Charlie almost choked on her hazelnut mocha. ‘What? One hundred and fiftythousand pounds?’
Hannah turned her laptop around so Charlie could see.
‘It’s got to be a spoof, hasn’t it? Spam,’ Hannah said, the fizz of excitement in her belly dissipating as the likeliest explanation for the enquiry dawned on her.
‘I suppose it could be,’ Charlie said, ‘but that email address looks considered to me – as if someone’s set it up with a purpose. It doesn’t look random, like it might if it were generated by a bot. It’s more like a .?.?. a .?.?. what’s it called? A sock puppet type thing.’
‘You’re a font of internet wisdom today, aren’t you?’ Hannah said wryly. ‘Unfortunately, I still have no idea what you mean.’
‘What Imean,’ Charlie said, her eyes suddenly shining, ‘is that maybe someone wanted to ask you about this date without revealing their identity. And perhaps that someone is awell-knownsomeone – which would also explain the cray-cray budget.’
‘You mean, like .?.?. a famous person? A celebrity?’
‘Exactly,’ Charlie said.
Hope took flight in Hannah’s chest, then abruptly floundered. ‘Shit. You don’t think it’s Marc playing games, do you?’
‘No!’ Charlie cried. ‘Why would you think that? Negative Nancy.’
‘Does the phrase “walking red flag” not ring a bell?’
Charlie tipped her head on one side, considering. ‘I still say no. Marc’s the type of red flag that likes to .?.?. I dunno – wave about where people can see him.’
Hannah snorted a laugh, but Charlie went on. ‘I’d say this morning’s TikTok antics make itlesslikely he’d send you a fake enquiry, not more. He wants you, and other people, to see him as some wounded romantic hero. He’d not hide behind a pseudonym to wind you up, I don’t think.’
‘You think it could be real, then?’ A pleasant hum of anticipation began to bubble in Hannah’s stomach at the thought of planning a wedding for someone well-known, with the sort of budget that would let her indulge every creative impulse she could imagine. Admittedly, doing it in three months would be hugely challenging – but she found herself galvanised by this thought, rather than discouraged. A celebrity wedding could offer priceless exposure for Eventurous, assuming the nuptials weren’t kept private. And even if they were, the networking opportunities and professional satisfaction this might bring Hannah would be immense. Her mind began to whir with ideas.
Charlie was beaming at her. ‘Only one way to find out,’ she said.
4
Jude had been back in the UK for about seventy-two hours, and he was still struggling to tell what day of the week it was. First thing this morning his iPhone had informed him it was Friday, so he was definitely in the correct place: a mid-sized conference venue near Sheffield.
Thanks to his screwed-up circadian rhythms, he’d arrived at the Mercury Centre unnecessarily early. It wasn’t even eight thirty, and while there were already people bustling in and out of all three conference rooms, there was no sign of Clive.
Jude’s stomach growled, reminding him that his body remained functional, even if his brain hadn’t yet recovered from the hellish, two-day journey that had taken in nine time zones and required numerous airline sick bags, plus a prescription for diazepam. Aware that lunch wouldn’t be served until after the conference talks concluded some hours from now, he decided to go in search of food.
Even putting the nightmare trip from Sydney aside, it was little wonder Jude needed sustenance – nor that he felt drained. Being back under the same roof as Lillian had set his nerves on edge in a way he hadn’t anticipated. Had being around her always involved walking on that many eggshells? He’d forgotten what it was like to have to self-censor so vigilantly; to have to consider in advance everything he did, and every word that came out of his mouth.
Since his return, his mother had done nothing to indicate she was anything other than pleased to see him. She was thrilled with his success at work, and with the freedom and lifestyle this afforded him. More than happy for him to continue living on the other side of the world, so long as this promised prosperity. However, the low hum of agitation inside Jude spoke of her brittleness – of the risk that some wrong move could shatter the peace. It was an old fear. Muscle memory. Jude’s childhood instinct to do as he’d always done – keep her steady – was irrepressible, but for the first time he recognised that it was costing him something. He was sure he hadn’t fully exhaled since he’d set foot in Beckford on Tuesday.
The risk that he could bump into Hannah at any moment only intensified his anxiety. He had no idea where she lived now, but it wasn’t out of the question that she’d pop into the village to visit her mum or Claire, who he knew lived nearby with her husband and two sons. He remembered how, during a brief phone call home in his early days in Sydney, Lillian had sneered her disapproval at Claire’s surprise pregnancy, discovered during her final year of A levels. Always fond of her, Jude was pleased to glean from mutual friends that she hadn’t been fazed by local gossip. In fact, Claire had achieved good exam grades, had her first son and then married his father. She’d given birth to a second baby two years later and, from what he could gather, was now training part-time as a primary school teacher.
Jude suddenly felt exhausted, in a way that even extreme jet lag couldn’t explain. He leaned against the side of the vending machine he’d just located and let himself close his eyes for a moment. It shouldn’t have bothered him that he knew far less about how Hannah lived these days than he did her siblings. It had been his choice to sever all contact between them. She’d always attracted admirers without trying, and in the latter years of their friendship he’d loathed the group nights out that inevitably saw a parade of men swarming around her like greedy wasps at a picnic. When their relationship fell apart, one of the few things Jude felt sure of was that she’d have no trouble replacing him – and that it would kill him to know she was with someone else. He couldn’t face a future where his mobile phone became an unexploded grenade; a weapon that might go off in his pocket at any moment with a call, text or social media post that declared how happy she was with some new boyfriend.
Now, he tapped the phone against the vending machine’s card reader, punching in the codes for a can of Coca-Cola and a chocolate-covered cereal bar. He was going to need all the help he could get to stay awake and on form today.
As he sipped the fizzing soda, wincing at its sweetness, the enormity of what he’d done when he cut Hannah off loomed before him in a way it hadn’t when he was on a different continent. Here, her absence from his life wasn’t a hole he could gingerly tiptoe around; it was a chasm, like the crater left behind by a meteor strike.
Everything reminded him of her – of what they’d once been to each other. For Hannah, new layers of meaning had probably smothered old, shared memories. She’d think of her nephews, buying comics and sweets when she popped to the QuickMart, not of the time she and Jude had bribed Joe into buying them illicit cider, then drunk it in Hannah’s back garden. A visit to Sheffield would mean shopping, clubbing or a theatre trip, whereas to Jude, it was forever fixed as the place he’d finally been honest with her. Where he’d told her he loved her above anything else in the world, and convinced himself she felt the same – even if she couldn’t bring herself to say it in so many words.
With a deep breath, Jude instructed himself to focus on the task immediately at hand. He needed to pull himself together, find Clive and give a presentation that was worthy of what he and the team who’d been behind him for the past four years had built together.
Then, regardless of his brother’s bizarre entreaties for him to stay here for weeks on end, he needed to get back to Australia as soon as humanly possible.
When Jude returned to the conference room, Clive was deep in conversation with a woman in chef’s whites. Not wanting to interrupt, he hung back until they’d finished chatting and the caterer had made her way back to the venue’s kitchen.
As she passed by him, Jude noted that she was very pretty; she had the sort of face you saw in old Hollywood movies. But he registered her beauty in the same way he would have a man’s, or that of an especially elegant painting or piece of furniture. The observation didn’t move him; didn’t spark anything he recognised as desire. He was .?.?. somewhat deficient in that department these days – like a car that had been left in a driveway for too long and no longer wanted to start.
