Chapter 6
When the barman at Charlie’s local asked whether she and Hannah wanted glasses or a bottle of the wine they’d selected, his question was met with wry laughter. In Hannah’s mind, this was the only appropriate response.
‘A bottle would be great, assuming it doesn’t come in buckets,’ she said – pleased that, despite the harrowing day she’d had, her ability to make lame jokes remained intact.
‘Er – no. Sorry,’ the barman replied, blank-faced. It appeared his own sense-of-humour bypass had been an unqualified success.
Charlie rolled her eyes, then tapped her bank card against the proffered reader with a decisive, ‘I’ll get this.
’ She swiped their glasses from the bar and strode in the direction of the pub’s beer garden.
Hannah followed, clutching a shiny silver bucket, the neck of their wine bottle visible above the rim.
Its body sloshed noisily amid the already melting ice that had been packed around it.
It seemed churlish to complain about the weather being too warm when you lived in the UK and spent half the year being rained on, but – as she made a beeline for a table with a sunshade – Hannah was sorely tempted.
Her pale skin was inconveniently prone to sunburn, and the current run of bright, thirty-degree days also felt like a deliberate mockery of her glum mood.
It had inspired a sort of holiday-ish cheerfulness in the general population that was wholly at odds with how heartsick she suddenly felt.
As she looked around, she took in several couples, all of whom were laughing, chatting and enjoying al fresco drinks or dinner.
She eyed them with the sensation she imagined an expat might experience when passing back through their native country.
Hannah recognised love when she saw it, and it sent a sharp pang of homesickness through her – but it was a state she could no longer imagine living in herself.
She knew her behaviour this afternoon had been cowardly, but she didn’t have it in her to regret ducking and diving her way through the final two and a half hours of the conference.
Though she hadn’t expected Jude to seek her out again – especially given that he was inundated with attention from excitable conference delegates – she knew she couldn’t rely on herself to react rationally if he did.
‘Feel free to tell me to do one, Hannah,’ Charlie said, picking up their dripping wine bottle and pouring two large measures into the glasses in front of them, ‘but you’ve been off balance since your sister spilled the truth about Jude at the Ashfield wedding.
We can sidestep talking about him entirely and spend the night dissecting the last series of Love Island, if you like .
. . but you do need to talk to someone about this, even if it isn’t me. ’
Hannah took a sizeable gulp from her wine glass and swallowed hard. The truth was, she’d never spoken properly to anyone about how things had ended with Jude – or how thoroughly it had crushed her.
Mum knew more than Ed or her sisters. Upon Hannah’s surprise return from Heathrow Airport, Jane had taken her broken, tear-stained daughter in her arms and let her cry for twenty-four hours straight.
She hadn’t asked many questions, but nor had she needed to.
Somehow, she’d understood the bare bones of the situation: that it had devastated Hannah to let Jude go, but also that coming home alone had been her only choice.
All cried out, Hannah had worn a brave face ever since.
Aside from what Ed and Claire referred to as ‘The Christmas Eve Incident’, she’d never again lost control of her feelings – or her eyeballs.
Said incident, six months after Jude left for Australia, had involved a pub in a nearby village, copious quantities of gin and a karaoke rendition of ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’.
This became so unexpectedly maudlin that Hannah had sobbed through the final verse and accidentally snotted on the microphone.
She’d awoken on Christmas Day and resolved that a) she would never touch Bombay Sapphire again, and b) she would pretend she had no memory of singing anything whatsoever.
The fact that Mariah Carey’s voice still triggered flashbacks was one she kept to herself.
As if she could read Hannah’s thoughts, Charlie went on: ‘Your silence does not lead me to believe you’re over whatever happened between you, by the way. I’d be surprised if it’s fooling anyone – aside from your brother, maybe, but he’s got a vested interest in you being OK.’
Hannah hadn’t thought about it this way, and it was disquieting to consider the possibility that Hannah 2.
0 – her post-Jude reinvention of herself – might only have convinced people who hadn’t known her previously.
Charlie’s point about Ed underlined Hannah’s own, growing awareness of how her relationship with her twin might be affected if Ed and Joe stayed together.
Already, Hannah was dreading the ‘Matthews family Sunday lunch’ Ed had summoned them to, which would take place with Joe in attendance at a local country pub this weekend.
She guessed that, on Ed’s part, it would involve a lot of waxing lyrical about how serious things had turned between the boyfriends, now they were cohabiting.
On hers, there’d be barely suppressed anxiety and a lot of smiling that she could only hope appeared sincere.
Belatedly, it occurred to Hannah that – given the connection between their brothers had solidified – it was now more likely than ever she’d cross paths with Jude.
This morning’s episode felt like a shot across the boughs.
A warning from the fates that something like this could happen any time, anywhere and with no warning.
‘I barely know where to start with this story,’ Hannah said to Charlie, her words coming out like a groan. ‘All I’ve wanted in the past few years is to move forward – move past it.’
‘I see that,’ Charlie said. ‘But maybe there’s a difference between moving past something and pretending it doesn’t exist? When you bury a hurt this deep, Hannah, you don’t confirm it as meaningless – you only prove how much it still matters.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Hannah moaned, ‘are you planning to charge for this therapy session? If so, can I afford you?’
Charlie smiled. ‘My listening ear is free. It always has been.’
As on the night of Pooja and Tim’s wedding, Hannah felt the injustice of how reticent she’d been with her friend. She’d baked inequality into a relationship that meant a great deal to her – yet Charlie instinctively understood Hannah’s feelings anyway.
She sighed. Mum always said you couldn’t make new old friends, and she was right – but you could choose to let new people in.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Seeing Jude today was terrible . . . and exhilarating. It was painful and embarrassing, and I wish it hadn’t been any of the above.
I wish I hadn’t cared, because I shouldn’t by now – and it’s obvious he didn’t. ’
‘You don’t know that,’ Charlie said gently. ‘Maybe he just . . . freaked out?’
Hannah replayed the awkward handshake in her mind, remembering the stricken look on Jude’s face after Clive ‘introduced’ them.
Resenting the sudden pang of sympathy this inspired, she said: ‘He still fucked up his first chance in four years to have an honest conversation with me. Declined to explain why I was chucked out like yesterday’s chip paper the second I stopped being his girlfriend.
I’d never have done that to him. He meant too much to me.
He was too important.’ The words burst out of her like long-forgotten items tumbling from an overstuffed cupboard.
One that she’d shut tight, fully intending never to open again.
Charlie sipped her wine but said nothing, giving Hannah space to continue.
‘He was important to me from day one,’ she said after a moment.
As someone who’d never been prone to gushing about her feelings, the words felt strangely resonant, like a confession.
‘I had no idea why,’ Hannah went on. ‘He was totally hapless back then. I used to watch nineties romcoms with Mum every weekend when she wasn’t on shift.
All the classics, you know? Notting Hill, Bridget Jones .
. . I remember thinking the moment I first saw Jude that he was just like one of those goofy Richard Curtis characters: all plummy vowels and tripping over something every five minutes. ’
‘Sounds cute,’ Charlie said. ‘And – sorry – but you can tell just from looking at him that he grew up into Mark Darcy.’
‘What?’
‘You know, flawlessly polite on the surface with hidden, extremely horny depths. Fully capable of sexing you into oblivion and then making you a lovely, post-orgasmic cup of tea. Nice boys don’t kiss like that,’ she said, quoting from the film. ‘Oh, yes, they fucking do.’
‘Great, Charlie. Thanks,’ Hannah said, feeling her face redden as she remembered how true this was. ‘That was super helpful.’
‘I did say sorry. Go on with your story. Please.’
‘Fine,’ Hannah grumbled. ‘He joined our school on the first day of year nine – we were in the same form, and the teacher announced it was my job to stop him getting lost. I wasn’t happy about being lumbered with the new kid: I’d spent most of the summer helping out with Claire and Livi, so the last thing I wanted was someone else to take care of. ’
‘What changed your mind, then?’
‘He could tell. Even though I didn’t say it, he saw how annoyed I was that I’d been made responsible for him.
And he was . . . decent about it. He told me I didn’t have to do it, that he could find his way on his own and he wouldn’t tell on me.
I got the impression he was used to taking care of other people, too, even though he seemed completely clueless. ’
‘And was he?’