Sunday again

Here's a scene from some months later. It's an example of how things might go, and I'm not promising it.

It's a Sunday, a little after six, and Hannah has rung. You've left your phone on speaker on the kitchen table and sat down next to it, with the carrots left for later.

She's telling you about work. A colleague has been given a project that Hannah thought was hers. About fifteen seconds in, you feel the click. You know just what she should say to her manager, and there's a story about your own job in 2003 that fits perfectly. You think, "Later," and go back to her voice. It gets a little easier each week.

She finishes with, "I don't know. Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was."

You breathe in. "Mm." One second, two. "That's a big thing to think. Where's that come from?"

She's quiet for a moment. Then she talks for ten minutes. The project turns out to be a small part of it. She's been comparing herself with a friend who's just been promoted, and she's wondering whether she's in the right career at all. You ask a few questions, and mostly you listen. At one point you say, "So it's less about this project and more about whether you're on the right road," and she says, "Yes. Exactly that."

Near the end she says, "What would you do? About the project, I mean." So you tell her what you'd say to the manager, in three sentences. It's better advice than the version you had at fifteen seconds, because you now know that the manager has been supportive in the past and that Hannah never said she wanted the project. She says, "That's actually really helpful."

You do tell the 2003 story, right at the end, and it makes her laugh.

Before she rings off she says, "I'm seeing someone, by the way. It's early. His name's Dan." You take the beat, and you manage not to ask eleven questions. "That's lovely. What's he like?"

The call lasts fifty-five minutes.

Things won't always be this tidy. Some weeks she'll be in a hurry and the call will be ten minutes about nothing. On others you'll be tired and the Gareth story will be out of your mouth before you've noticed. But she told you about Dan herself, in the first month. You didn't hear it from your sister.

You were trying, all those years, to help her and be close to her. You'd have got closer by listening for a minute longer and then asking her a question.

If you do one thing after closing this book, pick one conversation tomorrow with someone who matters to you. Put your phone in another room. When they finish speaking, breathe in before you answer, and make the first thing you say a question about the last thing they said.