by Fiona Lucas
Brody exhaled. Until Anna had started calling him, he hadn’t even considered whether he was lonely or not, but now he wondered. Was he?
He thought about how sometimes he’d come into his study in the evenings and stare at the phone lying on the desk, about the hollow sensation that followed when it stayed blank and silent, and he couldn’t share the things he’d stored away to tell her that day.
But maybe it wasn’t supposed to be like this. You weren’t supposed to have only one person in the whole world to share things with, were you? Did that mean he was lonely?
“Maybe I do . . . Occasionally. But I’m not sure marriage is the solution. I wasn’t a brilliant husband the first time around.”
“It wasn’t happy then, your marriage?”
“At first it was,” he said. “But then . . . Things happen . . . Life happens . . . And sometimes it changes you as a couple. Sometimes you just don’t fit together the way you used to afterward. Sometimes you just can’t work through it.”
Anna let out a heavy breath. “I don’t know whether that’s easier or harder,” she said. “Losing them when it’s great or losing them when it’s falling apart and you never have that chance to put it back together again.”
Losing them . . . He was glad she’d phrased it that way, because it meant he didn’t have to lie to her about Katri. “I don’t know either,” he said, staring out the window. There were no streetlights this far out into the countryside, no light on in the yard, and the blackness of the night was complete. “But the past is the past. I suppose all you can do is try to move forward, work out what to do with the rest of your life.”
“Everyone seems to think that enough time will pass and suddenly it’ll be easy,” she said. “As if there’s an expiry date on love.”
“For some people there is,” he said, staring grimly into the dancing flames in his fireplace. “Maybe you were just very lucky.” He knocked back another slug of whisky, enough this time to scald the back of his throat. “And maybe, if you do want to have another relationship again someday, you should just admit you need a bit more time. No one’s going to judge you for that.”
“It doesn’t always feel that way,” she replied mournfully. “Especially not when there are . . . possibilities . . . out there, should I choose to pursue them.”
“Possibilities?” he echoed, his voice low and rough.
“Men,” she replied simply.
Brody’s pulse kicked. For once, it had nothing to do with panic, and everything to do with the thought of Anna. And possibilities.
“Someone asked me to dinner last week,” she said so softly he almost didn’t catch it.
Brody stayed still, stayed quiet. He really didn’t know how to react to that.
“I say I want to move on, that I want to stop feeling this miserable, but do I want to? Really?”
“Only you can answer that,” he said as he ran a fingertip around the rim of his tumbler. He’d read enough books on grief that he was an expert on it—inside his head, anyway. When it came to practical steps, he wasn’t doing quite so well. But that didn’t mean some of what he’d learned wouldn’t help Anna. “It isn’t that black and white, is it? Emotions . . . Life . . . They’re complicated. Grief has different stages, and the path is different for everyone. There shouldn’t be any judgment about which route you take or how long it takes you to get there.”
“I suppose so,” Anna replied, sounding tired.
“And, sometimes, even when we truly want something,” he added, the image of the supermarket entrance front and center in his imagination, “we find ways to sabotage ourselves.”
“Do you think that’s what I do? Sabotage myself?”
“I don’t know,” Brody said carefully. “I suppose you’ll only really know when you go on the date itself.”
“Oh, I’m not going on the date,” Anna said in a rush of nervous laughter. “I said no.”
Brody felt a flush of relief. He stopped messing around with his glass and drank the remaining sliver of whisky, reminding himself as he did so that he had no right to feel territorial about Anna. She was a friend, a voice on the end of the phone, that was all.
You’re just invested in knowing she’s finding happiness, a little voice inside his head said in a soothing tone, and Brody decided to agree with it. He was just feeling protective about someone he cared about. Nothing more, nothing less. And he did care about Anna. How could he not? She was his only regular human contact at the moment, unless you counted Moji, and he’d only seen her twice in the last six months.
“Who is he? The man who asked you out?”
“Oh, just a guy at salsa class . . .”
“You do salsa?” Brody’s eyebrows shot up. He’d imagined Anna curled up in a window seat reading a book, or taking long walks in a country park, not doing salsa dancing.
Anna gave a soft laugh. “Gabi talked me into it months ago. She’s one of those people who think I should immerse myself in new experiences. This one seems to have stuck. Although . . . I have to say, most evenings, I’d rather be curled up in front of the fire with a good book.”
Brody smiled triumphantly to himself. “Why did you say no?” He’d decided not to pry, but the question had come out before he’d been able to stop himself.
She sighed. “I don’t know, really . . .”
That wasn’t what Brody wanted to hear, he discovered. He wanted her to say Salsa Guy was ugly or unbearably dull or had an extremely bad case of halitosis.
“Jeremy’s nice,” she continued wistfully.
Jeremy? Good grief.
“He’s great company, confident and funny . . . and he’s a great dancer.”
Good for sodding Jeremy, Brody wanted to say, but he kept his mouth firmly closed. She’d turned him down, after all. There must be something wrong with the guy.
“But . . .”
“But what?” he asked casually.
“He’s not Spencer,” she finally said with both weariness and conviction. “He’s just not Spencer.”
And neither are you, Brody told himself. Don’t go all stupid. You’ve been starved of good conversation for too long. Of course, you’re going to get attached. It’s just a fact of human psychology.
“Brody?”
She pulled him out of his thoughts and into the present. “Mm-hmm?”
“Do you think we could FaceTime or Skype sometime? I’d really like to talk to you face-to-face.”
Brody sat there, stunned. He hadn’t been expecting her to ask that, which was probably strange, seeing as it was a fairly normal way to communicate these days. “Um . . . I don’t have those apps on my phone.”
“But you could download them, right?” She paused for a moment and then added, “If you wanted to.”
“I don’t know,” he replied, answering both questions at once, even if he was the only one aware of that. “My phone is pretty basic. And the signal here isn’t very good.” He was making excuses now. Why?
“Oh, okay,” Anna replied. “It was just a thought. We can chat about it another time. Anyway . . . I’d better go now. It’s almost one, and I’ve got to be up at seven. Until next time, Brody. Thanks for the chat—as always.”
“Night, Anna. And, as always, no problem. You don’t have to thank me. I enjoy talking to you.”
He could hear her smiling before she responded. “I enjoy talking to you too.”
And then she was gone, leaving him feeling warm inside but also pondering why his initial reaction to video calling with Anna had been to resist the idea. He stood up, collected his glass and laid his mobile phone back in its place on the desk. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her face, that was for certain, so what was it?
Lewis, who had looked as if you could drive a tractor trailer past him and he wouldn’t have stirred only moments before, leapt to his feet, looking hopeful. He blinked at Brody.
“Come on, young man,” Brody said, as he headed out the study, turning the light out behind him. “
One last run down the garden for you.”
As he waited at the back door, Brody stared into the night sky. He and Anna’s relationship had started off as voices only and that was what he was comfortable with, he realized, so why shouldn’t it continue that way? It was probably sensible too, given the boundaries they’d put on not knowing more about each other than first names and general locations.
Yes, sensible, he told himself as Lewis trotted back up the lawn and ran past his legs into the warm house. Very sensible. Not cowardly at all.
ANNA STARED AT her phone as the screen went dark. The thought she might be able to FaceTime with Brody at some point buoyed her up. He always made her feel better about things and it would be nice to see his smile one day and not just hear it.
She sighed, playing back their conversation as she stuffed her feet back into the slippers that were sitting on the carpet in front of the sofa.
She hadn’t realized it, but up until now, she’d been feeling guilty about turning Jeremy down. However, after talking to Brody, she felt much better about her decision. She wasn’t being selfish. She was doing the right thing. For Jeremy too.
She yawned and covered her mouth with her hand, closing her eyes tight, and when she’d finished, she stretched, easing the kinks from her shoulders and back, from where she’d been curled up in the corner of her large squishy sofa. As she’d said to Brody, it was late, and she did feel tired, but now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure she was sleepy. She always felt very peaceful, very relaxed, after talking to Brody, but she often felt energized too.
She picked up her phone again to check that her alarm for the morning was set and spotted the Facebook icon on her home screen. She avoided social media these days, but now and again she’d hop on to put little blue thumbs-up signs on posts from people she knew, that she hadn’t talked to in a while, and hadn’t seen for even longer. She opened the app and scrolled down her feed, slowing for pet pictures and caustic cartoons, but easing past smiling couples and pictures of babies a little faster.
That’s why she didn’t do this more often. Because what did she have to put up there? A lovely house, to be sure, but where were the people? Where were the smiles? She couldn’t imagine Gayle posing for a selfie with her after a Sunday lunch.
She was about to zip past a photo of a newborn baby, wrapped tight in a cream blanket, face pink and scrunched, when something made her pause, possibly the flicker of recognition of the name at the top of the post, even though she hadn’t consciously read it.
Oh, my goodness! It couldn’t be . . . She clicked on the photograph to enlarge it.
It certainly was. The picture had been uploaded by Scott Barry, and the caption underneath read: Taking our little man home from the hospital. It had been posted earlier in the week. But that was almost two weeks early! She’d only seen Scott and Teresa for May’s family lunch the Sunday before and there’d been no sign that Teresa was about to go into labor the next day, not that Anna really knew what the signs were.
Anna let the phone drop into her lap. And four days ago? Why hadn’t anyone called her? Why hadn’t anyone let her know?
She picked her phone up again and stared at the picture of the baby.
Spencer. They’d called him Spencer.
A lump rose in her throat and she began to cry big, fat, gluey tears. She wiped them away, desperate to focus on the picture, desperate to see a likeness, but this baby’s face was so fresh, so new, that it hardly had a hint of its own identity, let alone a similarity to someone else’s.
What was she going to do about this? It was obvious that, in the mad rush of labor, delivery, and sleepless nights, Scott and Teresa hadn’t got around to letting people know. Or they hadn’t got around to letting her know.
She sat with the feeling that suspicion produced for a few seconds, a low drag in the pit of her stomach, then told herself to stop being silly. They were busy and sleep-deprived, that was all. They probably thought they had told her.
But that meant they might be wondering why she hadn’t made contact to congratulate them. Anna frowned. She wasn’t sure how to handle that. Leaving a comment that hinted at their omission might seem like a dig, but she also didn’t want to say nothing. That would also be rude. They might think she was jealous.
Oh . . . Maybe that’s why they hadn’t told her.
It got awkward sometimes with Scott and Teresa when something was said or done to highlight the fact that they still had what she’d lost, but she wouldn’t have thought that would mean they wouldn’t tell her about the baby being born, especially with the name they’d given him. She hoped they didn’t think she was jealous, even though she was, just a little bit.
She closed her eyes and hugged the phone to her chest. More than just a little bit, Anna. Stop kidding yourself. She wanted what they had so much that sometimes it became an actual physical pain, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t celebrate their happiness too.
Wiping another stray tear away, she woke her phone up. She wouldn’t leave a comment on the Facebook post—that seemed too casual, too impersonal. Phoning in the middle of the night was also not a good idea. She’d text. Hopefully, that would hit the right note.
She typed quickly, congratulating her sister-in-law on the birth of her lovely baby son, and letting her know that she’d love to come and see him for herself over the weekend. If they felt up to visitors, of course.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thank you so much! They’re gorgeous.” Teresa lifted the pair of dungarees Anna had bought from the wrapping paper, letting them dangle. “They’re impossibly huge, though!”
Anna thought they looked impossibly small, but she nodded in agreement anyway. All her attention was taken up with the warm bundle of pinkness in her arms. The baby was looking at her, his grayish-blue eyes intently staring at her face, and his little mouth making different shapes. She wasn’t sure if he was testing it out, finding out what it could do, or whether it was purely involuntary. It was fascinating.
“Are you okay with him?” Teresa asked. “I can take him back if you’re not.”
Anna smiled wryly and looked across the room to her sister-in-law. “Are you sure you’re okay that I’ve got him?” she asked. “I’m a total newbie at this.”
Teresa nodded. “To be honest, it’s a bit of a relief. He’s lovely and, on one hand, I can’t get enough of him, but on the other . . . Let’s just say I now know how dairy cows feel. The boy is perpetually hungry!”
“How much did he weigh when he was born?” Anna asked, jiggling the baby slightly because he’d started to wriggle.
“Not even three kilos,” Teresa replied, looking incredulous. “Which was a bit of a shock, given how long it took him to arrive! I’d thought a small one would pop out more easily.”
“You had a long labor?”
“Didn’t Gayle tell you all this when she phoned?”
“Um . . . Not really.” Anna concentrated on making eye contact with the baby, avoiding her sister-in-law’s gaze.
“I’m flabbergasted,” Teresa said, flopping back even further into the pillows of the armchair. “Richard keeps joking she’s stopping people in the street to give them a blow-by-blow account of the delivery, followed by a complete rundown of his vital statistics.”
Anna made a noncommittal noise and concentrated on making expressive faces at her nephew.
“What?” Teresa said, her tone full of suspicion. “Anna?”
“Erm, well . . . She didn’t actually call,” Anna said, wincing slightly, but quickly added, “or if she did, I must have missed it.”
Teresa frowned. “That’s odd. Scott and I were exhausted, so he asked his mum and dad if they could share the news.”
Anna tried to make her smile look sincere. “It probably was a mix-up due to all the excitement.”
Teresa pressed her lips together. “You don’t think she, you know . . . did it on purpose?”
Teresa had Anna’s full attention now, even as the bab
y began to fidget harder in her arms. “No.” She shook her head slowly, ignoring the sinking sensation in her stomach. “What reason could she possibly have not to tell me?”
As if he was taking this literally, little Spencer, who had been squirming harder and harder, opened his mouth and let out an ear-piercing cry. Anna looked nervously across at Teresa. Her sister-in-law unbuttoned her shirt and held out her arms, a weary look on her face. “I told you . . . Dairy cow!” The baby settled into a steady sucking rhythm and Teresa relaxed and smiled across at Anna. “That’s me, then. I’ll be stuck here for the next half an hour—if I’m lucky!”
“Since Scott has escaped to Sainsbury’s, do you want me to make your cup of tea?”
Teresa smiled at her. “Thought you’d never ask!”
Anna smiled back and went to make the hot drinks, and when she returned to the living room, she said, “It’s not just me then. You find her—Gayle—difficult too?”
Teresa sighed before glancing down to check on her son. “I put up with it for Scott’s sake. She’s intense, I know, but she’s basically harmless. I just try to let it all slide off.”
Anna sat down on the sofa and clasped her hands in her lap. “But how do you do that?” She’d managed to keep her cool at the one family lunch she’d been to since the vol-au-vent incident, but she’d discovered that “not reacting” was a lot tougher than it sounded.
Teresa thought for a moment, idly stroking the downy hair on the top of the baby’s head. “The way I look at it, without Gayle, Scott wouldn’t be my Scott. He’s much more like her than his dad, but it’s watered-down in him. He’s quietly determined, not noisily pushy, but that’s where he gets his drive from.”
Anna sipped her tea. “I suppose you’re right. I always thought Spencer was just like his dad: laid-back, full of fun, but he had that drive too, and that’s what prompted him to take a risk and follow his dreams.”
It occurred to Anna that if Spencer had been just like his father, he’d have been happy to potter around in a middle-management job until his retirement, just as Richard had done. Maybe that ambition, that creativity, was his mother’s gift, even though she was struggling very hard to see where it came from. Was Gayle a dreamer too? It hardly seemed possible.