Chapter 30
After the wedding ceremony, Jude felt a strange kind of tiredness sweep over him – the sort of exhausted relief he’d usually associate with getting off an intercontinental flight.
It was an adrenaline comedown; the effect of realising, after the chaotic search for Ed earlier this afternoon, that everything was all right.
He and Joe were married, and they both looked overjoyed.
Champagne and canapés were being served in the courtyard, and there’d be a two-hour break for mingling and photographs before the wedding breakfast in the carriage house.
Jude helped himself to a flute of something he knew would be both expensive and delicious, hoping it would chase away the last of his anxiety.
He sipped from his glass, then coughed on the fizz as Hannah appeared from behind a massive stone urn. He’d looked at her plenty already today, but his heart still stuttered at the sight of her. She had never looked more lovely.
She’d been openly annoyed that she hadn’t managed to fit in the elaborate hair and makeup routine she’d intended for today, but there was no need for her to feel self-conscious.
She stood out in all the right ways, as far as he was concerned – and her almost bare-faced beauty, paired with the light waves in her hair and the dress that had been custom-made for her body, was nothing short of captivating.
‘Can I talk to you?’ she said, and the question was so unexpected that Jude felt his grip on his glass tighten dangerously.
He forced his fingers to relax before it cracked.
Hannah had been so desperate to avoid The Big Talk that he couldn’t believe she’d want to have it now, with their brothers’ big day still in progress.
Was this going to be some sort of letdown?
A ‘thanks, but no thanks’ after what he’d said to her, via his talk with Ed, at the rugby club? He felt sure she’d understood him.
‘OK,’ he said, unable to think of an excuse for saying no. He felt like his stomach was somewhere in the region of his dress shoes.
Hannah led him away from the wedding melee, back towards the spot they’d sat in two months ago, on the day they’d first come here.
Somewhat restricted by her outfit today, Hannah couldn’t flop down on the grass like she had last time.
Instead, she found a nearby bench to perch on.
Jude settled next to her, but made sure to give her space.
If she was going to share things she’d find difficult to say, and that he wouldn’t want to hear, he didn’t want to crowd her.
She took a deep drink from the champagne flute she was holding, then said, ‘I have no idea where to start, and we’ve been so rubbish at having proper conversations over the past four years .
. . It strikes me that I might as well begin at the end.
So.’ She lifted her glass to her lips again.
Drained it and put it aside, then said: ‘Please don’t go back to Australia.
Please don’t leave me again. I love you.
I’m in love with you, and I want you to stay. I’m asking you to stay.’
Jude felt his mouth drop open. Felt his mostly empty glass slide out of his grip and then heard it land, with a dull thud, on the ground between his feet.
He was stunned. This was the most effusive Hannah had ever been.
Even in the six months they’d spent together, she’d guarded the words ‘I love you’ like a dragon protecting its hoard – like she was determined not to let them slip out too often because each time she set them loose, they cost her something.
Actually, it seemed they were costing her something right now; she was practically hyperventilating, and had doubled over as far as her dress would allow. She’d buried her head in her hands, like she was frightened to look at him.
‘Hannah,’ he said, taking both of her hands in one of his, then lifting her face with the other so he could see her properly.
‘I’m not going back. I’d already decided that.
My life is here . . . you’re here. Nothing in the world could take me from you, if you want me to stay.
I’m yours. I’ve always been yours – from the very first day. ’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. Tears spilled from her sea-green eyes, and she swiped them away with trembling fingers.
‘I’m more sure of you than I am of anything. I could more easily believe two plus two was eighty-seven than accept I’m not meant to be with you. I thought you knew that, even then.’
Hannah swallowed. ‘I never doubted that you cared about me – but there were so many things you could be, so many things you could do and places you could go. You were so ambitious, and I could see how easily I might feel lost and lonely, even if we stayed together. I was terrified I’d become some miserable drag, and hold you back until you ended up resenting me. I couldn’t let that happen.’
‘The thing is, I don’t think I really am all that ambitious,’ Jude said, shaking his head.
‘I enjoy working with numbers, and I’d like to do something good with the talent I have.
That’s about it, to be honest. That day, at the airport .
. . I realise now I hadn’t told you about the meeting with Larry because it felt all wrong from the moment I agreed to it.
I didn’t want to do it. I hadn’t sought it, I wasn’t the one who set it up.
But I felt like I had to do it, felt sick at the prospect of refusing, and I couldn’t make sense of why.
You’d been so jittery in the run-up to the trip – it had taken me so long to persuade you into it at all .
. . I didn’t dare bring it up with you. I left it too long, and then—’
‘That woman with the cute baby asked us how long we were going to Oz for, while we were waiting to check in our bags. And you’d managed not to tell me the truth, but couldn’t bring yourself to tell an outright lie,’ Hannah said.
‘I was stood there with my return flight already booked, and you hadn’t bought one, because you weren’t sure when you were coming back. If you were coming back.’
‘Yes,’ Jude confirmed. ‘But I would never have stayed out there without you if we’d gone together.
That wasn’t how I was thinking. I’d sort of told myself I could maybe talk you round, if the need arose – get you to extend your trip to six months, a year maybe, that you might even get useful experience out of it, if you found the right job while I worked for Larry.
I was naive – desperate and panicking – but I didn’t set out to deceive you. I hope you can believe that.’
‘I can now,’ Hannah said. ‘I was just too angry to consider it at the time.’
‘What I said to you during our argument was unforgivable,’ Jude went on, forcing himself to gaze right into her eyes, though the guilt coursing through him was urging him to hide.
‘It was worthy of my mother, probably – which is no accolade at all, as I’ve recently realised.
You being awarded your start-up loan was the most brilliant moment, and I knew how much it meant to you.
To diminish that by suggesting you could turn it down and try again later, or’ – he found he couldn’t look at her as he said this, no matter how hard he tried – ‘to imply I’d fund you, like I was some Big I Am and you needed my help .
. . God. It was terrible. Shameful. I was groping for anything that felt like a solution, because I could see you slipping away from me. ’
‘I’m not going to lie,’ Hannah said, ‘that gutted me. Seemed to confirm all the worst, most patronising things I’d ever worried you might end up thinking about me.
And you probably don’t remember, but I had my first wedding booking, too, for the month after we were supposed to get back.
Nice couple, Anna and Jez – they got married at the Cider Mill just outside Buxton.
There was no way I was going to let them down; they were the first people who ever put their faith in me. ’
‘And there I was, showing no faith in you whatsoever. No respect for you, either, which is worse,’ Jude said.
‘You were right not to go with me that day; right to back yourself when it seemed like I wouldn’t.
That’s who you are, and I loved you for it even then, probably.
But it was easier – less painful – to tell myself there were other reasons why you didn’t come.
That you’d been looking for a way out, that you were bored of me already, that I’d always cared about you more than you cared about me. ’
‘That isn’t and was never true,’ Hannah told him.
‘But I’ve realised it’s hard for me to admit when I need people – when they matter to me so much that losing them could destroy me.
I hid from you when I shouldn’t have. Let you think things between us were unequal when they weren’t.
And there was something I didn’t tell you then, as well.
I can see now it had some bearing on how badly I reacted to the news about the LogicLabs interview.
How determined I was just to go, get out of there, without listening to everything you had to say. ’
‘What was it?’ Jude asked, bewildered.
‘I was supposed to see my dad the day before we went down to Heathrow,’ Hannah told him.
‘I went to his flat where we’d arranged to meet and he wasn’t there.
I’m sure he was nearby, but he was far too busy to come and meet me.
I didn’t tell anyone – not even Ed – because I felt so fucking stupid.
So pathetic for even trying to mend fences with him.
’ Her voice was tight with tears as she continued: ‘It cracked something open inside me. Something that had healed a bit and was suddenly raw and angry again. It wasn’t your fault, but it made a difference that day, I think. ’
‘Shit, Hannah, I’m sorry. Aside from Jane, who to be fair is worth two average mums, we didn’t win big in the parental lottery, did we?’
‘No,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Do I take it this means you and your mum are . . .?’
‘Not speaking. At all.’
‘She’s here today, though – has she honestly not—’
‘Not a single word,’ Jude confirmed. ‘I’m actually not convinced she’s spoken to Joe, either. She’s only here so there can be no report to the local bridge society, Rotary Club or WI that she wasn’t at her own son’s wedding.’
He’d felt rather sorry for her as she stood alone on the cobbles, clutching a flute of post-ceremony fizz.
Lillian was beautifully turned out in a powder-blue skirt suit, but obviously uncomfortable among Joe and Ed’s assembled guests.
He’d turned to her, ready to stand beside her in support – perhaps even to try and start fixing things.
But before he could approach her, she’d shot him an icy look and turned away.
‘That’s mad,’ Hannah said, shaking her head in amazement as he relayed this, ‘and you’ve done nothing to deserve it.’
‘I’m a huge disappointment, it turns out – but I’m OK with that.’
‘It’s still rough,’ Hannah argued. ‘I always hoped she’d . . . change. Improve. Be kinder to you.’
‘People have to want to change, Joe says. If she decides to try, I’ll hear her out. Until then, I need to focus on the mess in my own head.’
‘Not to mention your status as an unemployed bum,’ Hannah joked. ‘Assuming Marc hasn’t totally trashed my business, maybe I can find something part-time for you. Livi’s first in the queue for a job, of course, but we might have need of an underling from time to time.’
‘I’m thinking of investing in a start-up, actually,’ Jude said. ‘With an old friend. Here, in fact. Well – I’ll have some office days in Manchester, and I have no idea where I’ll live or anything yet, but . . . I have the beginnings of a plan.’
‘Really?’ Hannah gasped. ‘Here? Or at least near to here? Near to . . . me?’ Her eyes had gone glossy and she was biting that infernal bottom lip again.
‘Yes,’ he said, pulling it from between her teeth and resisting the urge to kiss her until he’d said everything he needed to say.
‘Here. And as near to you as possible. To go back to the beginning of this conversation – or the end, as you put it – I’m in love with you, too, Hannah.
I never stopped being in love with you,’ he went on, ‘and I never will. I want us to be together, to build a life together, without reference to what anyone else thinks it should look like. So this plan I have – which is maybe the first one I’ve ever made for myself .
. . I don’t want it to be just mine. I want it to be ours.
Because I know if it works for us, it’ll work for me. ’
‘I’m willing to get involved,’ Hannah quipped, tears spilling from her eyes as she smiled. ‘You know how great I am at planning things.’
‘I do,’ Jude said, unable to hold back a laugh. ‘But maybe let’s not start work until tomorrow, eh? There’s more than half a wedding left to enjoy, and I have it on good authority the food’s going to be incredible.’
‘Can I remind you some of us are on the clock, here?’ Hannah said tartly, standing up from the bench and brushing her skirt down. ‘I’m supposed to be finding family members and taking them off for magazine photos in the walled garden.’
‘I’m a family member. You found me, didn’t you? Will I do?’ He looked up at her with the complete adoration he’d always felt for her, hoping she saw it, willing her to trust it.
‘I reckon you will,’ she said, and leaned down to kiss him.