Page 74 of The Impossible Fortune

‘My grief?’ Paul isn’t sure what she’s talking about. She sees he’s not bluffing, and finds that interesting.

‘One of your oldest friends died,’ says Joanna. ‘I don’t think we’ve really talked about it. I know you’re worried about Nick, but you can talk about Holly too you know?’

Paul doesn’t want to talk, Joanna can see that. But why? Is he hiding a small lie or a big lie?

‘Why didn’t she come to the wedding?’ Joanna asks. Approach it from a different angle. ‘And don’t say, “She was working.” Come on.’

Paul has been using his knife and fork to emphasize his opinions about the play, but now he puts them down. Real life, it seems, doesn’t provoke the same emotions.

‘We had an argument,’ says Paul. ‘Well, she had an argument; I just stood there.’

A chef Joanna recognizes from TV has just sat at the table opposite them. She will tell her mum about that. ‘What was this one-sided argument about?’

‘Our wedding being on a weekday,’ says Paul. ‘A work day. She accused me of scheduling it deliberately.’

‘But I scheduled it?’ says Joanna.

‘I know,’ says Paul. ‘But, as I say, it didn’t feel like she needed me to contribute to the discussion.’

So Holly was angry that the wedding was on a work day? She couldn’t take a day off to see one of her oldest friends get married? There really is only one thing left to conclude. Joanna had concluded it anyway.

‘How long did you date for?’

‘Hmm?’ Paul, bless him, is wondering if there is a way to avoid a collision. But there is not.

‘You’re not in trouble,’ says Joanna. ‘But it would be a very unusual thing for a platonic friend to object to.’

‘Yes,’ agrees Paul.

‘And unusual that she might think it was deliberate too,’ Joanna adds. ‘So how long?’

‘A couple of years,’ says Paul. ‘On and off. A while in our twenties, then again a few years ago.’

‘How many is a few?’ says Joanna.

‘Two,’ says Paul. ‘Slightly less than two.’

‘Should we settle on eighteen months?’ says Joanna.

‘That sounds about right,’ says Paul.

‘Your last relationship before this, then?’

‘I mean …’ Paul is pretending to think. ‘It would, I suppose, yes, I suppose it would have been.’

‘So you rekindle a romance from your twenties with an attractive woman –’

‘Don’t,’ says Paul. Men can be so funny about previous relationships. There are three or four of her own previous relationships she has absolutely struck from the record, so she understands it. None of them had been murdered recently though. In one particular case she could but hope.

‘Gave it another go in your forties,’ says Joanna. ‘Split up again, and then met the woman of your dreams, that’s me, shortly afterwards, extremely shortly afterwards, and then got married within six months?’

Paul nods.

‘I wouldn’t have come to the wedding either,’ says Joanna. ‘I’d have been furious. You split up with her, I assume?’

‘It was …’ Paul is searching for words that are both truthful and also paint him in a good light. Which is the eternal struggle of all men who have ended relationships. ‘It had an inevitability by the end.’

‘Soshesplit up withyou?’