Chapter 10 #3
‘Wow,’ Jude said. ‘I assume this was all Joe – that Ed wasn’t in on it?’
‘You assume correctly,’ Hannah told him.
‘The audacity,’ Jude said with a laugh, ‘is just incredible. The world is Joe’s machine, and we are all mere cogs in it.’
‘Did I just hear my name taken in vain?’ said a voice from the archway to their right – the one that led back towards the bar.
Joe was standing in it, and Jude was immediately suspicious he’d been lurking for a while.
His eyes swept the scene as he stepped onto the landing, taking in Jude and Hannah’s positions against the wall; the minimal distance between them.
Jude felt himself go hot and cold beneath the scrutiny.
‘You did,’ Hannah informed Joe, unperturbed. ‘But it was nothing we wouldn’t say to your face.’
We. The word was somehow louder, heavier, than all the others around it.
Joe noticed it, too; arched an eyebrow and said, ‘Did I just trip and land back in 2015?’ When nobody answered him, he added: ‘Ed’s looking for you, Hannah.
Wants to introduce you to a work colleague, Simon.
Nice guy – possibly looking for help with planning a ruby wedding party for his parents. ’
‘Ah, yes,’ Hannah said. ‘The English teacher. Ed did mention him. Said he’s got a little fan club of teenage girls who’ve discovered a sudden interest in poetry, ha ha.
I’ll just . . .’ Seeming not to know how to draw a line beneath her unexpected encounter with Jude, she turned to face him, limply raised a hand in his direction and walked away.
Evidently in no hurry to visit the gents, Joe took her place. He side-eyed Jude in silence, and Jude stood the quiet for as long as he could bear before saying, ‘For Christ’s sake, what?’
‘Your face when she mentioned the fit English teacher’s army of fans.’
‘She didn’t say that – the word fit wasn’t even—’ Jude spluttered.
‘It’s what she meant,’ Joe reasoned. ‘And the guy is quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing. Seems to be a very dutiful son, too. Ed’s quite keen for them to meet, and you’d probably get on with him yourself, actually. Why don’t you come and—’
‘No, no, thank you. You’ve made your point.’
‘Which is . . .?’ Joe was actually grinning. He looked like a mischievous kid who’d just seen a grown-up fall into the booby trap he’d set.
‘That I hate him on principle,’ Jude said, miserably.
‘Oh, little brother,’ Joe said, tenderness striking all sarcasm from his tone. ‘It’s never changed for you, has it? Never lessened or gone away.’
‘No,’ Jude told him. ‘Not even slightly.’
‘And is it better or worse now that you can actually see her again? Be in the same room?’
‘I always thought it would be worse,’ Jude sighed.
‘And it is. But it’s . . . not, at the same time.
It’s complicated.’ Again, he thought of how much Hannah had laughed when he’d invoked that idiot, Josh Brady.
Seeing her like that again – being the person who sparked her smiles – had gone to his head like strong drink.
He’d lived on those moments once; eaten them like crumbs that would sustain, if not satisfy him.
A younger version of Jude had survived in this liminal state for years – but the stakes were higher now he truly understood what was on the far side of the boundary he straddled.
Every second of connection he felt with Hannah over the next few months would hint at the deeper, more profound happiness of really being with her.
Being part of her life. This evening’s exchange had proved it.
Everything in him now strained to seize whatever remnants of their friendship he could lay hands on – but he understood that, having once had it, he’d constantly keen for more, more, more.
When Joe and Ed announced their engagement, Jude had thought it would be torturous to see Hannah, miss her and know she no longer cared – but the intense, ardent longing that had awoken in him this evening?
It was a factor he hadn’t accounted for.
It was the difference between experience in two and three dimensions, between theory and practice.
‘It seems to me that the situation’s actually very simple,’ Joe said.
‘Though I accept you’re not the only one making things difficult.
’ He sounded matter-of-fact. Almost bored – as though Jude, for all his brilliance, was tediously refusing to solve a very simple equation.
Jude had no idea what he meant, but sensed that, in his inimitably superior way, his brother was trying to be kind.
‘I promise, nobody wants to make anything difficult,’ Jude assured him.
‘Hannah and I even talked about it. She has a pretty tough job to do over the next couple of months, thanks to you – so we’re going to keep everything .
. . simple. No rehashing of what went before, no arguing, no recriminations. Just peaceful coexistence.’
‘Sounds very sensible,’ Joe said. ‘Well-reasoned. Admirably unemotional.’
He peeled himself off the wall, smiled shrewdly and clapped a conciliatory hand on Jude’s shoulder. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’