‘I’m sure he did. We have enough mutual friends. He must’ve done. Which I think is the thing that makes me angriest about the whole business.’
‘Oh?’
‘The satisfaction that he would get from that.’
‘Surely not?’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘I’ve met him.’
‘That’s not what I said, Jude. You don’t know him like I do. The idea that his walking out on a woman would have driven her to suicide he’d regard as an alternative notch on his bedpost.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘And I bet even now he’s using it as a come-on in his chat-up routine – saying how sorry he is that the woman he lived with for years had such problems, how he tried to be supportive to her, but what can you do in the face of mental illness? And how he’s been terribly wounded by the experience, but he’s daring tentatively to start thinking about relationships again.’ Gita took a savage sip of wine; its taste seemed no more attractive than the words in her mouth. ‘The bastard!’
‘On the other hand,’ said Jude quietly, ‘it wasn’t him who you turned your anger against, was it?’
Gita shook her head. ‘No. His behaviour just made me reflect on myself. If I could let someone treat me like that, what did that make me? And I thought of everything else that had gone wrong in my life: all the other men; the fact that I haven’t got any children whose lives I could mess up; the fact that any looks I might have had are long gone. Oh, the same endless spiral.’
‘A friend of mine, Gita, once described depression as “constipation of the mind”, the way your thoughts get stuck and stale, and make you feel heavy and lethargic and incapable of anything.’
‘Hm . . .’
‘And he also reckoned anti-depressants acted like laxatives: freed up the flow, allowed your ideas to move again.’
‘What a quaint taste in metaphors your friend had.’
‘Yes.’
Gita sighed. ‘At my lowest – I’m not at my lowest now – but at my lowest, the whole world seems to be a reproach to my own inadequacy. Everything I see anyone else doing I think “I can’t do that”. It gets quite funny sometimes – well, it would be funny if it weren’t me in the middle of it all. I open a door, and I think, “I couldn’t make a door. What use am I if I can’t even make a door?”’ She chuckled wryly. ‘Sorry. That’s just how I sometimes feel.’
‘Not all the time, though.’
‘But when I’m down there, it feels as though it’s going to go on for ever. That’s what’s so cruel. When you’re depressed, you can’t imagine there will ever be a time when you’re not depressed.’
‘And when you’re high?’
‘Same story. You think you’ll never be depressed again. You think you’ll spend the rest of your life glorying in how wonderful you are, loving yourself.’
‘That’s not real love.’
‘No, that’s a kind of manic, mad infatuation. You should know it’s the kind of feeling that can’t possibly last – but, at the time, you don’t.’
‘Loving yourself is the secret.’ Jude spoke very softly. ‘When you love yourself, you can spread love to other people.’
‘I know. How easy you make it sound. But how many of us have got so few hang-ups, have suffered so few bad experiences, that we really can love ourselves?’
‘It’s possible. You can learn.’
Gita was suddenly despondent. ‘Some people can learn. I think if I was ever going to learn, I’d have done so by now before I became a shrivelled old bag.’
‘You can learn.’
‘Will you teach me?’
Jude suddenly realized how tired she was. Healing always drained her. Energy was finite. But she was going to need a lot more energy for the forthcoming conversation with Gita – and for the many other conversations that would follow.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Of course I’ll teach you.’
Carole reckoned the afternoon had been a success. Gaby had been much more like the girl Carole had first encountered at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. She and Stephen were affectionate – almost silly – together, which was a surprise to his mother because she had never imagined her son had a silly side. But Gaby also seemed to have lost her ambivalence about the wedding arrangements, and had thrown herself into everything with great gusto.
Of the three venues Stephen and his mother had looked at that morning, Gaby was taken first to the Fedborough tithe barn, which she loved on sight. Of fifteenth-century construction, it had been lovingly renovated by the farmer on whose land it stood, and turned into a venue for corporate events and celebrations. The barn itself formed one side of a rectangle of outbuildings, which had been converted into toilet facilities, kitchens and conference rooms. The complex huddled in the foothills of the South Downs and, if the weather was anything like decent on the fourteenth of September, would make an idyllic setting for a wedding reception.
The engaged couple made their decision instantly, and informed the farmer’s wife, who had shown them round, that they would like to book the venue. Only a mile outside Fedborough, travel from All Souls’ Church would not pose too much of a problem for the guests. In his negotiation of the costs Stephen then showed a toughness which surprised his mother. He also resisted the farmer’s wife’s pressure to employ the catering company in which she had an interest, until he had looked into other possibilities. Carole had never before seen him so assertive, and began perhaps to understand his success in his mysterious working life.
The venue sewn up, the three of them then went to visit three of Carole’s shortlisted caterers. As a guide, they took the menus and price lists which the farmer’s wife at the tithe barn had given them. With the caterers, Carole was interested to see that Stephen and his fiancée worked more as a double act, capping each other with ever more detailed questions. Gaby showed no signs of dilatoriness or reluctance. Her enquiries demonstrated that she had thought through all the logistical minutiae involved in making a wedding work.
At the end of the three exhaustive interviews, Stephen and Gaby had a brief discussion in his BMW and their decision was made. He rang through to the winner of the contest – who would no doubt be ecstatic because they had selected the top-of-the-range menus – and said that, subject to written confirmation, the job was theirs. Suddenly, after months of vagueness, the wedding on the fourteenth of September had become a reality.
‘We must sort out invitations next,’ Stephen announced.
‘I can do that. There’s a printer we use a lot at the agency. He’ll give us a good deal.’
‘And we’ll have to work out who exactly we’re going to invite,’ said Stephen.
‘You’re still thinking of round the hundred and twenty mark?’ asked Carole.
‘Oh yes. And in fact we’re lucky . . .’
‘How so?’
‘Well, Mother, neither of us has a large extended family – so that means most of the people we invite to the wedding will actually be people we like.’
Carole wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but she didn’t think he meant to be insulting. Probably better, though, that her son had pursued a career in computers and finance, rather than the diplomatic service.
‘Which is actually another advantage of us making the arrangements ourselves.’
‘God, yes,’