She strongly suspected there was also the fear that a hug from a friend’s husband or partner might be misconstrued.Hands off my husband,Nina imagined her friends thinking,you might have lost yours but don’t think you can help yourself to mine!
There was a minefield of unspoken sentiments when it came to grief, and knowing this was one of the reasons she tolerated her mother-in-law the way she did. She understood what Hilary was experiencing and that she was unable to express the real emotional impact of her son’s death, other than to come across as unfeeling towards anyone else’s grief.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Hilary, appearing in the hallway, ‘do let the poor girl in before practically suffocating her!’
Same old Hilary, thought Nina, emerging from Keith’s embrace. ‘Hello, Hilary,’ she said. ‘You’re looking well.’ She made no attempt to kiss her mother-in-law. She’d made that mistake the second time Hugh had brought her here. The woman had virtually recoiled at her touch.
‘I’ve been better,’ Hilary said flatly. ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Come through to the kitchen. I’m putting the finishing touches to a salad. Keith is insisting on a barbecue. You know how he likes to mess about with hot coals and a pair of tongs.’
‘For you, my darling,’ he said, ‘I’d walk over hot coals!’
Nina smiled but Hilary tutted and rolled her eyes at her husband.
Slipping her arm through Keith’s, Nina fell in step with him. In the kitchen, he presented her with a selection of opened bottles of wine. ‘What’s your fancy?’ he asked.
‘A small glass of that Chablis would be perfect, thank you.’
‘Darling?’ he said, turning to his wife who was wielding a lethally sharp knife to cut into a large watermelon. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll have my usual. But don’t be so heavy-handed with the gin. You know I don’t like it too strong. Nina, we’ve been married for forty-six years, and he still can’t make me a drink how I like it.’
‘Right you are, my love, message received loud and clear that I must do better.’
Keith’s good-humoured response induced another eye-roll from Hilary, but this time Nina detected what felt like a false note to Keith’s customary ebullience in smoothing his wife’s sharp edges and softening the worst of her barbs. There was no twinkle in his expression and nor was there the exchange of a complicit glance with Nina.
When the drinks were served and Hilary had finished making the watermelon and feta salad with black olives, they went out to the garden. It was a magnificent garden and Nina knew it was Hilary’s pride and joy, so she always made a point of asking for a tour around the borders. She did the same now while Keith busied himself with the barbecue, sending clouds of smoke into the warm evening air.
Before Hugh died, father and son would have manned the barbecue together while putting the world to rights with a beer. Listening with only half an ear as Hilary rattled on about what a nightmare it had been to keep the garden from turning into a desert during the hot weather, Nina glanced back at Keith and thought how lonely he looked. And older. He must miss his son so much and yet his grief had undoubtedly been overshadowed by his wife’s.
By the time they sat down to eat, Keith had resumed his familiar joviality and was making Nina laugh with his tirade on modern life – how the smug lot in Silicon Valley were determined to make his life a misery with their constant software upgrades that often resulted in his laptop or mobile not working as well as it had before.
‘And don’t get me started on the hundred and one passwords I’m supposed to remember and all those wretched QR codes,’ he went on, warming to his theme. ‘As for trying to remember which bin to put out, and for that matter, what we’re supposed to put in it, I give up. I long for the days when a man’s bin was his own affair; now we’re practically facing a term in prison for making an innocent mistake.’
‘You do exaggerate,’ said Hilary, ‘and apart from that, Nina’s heard it all before, so climb down from your soapbox.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Nina, ‘I always enjoy listening to Keith raging against the machine. It’s what we all feel at times, isn’t it?’
‘But what he doesn’t tell you is that it’s me who deals with the bins.’
‘Aha, in that case, my love, you had better be careful or it will be you who goes to jail and not me,’ said Keith with a laugh. ‘But I promise to visit you,’ he added.
‘Oh, do be quiet.’
They drifted into a lengthy silence, and with the golden light of the evening giving way to a deep roseate glow as the sun began to set, Nina asked about Hugh’s cousins and the wedding she’d been invited to.
‘They were planning to marry next summer but have brought it forward,’ Hilary said, ‘after Fabian’s fiancée, Tigs, discovered she was pregnant.’
‘How wonderful for them both,’ Nina said, ‘they must be thrilled.’ She hoped she looked and sounded as though she meant it because mentally she was bracing herself for what she knew would come next.
‘It wasn’t the order they wanted to do things in, but as it turns out they couldn’t be happier.’
‘I’m sure,’ Nina murmured.
‘And dare I ask if you’re any nearer reaching a decision about having the child Hugh so badly wanted?’ Hilary asked.
Keith sighed and briefly closed his eyes. He looked mortified at the question.
It was just over a week since the letter from the clinic had arrived, and Nina still hadn’t replied to it. Every day she thought she knew what she wanted to do only then to change her mind. How could anyone make such a monumental decision and not be consumed with doubt that the decision they made was the right one, morally and personally?
