‘I thought you were psychic,’ I whisper.
He shakes his head. ‘More like a time traveller. I know grief, Kate. Intimately. So, when Cam was diagnosed . . .’
‘It stirred everything up?’
He doesn’t reply.
‘It took you back,’ I suggest. ‘I am so incredibly sorry. For your loss. And for dragging you through . . . everything, like I was the first person this had ever happened to. But you didn’t say anything. Why?’
‘It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t appropriate at first. People are quick to compare someone’s suffering with their own and it’s not about that. I just wanted to help you. Pay it forward, you know?’
I think about exactly what that meant. Hugh had been there for me in ways that floored me. Floored Cam, too, until he couldn’t appreciate things any more. I’d told him intimate, graphic details of Cam’s gradual descent from vibrant husband to someone virtually comatose. I’d gone over and over the moments when Cam died, what happened, when it happened, the way his breathing changed, the sense I had of him being taken from me against my will while I grappled with a deep desire for him to be at peace . . . How could Hugh have withstood all of this without ever once asking me to stop, or asking for an opportunity to share the burden of his own, equally tragic story?
‘When I met you, at the gym—’ he says.
Let’s not rehash that.
‘—you lot accused me of having a string of one-night stands, remember?’
To be fair, it was Purple Pants who accused him. I blush with shame on her behalf.
‘Kate, that was true.’
Oh, the ugly twisting in my heart is back.
‘When Gen died, I knew I couldn’t go through that again. That agony. The loss. It nearly killed me. And the way to protect myself from that was just to—’
‘Avoid the risk.’
‘Yes. I had an outright ban on getting close to anyone. Decided it wasn’t better to have loved and lost – it was much worse. I made a promise that I’d never put myself in a situation again that carried that much danger.’
I nod. This bit I totally get.
‘But what about Ruby?’ I ask. I’m embarrassed to raise the office yum cha rumour, but he saw her too many times for it not to have meant something.
His face softens. ‘She turned up around the time you were throwing me at Grace,’ he explains, and my heart sinks. She was the ‘something personal’ he was occupied with.
‘You were seeing someone!’ I can’t believe he lied!
He shakes his head. ‘Kate, she’s Genevieve’s daughter.’
Genevieve’s daughter? I don’t understand. How is that even possible?
‘Gen and I broke up for a couple of years in the middle. I thought she told me everything, but there was one big thing she’d kept to herself.’
Why wouldn’t she have told him?
‘She’d adopted the baby out at birth. When Ruby went looking for her biological mother and found she’d died, she started the search for her father.’
Does Hugh have a daughter? Lord, this conversation is exploding beyond all expectation.
‘I knew she couldn’t have been mine,’ he goes on, quickly. ‘Gen would have told me that. And I confirmed it with her closest friend, who’d always felt bad having to keep Gen’s secret from me. She said the only reason Gen didn’t tell me was she was scared it would drive me away somehow. It wouldn’t have. I would have loved that little girl.’
He does love her. Cam told me.
‘Ruby wanted to know everything about her mum. So we’d have long lunches . . .’
‘At yum cha,’ I say. ‘Everyone thought you were seeing her romantically.’ It’s mortifying to admit now.
‘No,’ he confirms. ‘Just talking about Gen. I told her everything. You know, I almost wished—’
He wished she was his.
‘That must have freshened up so much grief for you,’ I say. My heart is breaking for him.
He swallows hard. ‘Ruby is the image of her mother. And she’s like her in so many other ways. It was a strong reminder of what I’d lost. But at the same time, this beautiful, unexpected gift . . .’
I can’t believe all of this was going on and he never said.
‘Watching you go through everything with Cam was torture at times. But it proved to me unequivocally that I was right. I couldn’t lose someone like that again. I can’t. I won’t have it. Cam and I talked about it once – the risk you take, loving someone. And how losing Gen broke me.’
Cam knew?
I think about Hugh’s agony that time he disappeared for those weeks. I remember the conversation that passed, silently, between them when he returned. Was it too much? Watching me lose Cam? Was he giving up on us? On me?
‘You couldn’t stand to watch me lose him,’ I say quietly. ‘My pain was too much, so you went away.’
He takes my hand carefully and studies me. ‘That’s not why I went away. I wouldn’t leave you like that. No, it was something else. Bigger than that. Something I couldn’t think straight about if I was with you.’
An idea takes hold in my brain. Did Cam ask Hugh to somehow ‘step in’, after he was gone? Is that what their arrangement was about? It’s exactly the sort of thing Cam would have done, by that point. He was desperate. And of course there’s a part of me that absolutely recoils at the idea of it. But it’s the only thing that makes sense.
I didn’t want that arrangement. Didn’t need it. But feel rejected anyway.
‘I totally get the thing about wanting to stay on your own,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s the only sensible option. I’m glad you told him “no”.’
He looks confused.
‘That’s what he asked you, isn’t it? To look after me when he’d gone?’
He rubs his forehead. Shakes his head. ‘He did say something like that at one point, and I told him you wouldn’t have a bar of it, but that wasn’t it. It’s something else between Cam and I that I had to wrestle with when I was away. Still wrestle with, actually, most days.’
‘What is it, Hugh?’ I’m so intrigued I might burst.
He puts his hand on my knee. Right on it. I didn’t think such an innocent gesture could disrupt so much inside of me, and I’m grappling with that when he delivers a punchline that’s so hard, I feel like I’ve been hit in the jaw.
‘I’m really sorry, Kate, but Cam made me promise I’d never tell you.’
35
I am the next of kin. Keeper of Cam’s legacy. Protector of his secrets. Mother of his child!
‘You have to tell me!’ I exclaim.
Hugh shakes his head, uncomfortable yet resolved. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
‘But Cam told me everything!’ I protest, outraged.
Obviously, he didn’t tell me this. I can’t work out if I’m more hurt at being sidelined by Cam just when our marriage was at its most vulnerable, or angry that Hugh is choosing to go along with the secret, all this time later.