But in St Anne’s Court, just off Lower All Saints Lane, there was a sense of cool, quiet calm along the narrow cobbled street. With its antique shops and by-appointment-only jewellers and one or two other galleries besides Lavelle’s, it offered a pleasing hint of classy Dickensian charm. It wasn’t one of the busy thoroughfares for the tour groups and that morning, with no one about, Nina could take her time standing on the empty pavement, checking that the Auguste Bouvard landscape which her assistant Jakob had just placed on an easel in the gallery window looked its best. Satisfied that it did so, she gave him a thumbs-up sign and went back inside.
‘It looks perfect,’ she said.
‘Of course it does,’ he agreed, ‘and I guarantee it won’t be there for long.’
‘In that case I should increase the price, if it will be that easy a sale.’
He smiled. ‘You’re the boss. Coffee?’
‘Thank you, that would be great.’
While Jakob disappeared through the swing doors to the small kitchen area at the back of the gallery, Nina sat at her desk and checking her emails on her laptop, saw that there was one from the printers. She had been waiting to hear from them about the new brochure for the autumn show she was planning, and she hoped it wasn’t bad news. She was relieved to read that it was just a courtesy email, an update on when they would deliver.
Sending out brochures was a costly and time-consuming business, but clients for the most part were old-school and preferred a physical copy rather than a digital one. Jakob had come up with an excellent idea the other day, that since the physical brochure was so popular, maybe Nina should produce a calendar with each month displaying a painting from her considerable stock. She didn’t know why she or her parents had never thought of doing it before. Jakob, it had to be said, was full of good ideas, and she was glad she had taken him on.
Her last assistant had been an art student from Ukraine who had come here to escape the war, but when Oksana received the devastating news that both her father and brother had been killed while defending their country, she returned to Kyiv so she could sign up to fight. The last Nina heard from her she was still alive and was prepared to do whatever it took to help make her country free again. Whenever Nina found herself weighed down with her own grief and worries, she thought of Oksana and her courage and the fear she must live with every day.
In contrast Jakob seemed to sail through life without a care in the world. Perhaps that’s why she enjoyed having him in the gallery; he was always so upbeat and positive. He had been with Nina for six months now and with a law degree under his belt along with an MA in advertising, working here as her assistant wasn’t exactly a stretch for him.
He was Norwegian and was living in Cambridge, so he claimed, to escape his family back in Oslo and to perfect his English. Neither of which was true because his English was excellent, rarely did he make a slip-up over a word or a phrase, and he was clearly extremely close to his family as he talked about them constantly. He was thirty-two, and very personable and engaging which were great assets when dealing with customers. It didn’t hurt for business that he was as good-looking as he was and always immaculately dressed, but not in a show-pony kind of way.
What Nina couldn’t understand was why he was happy to work for her as her assistant when he could so easily find a job far better suited to the qualifications he held, and one that paid more. She had to assume that working at Lavelle’s was merely a stop-gap until he’d decided what he really wanted to do.
His family back in Oslo ran a shipping company and she imagined that one day they would demand he returned to the fold. For now, though, she would make good use of him. His art knowledge hadn’t been all that impressive when he applied for the job, but he proved to be a quick learner. It had crossed her mind more than once that if she wanted to keep him, she could offer him commission on any sales he made. Yet something told her he was not driven by money. Wasn’t that often the way when a person grew up surrounded with the kind of wealth his family had generated back at home? The house he lived in, so he’d told her, and which he shared with a couple of student lodgers had been bought for him outright by his parents and would not have been cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, Nina knew the house well; it was a three-storey townhouse just two doors down from where she and Hugh had lived. Since selling their old home she had deliberately avoided ever driving past the house; it was still too painful. Everyone she knew understood that – everyone except for her mother-in-law. It was no exaggeration to say that Hilary had been outraged when Nina had first mentioned that she was selling the house.
‘But you can’t!’ Hilary had cried. ‘It was Hugh’s home.’
‘It wasmyhome too,’ Nina had said firmly.
‘Then why are you talking about selling it? Surely it would be too painful to be parted from the home you made together? It would be like leaving Hugh, he put so much of himself into the house.’
‘As did I,’ Nina had asserted, thinking that she was actually the one who had turned the bones of the house into a proper home.
‘Then it makes absolutely no sense you selling something that was so special to you and Hugh. It’s like you’re trying to erase him from your memory.’
There was no reasoning with Hilary who was still desperately hanging on to every scrap of memory about her son and refusing to let him go.
Every first Monday of the month, it was carved in stone that Nina had dinner with her in-laws. Hilary had insisted it should become a tradition for them after Hugh’s death.
‘Hugh would have liked the idea of us being able to support one another in our grief,’ Hilary had said. Nina had gone along with the idea because to do otherwise would have seemed unnecessarily rude. It was, she told herself, Hilary’s way of keeping the flame alive.
So after work, and saying goodbye to Jakob as he set off to join friends for a drink and a far more enjoyable evening than the one she was destined to endure, she drove to Madingley with a heavy heart.
But at least she could look forward to seeing Hugh’s father. Keith was always pleasant company and Nina’s ally whenever Hilary became too overbearing. A people-pleaser, he was the archetypal put-upon, hapless husband who just wanted a quiet life.
Was that the fate of all husbands who wanted to take the path of least resistance; they placated and humoured their wives to avoid any unpleasant altercations? It was hard to picture it, but would she and Hugh have eventually adopted similar roles?
She arrived at The Maples on the dot of six o’clock. When Hugh had taken her to meet his parents for the first time, he had joked that to be late for his mother was the worst crime he could ever commit.
‘I could literally be accused of mugging an old lady and she’d let me off with nothing more than a warning. But be late and she’d cut me out of her will!’
‘What a splendid sight for sore eyes you are!’ declared Keith when he opened the door to Nina and enveloped her in one of his fabulously welcoming hugs.
He was always a good hugger, and she sank deep into his embrace, grateful for his big-hearted compassion. It was so rare these days that she was held like this, and by a man who was affectionate and genuinely empathetic.
She had discovered since Hugh’s death that most people who greeted her with a hug did so with little warmth or sincerity. They didn’t linger, as if afraid her grief might be infectious. Or worse, a display of emotion on their part might open the floodgates of her grief which they would find acutely embarrassing.
