Hannah laughed. ‘No, but I do have twenty-twenty vision, which probably helps.’ She pointed at his glasses. His prescription was pretty strong, and he’d been wearing them since the age of three – both facts that Hannah, unlike most people in his life, knew.
‘Good point,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t actually thought of that.’
‘Maybe the next challenge will be, like, “solve these twenty simultaneous equations”,’ Hannah said. ‘You’d have to carry me through that one.’
‘I’d refuse.’
‘You bloody would, too,’ Hannah said, as they entered a tent that they discovered had been set up like a pub. ‘“It’s better for you if you actually understand it, Hannah”,’ she sing-songed, parroting the sort of stuff he used to come out with when he tried to help her with anything mathematical. ‘Youneverdid my homework for me, no matter what your mum said.’
‘What?’ Jude asked, as he and Hannah both accepted pints of local cider from a smiling barman. He realised his tone must have been sharp when her cheeks went pink. She took a careful sip from her overfull glass, like she was trying to put off answering him for as long as possible.
‘Hannah?’ he probed.
She put her glass down on the bar and sighed heavily. ‘You know she wasn’t my biggest fan. Webothknew that, the whole time we were .?.?. anything. Occasionally she’d come out with something snide – always when you weren’t there to hear it. An accusation or a comment on how poorly matched we were, just to make sure I didn’t forget.’
‘Jesus,’ Jude said, utterly staggered. ‘And this was when we were still atschool? When we were kids? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’ He felt furious, but guilty, too – and he realised not a single part of him doubted that what Hannah had said was true.
It struck him that Lillian had done the same sort of thing with him, from time to time. Even now, he could remember what she’d said when he and Hannah finally got together: ‘So you’re .?.?. what? Her tenth boyfriend this year? I wouldn’t bank on being the one she sticks with, darling. You hardly suit, and it seems she has endless options .?.?.’ It had sounded like concern, but even at the time it had hurt – like she was pressing her fingertips into an already painful bruise.
‘There was no point in saying anything,’ Hannah told him now. ‘You had enough issues with her as it was.’ This simple statement of fact was another reminder of how well Hannah knew him. How uniquely placed she was to empathise with the responsibility he’d always felt for keeping the peace at home. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t scared of her,’ Hannah went on. ‘There were actually moments when I enjoyed how mad she got at not being able to get a rise out of me.’
‘That I can believe,’ Jude said. He found himself raising his pint glass towards her in salute.
‘Being ballsy didn’t help much in the end,’ Hannah said absent-mindedly, picking up her own drink again.
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘Nothing. Never mind,’ she said firmly – like she’d stepped too far over a line she hadn’t meant to cross, and was now keen to stand safely behind it again. She pulled her phone from her pocket, then swiped at the screen. ‘Text from Ed,’ she explained. ‘Next task’s starting, apparently, but we can take the drinks with us.’
Jude looked around, surprised to discover that he and Hannah were the last people in the tent. It seemed they’d both lost track of time, and neither of them had noticed everyone else leaving.
When they arrived at the old farmhouse – their destination for the day’s second and final challenge – Joe was stood in the doorway, tapping the face of his watch. ‘What kept you?’ he asked, one eyebrow arched, the question bland yet somehow accusatory.
‘Period emergency,’ Hannah lied, without missing a beat. ‘Happy to tell you all about my desperate dash for a giant tampon if you want to hear—’
‘Oh, fuck no,’ Joe said, his composure suddenly shot. Jude had forgotten how squeamish his brother was about blood, but Hannah hadn’t. Watching her best him, which happened with impressive frequency, never got old.God, she was cool. He felt like he was fifteen again for a moment; condemned to worship at the shrine of her sassiness, and not a bit mad about it.
‘You’re in this room,’ Joe said, slightly recovered after a short walk down the main hallway of the building. He pointed to a door on his left. ‘You’ll find a clock on the wall that will start ticking down from sixty minutes when the challenge begins.’
‘And the challenge is .?.?.?’ Hannah asked.
‘To escape, of course. First team out wins. The answer to the final clue will be the combination that unlocks the door. As soon as you punch it in, the timer will stop. Ready?’
‘Born ready,’ Jude said, far more confident about tackling a room full of puzzles than he’d been about clay-pigeon shooting.
Joe opened the door for them and, without thinking, Jude took Hannah by the hand and led her inside. His brother closed the door, but not before Jude saw his face light up with a smile that – for once – appeared entirely sincere.
The room was large and square, with a fireplace in the centre of one wall. Above it was a large digital clock, the number display set at60:00. This was an old writing room, or maybe an office, Jude thought. It was furnished with a sofa, a bookcase, a desk and several chairs.
He and Hannah were surrounded by a range of random objects they’d have to examine in search of solutions to whatever questions and riddles they faced. Bizarrely, some of the stuff in here was the sort you’d usually find in a school: old textbooks, pencil cases, sticky notes, ring binders .?.?.
‘Where do we start?’ Hannah wondered aloud.
‘Good question – and well worth asking before the clock starts winding down,’ Jude said. ‘I wonder if there were some initial instructions we missed .?.?.’
‘There’s a piece of paper on the mantelpiece,’ Hannah said, striding over to pick it up. She held it aloft so they could look at it together, and within seconds they’d both begun laughing.
The theme of the game was ‘escape from after-school detention’ – something Jude had never had to do himself, but which Joe, Ed and Hannah had probably all wished was possible at some point. There were five puzzles to solve, each connected to a different school subject. The room they were in, Jude guessed, was supposed to be a head teacher’s office.
