The Great Escape: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from the summer bestseller

‘Well, if you insist …’ Suddenly, Hannah’s attention is caught by a tissue-wrapped bottle nestling between the bread bin and the microwave. ‘Look, someone’s left this.’ Frowning, she examines the gift tag attached to its neck and rips off the wrapping. ‘It’s from Johnny. Oh, that’s sweet of him. Look, there’s something else too.’ As Sadie wrestles out the cork, and Lou grabs three plastic cups, Hannah peels the lid from a faded Tupperware box. GIRLS – FOR YOUR LAST BREAKFAST TOGETHER MAYBE? J x is written neatly across it in felt-tip. It’s an apple tart, the segments fanning out in circles beneath a golden glaze. Hannah smiles, snaps off a fragment of pastry and lets it dissolve on her tongue.

There’s a card, too, propped up against the bread bin. She studies Johnny’s old-fashioned forward-sloping writing on the envelope and rips it open. The card depicts a wobbly line drawing of Glasgow, with the famous buildings all jammed in together, jostling for space. Dear Han, it reads, So you’re off! We’re all going to miss you like mad, you know. What’s going to become of us? Who knows? And we’ll definitely miss your cooking! Haha. But we’ll be okay as long as you remember us and wear a bloody bike helmet in London. That’s an absolute order, and I’ve alerted the police to keep an eye on you too. Love, J.

‘Oh, Johnny,’ Hannah murmurs as Sadie fills the cups with tepid champagne. Raising hers to her lips, she wipes away the hot tears that have sprung to her eyes. ‘I’d like to make a speech,’ she says.

‘Speech! Speech!’ cry Sadie and Lou.

Hannah takes a deep breath. ‘I just want to say … I love both of you and we’re never going to lose touch, okay?’ She pauses as her friends murmur their agreement, then adds, ‘And there’s another thing.’

‘What?’ Sadie asks.

‘Johnny’s apple tart. I don’t think I can wait till breakfast, can you?’

THREE

The morning after

As Hannah and her parents trundle down the M6 in a hired van, Lou heads back upstairs, breathless and grubby from lugging a third black sack to the wheelie bin outside. ‘Oh, hi,’ she exclaims. Johnny is sitting at the kitchen table, studying Hannah’s butter bean dip into which someone has extinguished a cigarette.

‘That’s horrible, that.’ He looks up and smiles. ‘It’s an absolute crime against humanity. It looked so tempting as well.’

‘Ha. Yeah, disgusting. God knows who did that. Spike, probably. How old is he again?’ Johnny looks at her blankly. ‘Thirty-five,’ Lou reminds him. ‘I’m going out with a thirty-five-year-old man who still can’t use an ashtray because so many other things will do instead.’

Johnny smirks. ‘Where is he anyway?’

‘Went back to bed for more beauty sleep.’ Lou pulls a wry smile. ‘So has Sadie, lazy sods.’ She laughs, suddenly conscious of her limp, hungover hair and shiny face flecked with the remnants of last night’s mascara. She’s still in her pyjamas too – embarrassing ancient fleecy ones, not like the posh silk ensemble Sadie wears. Thank God she’s flung a sweater over her top. ‘Thanks for the apple tart,’ she adds. ‘That was very sweet of you. I’d have saved you some but we scarfed it all down last night.’

‘No problem. It was my first attempt, thought you could give me your verdict. So, left you with all the clearing up, have they?’

Lou grins. ‘Oh, Spike managed to pick up a beer bottle and rinse out my wine-strainer tights.’ She perches on the opposite chair. ‘Are you okay? Feeling a bit fragile?’

‘Er, guess so.’ He looks it, Lou thinks; not mildly poisoned, as Spike currently is, flat on his back in her bed with a saucer-cum-ashtray perched beside it, fag ends piled up like a mini Mount Etna. Johnny’s is a different kind of malaise altogether.

He looks up at Lou, and it fazes her, the way he regards her so intently. She gets up and rinses out the Tupperware box. No one knows – not even Hannah or Sadie – how she really feels about Johnny. She hasn’t said anything because he’s a friend to all of them, a flatmate really, separated only by one floor. Admitting that she’s nurtured a crush on him this past year, since Spike’s less endearing qualities came to the fore, would upset the balance and change everything. Anyway, she has Spike and Johnny has Rona. Spike might be annoying but he’s lived a life that Lou still finds fascinating, and he adores her. Lou has never been so completely adored by a boy – well, a man, Spike is thirteen years older than her. She looks forward to the moment when her Johnny-crush suddenly clicks off, as if by a switch.

‘D’you want an Alka-Seltzer?’ she asks to break the awkward hush. ‘Or something to eat? I might be able to rustle up a bagel if you’re lucky …’

He exhales. ‘No thanks. I’m not hung over, Lou. I hardly had anything to drink last night.’ There’s another pause, broken by Spike launching into a coughing fit in Lou’s bedroom. ‘Listen,’ Johnny adds. ‘I’m … I’m not supposed to tell anyone this. Rona’ll kill me if she finds out because she’s not ready to—’

‘What?’ Lou murmurs, frowning.

‘She … Rona’s pregnant.’

‘Oh God, Johnny.’ No, that’s not right. He might be delighted – perhaps they even planned it – and he’s just a bit shell-shocked and hasn’t quite taken it in. Lou sits on the chair beside him and tries to settle her face into a neutral expression. Johnny doesn’t look delighted, though. He looks like someone whose life has spun out of control.

‘We found out a few days ago,’ he adds dully.

‘So it’s still early?’

Johnny nods.

‘Um … what d’you think you’ll do?’ There are soft footsteps in the hall, then extravagant splashing as Spike pees into the loo, followed by a clanking flush as the flat’s prehistoric plumbing system kicks into action. Lou wills Spike to go back to bed.

‘I don’t know, Lou. Fuck …’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s a mess …’

Lou stares at her friend, a twenty-four-year-old student who loves staying up all night watching Steve McQueen films, and who’ll suddenly be propelled down that mysterious supermarket aisle that she’s only ever found herself in by mistake – the one with gigantic packs of disposable nappies and row upon row of little jars of food, every product bearing a baby’s face.

‘Oh, Johnny. I’m sure it’ll be okay …’

‘Will it, Lou? I just don’t know.’

What he does next shocks her. Capable Johnny, creator of proper meals, incorporating vegetables – obscure vegetables sometimes, like yams and butternut squash – has his head in his hands. Then he turns to her and cries into her grubby old sweater as she holds him and says that whatever happens, he’ll be okay, she’ll help him, she’ll do anything she can. Lou’s eyes are wet too. He pulls away and looks at her, then he’s kissing her on the lips, and her head spins and she knows she should pull away, but just can’t. It’s Johnny who stops, looks at her and pulls her into an embrace. They are holding each other now, not moving or speaking and not seeing Spike who’s happened to glance into the kitchen, hoping to find a cigarette or even a decent-sized butt in the ashtray. Instead, he sees his beautiful girlfriend wrapped up with that tosser from upstairs, who has always had a thing for Lou, he bloody knew it.

Spike turns slowly and pads back to Lou’s room where he’ll rummage through her chest of drawers in case she has a stray packet of cigarettes lying around. Then, once his nicotine levels have returned to an acceptable level, he’ll crawl back into her unmade bed and plot the slow, painful death of Johnny Lynch.

FOUR

Thirteen years later

Hannah steps into her wedding dress and studies herself in the mirror. She’d liked the simple cream shift when she’d tried it on at the department store, or at least she’d believed the persuasive salesgirl who’d said she looked ‘elegant, sort of Grace Kelly-esque.’ Heels were picked out too, plus a matching cream-coloured clutch. ‘It’s an elegant look,’ the girl reassured her, ‘but still lovely and young and fresh.’ Now, though, at 7.35 am in the chilly upper reaches of Ryan’s townhouse, Hannah doesn’t feel young, fresh or remotely Grace Kelly-esque.

She looks like a fat nurse. As if the perfect accessory isn’t the seed-pearl tiara Lou has already made for her, but one of those blood pressure devices that clamps around your arm. Instead of neatly skimming Hannah’s body, as it had in the changing room, the dress now clings a little too tightly to her breasts and hips and bunches up like a carrier bag around her middle.

Either she, or the dress, must have changed shape in the two days since she bought it. Even its shade seems to have altered. The shop girl had called it oyster, but Hannah is now thinking over-boiled cauliflower. She is a fat nurse in a cauliflower dress. You hear of people bolting from the church or registry office in blind panic just before they’re due to exchange vows. She can just picture Ryan glimpsing her in that dress – it’s already become that dress, and not in a good way – and hurtling out of the building.

It’s not, Hannah decides as she tugs it off over her head and throws it onto the bed, the best start to a grey Monday morning.

‘He stole my iPod to look at my photos and now he won’t give it back!’ wails Daisy, Ryan’s ten-year-old daughter.

‘Who cares about your stupid sleepover photos?’ Josh, her big brother, shoots back. ‘I’ve got better stuff to do than look at your dumb friends.’

‘Why were you looking then?’

‘’Cause I wanted to see what you had on it.’

‘Dad. DAAAD!’ There’s a screech, and as Hannah pulls on her black vest top and faded jeans, she detects the soothing tones of Ryan, her future husband, possessor of infinite patience and soon-to-be-witness of the cauliflower nurse dress.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘come on, you two … isn’t this a stupid thing to argue about? Yes, I hear what you’re saying, Daisy, I know they’re your private pictures, but Josh …’ Hannah pulls her fair hair back into a ponytail and waits at the top of the stairs.

‘Little shit,’ Josh barks. ‘You’re so spoilt.’ Ah, Ryan’s firstborn, just turned fourteen, liberal sprayer of Lynx (preferred fragrance ‘Excite’ – ‘A rare gourmand-oriental mixture of fresh green accords and woody base notes,’ Hannah had read while perusing the can with interest in the bathroom). Although she’s been living here for six months, it still strikes her as completely bizarre that Ryan is responsible for half the genetic make-up of the most life-sapping kids she’s ever met. Occasionally, Hannah wonders if she’s really doing the right thing by marrying him – but then, why should his offspring sabotage her future with the man she loves? This is the sweet, funny, sexy man with whom she exchanged life stories on the night they met. The man who turned up unannounced at her flat one sunny Sunday morning with a picnic for two. The man with whom she’s travelled to Barcelona, lain kissing on a Cornish beach and joked that, if they spent any more time in bed together, they might have to arrange for a delivery man to slide a pizza under the door.

‘Arsewipe,’ Daisy shoots back.

‘That’s enough,’ snaps Ryan as Hannah heads downstairs, gritting her teeth, a vein pulsating in her jaw as she tries to mentally transform herself into a vision of smiles and perkiness.

‘But Dad, all I did was—’ Josh starts.

‘You should respect your sister’s things,’ Ryan barks as Hannah steps over a lone, grubby-soled football sock in the hallway. ‘She doesn’t fiddle about with your stuff.’

‘She nicked my headphones,’ Josh counters. ‘She broke ’em and peeled the spongy bits off.’

‘I did not,’ Daisy snarls. ‘They were broke anyway. They were crap.’

‘Daisy,’ says Ryan firmly, ‘I don’t want to listen to this and I’m sure Hannah doesn’t either.’

‘Huh,’ Josh snorts, clearly meaning, Who cares what your stupid girlfriend thinks?

Pausing before entering the conflict zone, Hannah sees flashes of Ryan through the half-open door as he darts back and forth across the kitchen. Busy Dad, rattling through the morning routine before hurrying off to work. Hannah can’t help feeling irritated on his behalf and, rather than sauntering straight in, she takes a moment to consider what she should do next.

She could face the horrible truth that, despite her fantasies of being a friendly elder sister type to Daisy and Josh – watching movies together, perhaps even advising them occasionally in those rare moments when Ryan runs out of steam – it won’t happen. In their eyes, she will never rise above the status of an apple core they’ve found rotting on the floor of the car. This means she should probably tiptoe to the front door and let herself out, leaving Ryan, his kids and that disgusting nurse dress, and never see any of them again.

Or she could stride into that kitchen, mature and confident like the grown-up woman she is, and seize control of the day.

FIVE

A muffled beeping noise is coming from somewhere in the depths of Sadie’s bag. The bag is enormous and bulging and looks more like a vast quilted navy-blue pillow than anything you’d willingly lug around. It makes Sadie feel unbalanced, although she’s started to feel that way when she’s not carrying the bag, so perhaps it’s her natural state now.

The beeping noise is Sadie’s mobile, gasping for breath beneath the nappies, bottles, hats, wipes, bibs, extra sweaters (lovingly knitted in pale lemon yarn by Barney’s mum), bendy rubbery spoons and jars of baby food. It might as well be in Tasmania for all she can reach it. She stops with the buggy on the damp path in the park and frantically searches for it. Typical. Just as she manages to locate the phone, it stops ringing.

Missed call from Hannah. It’s 8.07 am. Why is she calling so early? Is something wrong? More to the point, what’s Sadie doing, marching around Hissingham Park on a blustery morning when normal people are having breakfast, drinking coffee in their cosy homes and browsing the newspapers? Yet she had to get out. Barney leaves at seven am every weekday, catching the train for his London-bound commute. Dylan and Milo took exception to Daddy leaving today, swiftly working themselves up to inconsolable on the baby mood-scale. Sadie tried feeding them, then carrying them both, one plonked on each hip, through every room in the house. She tried singing and even dancing in their small, cave-like kitchen, then gathered them onto her lap and read Peepo! twice. Nothing worked. She sees her imaginary parenting test paper covered in angry red scrawlings with FAIL written across it in huge capitals. Must try harder, Sadie Vella. Eight months into this course and we’re still seeing little improvement. Now, as a cool wind stirs the branches of a sycamore above her, scattering rain droplets onto Sadie’s pillow-flattened hair, Dylan starts to cry again. This means that returning Hannah’s call will have to wait.

Sadie strides on, hoping that the buggy’s steady motion will soothe her son, and also that Hannah is okay. Of course she is. Her life seems to be going spectacularly well at the moment. She has a great job, having risen through the ranks at Catfish to become head of the entire creative department. She has a gorgeous, caring and enviably grown-up man who loves her to pieces and writes adverts for – actually, Sadie can’t remember who Ryan writes ads for. Hannah has told her several times but it whooshed in through one ear and out the other, as most things do these days. Sadie wonders what’s now occupying the space in her head where her brain used to be. Teddy bear stuffing, or stale air, like the inside of a neglected fridge? Only this morning it took her fifteen minutes to locate her keys before she could leave the house. She couldn’t find the boys’ soft leather baby shoes either, so they’re each wearing two pairs of thick baby socks. Supposedly simple tasks have become virtually insurmountable. Sadie can’t fathom how women manage to hold down paid jobs as well as look after their children, bake cakes and fashion ‘amusing’ toddler meals where the cannelloni look like little people sleeping under a blanket.

‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ she murmurs, parking the buggy next to the café that hasn’t even opened yet, and bobbing down to try and soothe Dylan. A young girl is in the café – Sadie thinks she’s Polish – placing small vases of flowers on each table. Milo, apparently unconcerned by his brother’s anguish, is studying the spindly weathervane on the café’s roof. Sadie unclips Dylan’s buggy restraints, picks him up and cradles him close to her chest.

Rocking him gently, she absent-mindedly jiggles the buggy with her free hand. A ruddy-faced woman, her round cheeks accentuated by a short, choppy hairstyle, is striding along the path towards her. Hannah knows without doubt that this woman will stop and talk to her; it’s what people in Little Hissingham do. As well as motherhood, Sadie is also trying to get to grips with village life where everyone seems to know her as ‘the one with the twins’, even though she hasn’t the foggiest idea who most of these people are.

‘Oooh, you’re the one with the twins,’ the woman exclaims unnecessarily, cocking her head to one side as she fixes her gaze on Dylan’s tear-blotched face.

‘That’s right,’ Sadie says, pulling her lips into a smile.

‘What’ve you got again? Boy and a girl?’

‘No. Two boys.’

‘Aw, shame! Were you awfully disappointed?’

No, of course I bloody wasn’t, Sadie thinks angrily. ‘No, not at all,’ she says firmly. That’s better. She’s managed to wrestle her thoughts under control instead of having to restrain herself from slapping the woman.

‘Well, you got more than you bargained for there,’ the woman chuckles.

Sadie places Dylan, who’s calmed down a little now, back into the buggy. ‘Well, yes, it is pretty busy. Keeps me out of trouble, you know.’

‘IVF?’

‘Sorry?’ Sadie laughs involuntarily.

‘I mean, are they IVF babies?’

‘Er … no … why d’you say that?’ Sadie feels her heart quickening as, for a split second, she wishes Barney were here to tell the woman to mind her own damn business. Even if they had had fertility treatment – which they hadn’t – why would she wish to discuss it with a stranger in the park?

‘’Cause my sister,’ the woman continues, scratching her chin, ‘she and her fella tried for years, the old ovulation kit with the menstrual cycle and all that. Nothing happened. Took all the romance out of it, you know? Became, like … mechanical. Not romantic at all.’ Sadie is jamming her molars together so hard, she fears they might start to crumble. When did she start needing Barney to protect her in situations like this?

‘So it was twins they had,’ the woman rants on, ‘and God, they’re hard work, aren’t they? Not a second to yourself. You’ll know all about that, haha!’ She peers down at the buggy. ‘Don’t they have any shoes?’

‘Er, yes, but I couldn’t find …’

‘It’s a cold day,’ the woman scolds her. ‘Their little tootsies’ll be freezing …’

Phone bloody social services then, Sadie wants to scream. Or make a sodding citizen’s arrest. ‘Sorry, I’m in a hurry,’ she blurts out, charging off with the buggy, and wondering where she can go that’s not the inside of her soul-crushing house – sorry, cottage – but also where that woman won’t find her and start interrogating her on her sex life.

Both the children are crying now, signalling that feeding time is upon them. Sadie is still breastfeeding the babies, although they do, mercifully, also have bottles of formula, jars of food and her home-made concoctions. Determined to up her parenting grade – she’s awarded herself a D-minus so far – she bought a vast array of vegetables yesterday which she chopped at midnight and simmered until 1 am when Barney (and probably the entire Western hemisphere) was sleeping soundly, only to realise that the damn stuff couldn’t be frozen in ice cube trays until it had cooled properly. She found herself blowing on the vatful of steamy mush, then worried that she was breathing stinky adult germs on it and would infect her children with gastro-enteritis. It was too smooth as well – she’d overdone the mushing. By eight months her children should be managing lumps, finger food, great saddles of lamb, probably. Sadie finally staggered to bed at 2.30 am, cursing Barney for the sole reason that he had the audacity to be asleep, precisely ninety minutes before the babies woke up, eyes pinging open to full alertness, ready for their first feed of the day.

Is Sadie feeding them too much, too little or too often? She has no idea. She’s read so many baby manuals that they’ve all merged into one fat, hectoring tome. When she presented her hastily defrosted home-made baby food this morning – realising she needn’t have frozen it after all – Milo and Dylan spat it all out onto their white towelling Monday bibs.

Who could blame them? she thinks now, pushing the double buggy at a determined speed. What’s wrong with shop-bought baby food anyway? It’s made by experts – people whose lives are dedicated to formulating stuff packed with nutrients that babies will actually enjoy and not spit out. Sadie can’t compete with that.

Catching her breath, she heads for the rose garden where she knows there are benches, and which is shielded from the rest of the park by dense, square-cut hedges. For someone who was once body-confident, pouring her luscious curves into corseted lingerie which she constructed herself, Sadie is incredibly self-conscious about breast-feeding in public. She and Barney pored over soft pencil illustrations of possible feeding positions in Twins: Your Essential Survival Guide. It’s okay for the women in those drawings, she thinks now. They don’t have to sit on damp park benches with a baby clamped to each bosom and spot a teenage boy glancing through a gap in the hedge, looking completely appalled. Plus, the women’s breasts in those illustrations don’t overproduce milk until it seeps through their breast pads, making their gargantuan nursing bras wet and smelly (no boned, hand-stitched underwear for Sadie these days). She has never felt more aware of being a mammal in her entire life.

She’s just sat down, and is lifting an agitated Milo from his buggy, when her mobile trills into life again. Clasping him tightly to her lap, she fishes the phone from her bag, quickly enough to take the call this time.

‘Sadie?’ comes Hannah’s voice. ‘Are you okay to talk for a minute?’

‘Yes, sort of,’ she says, phone in one hand, and wrapping her other arm around her writhing son. ‘Just about to feed, though. Boys are a bit unsettled. Oh, hang on a sec …’ Milo squirms in her lap. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks quickly.

‘Er, yeah, I’m fine …’

‘Where are you?’ Sadie asks.

‘Outside. Just outside the house.’

‘What, your house?’

‘Um, yes … just had to get out for a minute. I know this sounds mad …’ Sadie hears Hannah blow out a big gust of air.

‘What’s wrong? Is everything okay with you and Ryan?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine! I mean it’s fine with us. It’s just, um … the kids, Sadie. They’re just …’

‘Has something happened?’

‘Oh, not really … Look, I’m sorry to load this on you at this time in the morning but they’re all in the kitchen right now, bickering, and I just … I don’t know why, but maybe it’s because I’ve just tried on my wedding dress and it’s horrible. Really ugly and plain. What was I thinking? I should’ve asked you to come into town and we could have had a lovely day and picked something together. And I bought a clutch bag. A clutch bag! I’ve never owned one in my life. Will I have to go around clutching it all day?’

‘Well, I’m sure you are allowed to put it down, or someone will look after—’

‘It’s horrible,’ Hannah cuts in. ‘Like something Princess Anne would carry. Can you imagine me with a clutch bag? And I got this fear, you know? This horrible feeling about …’ Her voice falters.