Briefly, he wondered what sort of metaphorical jump leads would be required for his engine to shudder back into life, only for his brain to supply the answer to that question with alarming speed. He forcibly pushed the thought aside as Clive waved at him.
‘What a sight for sore eyes,’ he said, his Yorkshire-accented voice warm and sincere. He held out his hand for Jude to shake, then thought better of the gesture and pulled him into the tightest hug Jude had experienced since Joe visited Sydney eighteen months ago.
‘It’s so good of you to come all this way,’ Clive went on, ‘so fantastic to see you.’
Thoroughly disarmed and unexpectedly emotional, Jude cleared his throat and said, ‘I’m happy to be here. It’s great to see you, too.’
‘Look at you,’ Clive said. ‘You’re even taller than I remember. Is there something in the water Down Under?’
‘Unlikely,’ Jude answered, warming under the older man’s friendly gaze. ‘You’re probably just not used to seeing me standing up. In supervisions I was usually sat in a corner, hunched over a page of equations I couldn’t fathom and trying not to cry. Remember?’
Clive laughed, a boom that ricocheted around the conference room – which was now dressed and ready for the delegates who’d soon begin arriving. He was a round-faced, round-bodied, gregarious man in his late fifties. Jude had always imagined that with the addition of a white, stick-on beard and red costume, he’d be the perfect am-dram Father Christmas.
‘Nonsense,’ Clive said. ‘Brains like yours don’t come along often! I was blessed to teach you whatever I could. It was my pleasure.’
Clive was one of the only people Jude had ever met who thought his intelligence a delightful curiosity, rather than a responsibility to live up to. Supported by a stream of schoolteachers, Lillian had always told him that squandering his brainpower would be shameful – that every opportunity it offered should be exploited. Clive had taken a different tack: in his mind, Jude’s brilliance should be enjoyed, stretched for its own sake – not considered some shortcut to success that it would be sinful to scorn. They’d met by chance at a dinner while Jude was still at Cambridge, and – though he hadn’t intended to leave and undertake his PhD elsewhere – something in the man’s easy manner had struck a chord that kept reverberating as Jude made postgraduate plans.
While it wasn’t like he had much to compare it to, Jude wasn’t above admitting Clive’s kindness had at times, during their three years of working together, felt almost fatherly. He’d needed it after his time at Trinity College, which had been marred by the weird disconnect between how thrilled he was supposed to feel about being there, and his deep-seated ambivalence about the place. He’d been the proverbial square peg trying to fit into a very ornate round hole, and it had made him taciturn and miserable. Now he looked back, he understood that his withdrawal from old friends might have come across as arrogance or snobbery, when it was actually born of desperation not to expose the truth that he missed them unbearably. Back then, it hadn’t occurred to him that relying on antidepressants to get him through each term was a sign the university didn’t suit him – not least because many of his classmates were also on some prescribed substance. The notable exception was Sunil Prasad, who went by Suni: a suitably bright moniker for a boy so cheerful he’d probably never even heard of citalopram.
‘You ready to do your talk? Happy with your slides?’ Clive asked. ‘They’ll be set up, ready and waiting for you when it’s your turn to speak.’
‘Yep, all good,’ Jude answered. ‘Not too many – I don’t want to put everyone to sleep. But hopefully they’ll find the work interesting.’
‘Interesting?’ Clive cried. ‘It’s extraordinary! It’s the sort of technology that will change lives –savelives.’
Jude felt himself flush, and Clive clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t take on, lad. You always were dreadful at hearing a compliment, but sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.’
‘If you insist,’ Jude said with a short laugh.
‘Aha,’ Clive said, his tone lifting as he gestured towards someone on the other side of the space. ‘There’s another bright young thing – the woman who’s making today happen.’
Jude glanced briefly at the person in question. She had her back to him, her reddish hair knotted on top of her head.She was wearing a black top and trousers, clutching a clipboard to her side. His eyes snapped back to Clive. ‘I thoughtyou’dorganised today.’
‘Me? God, no,’ Clive chortled. ‘I engaged the sponsors, sorted out who’d be giving the talks and decided on the running order, but I wouldn’t know the first thing about co-ordinating guest lists or getting journalists involved. As for setting up equipment and organising food .?.?. if it had been left to me, we’d be having this conference in the back room of the White Lion and lunching on pork scratchings. I hired someone who I knew would make a better fist of all that.’
Jude looked around the room, refusing to let his gaze settle on the woman Clive had pointed out. Perspiration had broken out on the skin between his shoulder blades, and his cereal bar seemed to be curdling in the pit of his stomach.
This placewastoo nice for Clive to have booked it. The chairs had been placed just so in front of the stage, and programmes had been laid out on every seat, positioned at consistent, jaunty angles. At the far end of the space, the lunch tables were already arranged with cutlery, glasses and place cards. There were cloth tote bags, presumably containing exhibitor merchandise, on the large desk next to the conference room entrance, where a tea and coffee station had also been set up. Everything was too tidy, too neat, too well thought through to have been handled by anyone other than an events professional.
Jude was holding off a powerful realisation the way people in stories sought to avoid encounters with the supernatural. If he didn’t believe in it, maybe he wouldn’t have to see it. Maybe it wouldn’t be true.
‘Hannah!’ Clive shouted. ‘Hannah, love – come and say hello to one of my old students. My most favourite student ever, actually.’
She crossed the room, and her mouth briefly dropped open in horror when she recognised him. He felt it like a knife to the gut.
She clamped it shut again before Clive could notice and kept striding in their direction. As Jude wondered whether his knees were about to give out, he couldn’t help admiring her professionalism.
When she reached them, he searched her face for some sign of what she was feeling and gleaned nothing. Her expression was shuttered; blank and inscrutable.
She was still, without doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His chest burned with awareness of it; with indignation at howunfairit was that just looking at her could still make him weak with admiration.
She wore little or no makeup, and her milk-white skin was radiant: lit-from-within bright against the charcoal cotton of her t-shirt. Her cheeks were pink with exertion – or maybe discomfort. Like a cat’s, her light green eyes betrayed no emotion as she looked at him. The colour of them had always made him think of the sea, and to his dismay he discovered that, even now, he’d happily drown himself in them.
‘Hannah is our event planner, Jude,’ Clive said. ‘And I’m sure you’ll agree she’s done a tremendous job, bringing all this together. Hannah, Jude will be one ofour keynote speakers today – which you might already know, if you’ve had a shufty at the programme.’ He pointed from one to the other, then stared at them expectantly – waiting for them to shake hands.
Hannah said nothing. She didn’t move, didn’t smile. She justwaited, staring, like she was asking a silent question and fully expected Jude to get the answer wrong.
Would it embarrass her if he brought their personal history into what was, for her, a place of business? And what could he say that would make sense, under the circumstances? Admitting they already knew one another but hadn’t spoken in years would only prompt more questions – especially from a character as sociable and chatty as Clive.
