Pizza

 

‘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.’