"You were pretty young, and grown up too," she said, looking past him to the suitcase, the curiosity almost killing her with anticipation. In truth, there were parts of his past that she simply didn't want to know about, parts that she wasn't prepared to hear about. When his younger self had turned up, she'd realised exactly how different he'd become; that unsure gaze of the younger man was a wake up call. She had no right to his past.
It wasn't that Hadley was simply the mother of his child; Pauline held that title too and Abi didn't want a scrap of that woman in her house. No. Hadley was special to Abi in a way that Hemingway didn't know. The woman herself had always spoken the highest about him and anyone who loved Ernest would always have a place in her heart too.
She swallowed thickly and glanced back at his question. "Depends whether I'll like what's inside," she said, a little tentative "But why would it turn up if it wasn't important to you, to us maybe?"