by Fiona Lucas
She looked at the top row of results and clicked on the first color thumbnail she saw, but it turned out to be a website for a children’s author called Brody Alexander (no Smith attached at the end—Google must have glitched). Had she heard of him? She clicked on “About” on the author’s website and had a read. Nope. He lived in London and he was married.
Before she closed the page down, she glanced at the black-and-white photo beside the biography. Not bad. Dark hair. A bit rougher around the edges than you’d expect a children’s author to look. Younger than she was looking for, possibly the same as her, early thirties, so that was all wrong too. He was looking into the camera and not exactly smiling, but there was a hint of it in his eyes. Anna looked more closely. There was something there, something that made her stomach flip a little. Could it be . . . ?
She studied the photograph for a good ten seconds, all the while feeling slightly breathless, but then she clicked the X at the corner of the web page to make it disappear.
No. It wasn’t right. His expression had been too . . . youthful, too fresh and unsullied by the darkness that life could bring. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t her Brody.
Because her Brody had a secret.
She was more certain of it every time they spoke. It was something to do with his wife, she was sure, something about his grief and loss. She’d tried probing a few times, but as she’d already discovered, he was very adept at conversational sleight of hand. She supposed she could try harder, but when it came down to it, she discovered she didn’t want to. If it was too painful to talk about, she should let him be. If anyone understood that, it was her.
Anna sighed and flapped her laptop closed. She was just going to have to be patient with him the way he’d been patient with her. And in the meantime, she’d just have to do her best not to be eaten alive by her own curiosity.
Chapter Thirty-Four
What about this one?” Gabi emerged from the changing room and twirled around, grinning. Anna could hardly see her for a cloud of white tulle and taffeta.
“It’s lovely!” she said.
Just like the last three wedding dresses Gabi had tried on. Anna was still a little fuzzy about how they’d ended up in a bridal boutique. They were supposed to be finding Anna a dress for Teresa’s party next Saturday. All she remembered was Gabi muttering something about this shop also doing evening wear, and before Anna had known it, they’d been inside the door, and when the sales assistant had assumed they were there to try bridal gowns on, Gabi hadn’t corrected her. Instead she’d shushed Anna, who’d been about to explain, smiled widely at the woman, then reached out and grabbed something off the rack.
Anna hadn’t minded at first; she’d been going with the flow, but she’d been sitting on this padded bench for almost half an hour now. “Gabs?”
“Yes?” Gabi said, twisting this way then that as she studied herself in a full-length mirror.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Such as?” Gabi rearranged her breasts to get just the right amount of cleavage in the scooping neckline.
“Gabriela!”
Gabi stopped what she was doing and spun round to face Anna. The dress continued to rustle and move for a few seconds afterward.
“Has Lee . . . ? You know . . . ?”
“Proposed? You know I would tell you first if he had!”
“I was starting to wonder whether all of this”—Anna waved her hand to encompass the luxurious fitting room—“Was leading up to something.”
Gabi swished her way over to Anna and sat down beside her on the upholstered bench. “No, he hasn’t proposed.” Normally, Anna would have expected Gabi to deliver news like that with big, sad, puppy-dog eyes, but it looked very much as if she were biting back a smile. “But I think he might!” she added, bouncing up and down slightly.
Anna studied her friend’s face. “Really?”
“He texted me last night to say he wants to talk about our relationship—that there is something big he wants to ask me.”
“Something big?” Anna said. “He used those precise words?”
Gabi scrunched her nose up. “Let me think . . . He said . . . I don’t remember what he said exactly. But it has to be something big, don’t you think, if he is taking me out to dinner in a really nice restaurant? It has to be more than if I want pizza or Indian next time we get takeaway!”
“Well, yes. It sounds as if it’s something more than that, but it could be anything, Gabi. I know you really like him, and you’d really like to settle down, but don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself?”
Gabi looked hurt. “You don’t think he’d want to propose to me?”
“Oh, Gabi!” Anna pulled her into a large, rustling hug. “Of course I think he should want to propose to you! He’d be lucky to have you.” Really lucky. “But do you think you’re ready? It’s still quite soon to be thinking about marriage.”
And, she didn’t want to add this, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure Lee was ready either. Not that he didn’t look very invested in Gabi whenever Anna saw them together. It was just a feeling she’d had for a while, fueled by something that had happened at salsa the other week when Gabi had an evening shoot, and hadn’t been able to go.
Anna had left the hall just as the social dance part of the evening had started, heading for the ladies’ room, when she’d spotted Lee and the girl with the swooshy ponytail together in a corner of the winding corridor. They’d been standing a respectable distance apart, hadn’t even been touching, but something about it had made Anna feel uneasy.
She pulled back and made eye contact with her best friend. “This is big, Gabi. Huge. We’re talking about the rest of your life.”
Or his, Anna added silently, unable to stop thinking about her own marriage.
“Didn’t you once tell me that you knew you were going to marry Spencer after your third date?”
Ah. There was that. Past Anna had kind of sabotaged Present Anna’s very sensible point, hadn’t she?
“Is it that you don’t think Lee and I are good together?” Gabi asked, brows pinched together.
“No, it’s not that . . .” And it really wasn’t. “I just don’t want you to jump in with both feet and get hurt.”
“You did—with Spencer.”
“I know,” Anna said, her heart sinking like a lead weight. She returned Gabi’s anxious gaze. “And look how that turned out.”
“But not because he didn’t love you enough.”
“No,” Anna conceded. “Not because of that. But it didn’t make it any less painful when it all came to an abrupt end.” She paused, finding her throat too tight to continue for a moment. “I just don’t want you to have to go through anything even vaguely resembling that.”
Gabi kind of wilted at that point and all the fight leeched out of her. She pulled Anna in for a one-armed hug and kissed the side of her head. “I get it now. Thank you. But . . .”
Anna gave her a squeeze and pulled away to look at her. “But . . . ?”
Gabi’s expression became determined. “But you can’t go through life avoiding love on the off-chance that it all goes horribly wrong at some point.”
Can’t you? Anna thought. In that moment, it seemed a terrifically good idea. Could she even do it all again? Now she’d paid that price once, she knew just how high and devastating the stakes were, and Anna had never been much of a gambler.
But if she really thought that, what was she doing even dating Jeremy, knowing he was looking for something serious ultimately? There had been one more oh-so-casual dinner last Saturday night and tonight they were due to go out for their third. She’d thought she’d been ready to at least start down that path, but it seemed her true feelings about long-term relationships—the feelings she’d just splurged all over her best friend—were contradicting her.
She rubbed her forehead. The whole subject was starting to give her a headache.
Anna’s phone buzzed at that moment, an
d since Gabi had caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors again and was momentarily distracted by her own loveliness, Anna pulled it out of her pocket. She smiled and tapped on the photograph that had arrived in her messages inbox to enlarge it. It was a picture of Lewis, dripping wet and caked in what looked like peaty, black mud.
Every time she got a message from Brody now, it lifted her. What if she could find a way to help other people find their own Brody? She’d been chewing the idea over in her head for the last couple of weeks, ever since she’d had that conversation with her mother, but she hadn’t contacted Spencer’s former partners, Rhys and Vijay, yet, wanting to have something more concrete than a one-line idea. How would you get people to sign up? How could you protect their privacy and identities? What happened if someone tried to use the app to take advantage of people when they were at their most vulnerable? These were all things she needed to think about, and that wasn’t even including whether the technology would fall into place.
“Come on,” Gabi said, interrupting Anna’s thoughts by grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet. “Stop mooning over texts from Jeremy and help me out of this thing. You’re right—I’m getting ahead of myself. I should probably be looking for something sexy to wear to dinner. I blame my mother. Now I’ve turned thirty, she’s lamenting my status as solteirona—a spinster, I suppose, is the closest translation. All of my sisters are married, so I’m the only one left to focus on.” She gave Anna a meaningful look. “Let’s just say sometimes I’m glad she’s five thousand miles away . . . Shall we try the boutique across the street next? I saw a blue dress in the window that would look fabulous on you!”
Anna unlaced the bodice of Gabi’s dress, then watched her head back to the dressing room. As she waited for Gabi to reappear in her normal clothes, she wondered why she hadn’t corrected her about the sender of the text. She still hadn’t told Gabi about Brody. She’d been meaning to, but she’d gradually come to the realization that she didn’t want to. It kept that connection private. Intimate.
When they entered the shop across the road, Gabi headed straight to a rack, picked up a cocktail dress, and handed it to Anna, saying, “This is the one!” before picking out a shorter dress in canary yellow for herself.
Before she could argue, Gabi tugged her arm and led her in the direction of the fitting rooms. When they both emerged from their respective cubicles, she smiled at Gabi. “That looks amazing on you!”
“And so does yours! Look . . .” Gabi turned Anna around to gaze in the full-length mirror.
Oh.
Anna stared hard at her reflection. Layers of midnight blue chiffon wrapped around to form a bodice, and then floated to just above the knee. Vertical rows of sequins glinted discreetly from the tiny pleats of the fabric, adding an almost imperceptible shimmer. She didn’t quite look like herself. She looked otherworldly, willowy. Like she’d just stepped out of a storybook. How did a dress do that? Maybe it really was worth the eye-watering price tag.
Gabi beamed, pleased with herself. “You said you needed something nice for Teresa’s party.”
“It’s not just nice. It’s spectacular! I just don’t know about the—”
“Don’t think about that. Some things are worth more than money.” She grinned cheekily. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t make you get one from the last shop?”
Anna chuckled. “Definitely. I don’t think turning up in a wedding dress would endear me any further to my mother-in-law.”
“Hmm. You have a point there.”
“I know that Spencer would have hated the idea that there was a rift, but I just can’t face her at the moment, Gabs. I just can’t.” She turned and fiddled with the zip at the back of the dress. She wanted it off now. Somehow, it didn’t feel so fairy-tale-ish anymore. “What did I do? What did I do to make her change like that?”
“It’s not you, honestly. It’s her . . .”
“That’s what Teresa says.”
“See? We’re all on your side.”
Anna squeezed her friend and then returned to the fitting room. While she was changing, her phone buzzed in her handbag.
“That man is besotted with you!” Gabi said, as Anna pulled the curtain back and checked her phone. Gabi must have got a glimpse of the screen before Anna had turned round because she said, “Jeremy sent you a picture? Is it . . . naughty?”
“No!” Anna exclaimed, reminding herself of a rather prudish fourteen-year-old. Which, unfortunately, might not be far off base. She still didn’t feel inclined to do anything more than kiss him at the end of their date tonight.
Just to prove to herself that she wasn’t a completely spineless creature, she picked up the hanger with the blue dress on and took it to the cash register. Behind her, Gabi let out a little whoop. Anna put her phone down on the counter to get her credit card out of her purse. Gabi tried to snatch it up to get a better look, but Anna was too fast for her.
“I didn’t know Jeremy had a dog!” Gabi exclaimed as Anna pressed the button to send her phone to sleep, hiding the picture message before she could read more. “Or one that was so . . . scruffy? Is that a word?”
Anna nodded. “It’s a word.”
In fact, it was a very good word for Lewis in that picture. Brody had sent one of his dog in an old-fashioned claw-foot tub. Lewis was covered in bubbles; obviously the next chapter in the story that had begun with a dip in the bog. “It isn’t Jeremy’s dog,” Anna said, turning away to receive her receipt from the sales assistant.
“Who does it belong to?”
So much for keeping her friendship with Brody private and intimate. Gabi would want to know everything now. Anna tucked her phone back into her bag and removed her credit card from the reader. “He belongs to a friend of mine—Brody.”
Gabi frowned. “Brody? Do I know him?”
Anna shook her head. “No.”
“The text you got in the wedding shop. That was also from Brody?”
“Yes,” Anna said as they exited the boutique.
“I never heard you mention anyone with that name before. Who is he? Why does he send you photographs of his dog?”
“He’s just someone I met . . . We talk. That’s all.”
“One of Spencer’s friends?”
“While he wasn’t a friend of Spencer’s, I suppose you could say I met him through Spencer.” She was taking the coward’s way out of this conversation, she knew. She’d tell Gabi soon, but on her own terms, when she was ready for the full interrogation.
They started walking back down the High Street. Anna noticed Gabi wasn’t looking very happy. While one of her best traits was her fierce loyalty, it did sometimes mean she could get a little territorial about her friends.
“I’m doing what you want me to do,” Anna said. “I’m finding new things in my life—new experiences, new friends. I’m trying to move on. Be happy for me.”
“I know,” Gabi said, and her expression lost some of its hardness. “I am very proud of you.”
“Good,” Anna said, linking her arm in Gabi’s and turning her back in the direction they’d just come from. “Because I haven’t maxed out my card completely yet, so we’re going to go and get you that killer yellow dress. Teresa said I could bring a plus-one, and we might as well walk in looking spectacular together!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Anna stepped from the passenger seat of the car and stared up at the imposing facade of the Warlingham Court Hotel. She was very glad she hadn’t come alone.
“Nervous?”
She turned to face her “plus-one,” who was not wearing a canary-yellow, figure-hugging dress but a well-cut suit and a shirt. A last-minute substitution. “A little,” she admitted to Jeremy. “I’m glad you’re here.”
The yellow dress was currently five miles away in a smart modern-European restaurant. Gabi and Lee were finally having their “talk” tonight. Lee had postponed two other dates already and Gabi was stressed out to the max, desperate to hear what he had to say. When
she’d told Anna about the clash of dates and had said she’d put Lee off, Anna had shaken her head. She couldn’t put her friend through any more waiting.
However, until that point she hadn’t realized how much she’d been relying on the idea of having Gabi beside her as moral support when she saw Gayle this evening. And she didn’t want to rope Scott and Teresa in and make them choose sides, so she’d been planning to duck out. However, when she’d mentioned to Jeremy at salsa that she might be free on Saturday after all, and told him the reason, he’d volunteered to come with her instead. Anna had phoned Teresa to make sure this was okay, and Teresa had been, well, strangely excited about the whole idea, so that had been that, and now here they were.
Jeremy smiled at her as he locked the car and offered her his arm, but she shook her head. They’d decided they wouldn’t be too touchy-feely this evening. There was no point in adding fuel to the fire; Teresa deserved a fabulous party, not another traumatic chapter in their ongoing family saga.
They walked up to the hotel and entered the lobby, where they found a sign directing them to the relevant function room. The bass of the DJ’s throwback nineties playlist could be heard as they turned the corner to where the double doors were open. Scott and Teresa were standing there, smiling and greeting their guests as they arrived.
Teresa grinned widely as she saw Anna and held her arms open. “Glad you could make it,” Teresa said, as she kissed Anna on the cheek, then whispered in her ear, “Is this him? Salsa guy? Not bad!”
Anna smiled weakly. “Are you sure this is okay? I don’t want to make things difficult between you and Gayle.”
Teresa waved Anna’s concerns away with a sweep of her hand. “This is my party,” she said, lowering her voice, “not Gayle’s, and I say you can bring whomever you’d like. It’s been three and a half years, Anna. You’re allowed to move on.”
Anna nodded, and inside her head, the familiar litany rang: Three years, six months, nine days . . . But Teresa was right. Maybe if she and Gayle could coexist this evening, if her mother-in-law could see that it was okay for her—for all of them—not to stay so firmly anchored in the past, then they’d all be happier. Maybe this night could be a turning point, not the disaster Anna had been dreading. “Is she here?”