‘You just sort of .?.?. yearned for him, then? For how long?’ Charlie asked. Her eyes had gone round, as if she was struggling to picture Hannah lovelorn and longing. Given her carefully crafted reputation as a romance refusenik, Hannah couldn’t blame her.
‘A long time,’ she admitted. ‘Until I was twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three?Are you telling me you didn’t so much as kiss him until you were twenty-fucking-three?’
‘I am.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Charlie poured more wine into their glasses and took a deep gulp from her own, as though she’d just had a shock and needed to steady her nerves. ‘I’ve seen the man! Surely keeping your paws off him for that long tooksuperhumanrestraint. It must have been miserable.’
‘At points, yeah,’ Hannah said, instructing herself not to think about Thea, the softly spoken Grace Kelly lookalike that – to Lillian’s delight – Jude had brought home for Christmas during his final year at Cambridge. At the time, Hannah had been seeing Josh Brady: a good-looking stoner who’d been in their year at school, and whom Jude had always disliked. Josh was back home after flunking out of Keele University, and if any part of Hannah was aware she’d deliberately chosen to date the anti-Jude, she’d decided to ignore it.
‘So why do it to yourself?’ Charlie demanded. ‘Assuming, of course, that the yearning went both ways.’
‘Because deep down, I knew we were a bad fit,’ Hannah said, her self-control slipping a little as she ground out the words. ‘You saw his presentation today: he’s a literal genius. He was a youth member of Mensa, for god’s sake. His mum enrolled him at ten. The older we got, the clearer it was that – in a lot of ways that really mattered – we were nothing alike. The world he was going to be a part of .?.?. people like me don’t live there.’
‘People like you .?.?.?’
‘Normal people. Ordinary people.’
‘I don’t even know what thatmeans,’ Charlie said hotly, brows knitted together. ‘What’s normal? Who’s ordinary? Isn’t everyone special, to whoever loves them?’
‘That’s a very sweet idea,’ Hannah said, straining not to roll her eyes. ‘Perfect for one of thoselive, laugh, lovetype posters people put up in their kitchen. It doesn’t work that way in real life, though, does it? He was always going to leave – always going to end up somewhere I couldn’t go, at least not as his equal.’
Every word Hannah spoke was costing her something now. Pride.Peace. She carried on anyway. ‘I felt like I’d lost a limb when he first went away to university. I lived for him coming back at the end of every term, but each time he did it was like he’d grown,expanded, and I’d feel like I was stuck – small and shrinking away to nothing. We stayed friends while he was there, but it was weird. Dishonest, somehow. We both knew that, for the first time, there were things we weren’t telling each other, but it was easier to pretend we hadn’t noticed. I visited him once – met all these rich, clever people in this beautiful, historic place. I felt like the village idiot. I held it together until I left, then cried the whole train ride home.’
‘My god, Hannah,’ Charlie murmured, her eyes soft with sympathy. ‘That’s awful. But .?.?. you must have got over it, if you eventually got together?’
‘Over that particular incident, yeah,’ Hannah said. ‘And eventually, for a while, I managed to kid myself that him wanting me, and me wanting him, was enough. That none of the other stuff mattered. We had six months where it was good.’
Goodwas hardly the word for the undeniable rightness of being with him – for the way she and Jude had fused together like burning atoms. Nor for the terror and joy she’d felt at finally giving in to a need she’d kept at bay for years.Goodwas a poor label for long nights of hungry hands sliding over bare skin. For the kick of satisfaction that came with smelling like his citrussy shower gel the next day.
‘And then what?’ Charlie asked.
‘And then it fell apart, just like I’d always been frightened it would if I let myself trust it.’ Hannah was smart enough to know her father had gifted her with an unusually intense fear of abandonment – but also that, when it came to her and Jude, she should have listened to it.
She steeled herself and went on. ‘I’ll spare you, and myself, the gory details. The point is that, for all the things we’d planned and promised one another, he couldn’t stand still. Couldn’t stop himself from doing the next impressive thing that was expected of him. He couldn’t even pause for long enough to ask himself whether it was whathewanted. Jude was like a train with no brakes, running on rails that ended god knew where. I had to choose whether to cling on and head to wherever he took me, or .?.?.’
‘Go your own way?’
‘Exactly,’ Hannah said. ‘I finally understood that the things I cared about, wanted for myself – like getting Eventurous up and running – would never be as flashy or important, or make as much money, as the opportunities he’d have. But they mattered tome. It hit me that I couldn’t be a passenger, someone who’d easily lift out of any situation because I didn’t truly belong there. I couldn’t live like that, when what I wanted was for us to build a lifetogether. So I ended things. And he was so angry with me that, up until this morning, he never spoke to me again.’
Hannah was dry-eyed but utterly wrung out. She’d pulled this story from somewhere so deep inside herself, the telling of it had left her feeling hollow: like she was raw and bleeding where its roots had been yanked free.
Charlie, brushing tears from her own lashes, said: ‘It sounds like you did the right thing. And it was cruel of him to cut you off; brutal to throw a decade of friendship on the fire. I’m docking hotness points for that – probably enough to offset the glasses. And youknowhow much I love a man in slutty little glasses.’
Hannah managed a watery chuckle, then said: ‘It was beyond shit. And I haven’t forgiven him – not that he’s ever asked.’
‘D’you think he was over here just for today?’ Charlie said. ‘Just for the conference?’
‘I guess so,’ Hannah answered. ‘Much as it pains me to say it, that project is the sort of work anyone would be proud of. It’s natural he’d want to show it off.’
‘Long way to come for one event, though,’ Charlie mused. ‘Mad, in fact. You don’t think .?.?. you don’t think he’sbackback, do you? That he’s taken a job at Sheffield Uni or something, and that’s why he came to the conference? It was a small one, when you think about it. Of course the organisation and catering wereon point, but it was hardly the sort of event you’d expect someone to travel halfway around the world for.’
Hannah felt her heart stutter. She hadn’t even considered this. From some recess in her mind, however, there came a reminder that – leaving aside his treatment ofher– Jude had always been fiercely loyal. If Clive had askedhim personally to come to the conference, he might well have said yes for that reason alone.
‘Highly unlikely,’ she said. ‘You don’t give up the sort of money he’s sure to be earning, not to mention two hundred days of sunshine a year, to become an overworked, underpaid academic in South Yorkshire.’ She’d intended for this to sound bracing and authoritative but ended up coming off as scornful.
‘Fair points,’ Charlie agreed. ‘Though you’ve got to assume he’ll see his family before hoofing it back to the airport.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Do you think he’ll try to contact you before he goes?’
