‘I hear you’re an auditor,’ Faith said, raising her voice above the gurgle of the coffee machine. ‘We were hoping you’d cast an eye over the support group accounts to see if Justine’s been skimming something off the top.’
‘Actually, I’m an internal auditor so I deal more with governance issues, but I could take a look.’ April’s eyes were wide when she turned to Tara as she approached. ‘Is there a problem?’
Tara placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of April and took the seat next to her. ‘No, there isn’t. Justine’s far more likely to add money to our fund than take from it. Faith’s teasing and she really shouldn’t.’
Faith took the reprimand with a polite nod. ‘Sorry, that was mean of me, but I don’t like the way she’s been trying to overthrow Tara. Justine hates that Tara’s looked upon as the group leader while she’s left to do the admin.’
‘Which she does really well,’ Tara added in Justine’s defence.
Tara and Justine had been friends since school and had been there for each other during the most difficult times of their lives. Justine had been a source of great strength at Mike’s funeral, never guessing that she would be the next to wear the widow’s mantle three short months later when her wife died from sepsis.
Together, they had sought out an existing widows’ group, but they had stood out from the start. Tara was in her late twenties, Justine only thirty, and as much as the older women had welcomed them, their experiences of widowhood had been markedly different. There had been no talk of childcare, careers, or the pressure society placed on them to reinvent themselves. If anything, the others envied Tara and Justine’s youth and their potential to start anew.
‘And Justine doesn’t only manage the budget,’ continued Tara. ‘She takes care of all the social media, and puts a lot of time and effort into organising us all. I couldn’t do what she does, but someone could easily replace me.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Faith.
Turning to April, Tara said, ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. The group is a family of sorts and Justine is like a sister to me. There really isn’t a problem between us and if ever there was, I would deal with it.’ Tara knew Faith had good intentions, but she didn’t want anyone taking sides. There were no lines to be drawn, not on her behalf. To Faith she added, ‘So can we please leave her alone?’
‘Noted,’ Faith said as she and Tara locked eyes. The moment passed and they both relaxed as they turned their attention to April.
‘Can I tempt you with some cake?’ Tara asked.
‘I haven’t had much of an appetite lately,’ April replied, ‘but it looks beautiful.’
Ignoring the refusal, Tara cut a slice and left the plate within reach. ‘You can take some home for your mum and dad, if you like.’
‘You’re living with your parents?’ Faith asked. ‘Oh, sorry. I heard what happened to your husband. No wonder you moved out.’
‘I’m not sure I could have slept there again even if I’d tried,’ April agreed with a shudder. ‘And being looked after is probably what I need right now, but to be honest, I didn’t have a choice. Jason and I had been renting our flat, and I couldn’t afford it on my own. I had to rely on family to cover the cost of the funeral, and my first priority is to pay them back before looking for a place of my own. Jason didn’t have life insurance or a pension.’
‘It happens more often than you’d think,’ Faith said. ‘My Derek died in a car crash just over four years ago. He was twelve years older, so you’d think he’d be better prepared, but he’d cashed in his pension as part of the divorce settlement with his first wife. He left me his business, but I don’t know the first thing about imports and exports and most of his contracts were verbal. I was lucky to keep the house when the company folded and its assets were stripped. My parents died when I was a teenager, so there was no one to bail me out.’
Tara looked over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘Enough of the sob story. Tell her about the compensation.’
Faith’s expression was sheepish. ‘OK, so maybe my financial circumstances weren’t as dire as I’m making out. Derek’s accident was caused by a mechanical failure that was supposed to have been fixed. He’d taken his car back to the dealership several times, but my guess is they simply reset the warning light and charged us a small fortune for the privilege. I agreed an out-of-court settlement, but I’m starting to regret it. I could have taken them to the cleaners if I’d been in a better frame of mind, but I’d just lost my husband. Derek’s death was needless, that’s what hurts me most.’
‘That’s awful,’ said April. ‘And what a thing to go through while you were in mourning, although I can understand why you settled. It feels wrong moaning about the money side of things. It shouldn’t be important, should it?’
‘But it’s a reality we can’t ignore,’ Tara replied. ‘Life would be so much simpler if we could deal with the emotional and practical elements of grief separately, but when the worst happens, everything hits you at once. So yes, April, you are allowed to complain about the financial mess you’ve been landed with, to us and the group. And don’t feel guilty about being angry with Jason once in a while.’
April’s laugh was hollow as she pulled the slice of opera cake towards her. She teased a corner of the cake onto her fork and didn’t look up when she said, ‘I’ve been angry with him so much lately.’
Tara’s eyes narrowed. Her instinct had been right – there was more to her story than April had been able to share so far.
‘Do you want to talk about it? Was there something you needed to say at the group meeting but couldn’t?’
Above their heads, there was the roar of an aeroplane climbing to the skies and April finally lifted her gaze.
‘In the months before Jason died … he’d changed. He had been a constant in my life, and suddenly he wasn’t – it was like he was somewhere else, or maybe he just wanted to be. There were times when he wouldn’t look at me and other times when he couldn’t do enough.’
‘But you said at the meeting you thought his change in behaviour could have been linked to his brain haemorrhage,’ Tara said.
April shook her head. ‘It’s what I’ve tried to tell myself, but according to the doctors it would be unlikely. I think Jason was up to something.’
Faith was blunter, as always. ‘Was he having an affair?’
‘It crossed my mind at the time, but not enough for me to accuse him. There was nothing specific, and then shortly before he died everything seemed to right itself. Stupidly, I thought I’d got my old Jason back,’ April said, blinking away tears. ‘And I’m glad I didn’t say anything. He would have died believing I didn’t trust him.’
‘And if he was having an affair, chances are he would have denied it anyway,’ Faith replied.
‘Exactly, but now that he’s not around to challenge, my nagging doubt has become a full-blown obsession. Am I being paranoid? Is this some cruel side effect of grief?’ April asked. She continued to look at Faith: she would pull no punches.
‘We’re blessed with natural instincts for a reason,’ Faith said. ‘Only people with something to hide, or something to hide from, dismiss it as paranoia. Have you checked his messages? His emails?’
‘Yes, and I hated doing it, but I hated myself more when I couldn’t find anything more incriminating than Snapchat on his phone.’
‘Sorry for being a techno-phobe, but why would that mean anything?’ asked Tara.
‘Messages are time-limited. You don’t have to go to the trouble of deleting them and you don’t run the risk of leaving an audit trail behind if something unexpected happens to you,’ April said, mashing her cake with the fork.