withoutwithmarkHilda shook her head; not vigorously, but with just enough strength to express her conviction. “I wouldn’t have done that.”
“I know,” Victoria conceded. “I know.”
In truth, she hadn’t expected Hilda to come at all. When she’d finally decided to reach out to her, when she’d committed herself to the course of action she was now pursuing, she’d expected to find herself stonewalled. She’d had every reason to believe that her message would be met with silence; an avoidance that would have been ironically fitting for a woman who fled so suddenly into the deepening night. So it had been with no small measure of surprise that she’d answered Hilda’s subsequent phone call; she’d been taken aback even further aback by her friend’s readiness to catch a train out of Bassington as soon
