Page 102 of Carry Me Home

Tilly arrives, drawn by the commotion. ‘What’s happened? What’s everyone looking so serious about?’

‘Tom’s leaving,’ Hayley says. ‘He’s going to Scotland. With Cara.’

‘Scotland!’ Tilly clutches her chest. ‘So you made up your mind then? What about your father? What about—’ Her eyes slide to Nina. The slide is not subtle. ‘What about everything?’

‘Dad’s sorting a temporary replacement until he winds the practice down. Everything else—’ I shrug. The shrug costs more than it should. ‘It’s time.’

‘Time,’ Tilly repeats. ‘So the village isn’t going to have a vet’s surgery any longer?’

It hits me in the gut and I’m sure Cara pauses.

I shrug. It hurts a little, somewhere down deep in that filing cabinet I like to keep things. ‘Pencross isn’t far away. They have a surgery, it’s not far.’

‘Pencross is Pencross,’ she states with one last soul-searching glance across my face before she turns back to the bar.

I let myself look at Nina.

She’s holding her wine glass with both hands. Not drinking. Not moving. Her bangles are silent on her wrists – no gestures, no motion, no Nina. She’s looking at the table surface, and her face is so carefully arranged that I can see the effort of the arrangement, the way you can see the joins in plasterwork if you know where to look.

Our eyes meet.

It’s only for half a second. Less, maybe. And I see it all: the anger and the hurt and the fear, and underneath it, burning low and unmistakable, I think I see regret.

She looks away. The mask goes back. She picks up her glass and drinks.

I look away too. Cara’s hand on my back. Round and round.

Too late. I saw it too late, or she showed it too late, and now I’m sitting here with Scotland in my mouth and a woman’s hand on my spine and across the table Nina Ellis is holding herself together with both hands and I don’t know what to do with any of it.

I don’t do anything. That’s always been my problem.

‘Nina.’ Isla’s voice, from the booth. ‘Any chance you can grab me a water? I’d get it myself, but I’m wedged in. Water?’

‘Of course.’ Nina stands. Her chair scrapes. ‘Anyone else?’

Requests of pints and crisps are reeled off. Nina nods, already moving, and heads for the bar.

I watch her walk to the bar, her shoulders rigid. The usual Nina walk is loose, quick, full of purpose and noise. This walk is someone trying to cross a room without leaving a mark.

‘You’re staring.’ Jude whispers, low, and for my ears only.

‘I know.’

‘While Cara rubs your back.’

‘I know, Jude.’

‘Then stop.’

‘I can’t.’

He’s quiet for a moment. Then: ‘Go talk to her. At the bar. Right now. Say the thing.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘There’re years of things to say. Pick one. Any one. Say it before you get in a car and drive away and spend the rest of your life wondering.’

‘She doesn’t want to hear it.’