Chapter 22 #3
Before she could come up with answers to these questions, Ed said: ‘Sorry, I call bullshit. Something’s happened.
It’s clear you still have feelings for him.
And god knows, he’s as mad about you as ever.
According to Joe, the man’s been living like a monk despite spending four years surrounded by women in thong bikinis. He’s barely had a date since he left.’
‘What?’ Hannah said, incredulous. ‘That’s insane.’ It also seemed impossible, given how handsome, smart and solvent Jude was . . . Yet she found her heart soaring in her chest, alive with something that felt dangerously like hope.
‘Shoot the messenger,’ Ed said, palms up in surrender, ‘but don’t doubt the message. Joe’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. He wouldn’t have told me that if it weren’t true.’
Hannah shook her head, unable to process what she’d just heard. Frightened to let herself believe it.
‘Since he came back, I’ve started to wonder . . .’ Ed pressed on. ‘Was it because of us? Were we the reason you didn’t go with him to Australia?’
‘What?’ Hannah said again, taken aback.
‘Livi was still at school, Claire had just had Alfie . . . I was bouncing around from job to job and Mum had just been promoted – she was working loads of nights back then,’ Ed said, eyebrows drawn together.
‘I look back and worry it was some crazy act of martyrdom. Did you give up your adventure, and the person you wanted, so you could keep taking care of everyone else?’
‘No! Nothing like that,’ Hannah cried. ‘I had no idea you’d ever have thought of it that way.’ In truth, however, she had agonised over whether she could leave them.
She remembered how long it had taken Jude to persuade her to go with him on the journey he’d long dreamed of making; how hard he’d had to work to convince her that nothing awful would happen while she was away.
For Hannah, even saying yes to an eight-week absence from home had felt rash and risky, and they’d argued several times about the length and scope of the trip before finally booking flights.
She’d never left her brother and sisters for more than a few days at a time, and though Ed had spent three years coming and going from Loughborough, she’d been glad to stay close to them.
For more than a decade, she’d been something like their second parent.
It had felt cruel to say this at the time, and she wasn’t sure Jude would have heard her properly if she’d tried – but unlike him, she had a home full of people who loved her.
People it was a wrench to leave, even just temporarily.
They didn’t treat her as a pawn in some game, imagining her successes were their own, or manipulate her into doing the things they thought she should do.
They relied on her in real ways, for support and care, and she took pride in that.
Hannah realised now that her failure to speak up about this difference in their situations had left too much space for misunderstanding between herself and Jude.
It had left a gap he could fill with other, perhaps entirely false reasons for her initial reluctance to travel with him.
‘Why, then?’ Ed asked her. ‘What made you leave him? Because from where I’m standing, it’s pretty clear you didn’t want to.’
‘Jesus, I didn’t leave him – he left me!’ she said, not quite able to believe this was how Ed, and presumably the rest of her family, had interpreted things. She was borderline incensed.
‘He loved you, though,’ her brother said, perplexed. ‘I’ve never doubted that. Still don’t.’
‘He let me down, Ed,’ Hannah sighed. ‘He changed our plans – well, his plans – without telling me. It scared me that he hadn’t been honest. I’d just had my start-up loan application approved, remember?
It meant the world to me, and he . . . he didn’t get it.
I can see now there were things that we both handled badly, but I couldn’t just follow him like some little lapdog.
The thing is, at the time it didn’t occur to me that he . . . that he wouldn’t come back.’
Her voice gave way on that final word, and she found she had to take a deep, fortifying breath. She realised she and her brother were still hand in hand when Ed loosened his grip on her palm to pull her in for a hug.
‘You have to sort things out with him, Hannah,’ he said when he finally released her.
‘I mean, I don’t want the two of you coming to blows on my wedding day.
But don’t convince yourself you’re doing me any kind of favour by refusing to have it out with him.
Do what you need to do. Tell him how you really feel while he’s here – while you have the chance. ’
Hannah nodded mutely, her eyes brimming with tears. The prospect of Jude flying back to the other side of the world did something painful to her chest. It felt like sudden, searing heartburn.
‘It was you two before it was ever us,’ Ed said. ‘Joe and I both know that. We’re rooting for you.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, until Ed said: ‘Shit, that was all a bit deep, wasn’t it? Shall we stick MAFS on the telly and eat some crisps? Restore some balance to the universe?’
‘No,’ Hannah said with a scowl, but she couldn’t help laughing. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, we’ve actually got work to do. You’re getting married in less than a month.’