by Fiona Lucas
Chapter Twenty-Four
The only sound was the night air whispering in the dune grass and the dull thump of a bass beat from the pub further along the bay. The water was so flat, the night air so still, that it might be a mile away. Possibly more. Anna only caught snatches of the music as the faint breeze shifted and circled around the dunes beyond her little yellow bungalow.
Only a feeble glow from a table lamp illuminated the living room as she sat at a little metal bistro set in the garden, her fingers wrapped around the stem of a wineglass. It was past midnight and there was a chill in the air, so she’d wrapped a chunky cardigan over the top of her pajamas and had pulled a pair of socks onto her feet.
Up above, the stars glittered. Away from the light pollution of the London suburbs, they seem to have multiplied tenfold. It was breathtaking. For the first time in years, and definitely in three years, three months and four days, Anna felt still inside. She felt quiet. It was pure bliss.
It was also odd, given the day she’d had, but there you go. Life was funny like that sometimes.
Her phone was sitting on the table in front of her. She woke it up and glanced at the time. Would he still be up? Should she even try? Her thumb hovered above the phone for a few seconds. She was going to press it anyway, so she didn’t know what she was waiting for. He was always there when she needed him.
When the call connected, she didn’t bother with pleasantries. “You know you said, ‘don’t react’ when it came to my mother-in-law?”
Brody answered her question with a wary, “Yes?”
“I had an epic fail.”
“Oh.”
Yes, oh.
Along with Oh, my God! What did you do? and What were you thinking?, these were the questions she’d asked herself a hundred times over since she’d left the Cinnamon Café earlier that day. But Brody remained silent, giving her time and space, as always, letting her reveal things at her own pace.
She started at the beginning, filling him in on the whole awkward afternoon, how she’d been doing so well, keeping her cool and saying nothing, and then she got to the subject of Spencer’s portrait. “And as I was staring at the photo, it suddenly struck me—like a baseball bat to the side of the head—what she’d done. She’d erased me, Brody! She’d wished me away.”
For months now, she had been trying to pin a label to that feeling she always got when she was with Gayle, that niggly little sensation that had always bothered her, the feeling that Gayle wanted to keep her close yet push her away at the same time, and suddenly all the pieces fell into the right place and she knew what she was dealing with.
“She’s jealous. She resents me because Spencer can’t be all hers. Because he was mine too, and she just can’t stand it.”
“So, you reacted.”
Anna hid her face in her hands, feeling heat flush through her body just at the memory. “Yes,” she said, and the word was muffled through her fingers. “I definitely reacted.”
Again, Brody didn’t push. He just waited until she was ready to say more. She let her hands drop and carried on talking. “She lit my fuse and I went off. I spilt coffee all over myself and over her glossy eight-by-ten tidied-up photo—she’ll never forgive me for that alone!—and then I stood up and told her that what she’d done wasn’t okay, that it really wasn’t okay.” Anna chewed on the side of her bottom lip for a moment. “Okay, maybe ‘told’ is downplaying it a little. I think I might have shouted it.”
“Really? In the middle of a restaurant?”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me! This isn’t funny!”
“No,” he replied, but she could still hear it in his voice. He was only just holding back a chuckle, she suspected.
“And, of course, everyone else in the place was looking on as if I was being totally irrational—even Scott and Teresa, because they didn’t know, they didn’t realize. They recognized it was a wedding picture, but not what Gayle had done . . . And why would she do that, by the way?” Anna knew she was jumping around all over the place, not finishing one thought before she started on another, but she just couldn’t get her brain to sit still. “Why? There were plenty of lovely pictures of him on his own, taken the very same day.”
“Why do you think she did it? Do you have any ideas?”
Anna stared at the shadowy humps of the sand dunes beyond the garden. “Because it was perfect, that’s what she said. It was the perfect one. And Gayle is all about perfection, all about control.” She let out yet another heavy sigh. “And I’m just so over being controlled by her. I couldn’t do it anymore. So, when she gave me one of her looks and said I was being insensitive, I lost it.” She winced again, remembering the shocked looks on the rest of the family’s faces.
“She knew what she’d done, Brody. She knew what I was talking about. I could see it in her eyes. But she didn’t even have the grace to look guilty. So I told her that she was a coldhearted, manipulative bitch and that I was glad Spencer was dead because it meant I’d never have to see her again.”
Anna swallowed. She’d felt wonderful at the time, slightly euphoric, even. But now, when she thought about it, she just felt sick. “I went too far, didn’t I? This is my problem. It’s always been my problem. I get so worked up and I can’t think straight, and I say things I never should say, that I don’t even really mean.”
“You didn’t mean she was a coldhearted manipulative bitch?” The smile was back in Brody’s voice, but Anna ignored it.
“Oh, yes. I meant that.”
He finally cracked and stifled a laugh.
“But I shouldn’t have said that I was glad Spencer was dead. I could never be glad about that.” She trailed off, her thoughts taking a more morbid turn.
“Anna?”
“Yes?” she replied softly.
“How do you feel now?”
Anna shifted on the metal chair, hugging her cardigan around herself. “Weird. I thought I’d be upset, and I am . . . There are moments when I get all fired up and angry again when I think about it, when I turn it all over in my head, but in my heart . . .” She placed a palm against her chest and waited, allowing herself to feel the beat beneath her hand, the steady pulse of life. “I feel . . . better. Free. But that could just be the eye of the hurricane, couldn’t it? It could just be that I’ve got no energy left to feel anything else. It might all start up again with raging force in the morning.”
“Maybe,” he replied, not sounding worried about the prospect of that at all, which somehow made Anna feel better, and allowed her to relish the calm, even if it wasn’t going to last.
“What are you going to do now?”
That was a very good question. She felt like anything was possible. She felt like a racehorse at the track, a creature that had been primed and trained, all amped up and ready to go, and finally the switch had been pulled and the gate had been opened. It was time to run. Forward.
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I’m at Camber Sands. I came to get away, clear my head, which is probably a good thing . . . I’ve had texts from my sister-in-law, but I’m not ready to read them yet, let alone answer them. Maybe tomorrow.” She breathed out, and with it the last bit of tension drained from her limbs. Suddenly, after being so wired and unable to settle, she was ready for a long, deep sleep. “Thank you, Brody. Yet again. For listening.”
There was no smile this time in his voice when he replied. His tone was thick, gravelly. “Anytime. Always.”
Anna yawned. She needed to get to bed but, at the same time, she didn’t want to end the call either. “I think I’m having what’s called a post-adrenaline crash, or something like that.” She yawned again, and this time her eyelids became heavy. “This is going to sound a bit strange, but what the heck, seeing as I’m so far past my own boundaries today, I have no idea what I’m doing . . . Would you mind if I didn’t hang up, if I just carried my phone around with me for a bit, but didn’t actually say anything?”
He took a moment to reply. “If that
’s what you want.”
“Thank you, Brody. Until next time . . .”
Anna tucked her phone into one of her cardigan pockets, then jammed her hand into the other pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. She unfolded it and read it yet again. This was exactly what she needed to do to commemorate her husband’s birthday. It was a bit last minute—so not her—but so very Spencer. She hoped they’d have space tomorrow, because he’d have loved to see her do this. It was the perfect way to remember him.
Yawning again, she stood and went back inside, closing the patio doors behind her. Before getting into the soft double bed, she pulled her phone out of her cardigan pocket and looked for somewhere to put it. The pillow next to hers always seemed empty these days, so she put it there to fill the space, then curled into the duvet and fell into a deep and restful sleep.
BRODY’S CHISEL SUNK into the wood he was holding in his left hand and he began deftly shaping the block, referring to a rough sketch in a notebook laid on the workbench. It had been weeks since he’d sat at his desk, held a pen in his hand and waited for words to come, but that was what he’d done when he’d got up before dawn this morning. He’d had a dream last night, the details of which were lost in his subconscious, but he’d woken energized. Inspired. He’d really thought today might have been the day. He’d been wrong.
Or sort of wrong.
Like before, he’d started with a word—the one Anna had described the way she’d felt last night: “free.” And then he’d allowed his imagination off the leash in a way he’d hadn’t done in years, too afraid it would head back to that same awful destination. Other words had come: “brave,” “strong,” “good” . . . And, like last time, when his rusty brain had run out of words, his pen had continued making marks on the creamy paper of his notebook. Brody was no great artist, but he had enough skill to sketch an idea and the end result be recognizable as something, even if it was just a wisp of an idea caught from a dream he couldn’t remember.
He’d drawn a woman. Well, an elf, really. Similar to the one Moji had in her shop, so he’d decided that maybe his subconscious wanted to make another one. He’d give it to Moji and she could sell it. It was the least he could do after all her kindness to him over the years.
When he’d finished sketching, he’d headed out to the workshop to get started. Lewis had followed him, slightly perplexed and wondering where breakfast was, and now here they both were, under the harsh glare of the fluorescent tubes until dawn broke properly, Lewis in his bed in the corner and Brody leaning over the workbench, trying to see if he could make this glimmer of inspiration come to life.
Brody hummed while he worked. He tried not to make many decisions or pay too much attention to what he was doing, just in case he jinxed this almost forgotten feeling of creative flow. He didn’t even glance at his notebook much. The image seemed stuck in his mind, so there was no real need.
But when he’d come close to finishing, when the major features—limbs and body, clothes and face—were just about there, only needing a little refinement, Brody realized he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. The little figure, maybe only ten inches tall, was close to the sketch he’d drawn earlier that morning, but there were significant differences too.
She wasn’t an elf, for one thing. She wore a dress, but it was plain and simple, no fluted sleeves or Celtic knotwork. Her hair was long but remained above her shoulder blades rather than skimming the backs of her thighs. He guessed, if he were able to lift her hair, that he’d find that her ears weren’t pointed but small and rounded.
His creation was human. Or maybe only half human, because there was something otherworldly about her too, something different.
Who was she?
The answer came in a flash from his dream, an image that fired across the synapses in his brain and stung them into life, like an electric shock from a defibrillator. He suddenly knew exactly who she was. His whole body grew hot and his skin shrank until it was three sizes too small.
It had been one of those dreams, or at least he assumed it had, the tiny portion he could remember was him and her between the pure white sheets of a rumpled bed. He remembered the sensation of skin touching skin, the thrill of being near her. Or who he imagined her to be.
Anna . . .
If there were any steamy details to the dream, they were lost to him. What he did remember was her laughter, the way she’d looked at him. Her eyes had been full of fun and teasing, but also something else. Something deeper. He’d felt known. Accepted.
He put the figure down, even though there were still a few small finishing touches that needed to be attended to. His chest hurt and he pressed a palm against it, sure another panic attack was about to descend on him, but was surprised to find his heartbeat sound and steady. This wasn’t his nervous system misfiring, telling him peril was lurking nearby when it was doing nothing of the sort. This was something far more dangerous.
It was want.
Need.
For something he couldn’t have. For something he’d promised himself he’d never look for again, because, after the mistakes he’d made, he really didn’t deserve it. And even if he had been so foolhardy as to open his heart again, it would be a very, very bad idea. Not just for him but for the poor woman he dragged into the pit with him. He would never want to do that to someone he truly cared about.
He realized he’d been avoiding looking at his creation and he forced himself to focus on her. He took in the large eyes, the faraway look that made her seem sad, but also the hint of a smile in her expression, not even fully formed enough yet to play on her lips, but it was there, waiting to burst forth. You aren’t real, he told the figure silently. You’re just a figment of my warped imagination. Nothing but my subconscious playing a vicious prank on me.
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t keeping her. She was for Moji, anyway. But after he picked the figure up, intending to complete it, he paused. She wasn’t the elf Moji had asked for, and he’d done too much to make any changes now.
He stared at her for a few seconds, then put her up on the shelf that held some of his tools above the workbench, and picked up another block of wood. He pulled his notebook closer and focused on the drawing. This time he was sticking to the plan.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The crash helmet fit snugly over her ears and went some way to drowning out the rumble of engines and the squeal of tires. Anna stood at the edge of Brands Hatch racetrack, shaking. She’d turned up two hours ago with Spencer’s voucher, hoping there’d be an open slot today, and had finally got the word someone else had canceled and she could have her go. The wait hadn’t helped her nerves much, though. Gabi would probably love this, but now the moment was upon her, Anna was definitely having second thoughts.
A sports car shot past at a dizzying speed. She clasped her hands together, closed her eyes and prayed. Please let me live through this . . .
“Anna Barry?” someone called.
Anna opened her eyes to find a guy who hardly looked old enough to have passed his driving test standing in front of her. “Yes?” she said, wishing she had a bottle of water (or possibly something stronger) with her. Suddenly, her throat was very dry.
“Your turn,” he said, gesturing to the sleek gunmetal Aston Martin idling a few feet away. “Hop in.”
We have a deal, God, remember? Anna added silently as she slid into the supple leather of the driver’s seat. You make sure I get around this track in one piece and I’ll . . . I’ll . . . Well, no time to work that one out now. Let’s just say I’ll owe you one.
She closed the door, did up her seat belt and then when Ade, the teenage driving instructor, was in the passenger seat, she pressed gingerly on the accelerator and pulled away.
Ade let her get away with twenty miles an hour for approximately ten seconds, then ordered her to put her foot down. There were other vehicles on the track, and it wasn’t safe for her to be crawling along like a pedal car, apparently.
Oh, how Spencer would ha
ve laughed if he could have seen her now.
Anna gritted her teeth, gripped the steering wheel. Ade sat in the passenger seat with a huge smirk on his face, like this was some big joke. Just like Spencer would have done. But for some reason Anna didn’t find it endearing, she just found it hugely irritating.
Without even trying, she discovered she was going faster.
“Better!” Ade said, looking unbearably smug. “Now, ease off the gas coming into this bend . . .”
Anna didn’t have much time to think about anything else for the next ten minutes. It took all her concentration to follow Ade’s instructions and navigate the hairpin bends the track was famous for. He would tell her when to hug the white line at the edge of the track, when to put her foot on the throttle, always urging her to go faster than she was comfortable with.
The worst thing was not braking going into the bends. Every time Anna’s heart was in her mouth and she was desperate to close her eyes, despite the fact she knew it was the stupidest thing she could have done . . . and accelerating out of the turns was even worse! It seemed her whole body and brain were a bundle of overstimulated nerves, and all her emotions, dampened down and numbed for so long, were suddenly turned up to the max. That might have been a good thing if the overriding emotion she felt hadn’t been sheer terror. She couldn’t have been happier when they pulled back into the pit after her three laps.
Thank God for that. Literally. She opened the door and reached for the strap of her helmet.
“Not yet,” Ade shouted from the other side of the car.
“What?” Anna yelled back.
Ade circled the car and came toward her. “You haven’t finished yet,” he said.
“I haven’t?”
He gave her that cocky smile again and Anna’s blood pressure reached a new peak for that day. “Nope. Your experience includes a high-speed passenger lap.”
Anna began shaking her head. “I . . . I don’t think . . .”
“You’ve already paid for it,” Ade replied, not smiling now, and his eyes glittered with challenge.