by Fiona Lucas
Vijay turned to her. “More interestingly, what are you doing now?”
“Me?” Anna looked between the two men. Rhys nodded. “We like your idea. We think it might have legs—especially if we can forge links with a charity or nonprofit organization that supports people who are grieving. Early days yet, but we’re putting out feelers, seeing if there’s interest, that kind of thing.”
Anna beamed at him. “Oh, I’m so pleased you want to do something with it. Having someone to talk to really kind of saved my life, or at the very least, set it on a healthier track.”
“Good,” Vijay said. “And we’re glad to see you doing so well, but I wasn’t kidding when I asked what you were doing now. Where are you working?”
“Oh,” Anna said, a little taken aback, but she filled them in on Sundridge Plumbing and Heating, the joys of invoices for taps and bits of piping she still didn’t know how to identify. “I think I’m ready to move on, though,” she added.
“Yes, do,” Vijay said. “Ditch it.”
Rhys rolled his eyes. “I thought you said we were going to take this softly-softly.”
“Ditch what?” Anna asked.
“Ditch that job and come and work with us again,” Vijay said, and he didn’t seem to be joking in the slightest.
Anna looked at the surrounding offices through the glass wall of the one she was in. It was no longer the three-person operation it was when she’d been involved. “I know you asked me to stay on after Spencer died, but you’re bigger now! I would have no idea how to manage the bookkeeping for this size of operation.”
“Forget bookkeeping!” said Vijay, cutting in. “You have Spencer’s shares. Technically, you’re a partner. Come on board doing something else.” He pulled a disbelieving face and added, “You can manage the office if that’s really your bag.”
Anna looked once again at the team of bright young things buzzing around the open-plan space outside the meeting room. “Don’t you have someone to do that?”
Rhys saw where Anna was looking and waved a dismissive arm in the colorful crowd’s general direction. “Yeah, but they’re creative types, and they’re like we were when we started—young and stupid. They think everything we say is gold dust.”
“They would’ve loved the name Avocado,” Vijay said drily.
Rhys ignored him. “What I’m saying is that we need someone around who’ll tell us we need a ‘does what it says on the tin’ name for a time management app. Someone like you, Anna.”
Anna stared back at them. She had the feeling she might cry if they said any more. “You really want me back? Just me? On my own? Even though I walked away three years ago and haven’t been involved since?”
Both guys nodded.
“We understood why it was hard,” Vijay said, sobering. “We found it difficult too. It was only not wanting to let Spencer down, wanting to make BlockTime a success for him, that kept us going to start off with. Will you think about it? Because the best person to develop your app is you.”
Rhys must have seen the look of pure horror on Anna’s face because he quickly added, “Not the technical side like Spencer did, of course, but the heart. That’s why BlockTime worked . . .” And he paused to look across at Vijay, who nodded encouragingly. “. . . because we were all passionate about it.”
“And who better to understand what an app for connecting grieving people needs to do than someone who’s been through it themselves?” Vijay added. “I’m sure the pair of us would wade in and make all sorts of mistakes.”
Anna took a moment to digest that. For so long she’d avoided these two, and any mention of BlockTime, because it had made her think of Spencer and all he’d done, and that had made her think of all she’d lost. But now she was remembering there was joy to be had thinking about all they’d accomplished together too. It was quite a revelation.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Brody’s phone lit up, Anna’s picture in the background behind the button to accept an incoming call. “Anna?” he said as he held the handset up to his ear.
“Brody,” she replied. And that was it. No chatter about her day, no random questions from out of the blue. Brody frowned and waited a few more seconds. There was a loud bang in the background.
“Are you okay, Anna? What’s that noise?”
“Fireworks,” she said, sounding slightly puzzled. “It’s Bonfire Night—had you forgotten?”
“I suppose I had. The nearest displays are probably twenty miles away.”
Anna harrumphed. “Can’t forget round here. They’re going off every few seconds.” And then she fell silent again. Most odd. It had been a few days since they’d spoken but she’d been so brimming with ideas and energy about this app idea when they last chatted, he presumed she’d been busy.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said quietly, and then he heard a gentle huff. Not of exasperation or humor, but as if she were trying to work out how to word what she wanted to say. “But there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a few weeks.”
Brody’s stomach dropped. Oh, God. She was going to say New Year’s Eve was off. She had something better to do. And someone better to do it with. Even though he hadn’t committed to going, and knew he would probably pull out in the end, he didn’t want the possibility of it to disappear just yet. “Go on,” he said, steeling himself for the worst.
“I know who you are.”
Brody frowned harder. “And I know who you are . . .”
“I mean that I know who you are in terms of what you do—or what you used to do. I know your full name is Brody Alexander Smith.”
For a couple of seconds Brody heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears. “How . . . How did you work that one out?” There was no point in denying it.
“Gabi told me. She did some . . . um . . . investigating. She was worried about me talking to a man I’d never—”
“It’s okay,” Brody said softly. “I get it.”
“It’s just . . . I’ve known for a while, and I wasn’t going to say anything, but I felt bad about it, even though it wasn’t me who went looking. But then I realized that it’s possible we’re going to meet soon, that we’re going to stand close enough to look into each other’s faces. And I realized there’d be this . . . thing . . . between us. A secret. And I didn’t want that.”
He exhaled and looked at Lewis, who was curled up near his feet. No. Secrets weren’t good. They were like walls. Barriers. “Does it matter?” he asked. “What you found out?”
Anna sounded slightly bemused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” He held his breath slightly, realizing he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Does it change anything?”
Once again, Anna confounded him. Despite his reservations, he’d been expecting a hasty denial—of course it isn’t going to change anything—but she kept him waiting. His stomach grew icy. How much had Gabi actually told Anna? And what had been the source?
“A little,” she said softly.
Brody closed his eyes, tried to breathe evenly.
There was a shyness in her tone when she spoke again. Anna had always said she was shy, but she’d never been that way with him before. The icy feeling started to spread.
“I read your books.”
Brody felt as if he’d been punched in the gut, but he had no idea where that reaction had come from. Why did it matter if she had?
“They’re beautiful, Brody . . . So full of magic, and not just the spell-casting kind. So full of imagination and depth. I was entranced.”
A thousand thoughts and feelings rushed around Brody’s head, none of them slow enough for him to tackle and pin down. “Thank you,” he managed.
“Why did you stop? Writing, I mean . . .”
Bam! Another punch. And this was territory he really, really didn’t want to cover. Especially not with her.
“Gabi said . . .” She paused, then continued nervously. “Gabi said something about an accident.”
Brody made a sharp intake of breath.
“Was that how she . . . you know . . . died?”
Brody’s voice was barely a croak when he replied, “Who?”
“Your wife.”
As much as he didn’t want to tell her the truth, he’d heard what she’d said about secrets. He also couldn’t lie to her about this, not now she’d asked him directly. “My wife isn’t dead,” he said slowly. “We’re divorced.”
“Oh,” Anna said loudly and then again more softly. “Then who . . . ?”
Brody’s heart thudded.
When she spoke again, she sounded confused, maybe even a little suspicious. “I’m not making it up, am I? You did say you’d lost someone too?”
Brody walked over to the other side of the room to stare out of the blackened window. He couldn’t even see the silhouette of the ragged trees that lined his boundary. Darkness began to seep through the panes, filling him. “I did.”
There was a moment of pure silence, both where he stood in his study but also at the other end of the line.
Anna whispered, “Who?”
“I . . .”
The wave hammered down on him. Without warning and without mercy. No clues it had been looming. No tingling fingers, no tight chest. God. Nine years. He thought he’d outrun it to a certain extent, but here was proof to the contrary: the pain was still as fresh and raw as it had been that day almost a decade ago.
Brody turned and began to run, even though it was a foolish thing to do in his tiny cluttered cottage. He knocked over a lamp in his rush to get to the back door, and it crashed to the floor behind him. He wrenched the door open and ran out into the yard, the frost suspended and waiting in the night air, chilling his face and hands.
“Brody . . . ?” The voice was muffled from where he held the phone against his chest.
He tried to talk, he really did, but no sound would come out. Hardly surprising, since it felt as if someone had launched a wrecking ball into his chest. He dropped the phone and staggered away from it, heaving in rasping breaths that made his entire body shudder. And then he fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands and began to sob.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Thanks for coming over to help,” Anna said to Gabi as they walked across the landing and into her bedroom. “I couldn’t face doing this on my own.”
Gabi sat down on the edge of the bed and bounced a couple of times. “No problem. I have nothing better to do . . .”
“Thanks!”
Gabi rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
Anna did know. She remembered feeling the way Gabi did not so long ago. The heaviness. The feeling that everything was too much effort, and there was no point to anything. She was worried about her. It was six weeks since Gabi and Lee had split up and she still wasn’t quite her old self. Normal Gabi was bright and bubbly and full of bounce. This Gabi reminded Anna of a half-deflated beach ball. They could both do with the distraction from their thoughts that this chore could bring.
It had been eight days since her last conversation with Brody. Eight days and not a word. Oh, Anna had tried calling. She tried calling a lot. But Brody wasn’t picking up. It made her feel sick every time she thought about it.
She walked over to Spencer’s wardrobe and opened the doors. Her eyes, as always, were drawn to the neat row of shirts on their hangers. Somehow, they held more meaning for her than any of the other items in the wardrobe. She wasn’t exactly sure why, only that when she’d pressed her face against his shoulder and held him tight, his shirts had always smelled so wonderful, of clean, fresh cotton and safety.
Anna still had her hands on the open wardrobe doors. She didn’t move. “I’ve got to do this,” she said, fixing her gaze on the shirts. “He doesn’t need them anymore.”
“That is true.” Gabi got up from the edge of the bed, walked toward her and put an arm around her shoulder. “But you don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”
Anna nodded. “I know. But I’ve been putting this off for too long. It’s time, Gabs. It’s just . . .”
“Difficult,” Gabi finished for her.
“Yes.” Anna replied solemnly. She exhaled. “But I’ve realized I have to make room in my life for new things, both emotionally and physically. Even if I’m not ready for a new man on my horizon today, I think I want to signal that I’m open to the possibility of him someday—whatever that ends up meaning.”
Gabi sighed. “I am sad it didn’t work out between you and Jeremy.”
Anna nodded. “I’m sad about that too, but it wasn’t fair to keep stringing him along.”
Gabi looked sheepish. “I was wrong to push you into seeing him. I know that now.”
Anna felt a rush of warmth for her friend. She hugged Gabi tightly and kissed her noisily on the cheek. “Not wrong. Maybe just a bit premature.” Gabi smiled back at her and then they both turned to consider the open wardrobe. “I don’t even know where to start . . . We need a plan.”
Gabi put her hands on her hips. “I have a plan, I think . . . We start with one thing—suits or shoes or jackets or shirts . . .” Anna must have been pulling a face at that word, because Gabi trailed off, swallowed, then carried on. “We start with the group that’s easy. We take out all those things, put them on the bed and sort them one by one. You must concentrate, Anna. You need to be ‘present,’ because otherwise you may feel too sad when it is all gone. You have to make a decision about each thing.”
Anna scrunched up her forehead and looked at Gabi. “Where did you get all of that stuff?”
“Binge-watching Hoarders when I can’t sleep,” she said with a little bit of the old Gabi twinkle in her eye.
Anna laughed and turned back to the wardrobe, scanning the contents. “Let’s start with shoes.”
And so that is what they did. They pulled out all of Spencer’s shoes and boots and trainers and went through them, pair by pair. Some they saved for the charity shop, and some they put into a black bin bag to go out to the dustbin. When both piles were full and there was no more footwear left in the wardrobe, Anna breathed out shakily.
There. She’d done it. And it hadn’t been terrible. In fact, there was a sense of peace, of release.
Next, they worked through the trousers, none of which Anna kept, but when it came to tops and sweaters, she saved a few of her favorites: a charcoal cable-knit fisherman’s sweater that was way too big for her and a couple of soft hoodies. These were things she’d liked to steal from Spencer when he’d been alive. They made her smile when she picked them up, even if tears welled in her lashes. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? If it wasn’t exactly a happy feeling, it wasn’t all sad either.
As she tied the knot on a full bag, tears began to splash onto her hands. Gabi came over, made her let go and hugged her. “Sorry,” Anna croaked when she was able.
“It’s nothing, minha querida,” Gabi replied, and Anna could hear the emotion in her voice. She rubbed Anna’s back. “We don’t have to put these bags into your car today. We can put them back in the wardrobe . . . Maybe you give yourself time? Get used to it all packed up before you get rid of them?”
Anna sniffed and pulled away to look at Gabi. “Is that what they do on Hoarders?”
Gabi laughed loudly. “No! That would be a very bad idea.” Her voice softened. “But this is different. You can make up your own rules. You can do what you want.”
Anna nodded and tried to suck in a deep breath, but it ended up more like a hiccup. “Okay.” She walked over to the wardrobe and stared inside again.
Just as her fingers brushed the shoulders of a few of Spencer’s shirts, her mobile buzzed in her back jeans pocket. She quickly pulled the shirts out, threw them on the bed, and grabbed for her phone. It might be . . .
It wasn’t.
Her heart sank.
“Brody?” Gabi said drily. Anna had hal
f a mind to think her best friend was getting jealous. She got this pinched little look on her face every time Anna mentioned him.
“No, my mum. Asking what time my flight gets in on the fifteenth of December. I’ll go and check the confirmation email when we’re finished.”
Anna went back to pulling shirts from the wardrobe. When the pile was complete, Gabi said, “But you thought that was Brody?”
Anna glanced over her shoulder to where Gabi was struggling with a black sack as she dragged it back toward the wardrobe and dumped it on the floor. “What makes you say that?”
“Your face. You never do that face when it’s anyone else.”
“I might look that way when you text me,” Anna replied. “You wouldn’t know, because you’re always somewhere else at the time.”
“Okay,” Gabi said. She pulled her phone out and tapped in a quick message. A split second later, Anna’s phone dinged again. She did her best to hide her smile when she saw Gabi’s text: Prove.
Anna pretended to faint, flopping back onto the bed covered in clothes and hangers. Gabi lay down beside her and they both giggled quietly. “You are silly,” Gabi said.
“Only half as silly as you, though,” Anna replied and poked her friend gently in the ribs.
“That is true,” Gabi said wearily, and they both lay there looking up at the ceiling.
“I’m worried about him,” Anna finally said. “Brody.”
Gabi pushed herself up on one elbow and looked at Anna. “Why?”
“The last time we spoke, I asked him about that accident you mentioned, and he kind of lost it.”
“Lost it?” Gabi said slowly. “How do you mean? Angry? Irrational?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said, propping herself up to match Gabi’s position. “He just . . . He stopped talking, and I could hear him, and then . . . nothing. The phone went dead.”
“Did he say sorry?”
“That’s just it. That call was more than a week ago, and I’ve sent messages, tried phoning every day, but he won’t answer. I’m scared I’ve stuck my big fat nose in where it didn’t belong and ruined it.”
