Chapter 1 #3
‘Surely you’re not going to dump him just for singing you a song?’ Livi said, scandalised. ‘You’re incredible – I’ve never known anyone so quick to pull the plug on every boyfriend. He was just trying to be nice. And he’s quite handsome, for an old man.’
‘He’s thirty-seven, Liv, not drawing his pension,’ Hannah grumbled – though at nine years older than her, he doubtless seemed ancient to her twenty-one-year-old sister. ‘Anyway, it’s not about the song. It’s about what the song, and his very public dedication of it, represents.’
‘I don’t understand you at all,’ Livi sighed, opening the passenger side door of Hannah’s company van – a poppy-red Ford Transit with the Eventurous logo on it. With a shake of her head, she got inside. ‘See you soon, Charlie,’ she said, before shutting the door.
‘Not to wind you up further,’ Charlie said, once Livi was out of earshot, ‘but after tonight’s revelations I’m not sure I understand you either. At least, not as well as I thought I did.’
‘Yeah. On that,’ Hannah said, ‘I don’t want you to think it was about me not feeling I could be honest with you. It was more . . .’
She trailed off, unable to find the right words, and Charlie finished the thought for her: ‘It was more about you not wanting to be honest with yourself.’
Charlie hadn’t meant this observation to hurt, but it landed on Hannah like a blow to the stomach. She felt astonished – and briefly winded – by the accuracy of it.
‘Is he in Manchester, too?’ Charlie asked. ‘This mystery man who apparently meant the world to you and yet has never been mentioned in the three years I’ve known you?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s not.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Charlie cried in alarm. ‘He’s not dead, is he? Oh my god—’
‘He’s not dead,’ Hannah interjected, almost laughing at her friend’s obvious alarm.
‘Nowhere near. Healthy and hale, last I heard.’ What an indictment of her ability to arrange her face, though.
How miserable must she have looked at the mere mention of him, for Charlie to have jumped to that conclusion?
‘You’re not friends at all anymore, then? You don’t speak?’ Charlie asked.
‘No,’ Hannah said. She didn’t trust herself to elaborate.
Anyway, what good would it do now to acknowledge how completely his total disappearance from her life had gutted her?
What was the use of admitting how badly it had hurt that her texts and calls went unanswered until, eventually, she stopped making them?
‘I suppose losing touch with someone you never want to speak to again is easy when you move ten thousand miles away,’ she said, striving for nonchalance. ‘The time difference makes it so effortless it could almost be accidental.’ It definitely wasn’t.
‘Ten thousand miles?’ Charlie was aghast.
‘He lives in Sydney,’ Hannah explained. ‘Works for some fancy technology firm out there in one of those six-figure jobs people like me don’t understand.’
‘Hmm,’ Charlie said, frowning at Hannah’s self-deprecation. ‘Smarts come in all shapes and sizes, Han. Neil could argue that black was white, but he was incapable of correctly boiling an egg. People are different, that’s all.’
‘That’s for sure,’ Hannah sighed. Charlie didn’t know how right she was.
‘So, this dude is a tech bro type who’s gone native in Australia?’ Charlie asked, wrinkling her nose. ‘I’m picturing Zuckerberg in a pair of mirrored sunglasses, clutching a surfboard. Or maybe . . . Elon Musk brandishing barbecue tongs. All very grim.’
At this, Hannah hooted. ‘Quite the picture you’ve painted there. No way to confirm or deny the accuracy, but let’s go with it. It’s definitely preferable to imagining him looking good – or doing good.’
‘He’s got no socials, then?’ Charlie asked.
Hannah shook her head.
‘Not that you’ve checked,’ Charlie commented archly.
Hannah felt her face heat, and was grateful when Livi rapped her knuckles on the van window, throwing up her hands in the universal gesture for come the hell on.
Hannah raised a mollifying finger that signalled sorry – one more minute.
‘I’ll tell you the full story,’ she assured Charlie. ‘Soon. I promise.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Charlie said. ‘Last question, I swear, but I have to ask since you haven’t told me: what’s his name?’
‘Jude,’ Hannah told her.
She remembered how he’d introduced himself to her on his first day at their comprehensive: bespectacled, clad in a brand-new blazer and freshly polished shoes that screamed mid-level bank manager rather than schoolboy.
Under strict instructions to show the new kid where various classrooms were, an unimpressed Hannah had muttered, ‘Oh,’ when he told her his name, sullenly offering hers in return.
Privately, she’d thought, ‘In this place, you’d have a far easier time if you were called something basic and normal. Ryan, or Chris, or James.’
Her throat felt weirdly thick now, though – sticky after she’d uttered the single syllable, as if it had been lodged there, clinging to her vocal cords. Waiting to be spoken aloud again.
‘Jude,’ Charlie repeated. ‘Nice name.’
Hannah nodded, unable to disagree.
Like everything else about him, it had grown on her.