‘You like it in here then?’
‘Yeah it’s good’.
Hannah didn’t know if it was good.
Jack had been here last summer with his cousins and Hannah had heard him
talking about the pizzas to some boys in class. Hannah didn’t like thinking
about Jack anymore. These days, when she thought about Jack, Hannah sort of…
froze. But not visibly. Not on the outside. It was inside. Really inside. A
deep freeze.
Hannah looked around the
restaurant. She’d never been to a restaurant at lunchtime before. She caught
the eye of an older girl at a table with some other older girls. They were
passing someone’s phone around and laughing, throwing their heads
back, wiping their happy tears from their mascaraed eyes. Hannah scanned the table of girls and decided that the one whose eye she caught was her favourite. She gazed at this girl, who seemed so free, so wild, so in her body, and she suddenly felt
embarrassed to be here with her dad; this man in a shirt and tie, with bags
under his eyes, that she was half of, who was now looking over at the older girls too. Hannah zoomed out and hovered over the table that she and her dad were sharing. She looked down at the pair of them, silently staring at this table of teenage girls.
Hannah pretended to sneeze.
‘How’s school?’
‘It’s the summer holidays at the
moment’
‘Oh, course it is. What year is it
next year?’
‘Seven.’
‘Great stuff. Looking forward to
it?’
‘Erm…’
There was a scream from the table
of older girls as Hannah’s favourite scrabbled for her phone in a coral reef of
nail varnished fingers. People at other tables turned from their pastas and
cheesecakes to look. Hannah’s favourite grabbed her phone and said, ‘fuck’s
sake, Siobhan, you aggy bitch’ and Hannah went bright red immediately.
Deep freeze. Hannah looked at her dad.
They had the same mouth.
She wished she could tell him everything
from the beginning, everything about what happened with Jack and everything abou-
‘Ah, great stuff’. Hannah's Dad slid his
card in the machine and the waitress smiled and stared into space.
‘Everything was ok with your food today?’
‘Yeah, great’
‘You’re welcome’
‘Great stuff. What’s your name
then?’
‘Agnieszka’
‘Like Agnes?’
‘Erm, like.. Agnieszka’
‘That’s a pretty name.’