The Last Goodbye

by Fiona Lucas

  Slowly, carefully, she got down on her knees beside Gayle, put an arm around her shoulder and drew her close.

  Chapter Eleven

  Anna followed Gayle and Richard’s Rover back from Camber Sands to their house, sitting stiff and tight-lipped behind the wheel of her car. Her anger had been quenched briefly when Gayle had broken down on the beach—no one could have remained unmoved by that gut-wrenching sorrow—but it had begun to grow again as she’d stood by helplessly while Richard and Scott had scattered Spencer, or what was left of him, onto the waves.

  She guessed it was supposed to have been a dramatic send-off, but the tide or the currents must have been doing something strange because the tiny little pieces of her husband had floated in a grayish-white scum on top of the silt-laden water and lapped around their ankles. It had been horrible. She couldn’t have thought of a worse ending to an already unbearable day.

  She’d been so bewildered that she hadn’t even remembered about the little yellow bungalow until she was halfway back to Gayle and Richard’s. The whole journey back, the words she’d collected to say to her mother-in-law circled in her head, and now she felt like one of those unexploded Second World War bombs. The tiniest touch, the slightest wrong move and—boom!—she would detonate.

  She pulled into the drive behind Richard and Gayle. Getting out of the car was an effort, and not just because she was stiff from driving; she felt utterly exhausted and her body was rigid with tension. The front door of the house was open, Gayle standing beside it, ready to shoo her guests inside. Anna approached the threshold but stopped before stepping over it.

  “Anna?” There was a whiff of irritation in her mother-in-law’s tone and Anna felt her blood pressure rise. She couldn’t look at Gayle. She couldn’t even look at the hallway through the open door. She was only just about holding on to her last shreds of self-control.

  If she went in there and had to make polite conversation after all that had happened that afternoon, that bomb inside her would go off. She was just so angry. Horribly, horribly angry. But having a meltdown over cucumber sandwiches and tea cakes wasn’t going to help anyone this afternoon.

  “I’m sorry . . .” she muttered. “I think . . . I think I’ve got a migraine coming.” And before Gayle could say anything else, Anna ran back to her car, jumped inside and reversed out of the drive.

  She knew Gayle would be staring after her as she drove away. What about the finger sandwiches, Anna? What about the vol-au-vents? But Anna didn’t care about the sodding vol-au-vents.

  She drove home with her fingers tight round the steering wheel, jaw clenched, resisting the urge to use the accelerator to vent her anger. Hold on, she told herself. Just a little longer, then you can close your front door behind you, sink against it, and let it all out.

  Almost an hour and a half later, thanks to a snarl-up around junction five, Anna hauled herself from her car and stared at her house. Just the sight of it almost brought tears of relief to her eyes. The walk to her front door seemed to go in slow motion, but she finally put the key in the lock, opened the door and then banged it closed behind her.

  Thank God.

  She sank against the back of the door and waited for the emotions to start flowing . . .

  But nothing spilled out, nothing exploded. There was no pounding of fists on the tiled floor of her hallway or shouts of rage echoing up the stairwell. She opened her mouth, giving permission for the howl of fury she’d been keeping inside all the way back from the beach to emerge, but all she could hear was her own shallow breathing. She closed her eyes, giving tears a chance to gather behind her lids, but when she opened them again, they were as dry as Gayle’s pork and sage stuffing.

  She let out a growl of frustration and made her way upstairs to her bedroom, where she lay down on the unmade bed and pulled the duvet up over her head. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. It was all too much.

  But the usual comfort of her blank, white cocoon didn’t help her today. Even so, she closed her eyes and breathed in and out, at a total loss for anything else to do.

  One moment, that was all she had wanted.

  One moment to be still today, to remember him in the way she wanted to, so she could start doing what everyone was always telling her she needed to and move forward. But it seemed she wasn’t allowed that.

  As much as the focus was always on Spencer when she visited his family, she couldn’t talk freely to Gayle, even though she wished she could, and she didn’t want to worry her own parents. Gabi tried, God bless her, she really did, but she only wanted to hear good and positive and healthy things, and the truth was, some days Anna was anything but those things. Sometimes she needed to be despondent and negative and toxic. It was the only way to let the poison out.

  She lay under the duvet in a half trance, letting her thoughts wander, like a bird hopping from branch to branch in search of a roost. They came to rest in an unexpected place.

  There had been one person who’d listened, a someone who’d seemed to actually understand.

  But this person was also a no one, an anonymous voice at the end of a phone line, completely unconnected from her life, from all the emotional baggage anyone who’d known her or Spencer came with.

  Things happen . . . , he’d said. Things that turn you upside down and your life takes a very different path.

  Spencer’s number had been assigned to him, the no one. She really wanted to call that number again, she discovered, which was more than a little surprising. Maybe it was because, in her mind, he was still part of that connection to Spencer.

  But phoning again would be completely weird. This time she’d be ringing to speak to him and not the ghost of a long-dead husband. This man. This stranger.

  This kindred spirit.

  That thought stuck in her head for the rest of the evening. She stayed in bed, reading, moping, staring at the ceiling. After a few hours, she took a bath and got into her pj’s, then returned to bed to read and mope and stare at the ceiling some more.

  Eventually, she could avoid the urge no longer. She pulled her phone off the bedside table and pressed the entry near the top of her “recents” list, the number still labeled as “Spencer.” Her heart thudded as she waited for it to connect. She closed her eyes and prayed hard she wouldn’t hear the robotic voicemail message, and it seemed, for once, her prayers were to be answered. The ringing stopped, and shortly afterward, a deep male voice said, “Yes?”

  “It’s me again,” Anna replied, then blew a breath out to steady herself. “It’s Anna.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Anna.”

  There wasn’t a hint of surprise in his tone. There wasn’t a hint of much, actually.

  Instead of apologizing and hanging up like any sensible person would have done, she asked, “Do you remember me?”

  A pause followed, one she couldn’t interpret, then he said, “Yes. I remember you.”

  A bald statement of fact. No joke that strange women who phoned at random times of day or night might be hard to forget. That was the sort of thing Spencer would have said, but this man wasn’t Spencer. She needed to remember that.

  Her throat dried. Where were words when you needed them? She’d had thousands waiting and ready to go, but now they’d all run scurrying into the shadows.

  “I wondered if you’d phone again,” he said.

  “Really? You were expecting me to?” Until tonight she’d had no intention of doing so. How had he known?

  “More pondering the probability.”

  And then it went silent again. She’d called him to talk, after all, but now she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  And he clearly didn’t have anything to say to her.

  Just like that, she knew she’d made a horrible mistake. Her words were clanging nails dropping on concrete. This wasn’t the lovely, warm, intimate bubble of conversation she’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t the place where she could spill her soul and find healing.

  Oh
, Anna. What have you done? It’s time to apologize for disturbing this man and put the phone down. Once again, you’ve conjured something from your imagination that isn’t there.

  A terrible sense of loss came with this epiphany. However, there was one thing she needed to know before she pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call. “When we talked before . . . How did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “About the exploding . . . About the keeping it all in and then . . . just . . .” She made a gesture with her hand, her fingers springing apart from a closed fist, and realized she was making no sense again. Good one, Anna. Should have hung up when you had the chance. From the silence on the other end of the line, she guessed he was thinking the same thing.

  He breathed out, long and hard. “I just know.”

  That was enough, just those three words. He’d said everything he needed to say, everything she needed him to say.

  He got it.

  Not because someone had told him, but because he’d lived it too. Anna choked back a sob. “Th-thank you,” she sputtered as hot tears streamed silently down her cheeks.

  More silence followed, but this time it was warm. Open. Giving her space, giving her permission. Anna started crying so hard she thought she’d run out of breath. She lost all sense of where she was, of time passing.

  Eventually, she sat up, letting the duvet fall away from her face, and reached for a tissue from the box on the bedside table. The nose blow that followed was not very ladylike or demure. “Sorry,” she whispered again, although she wasn’t quite sure if it was the gurgling snotty noise or the crying in general that she was apologizing for.

  “You didn’t find Spencer?” he asked.

  Anna frowned, confused. “What?”

  “You were angry with him for leaving.”

  It all came back then, how she’d rambled on the last time she’d called. Oh, God . . . What a fool she’d made of herself. He deserved some kind of explanation. “I am. I was . . . He’s not coming back. I know that now.”

  There was a soft exhalation at the other end of the line, not so much a sigh but a gesture of recognition. “Are you better off without him?”

  One corner of her mouth curled up in a twisted kind of smile. Even though he was wrong, that Spencer hadn’t left her of his own free will, she liked the way this man phrased it; he didn’t tell her she was better off but asked for her opinion on the matter. “No,” she said truthfully. “I’m definitely not better off without him.”

  Another breath . . . sigh . . . Whatever it was. He understood this too.

  “Will it always hurt this much?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  She almost laughed. God, it was refreshing not to be given a platitude or a proverb.

  “He died,” she said softly, not aware she was ready to tell this story until the words left her mouth. “He was thirty-one, and he died.”

  “Yet you phoned him,” he said, clearly perplexed.

  “Yes. Stupid, isn’t it? Wanting to talk to someone who’ll never be able to hear you again, who’ll never be able to talk back.”

  He let out a hollow laugh. “No.”

  Anna closed her eyes as more tears surged down her face. Oh, the relief . . . “You have no idea how lovely it is to be able to say all of this, to be honest, and for someone else to understand.”

  “Then tell me more.”

  Her eyes snapped open again. “Oh, I don’t think I should . . . I mean, I’ve invaded enough of your time already. You must have other things—”

  “I don’t,” he said, cutting her off. “Not right now.”

  “But why would—?”

  “Because I wish I’d had someone.” There was a pause, a moment of heaviness. “Someone I didn’t know. Someone who wouldn’t judge me . . . I won’t judge you, Anna.”

  No, he wouldn’t. She knew that already. She’d known that before she’d picked up the phone this evening, hadn’t she?

  So Anna talked. She told him about the day Spencer died, the darkness afterward. She told him about the horrible time she’d had at the beach with Spencer’s family that day. And he listened. He didn’t say anything, didn’t comment, until she finally ran out of steam. “Sorry,” she said again when she’d run out of words.

  “Why do you keep apologizing?”

  “Because . . . because normal people don’t do things like this,” she replied.

  “Maybe they should.”

  “Because I’m bothering you?”

  “You’re not.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not?”

  “I’d have told you if you were, and then I’d have hung up.”

  Anna couldn’t help laughing softly. She didn’t know much about this man, but she knew enough from his direct, no-nonsense answers that this was the truth, and for some reason that made it funny.

  “You know my life story,” she mused, “and I know nothing about you.”

  “Nope.”

  She smiled again. “Apart from the fact you’re not fazed by strange women phoning you up and pouring their life stories out to you. Is it a specialty of yours?”

  There was a little huff that might have accompanied a smile. “I have to admit that you’re the first.”

  For some reason that warmed her. She sighed. “I should probably stop tying up your phone line. Someone else might be trying to get through.” She imagined friends, a wife, even, getting frustrated with an electronic voice apologetically telling them this person was busy.

  “I doubt it,” he said in that same blunt tone. “This is a new phone number and I haven’t given it to anyone else yet.”

  “Oh.” Anna shifted and reached behind her so she could readjust the pillows and lean back against the headboard. “But it’s been almost four months since I first called. I’m the only person you’ve talked to in all that time?”

  “You’re the only human being I’ve talked to, full stop.”

  “You speak to non–human beings?” she blurted out, aware it was the most ridiculous response she could have offered. However, picking up the phone and dialing his number this evening had also been pretty ridiculous, so at least she was being consistent.

  And then it occurred to her what he’d just said: he hadn’t talked to another soul in almost four months. That just wasn’t normal. Why hadn’t he? She’d been so focused on what she needed from him, she hadn’t even stopped to consider the truth of what she’d just told him—that she knew nothing about him. He could be in prison, in solitary confinement. That would be a very good reason not to have much social contact, wouldn’t it? He could be dangerous or psychologically disturbed. Or both. And here she was chatting away to him, telling him everything about herself.

  He made a noise that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been filled with such heaviness. “I talk to the dog sometimes. I have to, otherwise my vocal cords might atrophy.”

  Atrophy. That was a good word, wasn’t it? A clever word. This man had education, so maybe he wasn’t a psychopathic, stalking axe murderer behind bars after all. And he had a dog. That had to say something about the kind of person he was, didn’t it?

  “Why don’t you talk to anyone?”

  “My choice. I live in the middle of nowhere. Don’t get many visitors.”

  Anna frowned. Was he a liar too? “And yet you still get a decent mobile phone reception?”

  “It’s weak, but I have a booster that amplifies the signal. When we had a storm just before Christmas and the landline went down for the fourth time in as many months, I decided I needed a backup.”

  “Hence, the new phone and the new phone number,” Anna said, sighing. “I bet you weren’t expecting this to happen when you got it.”

  “No.” Again, no sense of irritation or weariness in his tone. She would have been on the verge of concluding that he was a bit strange not to mind her weird phone calls out of the blue, but now she knew just a little bit more about him, she wondered if maybe he wa
s lonely. That would explain things.

  And she did know a bit about him now. She crossed “dangerous” and “psychotic” off her mental list and added some new qualities: patient, calm and . . . kind. Yes, despite his bluntness and offhand demeanor, he’d been very kind to listen to her.

  However, it struck her that there was one important bit of information she didn’t have about him. “I don’t know your name.”

  “It’s Brody.”

  That fitted the deep gravel of his voice somehow. She tried to picture him and came up with salt-and-pepper hair, maybe a beard. She got the sense he was older than she was, but it was hard to tell from his voice alone. He also sounded weary, as if he’d lived through a lot.

  “Brody,” she repeated quietly, and then, because her manners hadn’t deserted her completely, she added, “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  He laughed then, a proper deep rumble. “Surprisingly, I’m going to say ‘likewise.’”

  There was nothing much left to say now. The bomb was no longer ticking away inside her. He’d defused it cleanly and effortlessly while they’d been talking, and she hadn’t even noticed. No explosion was imminent.

  So that was that, then. It was time to go. The only problem was she didn’t know how to end a conversation like this. “Well,” she began but was quickly drowned out by the insistent barking of a dog in the background on the other end of the line.

  “Hang on a sec,” Brody muttered, and she could hear him putting the phone down and moving away, then muttering something along the lines of “Calm down! It’s only an owl.” A few moments later he was back, sounding marginally more ruffled than he usually did, which was kind of reassuring. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay,” Anna replied. It had made her smile. She liked dogs. She and Spencer had talked about getting one not long before he died but had decided it wasn’t the best timing as Anna had just come off the Pill and they were going to start trying for a baby. Another thing that had been stolen from her. But she wasn’t going to think about that right now. “Anyway, I just wanted to say—”