‘Dead? Oh, my God, Grace. How? What happened?’
Lilian crossed herself. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she breathed, her hand to her chest, before looking meaningfully at me across the bowl of chicken salad and crusty bread. I knew exactly what she was thinking. I was thinking the same. Had Nick changed flights at Heathrow and gone to Italy rather than India?
‘Amanda phoned just now and I thought I’d better come straight over,’ Grace said. Grace knew I’d told Lilian everything about Alex, and that we didn’t have to hide anything from her with regards to what I’d been up to with him. ‘Someone from the Italian office phoned David to inform him that Alex was found dead last night.’
‘Found dead?’ Lilian asked, white faced.
‘Yes. Apparently his car went off one of the coastal roads. I don’t know Italy – maybe the Amalfi coast…?’ Grace hesitated. ‘David said the police seemed to think there may have been some sort of race going on. Alex and some other bloke. No real details at the moment.’
‘So not murdered, then?’ I asked.
‘Murdered?’ Grace looked at both our faces. ‘Honestly, the pair of you. You are so melodramatic. You didn’t think Nick had gone out to Italy and murdered Alex, did you?’ When neither of us said anything, Grace started to laugh. ‘You did, didn’t you? You thought Nick had gone to seek his revenge.’ And then, realising she shouldn’t be laughing after imparting such dreadful news, she added, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry, Hat. Really sorry. I suppose we’ve called Alex The Bunion for so long now that I forget you couldn’t get enough of him at one point.’ She looked really dismayed. ‘I forgot he was someone’s son, someone’s brother.’
As Grace and Lilian continued to talk, I probed my mind as one might probe a hole in a tooth, constantly working at it, unable to let it go. How did I really feel about Alex? It was as if Grace had told me about a character from a TV soap. You feel you know all about them, you see them on a weekly basis, let them into your home, and yet they are all a sham. You don’t know them at all because, let’s face it, they’re not real. I’d never know Alex. I’d known his body – every intimate detail ‒ but apart from letting his guard down when he told me the agony of not being allowed back into the SBS, I didn’t know the man. Didn’t really know Alex Hamilton at all.
‘Lilian,’ I said, getting up from the table, ‘I don’t think I can face this food now. Sorry.’
‘How’ve you got here, Grace?’ Lilian asked.
‘Mum dropped me off. Jonty’s in the kitchen. Fast asleep in his buggy.’
‘Leave him with me,’ Lilian said. ‘Why don’t you two go off for a walk? Sam is itching for a run. You might be hungry later, Harriet.’
*
It was a beautiful evening. Derek, the farmer, had taken advantage of the wonderfully warm weather and was out in the fields with his tractor, cutting the first of the summer grass before rolling it into the huge black shiny cylinders that now dotted the landscape in front of us like a random, one sided game of draughts. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Very little stirred except the swallows, swooping and gliding after myriad flying insects, the tails on Derek’s pregnant Charolais cows endeavouring to swat troublesome flies and Sam… who was off, excitedly sniffing out a badger trail.
As Grace and I walked down the lane towards Grace and Seb’s now completely refurbished farmhouse we avoided an abundance of nettles, grown long with the early summer heat. I breathed in that wonderful summer smell that ‒ together with the cuckoo’s call ‒ has always begun, even by July, to fade. We didn’t speak as the lane narrowed and Grace went in front of me, climbing the ancient wooden stile that took us across a field, yellow with buttercups, and into Butterfield Woods. The sheer beauty of it all… and how I’d tainted it with what I’d done made me want to weep.
‘Hat? You OK?’ Grace turned her head back in my direction. ‘You look awful.’
‘Thanks. It’s probably something to do with the fact that my husband’s gone and my ex-lover’s dead.’
Grace looked at me sharply. ‘You’re not getting sentimental over Alex again, are you? What he and Anna concocted between them was awful.’
‘Grace, I did it to myself. Don’t make me out to be the injured party here. There’s only one injured party and that’s Nick. I’m frightened, Grace,’ I said. ‘Nick has such strong principles – you know that. I’m not sure he will ever be able to forgive me.’
‘He will. I’ll talk to him. Say to him, “Look how I’ve taken Dan back after his mistake.”’
‘And have you?’ I asked. ‘Is it all back on with you two?’
‘I feel very close to him again. I know I still love him. And yes, I think I can forgive him the affair with Camilla. Well… I have to, don’t I, if there’s ever to be any future for us?’
‘I’ve got the key,’ Grace said as we stood in the garden of her farmhouse. ‘Do you want to take a look?’
It was fabulous. The original dreadful kitchen, pantry and scullery had been knocked into one huge new kitchen now sporting cream, Shaker style units and black granite. I was desperate to get out cloth and polish and give the granite the once over.
Reading my mind, Grace laughed and herded me upstairs. The custard yellow cracked tiles and disgusting floor that had rendered Nick speechless had been replaced with floor-to-ceiling tiling, enough paraphernalia to run a bathroom shop and a huge, multi-jetted shower.
Back downstairs I gazed in wonder at the beamed ceilings and cosy inglenook fireplace that would be bound to win first prize if a Twenty-Five Best Sitting Rooms magazine was ever to be published. ‘So when are you moving in?’ I asked.
‘I’m not. We’re not. Me by myself, me and Seb or me and Dan. Whichever permutation you choose, we’re not living in it. I think Dan would quite like to move in, but I don’t want to. Too many bad memories, I’m afraid.’
‘What, even though it’s so fabulous now?’ I was disappointed. I would have loved Grace living within shouting distance, just down the lane.
Grace shook her head. ‘David wants to buy it from us.’
‘David? What on earth for?’
‘To be honest, he’s done such a lot of the work on it I guess he’s fallen in love with it himself. I don’t think he can bear to part with it. And for David it’s a drop in the ocean, isn’t it? I think he’s got the idea of offering it to all the Russians, Italians, and Chinese when they come to do business here in Midhope. Bit better than putting them up in The King’s Head.’
The King’s Head was Midhope’s major hotel: Victorian, seedy and in need of complete refurbishment.
‘He’ll furnish it out and…’ she hesitated. ‘I’m sure Seb will spend quite a bit of time down here too.’
‘Hmm, very near my darling daughter.’
‘Absolutely. She’s nearly eighteen. Not much you can do about that. So,’ Grace went on, ‘once I’ve got my share out, I’ll buy somewhere else. I’ve already got my eye on a gorgeous little cottage near Rebecca’s place.’
‘When’s she coming home? She’ll be back with the girls very soon, won’t she?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. She emailed me the other day, very upset. The girls want to stay with their father until Christmas, rather than coming back with her next month. Apparently they’ve really embraced the all-American way of life. She says they’re even talking with an American twang. They want to spend the summer up at some lake where they can sail, and then want to go back skiing with their father again for Christmas. Apparently Paul has some new woman who has girls their age and they all get along. One big happy family.’
‘Oh, God. Poor Rebecca. If I were her, I’d just say “No way.” They’d be booked on my flight home without any further argument.’
‘Me too. But I think she’s given in. I think she’ll be home in the next month or so, but without the girls. Her work with the company out there has come to an end even if she wanted to stay, which she doesn’t appear to. She’s been quite homesick, I think.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least that means I can keep Lilian until after Christmas. Have to say, I was dreading giving her back.’
‘I don’t think Lilian would want to leave you. Especially now. Maybe you and Rebecca can share her between you.’
By the time we’d locked up the farmhouse and found Sam, who’d gone rabbiting, a huge red sun was starting to set over the hills to the west leaving streaks of red, yellow and gold in its wake.
‘Red sky at night,’ Grace smiled, as we made our way back up through the woods and on to the lane. ‘It’s going to be another gorgeous day tomorrow.’
‘Oh, Grace,’ I said, ‘no days are gorgeous without Nick. What if he doesn’t come home? What if he leaves me?’
‘He won’t,’ Grace smiled, taking my arm. ‘He could never leave you and the kids.’