‘Or perhaps it is,’ suggested Venetia. ‘Maybe that’s a side of Nina Lavelle that’s never been allowed to reveal itself before now?’
‘Implying I’ve repressed the real me all my life?’ Nina looked doubtful, even a little defensive. ‘We’re getting very deep all of a sudden.’
‘Blame it on the wine,’ Venetia said airily. ‘That and the exquisite beauty of the day.’
‘No,’ said Nina with more than a hint of firmness, ‘that would be a cop-out because actually there’s some truth in what you’re suggesting. That day of the wedding when I was dancing with Jakob, I felt the real me again. I felt happy and carefree, like I used to be. I was Nina. It was the purest and most wonderful of emotions. Almost, I would imagine, like taking a drug and being high on it, and then came the crash,’ she added with a weighted sigh.
Venetia chose her next words with care. ‘If your mother-in-law hadn’t behaved the way she had,’ she said, ‘what do you think might have gone on to happen?’
‘That’s a very good question, and if I’m honest, the answer scares me.’
‘No bad thing to be scared, if by that you mean challenged.’
‘Oh yes, it challenges me all right, it makes me doubt I can be trusted to make an objective decision.’
‘Objective?’ queried Venetia. ‘Whoever made an objective decision when it came to the important moments in life? Was it an objective decision on your part to fall in love with Hugh?’
‘Of course not, it just happened because it felt completely right.’
‘Exactly how it should be.’
‘In contrast, and ever since Hugh’s death, I’ve had to overrule my emotions to avoid making a misstep. The result being, everything now seems forced and I’m constantly second-guessing the future.’
‘And that way lies madness.’
‘I know. And it’s exhausting constantly asking myself the “what if” question. It’s why I’ve put off making the biggest andscariest decision of all, what to do with the embryos the clinic has been storing all this time.’
This was a subject that Nina had never spoken in great depth about before; it was after all a very personal matter, but Venetia had the gist of it and didn’t envy her friend the decision she had to make. Despite her three marriages, Venetia had never had children – there were a couple of stepchildren floating around somewhere, but they’d never had anything to do with her – so she didn’t consider herself qualified to give advice on motherhood. It was a hell of a dilemma, and she didn’t envy Nina the choice she had to make.
‘Do you think you’re any nearer knowing what you’re going to do?’ she asked.
‘After the wedding debacle I was one hundred per cent certain that I was going to tell the clinic I didn’t want to use the embryos. But my certainty was for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to hurt Hugh’s mother after what she’d done to me, and I knew that by destroying her wish to become a grandmother was the surest way I could do it.’ She looked directly at Venetia. ‘Are you shocked at me for saying that?’
‘No, not at all. It seems perfectly reasonable in the circumstances, but I imagine you rejected that course of action because you’re essentially a decent person and don’t go around deliberately hurting others.’
‘Something along those lines,’ Nina murmured, ‘but don’t get carried away with the idea that I wasn’t seriously tempted, I was. Then an even worse thought came to me. That I’d have Hugh’s child and never let Hilary see her only grandchild. Now you are shocked, aren’t you?’
‘Shocked to my toes and wondering how you sleep at night!’ Venetia said with an amused lifting of an eyebrow.
A faintly sardonic smile passed across Nina’s face. ‘As cowardly as it sounds, I wish I didn’t have to decide what to do, that the decision could be taken out of my hands.’
‘I might be wrong, but it strikes me that you know what you want to do, but you’re afraid of committing yourself to doing it.’
Nina frowned at that. ‘Am I that obvious?’
Without answering her, Venetia said, ‘Is your real dilemma how to assuage your guilt atnothaving Hugh’s child?’
Nina lowered her gaze. ‘More or less,’ she murmured.
‘Being a mother doesn’t appeal?’ asked Venetia.
‘Not as much as being a father appealed to Hugh. He used to joke about creating his very own dynasty.’
‘Yes, it’s funny how so many men love the idea of a big family without ever putting themselves forward to take on the hard work involved.’
Her wineglass now empty, Venetia placed it on the table next to her. ‘You know, the sooner you inform the clinic of what you want to do, the sooner you can get on with making a new life for yourself.’
Nina gave a small shrug of her fine-boned shoulders. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I know you are. And you make it sound so easy and so straightforward.’
