by Fiona Lucas
Unlike Gabi, Anna hadn’t been hopeful that Lee was about to propose, but that didn’t mean it was all doom and gloom either. He might have wanted to ask her to go on a fantastic holiday, or move in with him, but as time crept on, Anna was beginning to think this was less and less probable.
Or maybe she was just being paranoid? Lee and Gabi could be snuggled up somewhere in a newly engaged bubble of love, having forgotten the rest of the world existed. She put her phone down on the sofa cushion and stood up, thinking it was about time she started the jambalaya she intended to cook for herself that night.
However, she was only two steps away when her phone rang, and she stopped and twisted to check the caller ID. Gabi! She dived for her phone and brought it up to her ear. “Hey there!” she said a little breathlessly. “What’s the news?”
The only reply she got was a sniff. Was Gabi actually crying with joy? It was possible. Gabi was definitely a crier when anything seriously good or seriously bad happened. Spencer had teased her about it mercilessly.
Anna gave her a few moments to collect herself, but when she heard another sniff, she frowned. “Gabi?”
“A-Anna . . .”
Anna went cold. Those were no tears of joy. Gabi sobbed, and it made Anna’s chest ache. She almost started crying too. “What is it? What happened? Is everyone okay?”
“No, everybody is not okay!” Gabi said, and Anna was slightly relieved to hear anger slicing through the sadness. “Lee did want to talk about our relationship, but not to get more serious. The bastard said he wants to see other people!”
“Where are you?” Anna said, looking for her shoes. If Gabi needed her, she was going to be there for her.
There was another sniff. “I’m standing on your front porch.”
Anna ran into her hallway, threw her front door open and enveloped Gabi in a hug. Gabi began to cry noisily. Still holding on to her, Anna led her into the house, kicking the door shut with her foot, then guided her to sit down on one of the chairs around her kitchen table.
“What happened?” Anna asked when the crying subsided. She left one arm over Gabi’s shoulder and studied her friend’s face as she tried to hold back a fresh round of tears. Oh, how her heart ached for Gabi. She knew just how it felt to have all your hopes and dreams for the future snatched away from you and trampled into the dirt.
“I’m making you hot chocolate,” she told Gabi as she reached for a saucepan and dashed milk into it. “And when you’re ready, I’m here to listen.”
Gabi nodded, her hands clasped together in front of her. She said nothing for a few minutes, but then her eyes became fierce and determined. “It was all going so well,” she began. “After all, he took me to Caprice—delicious French food, silly prices . . .”
“Bastard,” Anna said emphatically, which made the corner of Gabi’s mouth lift just a little. Anna meant it, though. Lee had known what he was going to say to Gabi. Saying it in pretty surroundings didn’t make it any better. It smacked of guilt. And cowardice. Anna shook her head gently, more to herself than to Gabi. She’d had a feeling about the guy, hadn’t she? She should have seen this coming. She should have been able to protect Gabi from this.
“We ate our meal and were going to share a tiramisu when he said we needed to talk about our relationship.” Gabi pressed her lips together and shook her head, warding off more tears. “I put my spoon down and smiled. I tried not to get carried away, like you said, Anna, but I could not stop hoping he was going to pull a little box from his pocket. Then he reached out. He stroked my hand. And he said we should not let things get stagnant . . .”
Gabi carried on speaking, head down, directing her words toward the table. “I was so set on what I thought he was going to say, that nothing he said made sense to me. So I had this big, stupid grin on my face . . . And then, one by one, the words made sense. It was like he poured a bucket of ice water all over me.”
Anna left the milk heating on the stove and sat down in the chair opposite Gabi. “And what exactly did he say?”
Gabi met her gaze. “He likes me, and that he thinks I’m great fun but . . .”
“But?”
Gabi’s bottom lip quivered. “But apparently, I’m not enough fun on my own . . .”
“So he doesn’t want to break up?” Anna asked, just to make sure she was understanding this right.
“No.”
“But he wants to see other people as well as you?”
Gabi nodded, looking even more broken.
At that point the milk boiled, foaming over the edge of the saucepan and hitting the stainless-steel stove with a hiss. Anna jumped up, grabbed the pan, and took it off the heat. Then she looked at the mess. “Stuff it,” she said, leaving the saucepan on the counter and heading in the direction of the living room. “Forget hot chocolate. There’s only one drink for situations like this.”
She returned with two glasses of Lagavulin and set one down in front of Gabi.
“Whisky?” Gabi said, frowning.
“You’ll thank me later,” Anna replied and dropped back into her chair. She and Gabi looked each other in the eye, raised their glasses, swallowed, then grimaced in unison.
Gabi coughed then said something in Portuguese that her mother probably wouldn’t have approved of. She closed her eyes and placed a hand at the base of her throat, seemingly concentrating on something. When she opened her eyes again, she handed Anna her glass. “Another.”
Anna went to fetch the bottle and placed it on the table between them. “So . . . What did you say to him?”
Gabi knocked back a second whisky and replaced her glass on the table with a satisfying thud. “I told him he could see as many girls as he wanted, but that I was not going to be one of them.”
“Good for you! And then what did you do? Did anyone need stitches?”
Gabi shook her head, and then a tiny smile curled her lips, almost in spite of herself. “When I walked out the restaurant, he was wearing the tiramisu.”
Anna laughed. She raised her glass and toasted Gabi’s moxie.
Gabi’s smile faded. She stared at her empty glass for a few seconds and then she slumped on the table, her long hair spilling over her arms, and started to cry. Anna got up, went around the table and crouched down beside her, hugging her and rubbing her back. “Do you want to stay here tonight?”
The rustling of the curls on the tabletop told Anna that Gabi was nodding. She started to cry even harder.
Anna kept crouching beside her, kept holding her. It was all she could do. And that made her heart break. If there were something she could do to stop it—invent a pill, perform a challenge set by the gods, step into Gabi’s body and take it herself—she would. But she knew she couldn’t. Just as Gabi hadn’t been able to do it for her.
Anna led Gabi upstairs and showed her to the guest bedroom. She found toiletries and a fresh toothbrush and handed over a spare set of pajamas. Once Gabi was changed and ready, she climbed into bed and lay there on the freshly plumped pillows. She looked utterly exhausted, beyond thought, beyond speech.
Anna knew what this felt like: when you were so wrung out from all the emotion that all you wanted to do was be by yourself and curl into a little ball. Hide under the duvet and pretend the outside world didn’t exist.
Once again, she forgave Gabi for all the “meddling” over the last few years. Watching her best friend go through this for one night was bad enough; it must have been awful for Gabi to have to do it week on week, month on month, year on year. No wonder that sometimes she’d got a little pushy.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Brody sat in his armchair and coughed. That dodgy spring was definitely on its last legs. He could feel it sticking into his left buttock. Terrific. He shifted position and placed a mug on the small table that stood between the chair and the fireplace. It was his usual dram of whisky, but this time he’d added hot water, lemon and a pinch of cinnamon. He’d woken up this morning feeling clammy and feverish, and now his nose had s
tarted to run. Even more terrific.
He picked up his phone, pressed a sequence of buttons and called Anna’s number.
“Hi,” she said, but he could hardly hear her.
“I think there’s something wrong with the connection,” he told her. “I’ll hang up and try again.”
“No! Don’t do that!” There was some muffled noise, as if she was walking to another place in the house. He heard a door close, and then she continued. “There’s nothing wrong with the line. I was just whispering.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, dropping his volume level and tone to match hers. “And why are we whispering?”
“I’ve got someone staying with me.”
Brody’s stomach dropped. He deliberately hadn’t asked about this Jeremy guy, even though he was aware she’d been seeing him for a few weeks, but this was a new development.
“Sorry . . .” she added.
Not as sorry as he was.
“She just came out of her room and headed for the bathroom and took me by surprise. I thought she went to sleep hours ago.”
“She?”
Anna sighed. “Gabriela. Poor thing. Her boyfriend dumped her a couple of days ago. Or, I suppose, technically, she dumped him, but only because he deserved it. I said she could stay at mine because she says all she does is cry all day when she’s on her own.” She sighed heavily. “At least when she’s here she’s only crying half the time . . .”
“How long is she staying?” Brody asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you okay with that?” Brody had never been big on having houseguests for an extended period, even back in the days when he’d had friends who’d wanted to stay with him.
“More than okay,” Anna said firmly. “Gabi was there for me when Spencer died. She can stay as long as she likes, move in permanently if she really wants to.”
Brody brightened at that idea. It’d make it more difficult for Jeremy to get a similar notion.
“She’s a total mess,” Anna said heavily. “She called in sick for work, which isn’t great because she’s a freelancer and she had to cancel a job, but she just couldn’t face it, so what can you do? I even took Tuesday off as well, but I can’t do that every day. So I’m just doing the things she did for me when I was a total mess: snuggling up with her on the sofa to watch comfort movies, buying her a bar of chocolate on the way home, or a copy of her favorite magazine, making her soup and—”
A sneeze caught him by surprise. “Sorry,” he said when he’d wiped his nose. “I hope I didn’t deafen you with that one.” He’d never been the sort to produce a discreet little snuffle if in public. His sneezes only came out at one volume: loud enough for most of Devon to hear them.
Instead of laughing at his joke, Anna said, “Sounds like you need someone to look after you too.”
Would you like the job? The words almost came out of his mouth as fast and loud as the sneeze, but he managed to hold them back. What a stupid thing to ask.
Oh, but if only he could . . . The thought of Anna pottering around in his kitchen making soup or curling up beside him on the sofa while they watched a film together stole his breath away.
Not going to happen, mate. Stop dreaming. Cook your own soup.
“I’m okay,” he finally said in answer to her question. “I’m old enough and ugly enough to take care of myself.”
Anna made a thoughtful noise. “I think that’s Gabi’s problem,” she mused. “She’s in a mess because she misjudged her ex, but then she’s beating herself up about being a mess, which makes her even more of a mess . . . It’s a vicious cycle. What she really needs is to be kind to herself. But we both know how difficult that can be.”
Brody grunted in acknowledgment.
“So, in the meantime, I’m going to step in and do it for her. We all need that, I’ve realized: to be kind to ourselves . . .” She drifted off for a moment. “For a long time, I wasn’t at all. I think I actually hated myself. Although I’m not sure what for . . . Being alive when Spencer was dead, maybe? Who knows?”
Brody grunted again. He knew all about this too, the self-hatred, the guilt.
“Uh-oh,” Anna suddenly said. He could hear her moving again, and she lowered her voice. “Gabi’s come back out of the bathroom. Oh, God. I can hear her crying,” Anna said, no longer bothering to whisper. “I’d better go.”
Brody nodded. This was how it always was with Anna and him. He’d feel that bond, that connection. It would feel all-encompassing, as if it was the only thing in the world, and then something would happen to bring him back down to reality with a bump, to remind him that he was only a tiny part of her life. “Until next time,” he said gruffly.
“Yes,” Anna replied, with a softness in her tone that tore his insides a little more raggedly, and then she was gone.
Chapter Forty
While she’d been talking to Brody, Anna had crept downstairs and into the living room, where she’d sat on the arm of the sofa. The light from the hall had allowed her to see just enough so she didn’t bump into the furniture.
“Anna?”
Anna shot off the sofa, heart pounding, and found Gabi standing in the doorway to the living room, half-asleep and fully bedraggled. “You scared the life out of me!”
Gabi rubbed a hand across her eyes. “I heard you talking . . .”
“Sorry. I was on the phone. I was trying not to disturb you.” She met Gabi in the doorway then led the way back up the stairs. Gabi followed mutely behind her, but as she stopped at the door to the guest bedroom she yawned and asked, “Who were you talking to?”
“Just . . . a friend.”
“Not Jeremy?”
Anna shook her head. “No, not Jeremy.”
“A friend?” Gabi said again with more than a dollop of disbelief in her tone. “No one talks that long on the phone anymore, not unless it’s your significant other. Even we text each other more than we talk to each other.”
“Well, I do. I talk on the phone to . . . people. Sometimes.”
Gabi stared back at her. “Was it that guy . . . Brett?”
“Brody . . .”
“Tell me how you met him,” Gabi asked, frowning. “You said ‘through Spencer,’ but how through Spencer?”
This was it, then. Anna had a choice to make; either she kept being evasive, fudging the issue, and risk hurting Gabi when she was already feeling so low, or . . .
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you about him, but we might as well get comfy if we’re going to do it.” She gestured for Gabi to go inside the bedroom and they both climbed onto the bed, Gabi under the duvet, Anna on top of it, where she sat up against the pillows with her legs crossed.
She began her story with her exit from the party on New Year’s Eve all those months ago and ended with the pictures and messages that pinged between his phone and hers on a regular basis now. Gabi listened to it all, without comment or interruption, which, in itself, should have been a warning signal.
Anna finished talking and glanced across at her best friend, who was propped up on pillows, her arms folded across her chest. She didn’t look very happy. “Are you in love with this man?” Gabi asked.
“What? No!” Anna paused before she said more. “No,” she said again, more calmly this time. “I’m not in love with him. He’s just someone who understands.”
Gabi gave Anna a look that said, What am I? Chopped liver?
Anna leaned over and hugged Gabi with one arm. “You know I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and no one could ever replace you, it’s just . . . He lost someone himself, that’s all. He knows what it’s like.”
Gabi pulled away and made herself comfortable, turning onto her side to face Anna. “Who did he lose?”
“His wife.” Gabi just looked at her and waited for more information to be forthcoming. Anna thought hard, trying to remember the detail of that conversation they’d had a while ago, and it only highlighted the fact that Gabi had a point. Even though Brody kne
w every intimate detail about Spencer’s death and its aftermath, Anna was still a little fuzzy on his history. Something dramatic always seemed to be happening in her life at the moment, and she realized she’d got sidetracked from her mission to dig deeper into the mystery that was Brody. “We don’t talk about her much—everyone deals with grief in their own way—but he has mentioned her. He told me they’d been having problems before she . . .”
What was the phrase Brody had used? He hadn’t said, “died.” Passed on? No. Left him? Not that either.
“What do you actually know about this man?”
“I know his name is Brody Smith, that he lives near Hexworthy on Dartmoor, and that he has a dog called Lewis.”
Gabi’s eyes widened. “Lewis?” she repeated slowly. “Like Spencer’s dog Lewis?”
“Yes.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” Anna said. “It’s just a coincidence.”
“Really?” Gabi plucked her phone out of her dressing gown pocket and pulled up Facebook. “Do you remember what is on Spencer’s page?” she said as she scrolled through the posts.
Of course Anna remembered what was on Spencer’s page. There were hundreds of posts from three years ago, outpourings of support and sympathy, exclamations of shock and sadness at the news. It had been comforting at the time to know that he’d been so loved, so she’d kept his profile active, and had never quite got around to deleting it.
Gabi’s eyes lit up. “Aha!” She turned the phone around and thrust it at Anna, a triumphant expression on her face. “Look!”
There was a picture of Spencer, arms tight around his beloved dog’s neck. Both of them seemed to have been grinning at the camera. She remembered him scanning that picture in. The caption read: Five years since we lost our Lewis. Miss you, mate.
