‘Shouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ he said again. ‘We had a falling-out.’
‘Oh,’ she said flatly.
‘That’s not why I’m here,’ he felt compelled to say. Although that wasn’t altogether true. But he didn’t want Hilary to jump to the wrong conclusion.
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I’d suggest you go and sit in your ghastly old chair while I make us something to eat. I have a chicken and mushroom pie which will stretch to two without too much difficulty. Are you ready for some more painkillers?’
He was so weakened by the agony he was in, he felt pathetically weepy at her kindness, which he certainly didn’t deserve.
She helped to settle him, put some more logs on the fire, switched on lamps, drew the curtains and then after placing a glass of water and a packet of tablets within easy reach, she left him alone. She seemed to him to be the woman she once was, the woman she’d been before Hugh’s death – capable and caring and quite unlike the shattered woman Nina had described and whom he’d expected to encounter today, the wreck of a woman he’d come to help. What a joke that was; he was the one who was a wreck and in need of help!
They ate in the sitting room, off trays, and the conversation was mostly about the puppy which Hilary would be collecting in a few days.
‘No doubt you know that it was actually Nina’s idea for me to have a dog,’ she explained, ‘and at first, I resented her suggesting it. Again, you probably know that too, but now that it’s all happening, I can’t remember when I felt so excited about something. Can you believe I’m even using a word like excited?’
‘It sounds good, Hilary,’ he said and meant it. ‘I’m pleased for you. And how are you in general? I know about the incident in John Lewis and that—’
‘Please don’t say any more!’ she interrupted him. ‘It’s enough that you know about it.’
Knowing that he had to tread carefully, he said, ‘Have you spoken to anyone about what you did and why?’
‘Not specifically about my compulsion to steal baby clothes, if that’s what you’re asking. I know why I did it. It’s obvious. The shame of being caught, and of Nina also knowing about it, was enough to bring me to my senses. I won’t relapse. I know I won’t. What’s more, I’ve given all the things I took to a charity.’
‘Do you think that turning to Nina was in some way a cry for help?’ he suggested.
‘As dramatic as you make it sound,’ Hilary answered with a small sniff, ‘I suppose that’s what it was. In my panic after I was caught and was being questioned, Nina, with her calm composure, was the only one who I trusted not to overreact. Also, her opinion of me was at rock bottom already, so it couldn’t get any worse, could it? She was extremely good with me. There was no judgement from her, only practical help.’
‘Hugh would have been proud of her.’
‘Yes,’ Hilary said softly. Then putting her tray and empty plate on the coffee table in front of them, and taking his tray from him as well, she said, ‘And it’s because of Nina that I found the courage to join a support group for parents who are grieving for the death of a child. It’s not online like the group you joined, but we actually sit in a circle and take it in turns to speak. That’s ifwe want to. I don’t always, it’s enough just to listen sometimes. I have to say, the common denominating factor amongst us, is how angry we all feel. Someone joked that we should rename it as an anger management group and maybe we should take up boxing classes.’
Keith smiled his understanding and was about to say that he wouldn’t mind joining that himself, when she said, ‘Well then, I suppose you’re here to talk about the divorce, aren’t you? So shall we get down to it?’
Taken aback, he swallowed and marshalled his thoughts. Divorce wasn’t the first thing he wanted to bring up; there was something else he needed to say before that. Originally, he had been in two minds about telling Hilary about his visit to the spiritualist church with Diane, but since it had been such an important turning point for him, he wanted Hilary to know about it.
‘Firstly,’ he began, ‘I want to apologise for walking out on you the way I did. It was brutal how I did it and cowardly that I blamed you for pushing me away, and at a time when you needed me most.’
‘It’s true, I did push you away, but then you had someone to go to, so I didn’t need to push too hard, did I? Would you have gone if there hadn’t been anyone?’
Her extreme reasonableness and the unwavering manner of her gaze was quite unnerving. ‘It’s a fair question,’ he said, ‘and probably the honest answer is no.’
‘Apology accepted,’ she said briskly, sounding as if she were moving on to the next point on the agenda of their meeting. ‘And it seems only fair that I should apologise for my own part in the breakdown of our relationship. That’s something I’ve learnt at the group, how many relationships unravel following the death of a child, no matter the age of that child. You’d think it would bring couples closer together, wouldn’t you, that we’d be unitedin grief? But then you know all this already, don’t you? That was how you were able to move on.’
He sighed. ‘I wish that were true,’ he said. ‘That was my mistake, thinking that I had come to terms with losing Hugh, or at least believing that I had managed my grief. I’ve since realised I’d merely suppressed it and then a few days ago, it all came spewing out.’
And as much as he’d rather forget the incident had ever happened, he told Hilary about Diane’s unexpected interest in spiritualism and how he’d been talked into accompanying her to the church she had become so taken with.
‘I didn’t believe in any of it,’ he explained, ‘I’ve never had any time for that kind of thing, you know that, but I went to please Diane. To keep the peace.’
Hilary rolled her eyes at that. ‘It always annoyed me when you did that, did something for the sake of keeping the peace, it was as if you were martyring yourself. So what happened when you went to this spiritualist church?’
He blinked and went on. ‘The church had a visiting medium and my mind had wandered while the woman was supposedly in some kind of trance and then suddenly Diane was whispering that the medium had a message for me from Hugh.’
Hilary stiffened at that, and her expression intensified. ‘And?’ she said sharply.
‘And apparently Hugh was happy, and I wasn’t to worry about him or be sad. He wanted me to know that he’d been prepared for his death, and it came as a merciful release, and I was to get on with enjoying my life, that I had to look to the future. Death wasn’t the end, he wanted me to know, only the start of a new and better journey.’
