‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t know, would you? Never heard from you after the marriage ended, did I?’
‘I tried ringing a good few times, left messages, but you never got back to me.’
‘Really? Didn’t I? How remiss of me.’ Megan’s tone implied that no such messages had ever been sent.
‘I can assure you I—’
Jude was interrupted by the arrival at their table of the waiter, Cyrus. He unscrewed the wine bottle and filled their two glasses. Then he poised his pen over his notepad. ‘Are you ready to order?’
‘I’ll have the usual,’ said Megan.
‘Of course.’ He wrote it down ‘Fesenjan.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Jude.
‘It is a very traditional Persian dish,’ the waiter replied. ‘Chicken with ground walnuts and pomegranate – very good.’
‘I’ll have the same.’ She hadn’t had an opportunity to look at the menu, but wanted to get back to challenging Megan’s accusations of disloyalty. As Cyrus moved away, she picked up, ‘I can assure you I did everything to try and contact you, but got no response.’
‘Oh well, water under the bridge.’ But Megan didn’t say it in a forgiving way. ‘So, the marriage took five years out of my life, the breakdown took two – more than that, actually. I’m still not shot of the symptoms. And when I’m finally in a state to pick up my career, I ring my agent and – surprise, surprise – there haven’t been any recent enquiries for my services. The news of my illness had somehow got out, and who wants to employ an actor who’s got mental problems? Making television is such an expensive process, producers can’t risk casting someone who might crack up at any moment. So bye-bye, career.
‘And of course that bastard Al was always stringing me along about having children. He knew I wanted to, but he kept putting it off.’
Jude’s own view was that Al Sinclair had never wanted children. He was one of those men whose ego was so huge he didn’t want his women’s adoration of him to be diluted by any other demands. But she kept that opinion to herself, saying, ‘To be fair, your television career was doing so well at that time, you wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt—’
‘I would have dropped it all in a moment to have a baby!’ Megan was now in full tragic heroine mode. Jude didn’t believe her, but understood how she had refashioned her past into something she now thought was the truth.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but—’
‘You never had children, did you, Jude?’ Megan looked at her beadily.
‘No.’
‘And doesn’t it make you feel dreadful?’
‘No,’ Jude replied, evenly and honestly. ‘The right time and the right man never coincided.’
‘Al was the right man for me, and I’m sure if we’d had a baby we could have saved the marriage.’
Jude disagreed completely. Having Megan tied to the house by a baby would have just given someone like Al Sinclair further scope for his infidelities. But there was no point in saying anything. Nothing would shift Megan from the version of the past that she had forged.
‘Well, who knows?’ said Jude, resorting to a safe platitude.
‘I know,’ Megan responded. ‘The point about being married to a bastard like Al is that …’
Fortunately, the diatribe was stopped by the arrival of Cyrus with their fesenjan. The dark brown stew, served on a bed of rice and garnished with pomegranate seeds, smelt wonderful, rich and warming, perfect for an icy January day.
Cyrus refilled their wine glasses. Megan’s was empty; Jude’s only needed topping up. And that wasn’t because of her preference for white wine. She was finding the Shiraz they were drinking quite acceptable. It was just that Megan was drinking faster than she was.
The fesenjan was as delicious as it smelt: rich, creamy and probably devastating to the waistline. For a moment, there was a silence as the two women started eating.
Then Megan said, ‘Pity Al isn’t with us today.’
‘No, it’s very sad that—’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Oh?’
Megan’s next words were accompanied by a vicious grin. ‘I mean, that this would kill him.’ She gestured to their fesenjan.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, come on, Jude, don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.’
‘Forgotten what?’
‘That Al was allergic to walnuts. For God’s sake, he was always going on about it. Turned it into a drama, like everything else in his life. Never went anywhere without his EpiPen. Kept going on about “spending his life on the edge of death”. Seemed to think it turned him into a tragic doomed artist, like bloody Keats. Oh, Jude, of course you knew about it.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t.’
‘Oh well, if that’s the way you want to play it …’ She took another big swallow of wine. Once again, her glass was emptying considerably faster than Jude’s.
‘Megan, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I knew a lot more about Al than I did.’
‘What, you stopped listening to him after a while, did you? I know what you mean. I did the same. He did go on a bit, didn’t he? But I thought you’d have taken in the information about his precious allergy, given how much time you spent together.’
‘We didn’t spend any time together. I don’t think Al and I ever spent more than ten minutes together without you present.’
Megan let out a little cynical laugh. ‘OK, if that’s your story, stick with it, by all means.’
‘It’s not a story.’ Jude seemed to have been closer to anger in the last thirty-six hours than she had for a very long time. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘Then why were you suddenly so keen to get in touch with me? And don’t tell me it had anything to do with Al’s Seth Marston books.’
‘That was the original reason.’
‘But then, when Al’s death became public, you had other reasons to contact me.’
‘The main one being that the police contacted me.’
‘And that got you worried?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No? Detective Inspector Rollins, was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I spent a long time talking to her yesterday.’
‘Right.’
Megan smiled complacently, not about to divulge what she and the Inspector had talked about. ‘And Rollins got you worried, did she?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Oh, come on, Jude. You’re not going to persuade me that you were so keen to see me just to offer condolences?’
‘I’m not saying that. Offering condolences was obviously part of—’
‘Anyway,’ Megan interrupted, ‘shouldn’t it be me offering condolences to you? You loved Al a lot more than I ever did.’
‘What?’
‘As soon as he was on the scene, you seemed to be round all the time.’
‘We saw no more of each other than we did when you were single.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘You were my friend. When Al came along, I was just pleased you’d found someone, that’s all.’
‘If that’s all, why did you see so much of us then?’ asked Megan aggressively. ‘It wasn’t me you wanted to see once Al was around.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous? As I mentioned, I haven’t noticed much sign of you being in touch with me since the divorce. Whereas I’m sure you and Al have been permanently “in touch”.’
‘Megan, that is absolute nonsense. Till he contacted me about his talk in Fethering Library, I’d hardly heard from him since the divorce.’
‘You and I haven’t been in touch since then either,’ said Megan, rather wistfully.