‘Smart move,’ Hannah commented bitterly.
‘You were right, Han,’ Ed said, his choked tone doing something violent to her insides – sending her into a state of such protective fury she felt sure that if her father was in this room right now, she would be capable of murdering him. She went to Ed and threw her arms around him, crushing his hulking form to her far smaller one as if she could envelop him, make him feel sheltered and safe, through sheer force of will.
‘I should have listened to you,’ Ed went on, ‘not just about today, but .?.?. all those times he screwed us over.Shit. I can’t believe he’d do this – on my fucking wedding day. But .?.?. why am I surprised? I’m such an idiot.’
‘You arenot,’ Hannah said, forcing back a sob. Two fat tears rolled down Ed’s cheeks, and it was almost more than she could bear. She wanted to burn something down, kick something until it broke – but what would be thepoint? Their father wasn’t here to see her rage, or Ed’s devastation.
‘You saw through him so much faster than I did,’ Ed insisted. ‘You’ve always been smarter than me. I should have cut him off when you did. I can’t count the number of times he’s let me down since.’
‘Ed,’ Hannah said, ‘I used to sit in the living room window and wait for him long after the rest of you when we were kids. Have you forgotten that? I wassucha daddy’s girl when he still lived with us. I adored him. Worshipped the ground he walked on. I even look like him, for god’s sake – I have his hair, hisface.’ She swallowed and forced herself to go on. ‘He used up his credit with me faster because I was even more desperate for him to care than you, Liv and Claire. I’m not smarter than you, it was just easier – quicker – for him to break me. And then I had no choice but to rebuild.’
‘But you’ve never wavered since. You’re so strong, and I’m .?.?.’ Ed took a deep breath, and Hannah could see he was fighting the urge toproperlycry – to do the sort of ugly sobbing that would leave his eyes red-rimmed and his face swollen up. The event planner in her reared to life then. She wouldn’t have him looking anything other than lovely, smiling and handsome in his wedding photos. She wouldn’t have him looking unlike himself.
‘I did waver. Once,’ Hannah said. She knew this news would shock him out of his despair.
‘What?When?’
‘The evening before Jude and I were supposed to fly to Australia, I went to meet him in Derby, where he was livingthen. Took the train over.’ Hannah glanced at Ed, who was looking at her like she’d just grown a second head. ‘I don’t know why,’ she went on, ‘but .?.?. something about leaving the country for two months – being further away from home than I’d ever been in my life – made me not want to go without trying to patch things up. Call it superstition, if you like. Jude’s always been terrified of flying, convinced it’ll kill him. Maybe he’d got me spooked.’
‘What happened?’ Ed asked.
‘What always happens,’ Hannah said. ‘He completely forgot. When I got to his flat, there was nobody there. I had to call him five times before he picked up. Then he said he was in London, on a work trip. Based on the background noise, it was pretty clear to me he was in a pub or restaurant, probably out with some woman – and not too far away, either, based on the accents I could hear.’
‘Fucking hell, Hannah. That must have been .?.?. just .?.?.shit.’
‘It was,’ she said, laughing a little at his speechlessness. ‘I think it was the most he’d ever hurt me, actually.’ As she said this, some part of her brain quietly set about drawing dots between this event and what had happened the following day. Making connections that her determined suppression of this attempt to reach out to her father had rendered impossible before. Hannah’s stomach dropped as she saw, for the first time, the clear link between what her dad had done and how visceral her reaction to Jude’s fuck-up had been. She’d treated the incidents as though they were linked, and they weren’t. She’d approached judging the men as if they were alike, and they were not. It wasn’t her fault, but thatwaswhat had happened.
‘I can’t believe this,’ Ed said, plonking his backside down on the sofa. The feather-filled cushions made a lowwhooshas he landed. ‘I wanted him here, Han. Stupid as that makes me, it’s true. And I couldn’t give a damn about half the people whoaregoing to be here .?.?.’
Ah. Here was the other problem. The one Hannah had known was on the horizon for weeks, and which she’d hoped she’d done enough to stave off.
‘Listen,’ she said bracingly, ‘you and Joe are going to have a brilliant day. You trust me, right? I’ve seen to it.’
Ed nodded, but didn’t look fully persuaded.
‘The magazine people have all been told they have to take picturesdiscreetly. That they’re to keep well back from the action unless invited in. There are no interviews today – all that happens later. And there are social rules, too, all squared with Tamsin. People can say they’re excited to see you guys today and no more – no location-sharing, no livestreaming,nothing. There’s no posting content until tomorrow, when everything’s done and you guys are already home.’
‘You think it’ll work? That it’llfeellike a wedding, not some media circus?’
‘I’m going to make it work,’ Hannah said, decisive. ‘Now, I’m going run down to the bar –yes, in this dressing gown – and get us a whisky each. I reckon we need them. You get in the shower, and it’ll be here for you when you get out.’
‘OK,’ her brother said, standing up and scrubbing his hands over his face.
Hannah did as she’d promised, thankful that only a few people had checked in to the inn so far, and her risk of being spotted was low. The sole barmaid on duty didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at Hannah’s attire, so she figured she was far from the first scantily clad woman who’d appeared on a mission to buy emergency wedding day drinks. Given that Livi, Claire and her mum were somewhere in the building, it might be she wasn’t even the first one to turn uptoday.?.?. It would be very like Jane to insist they enjoy a flute of fizz as they had their hair and makeup done.
When Hannah got back to the bridal suite, the shower wasn’t running. The bathroom door was open. She felt her stomach flip.
Her hands shook, and she put the two tumblers of whisky she was carrying down on a side table before she could drop them. Ed’s phone was resting there, but – as she’d suspected the second she returned – her brother was gone.
28
Jude and Joe were at a small boutique hotel eight miles from Renfrew Manor. Joe had declared it was ‘untraditional’ and ‘potentially bad luck’ for him and Ed to stay at the same place the night before the wedding, but Jude suspected neither tradition nor superstition had played any part in deciding where they’d slept. In fact, he felt fairly sure it was the presence of a sauna, steam room and beauty therapist that had swayed the choice to stay at The Purefoy, one of the Peak District’s ‘hidden gems’, according toTatlermagazine.
At this moment, Joe was somewhere in the building having a ‘reoxygenating skin bath’, whatever that meant. Jude was exchanging excited WhatsApp messages with Suni, who was characteristically thrilled that Jude had agreed to meet him again so they could talk seriously about the prospect of going into business together.
He had no idea what was going on between himself and Hannah, besides a fair amount of incredible sex. But irrespective of whether she wanted to be with him properly – permanently – he couldn’t go back to LogicLabs, or to the shadow life he’d made for himself in Sydney. There were people he’d met and liked there, but no one he’dmiss in the way he would miss his brother, and Hannah and her family, if he left them all again. Coming back here had forced him to confront the fact he’d spent four years living as a fugitive from his feelings – fromhimself. Aside from the not inconsiderable amount of money he’d made, the sole benefit of having been away so long was that it had empowered him to think differently about his relationship with Lillian. After months of saying she wouldn’t, and after everything that had happened, he didn’t believe she’d turn up today – but Joe still insisted she would appear, unable to face the prospect of being outed as absent. ‘It won’t play well with her social set,’ he said, ‘which we both know matters more to her than anybody’s feelings.’
When he and Joe returned to her house after their post-Sunday lunch drink, it was to discover – as Joe had predicted – that she’d filled Jude’s suitcase and left it on the doorstep. In the space of a few hours, he’d gone from number one son to pariah, and his mother’s commitment to this new world order seemed total. Every time he’d tried to talk to her since, she’d coldly rebuffed him.