a dad. And Amy could move in with Anne, into the cold, unfeeling apartment in Neutral Bay with its grey tiles and its snobby furniture. The fantasy would always fill her with simultaneous feelings of guilt and longing.

Hannah was often told off in school for daydreaming too much.

The pizza box was empty and they’d worked their way through a block of white raspberry Dove chocolate now as well.

‘So why all the running?’ India asked casually, pressing her thumb against the last crumbs of chocolate left on the silver foil packaging by their feet. She had a new purple stud in her nose and it sparkled when it caught the light. Hannah still found herself in awe of how India could constantly reinvent herself with each simple change to her appearance. Hannah would never be brave enough to just go out one day and get her nose pierced. ‘I mean, we’ve established that you’re not really training for the New York marathon, right? Is it because you eat too much of this?’ India asked, indicating the chocolate wrappers.

Hannah felt slightly alarmed for a moment and then she relented.
Give a little, Hannah, tell the truth for once.
‘Sort of I guess . . . yes. Thing is, I don’t really eat properly. Most days I starve myself, then I wake in the middle of the night famished and I gorge on chocolate. Next day I punish myself by running. It’s not about looking good,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s not a body image thing, more of a self-mutilation, I guess you could say.’

India peered at her. ‘Oh, okay, it’s
just
self-mutilation, yeah that’s much better,’ she said sarcastically. ‘So is that the big secret? You have an eating disorder?’

‘Umm, no.’

‘But you hate yourself. Why?’

Hannah paused, trying to figure out how best to respond. Finally she shook her head. There was no way she could tell India the truth, no matter how much she wanted to open up to her. ‘I don’t want you to hate me too,’ she said quietly.

India shrugged. ‘Whatever. I think I know what it is anyway. I’ve been thinking and it all adds up.’

Hannah froze. ‘You do?’

‘Yep. Let’s see, you’ve a mark on your ring finger, you’re clearly running away from something and you’re torturing yourself for having done something awful.’

Hannah waited, holding her breath.

‘You left someone at the altar, right?’

Hannah almost began to laugh, as she imagined herself as a runaway bride, fleeing to the airport with her lace veil flying behind her, but then the laughter twisted in her throat. ‘I wish it was that simple,’ she said, her voice bitter.

India looked disappointed. ‘Dammit, I thought I was on to you. Never mind, I’ll keep swinging and eventually I’ll come up with a hit.’

Hannah picked up the empty wine bottle, keen to change the subject. ‘We’re out,’ she announced, then said decisively, ‘Screw the girls’ night in. Let’s go out to a pub.’

‘Why, Hannah, I do believe you’re becoming a bad influence on me.’ India looked pleased though as she leapt to her feet and Hannah wondered how long she would be able to keep up this confident façade. More importantly, she wondered how much of it actually was the real her and not just the part of her that was so desperate to impress India.

As they wandered down the road towards the closest pub, Hannah glanced sideways at India. ‘You know what we never do?’ she asked.

‘What’s that?’

‘Talk about you.’

‘Ahh.’ India paused. ‘Well that’s not what we’re here for though, is it?’

‘Says who?’ Hannah smiled nervously and looked down at the ground, her hands tucked tightly into her jacket pockets. ‘Tell me more about Simon,’ she suggested hopefully.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Are you still writing to him?’

‘Yes. It’s stupid though, hey? None of my letters are ever going to get to him.’

‘So why don’t you actually start posting them? You know, like a normal person.’

India jabbed her in the ribs as they turned right to step off the footpath and head in through a vine-covered archway at the entrance to the Elephant Whistle pub’s front beer garden. ‘Hannah! Are you
mocking
me?’

‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’ Hannah tried to suppress the flutter of nerves in her stomach. Was she being too confident now?

‘I’m liking the new Hannah,’ India announced as they made their way through the tables and then inside to the bar. ‘It’s nice to see you’ve got a bit of spark to you, girl.’

‘Half a bottle of red wine helped,’ Hannah admitted.

‘Agh, don’t tell me you’re the kind of girl who can only loosen up when she has a few drinks,’ said India crossly.

‘Oh shut up. You drank the other half,’ Hannah replied, getting into the swing of it now. ‘What do you want by the way?’ she added as the bartender approached them.

‘Lemonade.
I
, unlike some people, don’t need alcohol to socialise,’ said India haughtily.

Hannah ordered their drinks – a Bacardi for herself – and then they made their way to a couple of bar stools set up along a bench that skirted the wall nearby a pool table.

‘So you don’t normally drink much?’ Hannah asked as they sat down and India picked up a cardboard coaster and began to twirl it between her fingers.

‘I try not to. I prefer to always stay in control. Although . . .’ she hesitated and Hannah raised her eyebrows as she waited. It wasn’t like India to be stuck for words.

‘What?’ she prompted.

‘The other night, when you left the Old Ship, I sort of got trashed. Like, really drunk. I ended up phoning Simon in the middle of the night.’

‘Yeah?’ Hannah asked, smiling. ‘How did it go?’

‘Bad,’ said India firmly, and Hannah’s smile vanished.

‘Oh no, I’m sorry. What happened?’

‘So it went like this. I was kissing this guy – some random in the back of a nightclub. It was nice and I was definitely thinking about fucking him. And I found myself thinking about Simon, and realising that . . . well, I was sort of missing him. For some reason I thought if I called him and told him what had happened then it would help me to sort things out in my head. But I don’t know what I was expecting him to say really.’

Hannah frowned. ‘Explain it to me again,’ she said firmly. ‘Why is it that you can’t just
be
with Simon?’

‘It’s simple, I like to keep moving.’

‘Does that mean you’ll be leaving London soon?’

‘Eventually, yes. But not until I sort you out.’

‘And what if I can’t be sorted out?’

‘Everything is fixable, Hannah.’

‘By that logic you should be able to make things right with Simon.’

‘Touché.’

‘Right. Let’s start with why you have this need to keep moving. What’s that all about?’

‘It’s just what I do.’

‘Why?’

‘All right, fine. Here’s the “India story”. My parents were junkies. My mum was still shooting up when she was in labour with me. She died just after I was born, and my dad was a drop-kick, took off when he found out my mum died, never even laid eyes on me. But you don’t need to feel sorry for me; I was raised by my grandmother in a tiny town in Perth called Gingin. She was a beautiful woman who loved me like nothing else. The day she found out I had cancer, it absolutely broke her heart. I almost didn’t even tell her. She was getting so old, and she wasn’t well herself; I was afraid the shock would kill her. But in the end it did the opposite. She was so damned determined to get me better. She passed away just days after I gave her the good news that I’d beaten the cancer.’