Chapter Twenty-Six
‘You must believe me when I say I’m sorry for what I did,’ Hilary said.
‘I behaved atrociously, and I know that Hugh would have been thoroughly ashamed of me. I’m ashamed of myself.
If there’s any way in which I can make it up to you, please tell me.
’ She paused, swallowed, then carried on.
‘As misplaced as the hope might be, I want to believe that when you accepted my invitation to come here this evening it was because there was a chance we could put that awful night behind us.’
Throughout the speech, for that was what it felt like to Nina, a very formal and well-rehearsed speech, Hilary wrung her hands and twisted the rings round on the third finger of her left hand, never once actually meeting Nina’s eyes.
In place of her customary cool demeanour there was a brittle awkwardness to her manner.
She held herself ramrod-straight in her kitchen chair and while her ash-blonde hair bore its usual appearance of being freshly washed and stylishly swept back from her forehead, it revealed a face which, despite the make-up applied more heavily than usual, was drawn and pinched.
She had tried to mask the dark shadows beneath her eyes with too much concealer and it had only served to make things worse by caking and enhancing the lines and pouches of lose skin.
She had lost weight since the fateful wedding day six weeks ago and dramatically so, thought Nina, if the looseness of her rings with which she was constantly fiddling was anything to go by.
Nina was sure they never used to fit so loosely.
Hilary was clearly suffering and if it had been anyone else, Nina would have felt sorry for the poor woman and comforted her.
What held her back from doing that, from reaching across the table and giving a reassuring squeeze to one of Hilary’s hands, was the fear that the gesture might trigger a total collapse in her mother-in-law’s physical and mental state.
It seemed to Nina that she was dangerously close to the edge of some sort of breakdown.
In the days immediately after the wedding debacle Nina would have been more than happy to witness her mother-in-law’s downfall, to see her grovel and beg forgiveness, but seeing her now struggling so hard to retain just the flimsiest veneer of self-control brought Nina no satisfaction.
She could see that Hilary was broken. She had lost her son and probably her husband, and all semblance of dignity. She had nothing left.
Nina had agreed to come here this Monday evening, not for supper as she had in the past, but for the purpose of the two of them saying what needed to be said. Whatever that might be.
Until last night Nina had resolutely ignored any of Hilary’s attempts to contact her; it was an act of petty revenge on her part which she wasn’t proud of. But we all protect ourselves in any way we can, she thought now as she sipped from the glass of fizzy water Hilary had poured for her.
‘I think we’ve both said and done things which we’re ashamed of,’ she said, placing the glass on the table. ‘And I shouldn’t have ignored your messages or phone calls. That was contrary and unhelpful of me. I’m sorry.’
Hilary pursed her lips and finally looked at Nina. ‘You were perfectly entitled to be as contrary as you wanted. But I must confess to being curious as to why you did answer my call last night.’
‘I was tired of it all. It takes too much mental energy to be angry, or hold a grudge,’ she added, thinking of Cassie.
Cassie had always made light of admitting that nobody could hold a grudge like she could, that she had spent nearly two decades harbouring a fierce hatred for the man who had abandoned her when she’d needed him most. ‘And look where it’s got me,’ she’d said the day before Ben had whisked her away for her birthday surprise down in Devon, ‘I’m now looking after his bloody widow and child!
That’s what I get for holding a grudge! If I hated Drew before, imagine how I feel now.
Honestly, even in death he can screw up my life! ’
Poor Cassie, she had sounded so irrational and so consumed with bitterness and it had made Nina realise that she didn’t want to hate Hugh’s mother. It was such a waste of emotional energy.
Not that she was setting herself up to be better than Cassie, she wasn’t. Cassie was full of warmth and fun and was so very big-hearted and engaging, and Nina envied her friend’s emotional openness.
In comparison, Nina was far too controlled.
Ironically, much like her mother-in-law.
Maybe that’s why they had never truly warmed to each other, they saw themselves in the other and didn’t much care for it.
And wasn’t it true that sons are often attracted to women who resemble their mothers? Nina shuddered at the possibility.
‘Are you cold?’ asked Hilary.
‘No, no,’ said Nina, ‘I’m fine. It was just one of those involuntary spasms,’ she lied.
‘We always said it was someone walking over your grave when that happened,’ Hilary said absently, ‘I don’t suppose your generation believes in such nonsense.’
‘My mother used to say it when I was a child,’ Nina replied, ‘along with, you should never put new shoes on a table as 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.