by Fiona Lucas
Anna started to feel a little queasy. It was the sort of look Spencer would have given her in a situation like this, full of boyish arrogance, so sure he was right about everything. She couldn’t help thinking about what he’d have done if he’d got to use this voucher as planned. She could imagine him diving out of the driving seat and jumping into the passenger side, banging on the dashboard to make Ade hurry up and get on with it.
You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you? she said to someone. Whether it was Spencer, God or her conscience, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t mean the answer didn’t come back just as clearly.
Yes.
She set her chin and looked at Ade as she tightened her helmet back up. “Let’s do this.”
THREE MINUTES, THAT was all it took to do one complete circuit of the racetrack, and Anna was sure she was going to be reunited with Spencer every second of it. “Oh, God . . . ! I don’t want to die!” she wailed as they took another corner at what seemed like two hundred miles an hour, even though Ade had patiently explained while zooming through the chicane that the turns came too quickly for the car to reach its maximum speed. But as they accelerated into yet another bend, Anna decided she wasn’t quite sure she believed him.
She was doing her best not to shout out or brace herself against any part of the car’s interior because she’d already worked out that Ade took it as a sign to stamp his foot down. When she got out of this car and got the use of her legs back, she was going to kick his butt, she really was. Let’s see who’d be smirking then!
The g-force as they went into the turn threw her against the car door, making her head bounce around like a puppet’s, and she’d barely got her breath back when Ade began to accelerate along one of the straighter patches. Pavement and greenery streaked past the window in a blur. She glanced across at him and he was laughing, actually laughing.
Only one more turn, he mouthed at her as she closed her eyes and began to pray again. She could already feel the car surge forward as he floored it.
It was worse with her eyes closed, she discovered, like being locked in a washing machine on the spin cycle, so she quickly opened them again, only to discover they were hurtling toward a safety barrier. The back wheels skidded, and she flung her arms out and gripped onto the dashboard. She didn’t care if Ade saw her fear anymore, because they couldn’t possibly go any faster than they already were.
Much to her relief, she saw the spectator stands looming ahead, meaning they were about to pass the finish line. She almost wept with relief, only to scream loudly when Ade didn’t bring the car smoothly to a halt but executed a perfect handbrake turn that left her stomach in the top of her skull.
The world kept moving, even though the car had stopped, but Anna didn’t care. She scrabbled at the door handle, managing to catch it on the fourth try, and practically tumbled from the car and onto the pavement.
She bent over, bracing her hands on her knees and gulping in great lungfuls of air. And then, very strangely, she began to laugh. And once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. It might have been endorphins or adrenaline or just plain old insanity, but she crumpled like a rag doll and sat on the track, laughing until she almost couldn’t breathe anymore.
Ade came around to help her up, his smirk finally gone.
It took two attempts to get Anna to her feet because she was giggling so hard, but when he managed to do it, their eyes met. He gave her a nod, and that little gesture might have contained a hint of approval. “You’re not dead, then,” he said.
“No,” she replied. “I’m not. I’m very much alive.”
Ade just grinned at her.
Anna sobered and narrowed her eyes. “No thanks to you,” she told him, but instead of belting him round the chops as she’d planned to, she planted a big wet smacker on his cheek and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Brody stood in his garden, the scents and sounds of twilight all around him. Now and again a bat flittered between the nearby trees and the eaves of his outbuildings. It was past nine o’clock but, this far south in June, the sun still glowed behind the trees down the valley.
His phone rang and he pulled it from his jeans pocket. He no longer kept it on his desk until late in the evening, when he’d retire to his study to read and wait for it to light up. He’d got into the habit of keeping it on him. Just in case. And here was his reward. He smiled as he lifted it to his ear.
“I did it, Brody! I actually did it!”
Brody smiled. Whatever it was that she’d done, whatever she was celebrating, he was glad she was sharing it with him. And by the sound of her voice, he was the first person she’d shared it with. A little flame of hope flickered inside his chest, but he snuffed it out. It meant something, but it didn’t mean that.
“What did you do?” he asked, but before her answer came, a thought flashed across his brain. “You used the voucher. You went to the racetrack?”
Anna gasped. “How did you know?”
“I just . . . did. You had fun, then?”
“No! I thought I was going to die!” Anna erupted into laughter. Laughter with a slightly hysterical edge, it had to be said. “But I suppose, in a strange way, I did enjoy it. Not the actual experience maybe, but the feeling afterward.”
“Which was?”
“I feel energized. I feel . . . awake.”
He knew she was telling the truth, could hear it in the buoyancy of her tone, the lightness. Such a difference from the first time he’d heard her voice. It made his chest ache. He wished more than anything else in the world he’d been there to see it today, to see her climb from the car, a look of joy and exhilaration on her face. He was so proud of her.
If they had been proper friends, the kind that met up and saw each other face-to-face once in a while, he would have suggested going out to celebrate. He was on the verge of asking her anyway, but then he sobered.
No. She had other friends for that. Better friends for that.
Friends? Come on! Tell the truth. At least to yourself. You want more than that.
No point, he replied to himself firmly. If I can’t even manage “friends,” what’s the point in taking it any further?
As Anna began to describe in detail her experiences at the racetrack, Brody wandered back into the house, paying more attention to her words than he did to where he was going. He ended up in his study. Leaving the light off, he eased himself into his armchair and looked up at the bookshelf. The little wooden figure that should have been an elf sat in front of the top row of paperbacks. It hadn’t seemed right to leave her in the dark and cobwebby workshop.
She wasn’t looking down on him, keeping him company. Instead, she looked off into the lavender twilight, staring into her distant future. A future full of fresh territory, fresh challenges. That was where she belonged.
Anna was moving on.
That was good. It was what she needed, what he wished for her, but he couldn’t help feeling that, at the same time, she was moving away too. Oh, she’d probably still call for the next few months, possibly even the next year or two. She’d still tell him about her life, but that didn’t mean the distance between them wouldn’t increase. It didn’t mean it wouldn’t grow into a chasm.
Because there she was, blossoming. Becoming.
Whereas he was stuck in this damn chair. And it wasn’t even a particularly nice armchair. A spring had broken at the back of the seat and the arms were becoming threadbare.
“Did this happen to you?” she asked. “At some point in your journey out of grief, did you . . . I don’t know how to put it . . . Did you suddenly feel as if there might be hope, that life might be okay again one day? Not the same, of course, but just better than it had been?”
Brody crafted his answer carefully. “There certainly have been times where I’ve felt lighter than others.” He wasn’t going to admit to her he’d been feeling hollow and empty for so long, he’d kind of got used to it.
“And was it, you know, a moment,
like I had, or was it a slower process?”
“It was less . . .” Brody fidgeted in his chair. “. . . dramatic.” And then, before she could probe any further, he headed her off at the pass. “So, what do you think is going to come out of this ‘moment’? What is going to change going forward?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. All I know is that sometimes I feel happy and scared, hopeful and overwhelmed all at once. There might be light in my future instead of just darkness, but for some reason I find that slightly terrifying too.”
Brody smiled. She’d put it so well. “Isn’t that what life is about?”
“I suppose it is . . .” She paused, and he could tell she was thinking about something. “You’re right—I should make some changes going forward, and as we’ve been talking I’ve realized one of those things is my job. Gabi said something a couple of months ago about me not loving it and I didn’t really take on board what she was saying.”
“You’re going to look for a new job?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding very certain.
“What kind of job?”
She laughed. “That’s the whole problem! I think I’ve worked out that I don’t want my current job, but I have no idea what I want to do instead. I suppose I’m just going to have a look at what’s available and see if anything sparks my interest.”
“It’s a start.”
“Yes,” she said again, still sounding so sure and confident—so different to how she’d come across when he’d first heard her voice on the other end of the line on New Year’s Eve.
When they finally ended their conversation, Brody couldn’t stop thinking about that, about how much Anna had changed, how much progress she’d made.
Whereas, all you’re doing is treading water, the little goading voice in his head said. Stagnating. You’re all full of good advice when it comes to Anna but where is all that wisdom when it comes to your own life?
He glanced across at the book sitting on his desk, the one about panic and agoraphobia. He’d been trying to do everything it said for a couple of months now and it really wasn’t working, was it? Maybe this wasn’t something he could do on his own. But he supposed he’d got so used to doing everything on his own, that it hadn’t occurred to him to try a different route.
So what are you going to do, huh? Are you going to be brave, like Anna is being brave, or are you going to sit there and fester in that armchair until you become part of it?
That, thought Brody, was a very good question.
Part 2
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As summer ebbed away slowly, blessing the beginning of September with warm days and crisp skies, Anna pondered her conversations with both Brody and Gabi. What did she want her life to be like? She turned the idea over and over in her head, looking at it from every angle, but got no closer to an answer.
There was an ache beginning inside her, a yearning for something more, but when it came to nailing down specifics, she just couldn’t create a picture in her mind. And with no vision of her future to guide her, she found herself stalled.
She signed up to a few job search websites. Some of the positions listed seemed interesting, but she never quite got to the point of filling in an online application. She didn’t want to set off down the wrong path; there was no point swapping one unfulfilling job for another. Until she decided what she wanted to do next, she might as well stay put at Sundridge Plumbing and Heating.
Maybe she just wasn’t ready for that level of change? It had been almost three months since she’d been to the racetrack, and she couldn’t evade the feeling that since that day everything had turned upside down, even though on the surface life seemed pretty much the same. It was as if her mind and emotions had been shaken up and jumbled about like the flakes in a snow globe and she was still waiting for everything to settle and return to normal.
But that wasn’t an entirely bad thing. There were good signs, shoots of spring after her long emotional winter, things she’d forgotten had once been part of her life. She found herself laughing more, but also crying more too. Sometimes, with sheer frustration, when it came to thinking about her mother-in-law.
Gayle. What was she going to do about Gayle?
Teresa kept trying to broker a truce, but Anna wasn’t ready to say sorry. She knew her behavior had not been good, but she also knew that if she went and groveled to Gayle, her mother-in-law would stiffly accept her apology, then refuse to take any responsibility for all the terrible things she’d done. Anna’s outburst at the Cinnamon Café hadn’t happened in a vacuum.
There were other reasons too . . . Anna could see now that she’d tethered herself too strongly to the past, but now she had begun to let some of these things go, she felt cast adrift.
And that was the problem with Gayle. She was still firmly camped in that dark place Anna was so desperately trying to get away from. Anna sometimes wondered if that was why she kept putting off getting in touch. It was all so new, so fresh, this feeling of freedom. Maybe she was scared of losing it, scared Gayle would suck her back into being that way too?
Her one constant in this sea of internal change was Brody. They spoke at least four or five times a week now. Despite a few further requests from Anna, they still hadn’t FaceTimed. It wasn’t that Brody had ever squashed the idea completely, more that it never seemed to come to fruition. Maybe he wasn’t very good with technology. Maybe there was something about his appearance he felt self-conscious about, who knew? She’d decided to stop pushing and let him come around to the idea at his own pace.
However, they had managed to extend their communication methods to include picture messages. Brody had sent her a picture of a rocky tor bathed in dawn light only that morning. No words—they saved those for their late-night phone calls—but while the sun was up they sent each other pictures snapped with their phones, little snippets of their daily lives.
Brody often sent her images of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, misty moors, rabbits on his lawn. Anna was having to up her photography game quite a bit to make London seem as picturesque, but she was starting to get the hang of it, especially as Gabi had shared some tips about framing and lighting.
On the walk home from work, one day in early September, she stopped, noticing the way the early evening sun was highlighting the rough sandstone bricks of a converted warehouse. She zoomed in and took an angled, almost abstract picture of an area of light and shadow, including the corner of a cast-iron window. She shared the image with Brody instantly, hoping he would see the same stark beauty in the shapes.
When she reached home and collapsed onto her sofa, she checked her messages and was rewarded with a reply—a picture of a colorful pheasant in a leafy lane. She smiled as her stomach rumbled. What was she going to have for dinner? Pasta again? Or something from the selection of ready meals stacked up in her freezer? It was all she’d had the energy to cook for . . . well, years now, even though, once upon a time, she’d been a keen cook.
Salsa was providing some much-needed exercise in her routine, but it occurred to her that she’d feel even less sluggish if she started paying attention to the quality of what she was putting into her body too? Make the effort, Anna. Go on. A nice homemade Thai curry would be a good start. She hadn’t had one of those in ages.
Despite the fact she was tempted to lie down on the sofa and close her eyes, she pushed herself up and walked to the small supermarket a short distance away, grabbed a few items, and then headed back home, where she began assembling and preparing ingredients. She chopped a stick of lemongrass and added it to the finely sliced shallots that were sweating gently in a pan on her stove.
Just as she added a dollop of green curry paste, her phone rang. She turned the heat down and jogged back to the living room to fetch it, wooden spatula still in her other hand. It was her mum. At least she wanted to video call.
Her mother’s face appeared on the screen. “Hello, darling,” she said, smiling.
Anna walked back to the kitch
en and balanced her phone on the shelf to the left of the cooker hood so she could dump the chicken into the pan while she was talking. “Hi, Mum. What’s up?”
“Nothing especially. I was just thinking about you. How are you doing?”
Anna picked up her phone and angled it to take in the pan on the stove. “Wish you could smell as well as see . . . I’m cooking a Thai dish. I’m quite excited about it, actually.”
She placed the phone back on her shelf and discovered her mother looking at her from over the top of her glasses. “I asked how you were doing. Not what you were doing.”
“Oh. You know . . .” Anna turned away, reaching for some chopped lime leaves to throw into the pan. She knew the script to this bit: I’m okay, getting better slowly, taking things day by day . . . She opened her mouth to recite it, but then she frowned and pinned her bottom lip with her teeth for a moment. “Actually, Mum, I’m beginning to think I turned a corner this summer.”
“I’m so pleased to hear that, especially after that business with Gayle on Spencer’s birthday. I must admit, I was a little worried that might set you back.”
“Yes, even despite that. In fact, maybe because of that.” She’d already told her mum about the visit to Brands Hatch but she began to delve into more detail, explaining just how it had shaken something loose for her. Up until that point, she hadn’t wanted to admit to her mother how much she’d been struggling.
Her mother listened carefully and when Anna had finished, she said, “I’m so glad you felt you could talk to me about this, sweetheart. I wish you had sooner.”
Anna nodded as she concentrated on her cooking. “I know. Me too.”
“What do you think has helped? Was there something in particular?”
Anna stopped stirring, realizing she still wasn’t being entirely honest with her mother. There was a big part of the picture she was still skirting around—Brody. He was the catalyst for all this change.