Free Freeze Frame by Peter May

Enzo, then she smiled. “Nice to see you again, Madame Killian,” she said in French. Jane just smiled and said nothing, and the waitress left them to make their choice.
    “The shrimp are always good. And the dorade.”
    “Then I’ll have shrimp for an entrée, and dorade for my main course.”
    Jane grinned. “Now I’ll feel bad if you don’t like them.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll pretend I do, even if I don’t.”
    She laughed, and some of the tension seemed to leave her. “Such a gentleman.”
    “Shall I choose a wine?”
    “Please.”
    Enzo cast his eyes over the wine list and picked out a 2005
M
é
moire Blanc
from Château Clement Termes. When they had ordered, he rested his chin on interlocked hands and looked appraisingly at Jane Killian. “How come an attractive woman like you never remarried, Jane?”
    She seemed to think about it for a long time. Perhaps deciding whether or not to speak the truth, or whether to brush his question aside, some superficial response to satisfy his curiosity. In the end her reply, Enzo was sure, came from the heart. “They say that for every one of us, somewhere in the world, there is the perfect partner. They also say that most people never get to find theirs. I was lucky. When Peter came along, I knew I had met mine.”
    “How did you meet?”
    “Oh, it wasn’t anything very exciting. We were both at Edinburgh University. Peter was from London. I came from Bristol. Edinburgh wasn’t either of our first choice, but that’s where we both ended up. As if fate had decided it for us.”
    “You believe in fate, then?”
    She smiled. “No. But sometimes it’s nice to think that something so right has been planned. That we actually do mean something in the great scheme of things.”
    The wine arrived, and the waitress filled each of their glasses.
    “Peter had always been interested in charity work. He was a great believer in the individual making a difference in the world. I never understood, after all that he saw and experienced, how he ever managed to hold on to that belief. He came back sometimes from his trips, usually to Africa, with stories that reduced him to tears in the telling. He saw awful things, Mr. Macleod. Hunger, disease, war. Terrible suffering on an unimaginable scale. And still he thought he could make a difference. For a few, maybe he did.”
    “You were never tempted to join him?”
    “I didn’t have his strength. In the face of such suffering, I think you have to remain resolutely dispassionate in order to be able to help. I would have been far too emotional, completely useless. Somehow Peter never let it affect him. Until afterwards. In the field he was only ever totally practical. He saved his tears for me. And in a strange sort of way, that made me feel very special. Admitted to a place in the very heart of him that no one else ever reached.” She looked very directly at Enzo. “So you see, Mr. Macleod, there was no way I could ever replace him.”
    “It’s Enzo,” Enzo said. “Not even my students call me Monsieur Macleod.” He sipped his wine and let the smoky vanilla flavour slip back over his tongue. “So how did you fill your life during his long absences?”
    “I had my career. In publishing. Very prosaic, I’m afraid. I got to live my life vicariously through the authors we published. And through Peter, of course. How I wish we’d had the Internet in those days. It would have been so much easier to keep in touch. And I might have had a more enduring record of our conversations. These days I keep every email I send and receive. As if keeping a record of my life might give it some meaning.” She laughed, but too late to hide the bitterness.
    From the moment he had met her, Enzo had sensed an emotional charge within her, almost like a controlled explosion, a part of herself on which she kept the lid firmly shut. Now, for the first time, he felt the force of that charge escaping, involuntary words betraying her disappointment