‘Then you need to find a way to stop that feeling happening. Why don’t you take a plus-one, somebody who is there not so much to hold your hand, which you certainly don’t need, but to be on Team Nina?’
‘The look of horror on my mother-in-law’s face would be priceless,’ she said with a laugh.
‘Would she really be so shocked to see you with somebody else now?’
‘She’d be outraged; in her eyes nobody could ever replace her son.’
‘What about in your eyes?’
The question was so unexpected and direct, and hit a nerve so powerfully, Nina wasn’t sure how to answer.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised when seconds passed and she hadn’t spoken, ‘perhaps that was too blunt of me.’
‘It’s a reasonable enough question,’ she said, ‘and part of me thinks that I have to look to the future and what I want for my life, but it’s … ’
‘Hard to let go of what you once had?’ he offered.
‘Yes. I know full well that Hugh has gone and that I owe it to him to be happy again.’
‘You owe it to yourself too, don’t forget.’
She frowned. ‘For one so young, you’re very wise.’
‘I’m not so young,’ he refuted, ‘I’m thirty-two.’
‘Wow, as old as that!’
‘Now you’re making fun of me. But back to the subject of this wedding, is there a male friend who could go with you?’
She shook her head. ‘Everyone I know is partnered up.’
‘I’m not. I could be your plus-one?’
Nina had a sudden mental picture of Hilary’s jaw dropping to the floor at the sight of Jakob walking in with her and how the rest of the family might react.
Before she’d even processed the thought, and as if reading her mind, Jakob said, ‘Wouldn’t it be just a little bit satisfying to shock your mother-in-law into seeing you as a person in your own right?’
No, thought Nina, she’d probably think I’d gone mad and accuse me of embarrassing her and everyone else by showing up with someone so much younger than I am.
‘But who would look after the gallery if you came with me?’ she said without answering Jakob’s question.
Which meant she was considering the idea, she thought later when after a tussle over the bill – a tussle which she won,overruling his claim that it was his idea to come here – Jakob insisted on walking her back to her car.
‘There’s no need,’ she said as they set off down Mill Lane.
‘Just as there was no need for you to pay the bill,’ he countered.
It was dark now but there were still plenty of people about in the illuminated streets, and plenty of good-humoured carousing going on too as people spilled out of pubs and restaurants. Kings College Chapel was looking particularly magnificent, with a silvery-bright moon high above it.
In contrast, when they turned into Lower All Saints Lane it was completely deserted and once again, despite complaints to the council, the streetlights weren’t working.
‘Here, take my arm,’ Jakob said as they entered the darkness.
It was a wholly natural thing for anyone to say, and after a slight hesitation, she did as he said and at the feel of his arm against hers, she once more pictured Hilary’s face if she showed up to the wedding with Jakob. Would it be so bad of her to do it?
Wouldn’t it, as Jakob had said, show Hugh’s family that she wasn’t just Hugh’s grieving widow? She was Nina Lavelle, a woman in her own right.
Chapter Fourteen
