Chapter 5 #3
Thirty minutes later, as she helped Charlie begin arranging a raft of carefully labelled food options on three large, rectangular tables, Hannah heard Clive introduce the day’s closing keynote speaker.
His rich baritone rang out, amplified by the microphone he was holding, and Hannah realised any hope of tuning out his words was forlorn.
‘I first met this young man when he was even younger – just twenty-one,’ Clive said, his voice tinged with affection.
‘It’s fair to say he had the most promising mind I’d come across in my many years of teaching, as well as a very good heart.
’ Hannah felt her own throb painfully at this, and gripped the edge of the table, grounding herself.
‘I knew then that he’d go on to achieve great things,’ Clive continued, ‘and I’m thrilled he’s joined us today to tell us about them, all the way from LogicLabs in Sydney, Australia. Jude Gibson, everyone.’
Jude rose from his seat at the rear of the room and made his way to the stage, his long strides easy and graceful.
Hannah had a momentary vision of him walking very differently: hunched over, almost hiding, after his year ten growth spurt.
She’d been prone to poking him whenever she saw him move like that – to encouraging him, in the least sentimental way, to straighten up and own the extra height he’d suddenly acquired.
Now, Jude bent to shake Clive’s hand, laughed embarrassed thanks for his effusive introduction, then stood tall again.
He fiddled with the switch on the microphone that had been clipped to the neck of his t-shirt.
Hannah couldn’t help marvelling at the change in him.
It was like some final gearshift into adulthood had happened when she wasn’t looking, and now she was caught playing catch-up.
Even more so than when she’d last seen him, he looked comfortable in his own skin.
There was something quietly confident in the way he held himself now: an unshowy self-possession she’d have found boundlessly attractive, if she let herself.
Hannah realised she was staring and returned to placing tiny trifles on the silver tray in front of her.
When he started his presentation, she had to suppress a shiver.
His voice had deepened a little, but – now he was using it to do more than mumble a reluctant ‘pleased to meet you’ – she could tell his accent hadn’t changed. She found she was glad of that.
When they first met, she’d rolled her eyes and privately filed his posh boy voice under ‘just another thing he might be bullied for’.
Even then, though, she’d secretly liked it.
It suited him, and she enjoyed the way it made everything he said sound serious and sincere – which it often was, especially compared with the nonsense spouted by most boys their age.
Aware that her grip on herself was loosening, Hannah resolved not to listen too hard to his words. Before long, though, she’d heard enough to feel sure that Clive’s enthusiasm for Jude’s work hadn’t been misplaced.
From two tables away, Charlie moved in Hannah’s direction, silently pushing her now-empty hostess trolley. She leaned in close so she could whisper in Hannah’s ear. ‘Is he saying what I think he’s saying?’ she asked.
Feeling as if her breathing was shallower than it should be, Hannah nodded.
Charlie waved her hand in the direction of the kitchen, and – her own buffet table now fully arrayed – Hannah followed her.
‘He’s using maths to help cure cancer?’ Charlie hissed, the second the door had closed behind them.
‘Not once in my GCSE lessons did my dullard teacher ever imply that might be possible. It was all “the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the blah-something-blah”. Nothing that seemed like it might actually be useful!’
‘I’m pretty sure Pythagoras’s theorem is considered useful – not least by anyone who’d prefer their house not to fall down,’ Hannah said.
She was impressed with herself for remembering this, but all too aware she’d only ever understood it because Jude had explained it to her during one of their many interminable study sessions.
‘I think what he’s talking about is AI,’ she went on.
‘Artificial intelligence. Algorithms, maybe? Not that I really know what they are. What his team has created doesn’t cure cancer, but from the sound of things it can read scans quickly, without mistakes, and speed up diagnosis.
That’ll help get people the right treatment more quickly.
It sounds like the sort of thing my mum would go mad for, to be honest.’ Over many years and through much hard work, Jane had risen through the ranks to become lead cancer nurse at their local NHS Trust. It was a position of such awesome responsibility that it blew Hannah’s mind a little; she could barely imagine looking after one person with cancer, let alone helping to co-ordinate care for thousands.
Charlie whistled under her breath. ‘Then I’m sorry to say it, but maybe we’re not dealing with a cyborg here after all. This is . . . confusing?’
‘It is,’ Hannah agreed. Though a treacherous voice – one that sounded an awful lot like Jude’s mother – whispered from somewhere inside her that, actually, the situation was devastatingly simple.
Lillian had once told her – in an out-of-earshot moment Jude had missed, but which Hannah would always remember – that if she held onto him, she’d only ever hold him back.
Add it up, Hannah told herself now. Two plus two is four. The evidence is here in front of you.
This project, this research, was what Jude could do. This was what leaving her had empowered him to achieve.
Perhaps Lillian had been right all along. Justified in relentlessly pushing her favourite son to pursue bigger, better things, even when he didn’t seem sure he wanted them.