Chapter 4 #2
While it wasn’t like he had much to compare it to, Jude wasn’t above admitting Clive’s kindness had at times, during their three years of working together, felt almost fatherly.
He’d needed it after his time at Trinity College, which had been marred by the weird disconnect between how thrilled he was supposed to feel about being there, and his deep-seated ambivalence about the place.
He’d been the proverbial square peg trying to fit into a very ornate round hole, and it had made him taciturn and miserable.
Now he looked back, he understood that his withdrawal from old friends might have come across as arrogance or snobbery, when it was actually born of desperation not to expose the truth that he missed them unbearably.
Back then, it hadn’t occurred to him that relying on antidepressants to get him through each term was a sign the university didn’t suit him – not least because many of his classmates were also on some prescribed substance.
The notable exception was Sunil Prasad, who went by Suni: a suitably bright moniker for a boy so cheerful he’d probably never even heard of citalopram.
‘You ready to do your talk? Happy with your slides?’ Clive asked. ‘They’ll be set up, ready and waiting for you when it’s your turn to speak.’
‘Yep, all good,’ Jude answered. ‘Not too many – I don’t want to put everyone to sleep. But hopefully they’ll find the work interesting.’
‘Interesting?’ Clive cried. ‘It’s extraordinary! It’s the sort of technology that will change lives – save lives.’
Jude felt himself flush, and Clive clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t take on, lad. You always were dreadful at hearing a compliment, but sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.’
‘If you insist,’ Jude said with a short laugh.
‘Aha,’ Clive said, his tone lifting as he gestured towards someone on the other side of the space. ‘There’s another bright young thing – the woman who’s making today happen.’
Jude glanced briefly at the person in question. She had her back to him, her reddish hair knotted on top of her head. She was wearing a black top and trousers, clutching a clipboard to her side. His eyes snapped back to Clive. ‘I thought you’d organised today.’
‘Me? God, no,’ Clive chortled. ‘I engaged the sponsors, sorted out who’d be giving the talks and decided on the running order, but I wouldn’t know the first thing about co-ordinating guest lists or getting journalists involved.
As for setting up equipment and organising food .
. . if it had been left to me, we’d be having this conference in the back room of the White Lion and lunching on pork scratchings.
I hired someone who I knew would make a better fist of all that. ’
Jude looked around the room, refusing to let his gaze settle on the woman Clive had pointed out. Perspiration had broken out on the skin between his shoulder blades, and his cereal bar seemed to be curdling in the pit of his stomach.
This place was too nice for Clive to have booked it.
The chairs had been placed just so in front of the stage, and programmes had been laid out on every seat, positioned at consistent, jaunty angles.
At the far end of the space, the lunch tables were already arranged with cutlery, glasses and place cards.
There were cloth tote bags, presumably containing exhibitor merchandise, on the large desk next to the conference room entrance, where a tea and coffee station had also been set up.
Everything was too tidy, too neat, too well thought through to have been handled by anyone other than an events professional.
Jude was holding off a powerful realisation the way people in stories sought to avoid encounters with the supernatural. If he didn’t believe in it, maybe he wouldn’t have to see it. Maybe it wouldn’t be true.
‘Hannah!’ Clive shouted. ‘Hannah, love – come and say hello to one of my old students. My most favourite student ever, actually.’
She crossed the room, and her mouth briefly dropped open in horror when she recognised him. He felt it like a knife to the gut.
She clamped it shut again before Clive could notice and kept striding in their direction. As Jude wondered whether his knees were about to give out, he couldn’t help admiring her professionalism.
When she reached them, he searched her face for some sign of what she was feeling and gleaned nothing. Her expression was shuttered; blank and inscrutable.
She was still, without doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His chest burned with awareness of it; with indignation at how unfair it was that just looking at her could still make him weak with admiration.
She wore little or no makeup, and her milk-white skin was radiant: lit-from-within bright against the charcoal cotton of her t-shirt.
Her cheeks were pink with exertion – or maybe discomfort.
Like a cat’s, her light green eyes betrayed no emotion as she looked at him.
The colour of them had always made him think of the sea, and to his dismay he discovered that, even now, he’d happily drown himself in them.
‘Hannah is our event planner, Jude,’ Clive said.
‘And I’m sure you’ll agree she’s done a tremendous job, bringing all this together.
Hannah, Jude will be one of our keynote speakers today – which you might already know, if you’ve had a shufty at the programme.
’ He pointed from one to the other, then stared at them expectantly – waiting for them to shake hands.
Hannah said nothing. She didn’t move, didn’t smile. She just waited, staring, like she was asking a silent question and fully expected Jude to get the answer wrong.
Would it embarrass her if he brought their personal history into what was, for her, a place of business?
And what could he say that would make sense, under the circumstances?
Admitting they already knew one another but hadn’t spoken in years would only prompt more questions – especially from a character as sociable and chatty as Clive.
What could he say, apart from, ‘Pleased to meet you’?
What was he supposed to do, apart from reach for her hand and hope she didn’t flinch?
The feel of her palm against his went through him like electricity, jolting him as though he’d touched a live wire. The skin-on-skin sensation was brief but exquisite torture: a reminder of everything he’d longed for and lost, then tried to convince himself he could live without.
Hannah stared up at him as he made himself loosen his grip on her hand.
Hurt briefly flashed across her features before it was chased away by something like satisfaction.
Vindication. The change took only seconds, and within the blink of an eye, her face had settled back into an expression of supreme indifference.
Jude writhed with immediate awareness that he’d screwed up. Badly.
‘Likewise,’ Hannah said coolly, before mumbling something about needing to check in with the caterer and bustling off.
‘She’s a real force, that lass,’ Clive said as Hannah retreated. ‘Very impressive – she’s built her own business from nothing, and she’s only late twenties. Same age as you, I’d guess.’
Jude raised his eyebrows as if in impressed surprise – though none of this was news to him.
While he knew nothing of Hannah’s personal life, he had kept abreast of how Eventurous had grown.
As a teenager, she’d dreamed of setting up her own company, and he was genuinely happy that, now she’d done so, it was every bit as successful as he would have predicted.
He was proud of her, though she’d probably never know it.
Jude didn’t have any social media profiles of his own, but in weak moments he’d been known to look at the Eventurous Instagram page.
Hannah never featured in the images she posted there, but he could see her in them anyway.
They were carefully composed, yet rich with an authentic sense of celebration – an infectious, unruly sort of joy radiating from every perfectly framed picture.
‘She’s quite easy on the eye, too,’ Clive said, with a conspiratorial wink. Jude realised too late that he’d been staring after Hannah, his eyes fixed on the door she’d gone through, like he was waiting for her to reappear.
He swallowed and turned back to Clive. ‘I suppose so.’
It seemed safer to offer this response than: ‘I know she is – she always was. And, after careful analysis of all the newly available data, it seems I’m still totally fucked.’