Chapter 28
Jude and Joe were at a small boutique hotel eight miles from Renfrew Manor.
Joe had declared it was ‘untraditional’ and ‘potentially bad luck’ for him and Ed to stay at the same place the night before the wedding, but Jude suspected neither tradition nor superstition had played any part in deciding where they’d slept.
In fact, he felt fairly sure it was the presence of a sauna, steam room and beauty therapist that had swayed the choice to stay at The Purefoy, one of the Peak District’s ‘hidden gems’, according to Tatler magazine.
At this moment, Joe was somewhere in the building having a ‘reoxygenating skin bath’, whatever that meant.
Jude was exchanging excited WhatsApp messages with Suni, who was characteristically thrilled that Jude had agreed to meet him again so they could talk seriously about the prospect of going into business together.
He had no idea what was going on between himself and Hannah, besides a fair amount of incredible sex.
But irrespective of whether she wanted to be with him properly – permanently – he couldn’t go back to LogicLabs, or to the shadow life he’d made for himself in Sydney.
There were people he’d met and liked there, but no one he’d miss in the way he would miss his brother, and Hannah and her family, if he left them all again.
Coming back here had forced him to confront the fact he’d spent four years living as a fugitive from his feelings – from himself.
Aside from the not inconsiderable amount of money he’d made, the sole benefit of having been away so long was that it had empowered him to think differently about his relationship with Lillian.
After months of saying she wouldn’t, and after everything that had happened, he didn’t believe she’d turn up today – but Joe still insisted she would appear, unable to face the prospect of being outed as absent.
‘It won’t play well with her social set,’ he said, ‘which we both know matters more to her than anybody’s feelings. ’
When he and Joe returned to her house after their post-Sunday lunch drink, it was to discover – as Joe had predicted – that she’d filled Jude’s suitcase and left it on the doorstep.
In the space of a few hours, he’d gone from number one son to pariah, and his mother’s commitment to this new world order seemed total.
Every time he’d tried to talk to her since, she’d coldly rebuffed him.
At the same time as feeling like the rug had been pulled from under him, he found himself strangely unsurprised by Lillian’s behaviour.
It was as if some part of him had always known there was no substance to their connection; that the bond between mother and son was paper-thin, lightweight, and would dissolve like tissue as soon as he refused to do as she wanted.
It horrified Jude that his mum had been so confident in her control of his actions; that she hadn’t felt any need to downplay her involvement in the permanent job offer from Larry.
She’d thought him so malleable – so devoid of any motivations or wishes of his own – and she’d based that judgement on years of successfully pointing him in one direction or another.
He was as angry with himself as he was with her, and Joe had impressed upon him that therapy was a vital step in sorting his head out.
He planned to take the recommendation seriously.
Just as he was contemplating a shower, Jude’s phone rang.
Hannah was calling him. Her number hadn’t changed in the whole time he’d been away, and every time he remembered this, he felt a fresh wash of guilt at having ghosted her.
Was it wishful thinking to wonder if she’d deliberately left the door open, in case he ever changed his mind?
He answered as soon as he could pick up, concerned something must be wrong for her to be reaching out just two and a half hours before wedding lift-off.
‘Hannah?’ he said into his handset. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s Ed,’ she said, the high pitch of her voice betraying panic. ‘He’s disappeared.’
‘What? Why?’
‘He got a text – a fucking text – from our dad to say he can’t make the wedding. He was devastated. And he’s got cold feet about the size of this thing, the magazine deal, all the hoopla . . . Remember I said he wasn’t as cool about it as he seemed?’
‘Shit. Yes. Oh my god.’ Jude could feel his heart hammering inside his ribcage – banging like it was trying to get out. ‘If this wedding doesn’t happen, Joe will be ruined. I know he seems invincible, but—’
‘He isn’t,’ Hannah said, knowingly.
Jude nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him. ‘What can I do?’ he asked.
‘We have to find him,’ Hannah said. ‘Talk him down. He wants this, he’s just hurting. Freaking out.’
‘Of course, I’ll help you look for him. But where do we start?’
‘I don’t know . . . Pubs? Cafes?’ Hannah guessed. ‘Anywhere walkable from Renfrew, since he has no car.’
‘You don’t think there’s a chance he could have got in an Uber . . .?’
‘Oh god, maybe,’ Hannah groaned. Then she said: ‘Actually, no. Probably not. He’s left his phone here.’
‘Well, that’s something. Keep thinking, and so will I,’ Jude said. ‘I’ll come to you, we’ll make a plan and then split up to start searching. We’ll cover more ground that way.’
‘OK. Thank you.’
‘Of course.’
‘And don’t tell Joe Ed’s missing,’ Hannah said urgently. ‘I don’t want to terrify him without cause – we’re going to sort this out, and maybe he’ll end up being none the wiser.’
‘Right,’ Jude said. ‘None the wiser.’ He chose not to remind her that deliberately keeping things from Joe was almost always impossible; that the chances of him not finding out something was going on were so remote, you’d need the James Webb Space Telescope to find them.
They said goodbye, Jude pulled his trainers on and – in case he couldn’t get back here in time – picked up his travel bag and slung his wedding suit over his arm.
He ran down the hotel corridor, his pulse still thudding in his veins, and instructed himself to stay calm.
He’d send Joe a text, he decided – make up some urgent but unserious excuse for dashing off unexpectedly.
It was unfortunate that seconds after he punched the ‘down’ button for the lift, its doors opened to reveal Joe standing inside it: relaxed, fresh-faced and smiling.
‘Where are you off to in such a rush . . . with all your stuff?’ he demanded, raising an eyebrow.
‘I’m just . . . Er. Hannah wants help with something,’ Jude said, doing an incredibly poor job of not looking like he was panicking. ‘She rang me. She needs me.’
He hadn’t registered this before, but the thought that he’d been her first call made him feel ten feet tall. It seemed important. And it certainly appeared that she’d confided in him before reaching out to Livi, Claire, Charlie or even her mum – all of whom were on-site.
‘Well,’ Joe said with a smile, ‘if she’s asked you to be there for her, be there. I’ll see you at the wedding.’
‘Great. Yes. Definitely. The wedding,’ Jude said, pushing his way into the lift Joe had just vacated. He pressed the button for the lobby before he could say anything else suspicious.
Jude knocked on the door of the bridal suite just twenty minutes later, and found that Hannah – in typical fashion – had spent the time creating two well-organised lists of places they could look for Ed.
She’d googled local amenities, then divided them up sensibly so she and Jude could hit as many as possible within the next hour.
He reached for the piece of paper she was holding out to him, noting it had been hastily scribbled on White Rose Inn-branded notepaper from the writing desk in the bay window.
‘If it gets to one o’clock and we still haven’t found him,’ Hannah said, ‘we’ll . . . Well. I don’t know what we’ll do. Let’s crack on and hope it doesn’t come to that.’
She was grim-faced but still beautiful; so constructive in the face of potential disaster, so determined to save the day for their brothers.
How had he ever imagined he could live without her?
Jude pulled her into a hug, wanting to soothe her for a moment before they started running around.
She leaned in, taking comfort from it, like she needed it and didn’t have the energy to hide the fact.
‘I’ll take Ed’s phone as well as mine, just in case,’ she said after a beat of silence. ‘Turn your ringer on, and make sure it’s loud enough to hear.’
‘Got it,’ Jude said. He had no problem whatsoever with doing exactly as he was told.
They went their separate ways, and half an hour later Jude was sweaty, dishevelled and had looked in five different places for Ed. He hadn’t been in any of them.
Hannah called for an update, and he gave her the bad news. ‘Same here,’ she said. ‘I’ve asked around, too, and nobody’s seen him. This is awful. I don’t know where else we can look.’
‘Where are you?’ Jude asked. She sounded tearful again.
‘Kids’ playground,’ Hannah said miserably.
‘I went by it a couple of minutes ago,’ Jude said. ‘I’ll double back and find you.’
Face to face again, and both slumped on a children’s swing set, they looked at one other in ill-disguised dismay. ‘Let’s think,’ Jude said. ‘What does Ed love? What calms him down? What does he do when he’s stressed or unhappy?’
‘I dunno,’ Hannah answered. ‘He eats. Watches unbelievably bad TV. Drinks too much beer with his rugby mates. Goes to the gym, plays sport . . .’
She looked up and caught Jude’s eye just as they came to the same realisation. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started typing, as did Hannah.
‘We need to look for a rugby club,’ she said.
‘Or a sports park,’ Jude added.
‘Or even a school field . . .’
‘How about this?’ Jude said, holding up his phone so she could see the words ‘Redbridge Rugby Football Club’ on the screen, with an address around five minutes’ walk away.
‘That’s it,’ Hannah said, ‘it has to be.’ She jumped up, threw herself at him for a brief, tight hug and then pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’
They ran almost all the way there, and Jude marvelled that not once, not even for a second, did she let go of his hand.