‘Fine,’ Larry grumbled. Glasses clinked in the background at his end, and Jude wondered how much of this conversation he’d claim to have forgotten come Monday morning. ‘Look out for my message, won’t you,’ he barked, then rang off without saying goodbye.
It occurred to Jude that Larry was among the most joyless individuals he’d ever met. Nothing – not the millions of dollars he made each year, the ‘dollybird’ girlfriends he paraded around with, or the success of his numerous businesses – seemed to bring him any pleasure.
Had Jude become similarly cheerless since entering Larry’s orbit? He felt a twinge of discomfort as he admitted that, yes, he had become some low-frequency version of himself. A single night in a pub beer garden – one evening of easy conversation with people who reallyknewhim – had proved it.
Initially, throwing himself into work had been protective: a way to focus his energy and achieve some forward motion after the catastrophe with Hannah. The diagnostic software his team was developing had been the perfect project to pour his energies into because what they were building had genuine value. After a while, Jude had found it easy to relegate the state of his heart and mind to the back burner in favour of helping doctors treat patients with what he thought of as ‘real problems’. But how would he fare when he wentbackto LogicLabs? He didn’t need to wait for Larry’s email to feel sure that, whatever work was thrown his way next week, it would be wholly uninspiring.
He gulped down what was left of his water, eyeing his mother as she shooed away a neighbourhood cat that had the audacity to keep defecating in her borders. It was a large, fluffy, smoky-grey thing: a tom that the neighbours referred to as Jasper. He bolted, but then scaled a tree at the edge of the lawn and stared down at Lillian as she shook her secateurs at him in impotent outrage. Jude laughed. Something about the spectacle reminded him of how Joe handled their mum.
He’d ‘run away’ at the age of eighteen, never spending another night under her roof again after he left for university – but the retreat had rendered him stronger, not weaker, and it had maddened Lillian. Even now, Joe’s calm insistence that she’d be welcome at the wedding seemed like the equivalent of taunting her from a branch beyond her reach, though Jude didn’t doubt his brother’s sincerity. For the first time, it struck him that the place Joe had chosen to sit and look down from all these years was actually the moral high ground. Lillian could meet him there whenever she pleased, but he’d accepted that the prospect of her doing so was remote. Whatever Joe was playing at when it came to himself and Hannah, Jude couldn’t help admiring his forbearance on this front.
His phone chimed with an incoming text and he flinched reflexively, assuming Larry had more to say on the subject of his continuing absence from the office. To his surprise, the screen showed a preview of a WhatsApp from his old university friend, Suni – someone he heard from only sporadically, but whose messages were typically cheering.
He opened it, intrigued.
Suni had sent him a link to an article in an online tech magazine that covered the Sheffield conference, specifically focusing on the LogicLabs diagnostic software.
Suni
Amazing stuff
Kudos! Thrilled to see you’re doing so well!
Suni had always been a uniquely positive presence in the Cambridge University maths department. He came from a massive family who ran a chain of successful restaurants in the West Midlands, and was the only strongly academic sibling among seven. He’d treated studying almost as a lark; something he was doing because he could, rather than because he felt he should. To their tutors’ mild horror, he was open about the fact that his parents would have much preferred him to manage a new restaurant location in Solihull than spend three more years ‘doing sums’.
Jude
Thanks
Appreciate it. Hope you’re well?
Suni
I am! You still in GB?
Jude
Yeah
Here till October, probably – sticking around for my brother’s wedding.
Suni
We should meet up!
Where are you staying? I’m in Manchester now. Finally convinced mum and dad I wasn’t a natural restaurateur, lol.
Jude
Weirdly, I’m there at the end of next week for a suit fitting. My brother lives in the northern quarter – any good?
Suni
Fancy! I live with my girlfriend in Didsbury! But I’m cool to meet somewhere central. Let me come back to you with a time and place.
Jude smiled. He’d forgotten how almost everything Suni said was an exclamation. He’d even been like this in tutorials.
‘I get it – this is a partial differential equation!’
