‘My mother used to say it when I was a child,’ Nina replied, ‘along with,you should never put new shoes on a tableas for some reason that would bring instant bad luck.’
‘I said some unforgivable things to you that night of the wedding,’ said Hilary, picking up her glass of gin and tonic, the ice cubes rattling noisily. Shocked, Nina realised Hilary’s hand was shaking and that was why the ice cubes were rattling.
Perhaps realising it too, Hilary quickly put the glass down. ‘There hasn’t been a day since when I haven’t wished I could unsay what I said,’ she continued. ‘As for hitting you the way I did—’ She broke off as though the memory was still too painful for her to recall. ‘I have no defence. Keith said it would have served me right if you’d made a formal complaint to the police and I’d been arrested for assault.’
‘I didn’t think it would have helped either of us if I’d done that,’ said Nina.
‘How is your head?’
‘It’s healed well enough.’
‘Which is unquestionably more than our relationship ever will,’ Hilary murmured with a slight tightening of her lips as if to stop the unthinkable from happening: a display of emotion.
Nina couldn’t think of a suitable response to this, so she deflected. ‘What about you and Keith? Are you trying to put things right with him?’
If Hilary was surprised by the question, she didn’t show it. ‘I don’t think there’s much chance of doing that,’ she answered.
‘But have you tried?’
Her chin raised, Hilary said, and with a flicker of defiance, ‘If he doesn’t love me, then that’s an end to it, isn’t it? He’s made his choice, and whether I like it or not, I must accept it.’
Nina could see how it was costing Hilary dearly to put such a brave front on. Her body was so taut with constrained emotion she was like a house of cards, one nudge and it would come tumbling down.
‘But you kept on trying with me, didn’t you?’ Nina said. ‘And here I am.’
‘That was different.’
Nina opened her mouth to query the statement, but then snapped her mouth shut as an awful thought occurred to her. Was Hilary forcing herself to apologise because she was still clinging desperately to the hope that she might yet become a grandmother if she convinced Nina that she was genuinely sorry for what she’d done? But surely that was too Machiavellian even for Hilary?
‘Why is it different, Hilary?’ she asked, her voice firm.
‘It just is. I did it for Hugh’s sake.’
Because you want his grandchild?was on the tip of Nina’s tongue, but checking herself, she said, ‘Surely for Hugh’s sake you need to sort things out with Keith. He’s hurting just as much as you are.’
Hilary shook her head. ‘I doubt it.’
Nina had to admit that currently Keith didn’t give the impression of a man in any real degree of hurt. Seeing as much of him as she did, both at home and at the gallery where he was helping her, he seemed to be enjoying life just a little too much. She put it down to him experiencing the initial heady glow of imagining a new life for himself, free of the burden of carrying his wife’s overbearing grief as well as his own.
Nina knew the feeling all too well, because for a few crazy moments at the wedding when she’d been dancing with Jakob, she had felt the same thing, a wildly liberating sensation of being truly alive and without a care in the world. When they’d kissed, her every sense had been awakened sending an intense pulse of desire racing through her, and she’d wanted to go on kissing Jakob, to lose herself in the moment forever, for it never to end. But it had ended, and just as whatever it was Keith imagined he felt towards Diane, that would probably end too. The woman was not the answer to his problems, she was merely a pleasant distraction.
When Jakob had handed in his formal resignation to Nina, explaining that if she was happy, he would remain at the gallery to help her through the exhibition and then leave, she had experienced a wave of guilty relief. It had been combined with gratitude that he appreciated that the situation simply wasn’t tenable now; a line had been crossed that inevitably made them both uncomfortable around the other. There was a very good reason why office relationships were frowned upon.
On a purely business level, which was all she allowed herself to contemplate, she missed Jakob’s efficiency in the gallery and his enthusiasm to learn about the world of fine art. Finding a replacement as good as he’d been would be hard. As a temporary measure, having Keith lending a hand worked well enough, but a more permanent arrangement had to be put in place. She hadn’t rushed to find anyone else because she suspected Keith needed to keep busy, to stop himself from thinking what he was going to do next.
‘I know Keith is staying with you,’ Hilary said, breaking into Nina’s thoughts, ‘he told me you’d invited him to use your guest room. Before he left me,’ she went on, ‘he explained all about the woman he’d met. He seemed to think it would help me to understand things better, my knowing how they met.’ Her voice took on a hard sarcastic edge. ‘A classic case of my-wife-doesn’t-understand-me. Could he be any more of a cliché?’
‘I doubt it will last between them,’ said Nina. ‘It’s grief Keith is running away from, not you.’
Hilary frowned. ‘Has he told you that?’
‘No. He doesn’t need to. It’s obvious what’s going on, he’s found someone with whom he can talk about Hugh. You wouldn’t ever let him do that, would you?’
The Hilary of before wouldn’t have let Nina get away with such an impudent question, but then if it had been the old Hilary sitting opposite her, Nina wouldn’t have dared launch such a direct hit.
‘I couldn’t,’ murmured Hilary, ‘it was too painful. Whenever he broached the subject, I had the feeling all he wanted to do was put Hugh’s death behind him and move on. He made it sound so mundane that we had lost our son, as though I just had to pull myself together and we’d get over losing Hugh.’
‘I don’t believe for one minute that’s what Keith thought. He wanted to share his grief with you, not trivialise it.’
