‘Charlie, come and help me make sure there’s enough food and drink,’ ordered Adam.
‘It’s a wake, not a party,’ the boy replied quietly.
‘Charlie, go with Adam,’ said Sylvia. She wanted to get to the bottom of what had gone on.
They moved into the study and shut the door. It was a glorious room, flooded with light, which bounced off the leather-bound books. Diana leant back on the huge mahogany desk, waiting for her mother to interrogate her.
‘I know this isn’t easy for you . . .’ said Sylvia finally.
‘But what?’ said Diana, sipping the whisky. ‘You know this isn’t easy for me but I shouldn’t just run away from my husband’s funeral like that?’
‘You gave Victoria Pearson the fright of her life. We all care about you. We’re here to help you get through this. But you can’t just be rude to people and then collapse, and expect us not to ask questions about whether you should see someone. A doctor, a counsellor.’
‘I was not rude to Victoria Pearson,’ Diana said quietly.
‘Barbara said she heard a few sharp words between you. What was that about?’
She had to tell someone. The words were bursting on her lips and she just needed to hear that she was being ridiculous.
‘I don’t know. I just thought . . . I just thought Julian might have been having an affair with her, or something.’
‘An affair? With Victoria?’ said Sylvia incredulously.
‘It’s not so hard to believe, is it? Look at her. Elegant, beautiful . . . and she looked so upset.’
‘Diana, I don’t know how you could think such a thing . . .’
Diana gave a low, soft snort. Of course it was easy to believe that Julian was having an affair. They’d had sex just once or twice since Christmas, since they had lost the baby. Both had been awkward and painful experiences which Julian had treated with his usual diplomacy, making all the right noises about ‘easing ourselves back into it’. She had counted her blessings that she had such an adoring, supportive husband, but deep down she wondered if his patience, his understanding had a darker truth. That he was simply getting his sex elsewhere.
‘It would all make sense,’ she said, voicing the fears that had been nagging at her since the day he died. ‘Julian didn’t kill himself for nothing. Something drove him to it. A feeling of the situation being out of control, guilt, I don’t know, but it wasn’t something that he could talk to me about.’
‘And you think he had a mistress?’
‘Perhaps,’ she whispered.
Sylvia hesitated before she spoke again.
‘But he had had an affair before,’ she said softly. ‘He dealt with it. You both dealt with it. That wasn’t the sort of thing that would have made him do what he did.’
Diana tipped the entire contents of the whisky glass down her throat as fat tears began streaming down her cheeks. She could feel them making rivulets down her thicker than usual make-up.
‘I could see people at the funeral thinking, speculating what drove him to it. Drugs, marital problems, financial ruin, another terrible scandal that would have dragged him back into the papers . . .’
‘Diana, you’re being paranoid,’ Sylvia scolded.
‘No I’m not. No one said anything, of course. They are far too polite for that. But it’s human nature, isn’t it? To wonder.’
She clasped the empty crystal tumbler to her chest. It felt cold through the thin fabric of her blouse.
‘So imagine how it feels for the person who knew him better than anybody. Or who ought to have known him better. Imagine how it feels for me, wondering what could have been so wrong in our perfect lives, wondering what I could have done differently, wondering if I could have saved the man I loved.’
Her mother came over, took the glass out of her hand.
?
?You couldn’t have done anything differently. Depression isn’t a rational thing . . .’
‘So Ralph told you he was depressed?’