Worried the lippy makes me look like an actual scarlet woman.Too extra?
She’d come in here intending to remove the swipe of Lisa Eldridge’sRibbonlipstick that she’d applied on a whim, then spent the short walk here second-guessing. Tissue in hand, however, she’d hesitated.
Charlie
LEAVE IT BE
It’s stunning.
Then, a moment later:
Charlie
You doing ok? x
Though Hannah hadn’t said as much, Charlie knew she’d been anxious about tonight.
Hannah
Yep
Then Hannah added a jaunty thumbs-up emoji that she immediately regretted.Overkill.
The truth was, while The Red Dress did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to projecting self-confidence, her nerves felt scraped raw. She’d told her brother she could negotiate a productive peace with Jude, but – with the need to deliver on her promise imminent – she felt freshly annoyed that responsibility for patching up some pale imitation of their friendship had fallen to her.
Beneath this irritation was the same fear she’d identified but refused to fully interrogate since Ed and Joe got together. It was an anxiety she’d hosted like a dormant virus, hoping it wouldn’t attack her immune system – yet suddenly she was shaky and feverish with it. The worry was simply that being proximate to Jude in any way wouldhurt. That it would be more painful than her brave face could bear. Seeking him out to begin communications felt little short of masochistic .?.?. but it was what she’d signed up to do.
She shoved her phone back inside the small black evening bag she carried, then made her way to the bar. Her mum was on the far side of the room, chatting with Martin – a sturdily built, kind-faced kidney doctor she’d recently begun seeing. Hannah waved and smiled, but resolved not to interrupt their date. There was no sign of Jude yet, while Ed and Joe had already been swamped by friends, acquaintances and well-wishers. It blew Hannah’s mind a little that they evenknewthis many people.
Everyone on the first floor of Crockett & King was here by invitation – though, slightly annoyingly, there was a problem with the downstairs men’s toilets, so this storey’s gents would have to be shared with the bar’s regular patrons. Hannah guessed there must be more than a hundred and fifty guests milling around already, drifting in and out of various rooms, alcoves and ‘snugs’ – and the evening had only just started.
She couldn’t help noticing her brother looked slightly overwhelmed. He was naturally gregarious, but it was clear to her that the parameters for this party had been set by his limelight-loving fiancé. It occurred to Hannah that Ed might not know quite as many of these people as Joe did.
She ducked beneath the wildly gesturing arms of a stocky, well-groomed man in a three-piece suit so she could stand next to her brother, then felt him relax a little as she wound her arm around his waist.
‘Drink?’ he asked her. ‘Cocktail? Fizz?’
Hannah considered. An Old Fashioned would certainly take the edge off her unease, but she needed to keep her wits about her this evening. ‘Fizz would be great,’ she said.
Ed leaned towards the bar and poured her a shallow coupe of something pink and sparkling that she sensed wasnotprosecco. Joe had, in a typically extravagant move, put some money behind the bar tonight, and there were rows of sparkling glasses positioned strategically on every surface, along with gigantic ice buckets stocked with bottles of champagne. Hannah sipped from her glass, and the fizz shimmered on her tongue: vibrant and delicious, with a slight flavour of tart strawberry. ‘Oh mygod,’ she moaned, a little overcome. ‘That’s delicious.’
Ed shot her a wry smile. ‘The man knows how to pick a wine. If it had been left up to me, you’d be on Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference cava.’
Hannah laughed. ‘But can Joe corral groups of thirty teenagers at a time, or kick a drop goal from fifty metres?’
‘Unlikely,’ Ed conceded, and they began to mingle. Hannah was introduced to everyone as his twin, best friend, best womanandwedding planner. She met people she’d heard of, and whom she’d encountered via radio, podcasts or TV– but for the most part, Joe’s showbiz pals struck her as normal and nice. She congratulated herself on not being awestruck at meeting Dylan Byrne and Nathan Lambert, the leading man and director, respectively, ofMary Quinn: a dark BBC period drama she’d recently inhaled, and which was tipped for several Emmy nominations.
Unfortunately, it was a different magnitude of struggle to keep her face neutral when she saw Jude chatting with a tall, slender woman in the far corner of the room. She had no idea when he’d arrived, but the tight bodice of Hannah’s dress immediately felt like it was constricting the action of her lungs. As she scanned him, noting the casual cool of his expensive-looking jeans, grey marl t-shirt and stone-coloured chore jacket, she cursed herself for dressing up. Perched on her three-inch heels, she felt exposed: idiotic, rather than empowered. His head was tilted in the way that meant he was listening to his companion intently, killer cheekbones sharp in the low light of the room and teeth flashing as he smiled.
Only the woman’s back was visible from this vantage point, but Hannah didn’t need to see her face to feel sure she was attractive. She was wearing a simple, A-line dress made of thick black organza: almost shapeless, but semi-transparent, and very much the sort of thing Hannah herself might have worn, under different –normal– circumstances. The woman’s hair was mahogany dark and cut in a razor-sharp bob that fell to just below her earlobes. Hannah was torn between admiring the woman’s style and .?.?. yes. Wanting to shove her from the nearest open window.
The hot rush of jealousy she felt was wild. Shocking in its headiness. Hannah berated herself for her failure to contain it, her brain supplying words like ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unreasonable’ and ‘undignified’. The burn didn’t fade, though, and she felt maddened by the need to know who this woman was. There was a fresh flash of heat at the back of her neck as it dawned on her that her refusal to think about Jude or his new life in Australia – let alone ask mutual acquaintances how he was doing – meant that, for all she knew, the dark-haired stranger might be someone significant. She might be a partner of the kind Hannah hadn’t found herself. Hadn’t, even for a moment, sought, if she was honest.
She turned to Joe, who’d appeared to her left and was grinning indulgently at Nathan Lambert’s insistence that his fiancée, screenwriter Jess Mackenzie, was the true talent behindMary Quinn. ‘I’m just going to find another drink,’ Hannah said, the words coming out thin and scratchy. Joe looked beyond her, easily spotting his brother. He shot Hannah a penetrating look. ‘That’s our cousin, Tamsin. She’s visiting from Toronto, and she’s happily married to a man called Chad.’
‘I .?.?.’ Hannah groped for words and tried to prevent herself from physically sagging with relief. ‘Good for her,’ she managed after a moment, then moved as quickly as she could in the direction of the nearest tray of champagne.
Glass in hand, she retreated around a corner, then through an archway, and found herself back in the building’s rear stairwell. There was nothing here but the entrances to the bathrooms, so – aside from the odd personcoming and going – she was free to catch her breath. Her heart was thumping like it was trying to punch its way out of her ribcage.
