She nodded. The words were caught up in the back of her throat with her next breath.
She wanted him to make a joke of it as he had done all those months ago. Every time the pregnancy test had been quietly negative he’d given her a hug and said, ‘Never mind, we’re having fun practising.’ She’d loved him for making her smile, even though she’d known he was bitterly disappointed too.
She needed him to do that now, to make the sick feeling go away.
But he looked blank, as if all the cheeky humour had leached out of him. And even worse was the knowledge that she had been the cause. She’d eventually brought him down to earth and it was killing him.
Nick picked up the tray. ‘Are you finished?’
Yes, she was finished. The whole thing was finished.
The sun was low in the sky as they got back on the motorway, giving a warm glow to clouds that otherwise had an ominous hint of steel. Nick stared out of the passenger window. Adele was back in the driving seat—in more ways than one.
‘How are we going to handle the party, Nick?’
What was to handle?
‘How do you mean? We walk in, we smile, we talk, we eat, we leave.’
Adele sighed. ‘As always, you haven’t thought this through, have you?’
He hunched down in his seat a little further. ‘Obviously not.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’
Maybe there wasn’t, but it made him feel better. Adele had sat as judge and jury on their relationship and she wasn’t about to share the power and let him have a second chance. He understood that now.
‘OK, OK. What have I missed?’
‘Look at us! We’ve both got faces like a wet weekend. No one’s going to believe we’re love’s young dream. Phoebe sussed us out in an instant.’
His eyebrows inched up. ‘She did?’
‘Women spot these things. Your sisters will be on to us in the blink of an eyelid.’
‘We’ll have to smile an awful lot more and convince them.’
Adele went quiet and they sat with the sound of the engine for company for a while. Big fat splashes started appearing on the windscreen and he realised that it wasn’t rain this time, it was snow—big, fluffy flakes of the Christmas-card variety.
Adele turned the wipers on and the action seemed to kick-start her brain again too.
‘It feels too much like lying to them, Nick. I don’t like it.’
‘All we’ve got to do is be civil to each other, talk, smile a bit. We can still do that, can’t we? We don’t have to be all over each other on the dance floor or anything.’
She didn’t sound convinced. ‘I suppose so.’
‘We can split up and circulate. All my family will be there and they’ll want to hear about my job in LA. Hell, they’ll be wrestling me to the ground and demanding free tickets to the première if I know them!’
Miracle of miracles, Adele cracked a smile.
‘OK. That sounds like a plan. We arrive together and we circulate as much as possible, meeting up every now and then for a progress report. Your sisters will all be keen to fill me in on the latest news about our myriad nephews and nieces—that should take up a fair chunk of time.’ She nodded to herself as she stared at the carriageway. ‘Yes. It might work. But only if we keep our distance from each other.’
It was crazy enough to work: stay apart to convince everyone they were together.
If only Adele didn’t seem so overjoyed at the prospect of avoiding him for the whole of the evening.
As they drove further north, the snow eased off. They’d obviously driven under the snow cloud and out the other side. They reached the fringes of the Lake District and the temperature dropped further. A thin coating of snow carpeted the valleys and clung in drifts to the craggy peaks.
But this wasn’t fresh snow. There must have been a fall last night. He had no idea if more was supposed to be on the way. He did, however, know a woman who would.
‘Adele? What’s the weather forecast for this area today?’
She hesitated—he guessed she was considering feigning ignorance; she hated being thought predictable—but instead she gave in and spoke in a weary voice.
‘Rain with the possibility of icy showers, clearing towards evening. That’s what the man on the radio said, anyway. We should have seen the worst of it by now.’
‘Good. The roads are clear enough at the moment, but I wouldn’t like it to get any worse. That would really slow us down.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s just before four. We’re a little behind schedule, but we should still be there with an hour or more to spare.’
Adele’s smile was wry. ‘Be careful, Nick. You’re starting to sound organised.’
‘What I really meant to say was: shouldn’t we be going south if we’re heading for Scotland?’
‘That’s more like the Nick Hughes I know.’
She missed out the and love. He smiled anyway. ‘I don’t like to disappoint a lady.’
Nick laid his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. What he’d said was spot-on. She wasn’t the only one disappointing her spouse. He might have just brushed over the truth of it with a joke, but just once he would like her to look at him the way she had in the early days of their marriage. She’d thought he was wonderful then. He hadn’t changed; he was still the same old Nick, but nowadays everything he said and did seemed to be wrong.
‘Oh, bother!’
He opened his eyes to find out what had caused Adele’s outburst. A string of red brake lights snaked up the hill in front of them. Very soon they joined the back of the queue. The traffic was moving at ten miles an hour at best.
Nick stared angrily at the bumper of the car in front. ‘Well, that’s just great! If we don’t get moving again quickly, we’re going to miss dinner.’
The line of cars was at least a mile long, and possibly longer, as the road curved up and round a hill, blocking his vision.
‘Do you think it’s the snow?’ Adele asked as she spritzed the windscreen with screen wash for the fiftieth time. ‘We all know it only takes three flakes of the stuff to bring the great British transport system to a halt.’
‘Shouldn’t be. The gritters have been out and the carriageway is clear. It’s probably an accident—some fool going too fast in these conditions.’
‘I hope it isn’t serious,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Me too.’
Five minutes later they were hardly moving at all.
‘My calf muscle is aching from keeping my foot on the clutch,’ Adele moaned. ‘I’d prefer to be at a complete stop than this interminable crawling along. I don’t want to get stuck in this. Do you remember that story on the news a few years ago? It snowed and hundreds of people got stuck on the motorway in East Anglia and had to spend the night in their cars.’
‘That’s not going to happen here.’
‘How do you know? We’re only doing…’ she peered at the speedometer ‘…two miles an hour. Any slower and we’d be going backwards.’
Nick frowned but didn’t say anything. Adele craned