by Fiona Lucas
Eventually, she turned on a single lamp in the living room and sat down in the corner of her sofa. It was so tidy, so neat. That was Anna’s natural state. She found it easy to put things away, to keep things ordered, but it wasn’t how their home had been when Spencer had been alive.
She reached over to the coffee table and pulled the newspaper out from the shelf underneath, then flapped the pages open and messed them around a bit, before crumpling a section up and letting it slide onto the floor. That was how he’d always left it. It had driven her mad, but now she almost missed the socks down the side of the sofa cushions and the boxers that only made it halfway into the linen basket.
She sank back into the sofa and sighed. Would it ever stop, this feeling? Wasn’t time supposed to heal all wounds? In her opinion, time was doing a pretty crappy job. Buck up, time! Sort yourself out. After all, it kept marching her steadily away from the last moment she’d seen Spencer living and breathing, whether she wanted it to or not. Surely it owed her a little something in return?
She tucked her legs up under herself and reached for her phone. This was a bad idea, but it had been a difficult night to get through; she was going to allow herself one small concession, one tiny weakness.
She pulled up her messages, found Spencer’s name, then scrolled back to February fourteenth, three years earlier. He’d died a little over a month later, but on that Valentine’s Day, Spencer had sent her a series of funny little text messages, crammed with emoticons and saucy suggestions about how they should spend the evening together when he got home.
Anna smiled as she reread them, reveling in not just the words but the memories of that night, memories that only two people in this world had been party to, and now she was the sole keeper of. It would be wrong to let them fade and die.
But reading it back, remembering it all, was like picking at a scab. It started with that feeling, that delicious temptation, knowing there was something you wanted to do but shouldn’t. Oh, and then the moment came when you let your self-control crash and gave in to it. Bliss. Relief. Everything focused on that moment of instant gratification.
But it didn’t stay that way for long. The wound was open again, and it began to sting and seep. There was a price to be paid for that split second of euphoria, and Anna paid it in full as she stared at the bright screen of her mobile, full of Spencer’s personality captured in letters and stupid little cartoon faces, and the ache deepened until it was almost unbearable.
But then an idea crept into her head, a magnetic tug pulling her to a destination she didn’t want to visit. To take her mind off it, she opened up the photos app on her phone and began scrolling back through the images of them together, lingering on them the way she’d wanted to at her mother-in-law’s the previous Sunday (it had been secondary school pictures that day: toothy smiles, trophies and too-big blazers) but eventually she reached the earliest ones, and as many times as she tried to swipe down to reveal more, the pictures bounced back up to the top of the screen, stubbornly refusing to do as she asked.
And the tugging toward that bad idea, that black hole, was still there in the background, whispering to her, hypnotizing her to the point where she numbly opened her contacts and found the favorites. Spencer’s name was at the top. She stared at it.
You said you wouldn’t do this again, that sensible little voice in her head whispered. You promised yourself that Valentine’s Day would be different from New Year’s Eve, but her finger pressed the screen while the inner voice was still talking, and the phone began dialing his number. Even though her heart was beating double time due to the memory of what had happened last time she’d done this, she held the phone up to her ear.
The ringing on the other end of the line stopped and she held her breath, waiting for what came next. However, instead of Spencer’s message, she heard a generic robotic voice instructing her to wait and speak after the tone.
How the heck had that happened? Had she been in such a flap last time that she’d managed to press the wrong button and delete his voicemail greeting? No, that wasn’t right. You could do that to your own message but not to someone else’s. It didn’t make sense.
She pressed the “end call” button in frustration. What had just happened? Had it been a wrong number? Seconds ticked by as she glared at her phone screen, holding her breath, and then she dialed again. This time there was no message at all.
The call connected.
“Hello?”
Anna froze.
Was that him? It had only been one word. She couldn’t tell! She couldn’t think! Once upon a time, she’d been able to tell his voice from anyone else’s, and it cut her to the core that she’d lost that treasured skill and hadn’t even realized it. “Spencer?” she said in a croaky voice. “Is that you? Please let it be you.” She started to cry. “I have so much I want to say . . .”
For a long time, there was nothing but silence. No voice. Not even the sound of someone breathing—which, in a rather morbid way, made sense—but she felt a presence. Someone was there. Someone was listening.
And so she started to speak. She began to say everything that had been boiling up inside her for two years, ten months and twenty-two days.
“Spencer, it’s me . . .” She broke off, unable to carry on because her throat was so tight, and she had to concentrate on getting the next words out. “I love you, Spencer. I know you always laughed at the idea of soul mates, but you were mine. You are mine. And I miss you so much . . . Sometimes, I feel as if I’m never going to feel normal again. Strike that, because I feel that way all the time. And how could I go back to normal without you, anyway? I’m not sure how I go on living and breathing without you as it is.”
A sudden wave of emotion hit her. Not something crashing over her from the outside, but something rising up from within. “And I’m angry with you for that! I’m cross that you left me here alone, like it’s some big joke. Like you’re going to jump out from behind a corner and shout, ‘Only kidding!’ But it’s not funny anymore, Spencer! It’s just not funny. So stop it, you hear me? Stop it. Because I want you back.” She hiccupped in a breath and then let out a sob. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please come back.”
No reply.
Gluey tears had collected under her lashes and she wiped them away with her hands. “Please talk to me.” She waited. Seconds ground past. Still there was no response on the other end of the line, but she could feel him there. She really could.
“Spencer?” she eventually said. It felt as if she was tiptoeing beyond the edges of life, of what was real. Maybe the rules were different there. Maybe she shouldn’t take some things for granted. “Can you hear me? Do you even remember me? It’s Anna . . .”
Please, she whispered silently, not knowing if she was appealing to Spencer or God, or the night around her. Please, let there be someone there. I feel so alone.
She waited for him to say her name, waited for him to say it in that soft, sexy way he always had when he’d picked up one of her calls, as if he had a special smile just for her. Anna, he’d say, and he’d load that one word with everything he felt for her. He wouldn’t have even needed to tell her he loved her each day, even though he always had. Just hearing her name on his lips would have been enough.
And then it happened. What she’d been waiting for happened.
“Anna?”
Chapter Eight
Anna.
He’d said her name, but it wasn’t soft and warm and full of smiles. Just a word repeated because it made no sense to the person speaking it. Anna felt as if someone had tipped a bucket of ice water over her head.
Oh, my God! What am I doing?
She ended the call, dropped the phone, then sprang off the sofa and stood at the opposite side of the room, trembling. She turned so she didn’t have to look at the screen and found herself facing a small sideboard. She flung one of the doors open to reveal several dusty bottles of whisky. Spencer’s whisky. She pulled out a tumbler and reached for a bo
ttle, bypassing the smooth Highland Park for the Lagavulin. She needed earthy, peaty tones and a fire in the back of her throat. She half filled the glass, knocked it back in one go, then shuddered.
By the time she was at the bottom of her second glass, she wasn’t quite as mortified as she had been half an hour earlier. In fact, she was starting to feel much more philosophical about the whole thing. So much so, that she reached over, picked up her phone and dialed the number again.
There was no mechanical voicemail message, just a hesitant silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry. I know . . .” she said, hoping the edges of the words weren’t blurring into each other too much. And then, when all that came back was a soft grunt, she added, “I know you’re not him . . . That you’re not Spencer . . .” She broke off again to cough back a sob as the truth of that realization hit her a second time, as ridiculous as it was to have even considered it in the first place. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. For phoning in the middle of the night—twice now!—and rambling on like I’ve become unhinged.”
Another soft grunt. But there might have been the merest smidge of a smile behind this one.
“I’m not unhinged. I’m just . . . just . . .”
There was a heavy, masculine sigh.
“I don’t know what I am,” she ended weakly.
For a few seconds it was very quiet, and Anna was half expecting to hear it deaden, for that silence, that gap in a conversation when no one says anything, to become the blankness of no one else being there at all, but then she heard him take a breath, readying himself to speak. “You haven’t lost your mind,” he said.
His voice was rich and warm and certain. Anna was tempted to believe him, even though she wasn’t sure it was the truth. Reality had been a hazy concept for a long time now. “How do you know? After all, I’m talking to a stranger in the middle of the night.”
“Life . . . isn’t always easy,” he replied slowly. It seemed as if he was picking his words carefully, not because he didn’t have the conversational skills, quite the reverse. She had a feeling that this man was always careful with his words, always weighed them and used them sparingly. “Things happen . . . Things you couldn’t ever have predicted. And when they do, it can throw you, turn you upside down and your life takes a very different path.”
Anna held her breath. How did he know? Was there something strange and supernatural going on here after all? It seemed as if he’d peered inside her skull and recited back to her all the things she was thinking and feeling but could never tell anyone.
“And when life changes suddenly and unexpectedly,” he continued, “there’s a grieving of what was and what never can be again. I would call that being human.”
That all sounded very logical, which was very reassuring. He could just be telling her what she wanted to hear, of course, to get the hysterical woman off the phone, but even so, his words had the weight of truth about them. Of experience.
Are you human? she wanted to ask, but she’d already subjected this poor man to a hefty dollop of her stupidity; he probably didn’t need more. She swallowed the question and took a different tack. “Thank you,” she whispered. “And sorry . . . I won’t ring again.” And then, because it seemed rude not to, she added, “Good night.”
A pause, as if he was considering her words, as simple as they had been. “Good night . . . Anna.”
And then he was gone, cut off by the pad of her thumb on the glass of her phone screen. Good night, Anna. There had been no smile in that voice just for her. But there had been something. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Didn’t matter, though, she thought as she stood up, turned off the living room light and headed up the stairs. She wouldn’t be dialing that number ever again.
Chapter Nine
Anna kept her promise to herself—she didn’t call Spencer’s number again. Or what turned out to be Spencer’s old number. She did, however, call the mobile phone provider and, after twenty minutes on hold and being rerouted through three different departments, finally the mystery was solved.
She’d been paying for Spencer’s mobile with a joint credit card she no longer used except for that bill. The account was still active, but the card had expired last September. She’d found an urgent email buried under five hundred other unopened messages in her inbox, warning her Spencer’s account would be closed in sixty days if a new payment source was not provided. When that hadn’t happened, his number had been reassigned.
It was her fault that tiny but vital connection to Spencer had been lost. Nothing spooky or supernatural. No act of God or fate or whatever it was that was laughing at her from above the clouds as it toyed with her life. Her own stupid fault. She wished she could rewind time and go back and read the buried email alert before it was too late, to get her lethargic backside into gear and call the phone company.
But she supposed if she’d had the power to do that, she’d have skipped over those inconsequential things and would have gone back to the day Spencer had died. Instead of yelling down at him to get a two-pint carton of milk when he went to the shop, she would have run down the stairs, stopped him as he was opening the door, pinned him against the wall and kissed him senseless. Thirty seconds was all it would have taken, and then that drunk driver would have been further down the road or all the way around the corner. None of this would have happened and she wouldn’t be living this nightmare.
That thought plagued her more and more as the next few weeks ticked past, leading up to March twenty-third, the third anniversary of his death. The Barry family had forgone their scheduled Sunday lunch two days earlier and were meeting up to mark the occasion, so Anna had taken the day off work. About eleven in the morning she climbed into her car and headed out of London.
She glanced up at the sky as the houses and shops melted into woods and farmland. It was gray and moody, threatening rain. Disappointing, but fitting. She had mixed feelings about the day ahead. The last two years, she’d met up with Spencer’s family and they’d all just assumed they would do the same today, but now she was thinking about it, she wondered if she’d have been better off spending the day on her own. A day to be quiet and reflect might have been just what she needed.
She sighed. It was too late to change plans now, anyhow. It would be insensitive—if not downright rude—to call and say she wasn’t coming.
Her phone was sitting in a mount on the dashboard and she glanced at it. What she really wanted to do was call her mum and get some emotional support before she arrived at her destination. It would be early in Nova Scotia—not long past breakfast time—and her mother might well be up and driving to work in the nearby city of Halifax.
But Anna had to walk a fine line with her parents. It might be different if they didn’t live on another continent, but they did, and she had to deal with that. Even though it had been three years, she knew they’d drop everything to come and visit if they felt she was struggling, but that just didn’t seem fair. They had their own lives, and she didn’t want her mother to jeopardize a job she adored.
In the end, she gave in and made the call. She could edit what she said, after all, and skirt around the really dark stuff that went on in her head, as she usually did.
“Hello, darling,” her mum said, and Anna could hear the dull rumble of traffic in the background. “I suspected I might hear from you this morning, but I was going to call later if I didn’t.” She sighed. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Spencer myself in the last few days. You know how much your father and I adored him. I can hardly believe it’s been three years . . .”
Anna sucked in a breath and blinked furiously, caught off guard by her mother’s words.
“How are you doing?” her mum asked softly.
“I’m . . . managing,” Anna lied, but then compensated with a bit of truth. “But I’m not really looking forward to today.”
“Another trip to the crematorium and one of Gayle’s buffets?”
Anna grimaced. “No, thank goodness. I couldn’t have faced sandwiches and finger food again this year. Maybe that’s just as well. I’m starting to find going to Gayle and Richard’s a little—I don’t know—claustrophobic.”
“Really? How so?”
Anna frowned as she concentrated on overtaking a car that was going half the speed of all the other traffic. “I’m not sure how to put it into words. You know how important it is to me to keep that connection with Spencer’s family, but sometimes I find Gayle a little bit distant. Maybe it’s just me . . .”
She trailed off to consider this. She had been out of sorts, ever since New Year’s Eve. That night, that call, had done it. Maybe she was just being oversensitive?
“I get what you’re saying about Gayle,” her mum said. “She’s always struck me as a little . . . structured.”
Anna chuckled softly. That was certainly one word for it.
“I thought she was that type from the first time we all had dinner together, but my heart really went out to her after Spencer passed away.” She paused for a moment and sighed. “I can’t even imagine how I’d react if I lost you, and I couldn’t judge her if she was being a bit, well, controlling, in those months after he died. People deal with things in their own unique ways.”
“Yes,” Anna replied thoughtfully as she turned onto the A21 and headed toward the coast. “Being in control . . . I suppose that is Gayle’s way of dealing with things. She likes her routines, her rituals.” But so did Anna, so maybe she shouldn’t judge her mother-in-law for that. “Anyway, no mini Scotch eggs and fondant fancies today, thank goodness. She suggested doing something different.”
“Gayle did? You do surprise me! But maybe it’s healthy that she’s decided to plan something different this year? It shows that perhaps she’s beginning to move on.”
