‘Of course. No thanks needed. But does this mean .?.?.?’ Joe said, deliberately leaving the question unfinished.
‘I don’t know yet. But I know what I want it to mean.’
Joe nodded, pleased, then seemed to remember what he was here for. ‘We’d best go down,’ he said with a grimace. ‘We’re having duck, I’m afraid.’
Ugh. Jude knew immediately it would be the dish with cherries and port. It was their mother’s favourite, but he actively hated duck – could barely face it after a bout of serious food poisoning when he was twelve. He’d spent two days hunched over the toilet bowl after a badly cooked restaurant dinner. He, his mum and brother had been on holiday in France, the Easter before they’d moved to Beckford. Even now, remembering how ill he’d felt brought Jude out in a cold sweat. Lillian had claimed emetophobia, so fifteen-year-old Joe had looked after him, keeping him clean, hydrated and eventually getting him to nibble on unbuttered chunks of baguette from the local market. The vomit cloud had lifted on day three, but the memory of the incident never did. Even the smell of duck – the sight of the pink, fatty meat – still made him want to hurl.
Jude wondered whether Lillian had forgotten all this, didn’t care or hadn’t even noticed in the first place. Perhaps, he told himself, all of those possibilities added up to the same thing.
After thirty-five minutes of stilted conversation, feeling nauseated by the sight of the uneaten poultry slowly congealing on his plate, Jude finally learned why he and Joe had been asked to lunch.
‘I understand congratulations are in order, darling,’ his mother said, the endearment jarring as she eyed him, unsmiling, from the other side of the dining room table. She’d changed out of her gardening clothes and was dressed in her standard uniform of slim navy slacks, silk blouse and pearls. Her silver hair was styled in a sleek bob that, if Jude were feeling uncharitable, he might have described as severe.
For a split second, he thought she knew what had happened between him and Hannah; that she might even be happy for him. Then he remonstrated with himself. That wasn’t it at all.
‘What’s this?’ Joe asked, sipping from his water glass.
‘I got a job offer this morning,’ Jude said, suddenly feeling like his clothes were on too tight.
‘A permanent job, with the promise of permanent residency,’ Lillian said pointedly. ‘Lots more money, lots more responsibility .?.?. It’s marvellous news.’ She did smile then, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. She had eyes like Jude’s, though with fewer shades of blue shot through the irises. They were greyer. Colder than his.
‘Citizenship?’ Joe said, setting his glass down. ‘Since when has that been the plan?’
‘I’ve thought about it, on and off,’ Jude admitted, uncomfortable beneath his brother’s scrutiny.
The air in the room felt like it was full of static electricity, the way it sometimes used to before Lillian and Joe argued. Jude felt his stomach turn at the thought of being stuck in the eye of the storm.
‘And you applied for this job? Recently?’ Joe asked. His tone was calm and measured, but his face was a riot of conflicting emotions. It was years since Jude had seen his brother struggle to master himself like this, and it alarmed him. Something was very wrong, here.
‘Not exactly,’ Jude said. ‘In fact .?.?. no. Not at all.’ As the words came out of his mouth, he heard how weird they sounded. Registered how mad it was that this had landed in his lap, unasked for.
‘He didn’t need to,’ Lillian said, blithely waving an elegant hand. ‘I heard from dear Larry last week; he said he was struggling to convince you to sign a new contract. I suggested to him that his offers simply hadn’t been good enough, so far.’
‘But this one is, I take it?’ Joe ground out, his dark eyes flashing from beneath his furrowed brow.
‘It’s .?.?. insane, to be honest,’ Jude said, shaking his head almost apologetically. He feltguilty, he realised. Why did he feel guilty? He hadn’t done anything wrong.
‘And do you want this job?’ Joe demanded, his self-control fraying a little. ‘Do you want to go and live permanently in Australia, when you’vejust this morningmanaged to salvage something with Hannah?’
‘What has she got to do with anything?’ Lillian asked sharply. ‘That girl has never been anything but bad news. A badinfluence. She never understood what you were capable of – could only ever have held you back.’
‘Held me back from what, Mum?’ Jude heard himself ask, his voice heavy and sad. ‘What you thought was best? Whatyouwanted me to do?’
Lillian’s pink-painted mouth formed an outraged little ‘o’, and Jude knew he’d crossed a line he’d never stand behind again. He cast a glance at Joe, who had sagged slightly in his seat. He looked relieved, Jude realised. Like a weight had been lifted off him.
In all the years since he’d fallen out with Lillian, Joe had never once lost touch with Jude. He’d visited him at university, hosted him in Manchester, called him every week .?.?. but he’d erected a barbed-wire fence around the topic of their childhood. Jude could see now that separating how they each felt about Lillian, rarely even mentioning her, had rendered her powerless to divide them. He wondered how many things Joe had kept to himself during that time; how many things he hadn’t told Jude, for fear that if he wasn’t ready to hear them, home truths could land like bombs, destroying more than their intended targets.
God, there was so much he hadn’t understood. So much he hadn’t looked directly at, until now. That guilty feeling needled him again, and he recognised it for what it was: the shame of not wanting the thingshewanted for him. The pain of wishing for something different and knowing it would disappoint her.
Lillian was the parent who’d stayed – the one who hadn’t abandoned him and Joe when they were kids. In Jude’s childish mind, the logic had been simple: heowedit to her to justify the pride she took in him. He’d never once asked if the price he paid for her pride was fair.
‘I have onlyeveracted in your interests,’ Lillian said – seeking to soothe and reassure him. ‘You needed help to reach your full potential,’ she explained, ‘guidance to choose the right path. You’re too self-effacing. Not as ambitious as you should be. You’d have gone to Warwick instead of Cambridge if I hadn’t stepped in. Wouldn’t that have been silly?’ She gave a laugh; a hollow trill, entirely empty of mirth.
‘I hated Cambridge,’ Jude said. ‘I was miserable there.’ He’d never admitted this before, not even to Hannah.
‘Nonsense,’ Lillian argued, with a musical giggle and a firm shake of her head.
‘It’s the truth,’ Jude insisted. ‘And .?.?. I don’t want to go back to Australia. Larry’s a soulless lunatic, and I can’t work for him anymore. No amount of money could convince me.Youcan’t convince me.’
