The Last Goodbye

by Fiona Lucas

  “Not yet. I’m expecting her around eight-thirty.”

  “And Little Spencer?”

  Teresa nodded toward the function room. “My niece has got him at the moment—he’s asleep in his pram, out like a light, but we’ll see how long that lasts!”

  Anna laughed and wished Teresa luck, then she greeted Scott and introduced Jeremy. As they turned to go through the double doors and into the party itself, Anna felt her stomach flutter.

  “What does she look like?” Jeremy said in a low voice as they turned left inside the entrance and headed for the bar area. Anna regretted the “no touching” rule at that moment, because she could have hugged him for reading her so well.

  “Tall, early sixties, but looking good for her age. Blond, with one of those blow-dried, swept-back styles that’s held together with half a can of hairspray.”

  “A bit Margaret Thatcher–ish, then?” Jeremy said with more than a glimmer of mischief in his eye. Anna smiled. This man had a talent for making her do that.

  “And twice as scary,” she replied in a low whisper, “but it’s more of a bob than the full-on eighties Maggie crash helmet.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Got it.”

  They headed for the bar. “Are you going to confront her this evening?” Jeremy asked, once they had drinks in hand and were making their way to a table. Anna turned and looked at him in horror. “Well, it seems as if you need to have it out with her at some point.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not yet.”

  Not because she was scared to, but because Brody’s advice still rang true in her ears. “I don’t want to give her the satisfaction. I think the best thing I can do is just live my life, do what I think is right. I don’t need her permission to do that.”

  Jeremy nodded toward the dance floor. “Does this life you’re going to live include dancing? The kind where we stay two feet away from each other at all times, of course.”

  “Maybe,” she replied, smiling. “In a bit.”

  As promised, they kept their tour round the dance floor purely platonic, smiling at each other every now and then, but mostly just enjoying moving to the music. The salsa lessons must have helped, Anna thought, because she didn’t feel as self-conscious as she used to at events like this.

  They were halfway through dancing to their third song when Anna felt a sudden change in the atmosphere. She looked around, but beyond the dance floor, the rest of the room fell away into shadows. The people sitting around the banquet tables drinking and chatting were little more than dark blurs. A thought dropped into her mind like a pebble hitting a pool of water: someone was watching her. The next realization followed on like a ripple.

  Gayle had arrived. The hairs on the back of Anna’s neck lifted and she shivered.

  Cold? Jeremy mouthed to her.

  She shook her head. Do you mind if we go and sit down for a bit? she mouthed back, with hand gestures for extra clarity.

  He looked slightly perplexed, but he followed her lead as she headed away from the dance floor. Thankfully, in the opposite direction from where she’d felt that . . . presence. It was like being trapped in a bad horror movie.

  She tried to chat as much as the music would allow and, when Jeremy went to get a second round of drinks, Anna decided to escape the function room on the pretense of going to the ladies’ room. She was halfway down the plush, carpeted corridor before a steely voice rang out behind her.

  “How dare you!”

  Anna spun around to find Gayle marching up behind her, fire in her eyes.

  “How dare you bring that man here! Are you trying to hurt us, to hurt me? Because well done, you’ve done a marvelous job!”

  “Teresa said I could bring a plus-one,” Anna said, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice.

  “Even if she did, you should have known better! You should have brought someone else—that loud friend of yours. She would have been fine!”

  “Her name is Gabriela,” Anna said stonily.

  “You shouldn’t have brought him to our family party,” Gayle said, and Anna couldn’t help noticing a tiny bead of bubbly saliva at the corner of her lips. Good grief. She was actually foaming at the mouth.

  A girl in a short silver dress and high heels tottered past on her way to the loos. Anna had to step to the side to make room for her, which gave her some much-needed distance from Gayle.

  She looked at her mother-in-law’s face. Although, as she’d said to Jeremy, Gayle really did look good for her age, up close Anna could see the fine lines on her skin more clearly, the wrinkles and puffs beneath her eyes, their purple tone cleverly hidden with a good concealer. Gayle looked old, she realized. And not nearly as invincible as she made herself out to be.

  “Not everything is about Spencer,” Anna said, not aiming to injure but to explain.

  Gayle stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Of course it is! Because he should be here tonight, like he should be at every family gathering! How could you ever forget that?”

  “I know he should be here,” Anna said, with a softness in her tone she didn’t have to fake. This was the one core thing that, deep down, connected her and Gayle. If only they could get back to that place where it meant love and support and togetherness, not competition and accusations. “Do you think I don’t wish it was different? I’d much rather Spencer was here.”

  She felt the truth of that statement like a stab to the chest. If she could pick between the two men—no matter how nice and supportive and good-looking Jeremy was—of course she’d choose Spencer. She would always choose Spencer. Something shifted inside her at the thought.

  “Spencer was the love of my life,” she said and saw an unexpected warmth flood her mother-in-law’s eyes. Maybe there was hope after all? “And nothing will ever change that. But what happened has happened. He’s dead, Gayle, no matter how much we wish he weren’t. And we’ve got to find a way to live without him, to move forward.”

  Anna saw the moment the soft patch in Gayle’s armor hardened and turned back to steel. It was just as she’d said the word “dead.” She’d been too blunt.

  “And you call that ‘moving forward’?” Gayle said, her volume rising with every word as she flung an arm in the direction of the function room. “Flaunting yourself with him? You’re just throwing it in our faces!”

  “I was only dancing,” Anna replied, more than a little exasperated. “There was nothing inappropriate going on.”

  Gayle’s face betrayed just what she thought about that.

  Anna stared at Gayle, begging her to understand. “Aren’t I allowed to be happy?” she asked. Her voice cracked and her eyes filled as she said it, taking her by surprise. She really did want that now, she realized. She wanted it so badly.

  Gayle pressed her lips together. Anna knew she had no sensible answer to that, because if she said “yes” Anna had won, and if she said “no” Anna had also won because Gayle would prove herself to be a cold-hearted bitch after all. Instead, master of keeping others in their place, Gayle changed tack and found a more suitable offense. “You’re being disloyal,” she said flatly.

  “To whom?”

  Even though she knew exactly where Gayle was going with this, the accusation hit Anna harder than she expected it to. “To Spencer.” Gayle must have seen the pain in Anna’s eyes because she took the opportunity to dig the knife in a little deeper. “And to the family. You know how much my son cared about his family . . .”

  Anna almost laughed. “What? The family that you’ve been doing your level best to push me out of for the last year? That family? Do you think I’m so stupid that I can’t tell you don’t like me, Gayle? That I don’t know you can’t stand having me around?” Anna really did laugh then. It was a horrible, tight little noise that got stuck in her throat. “What I don’t understand is, if you’d rather I disappeared from your life, why the hell do you care what I do, or who I do it with?”

  Gayle’s eyes had started to blaze while Anna had been talking and now, lik
e a dragon exhaling flames, she scorched Anna with her fury.

  “Because it should have been you!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, so loud that the sound bounced off the walls and ceiling of the narrow corridor and echoed back to Anna. “It should have been you that went out that night to go to the corner shop! And because of you, because of your laziness, my son is dead!”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Anna sat in bed, her back against the padded headboard, her knees pulled up toward her chest, the duvet tucked under her arms. She’d turned the lights off but had left the shutters open, and the bedroom was illuminated by the glow of the streetlamp across the road.

  Thank goodness that girl with the silver dress had emerged from the ladies’ toilets immediately after Gayle had dropped her bombshell. Gayle had frozen the moment the words had come out of her mouth, and she’d looked horrified, as had the girl in the silver dress, who’d obviously overheard the entire exchange. Anna had just turned and walked away. She’d gone to find Jeremy, and they’d said a hasty goodbye to Teresa and Scott before leaving.

  Anna hugged her knees. She needed to talk. To Brody.

  She’d been silent the whole journey home in Jeremy’s car, so much so that he’d got worried and had pulled over and had begged her to talk to him. She’d just shaken her head. Her lips had seemed glued shut.

  It wouldn’t have been a good idea, anyway. She’d been afraid that once the floodgates were open, she’d lose control completely. She didn’t want to do that in front of him.

  But Brody . . . Brody had already experienced all of that from her. And more. He could take it. And she had no doubt that there wasn’t anything she could say or do that would mess things up between them.

  She’d ended up leaning over and kissing Jeremy on the cheek, whispering a soft “sorry” before she’d climbed from the car, and now she was sitting in bed, her thumb hovering over her phone screen.

  Just as she was about to dial Brody’s number, her mobile rang, startling her so much she dropped it onto the duvet and had to scrabble around to pick it up again before her voicemail kicked in. This mind reading was happening more and more when she and Brody spoke; either she’d just be about to call him and her phone would ring, or she’d dial his number and he’d say he’d been about to do the same.

  “Hi,” she said on an exhale of air that betrayed her relief at hearing his voice.

  “Hi,” he said back.

  Anna hugged the duvet harder. “Do you ever think . . .” She paused, willing herself to go on. After what had been said tonight, she really needed to know the answer to this question. “Do you ever think it should have been you, not them? That you should have been the one who died instead?”

  Brody took a few seconds before he answered, and when he did his voice was hoarse. “Yeah . . . A lot.”

  Anna nodded to herself. She’d known he’d get it. “I used to think that way all the time. Until tonight, I didn’t realize that I hadn’t so much recently.”

  There was silence again, but this time it was thick. Tense. “What happened at the party this evening, Anna? I haven’t heard you talk like this for months.” He sounded concerned, maybe even a little scared.

  Anna let her phone drop to the duvet and buried her head in her hands. “She said it to me—Gayle. Those exact words: that it should have been me.” Anna went on to tell him the whole story, finishing with, “And the look in her eyes . . . I know she meant it, Brody, I really do.”

  Brody swore softly.

  “And the weirdest thing is that I’m not even sure I can hate her for it. Because she only said what I’ve thought a million times myself. For ages, maybe even years, I wished it had been me. I longed for it, bargained with God for it, but He didn’t take the deal. Is that terrible?” she asked a little desperately. “That I wanted to die? It seems so selfish, so ungrateful . . .”

  Brody’s voice was thick. “I think, given the circumstances, feeling like that is entirely understandable. In fact, I’d say far more people feel that way than ever let on. I certainly did. If I could have made that trade, I would have done it in a heartbeat.”

  Anna sobbed with relief, and Brody gave her time, listening patiently as she rode the storm, only speaking again when all that was left were a few waves rustling against the shore.

  “You said ‘wished,’ Anna. Past tense. Not ‘wish.’ That’s good . . . It means you don’t feel that way anymore.”

  Anna lifted her head from her hands. Had she said “wished”? She hadn’t even paid attention. She sniffed. “You’re right. Most days I don’t. Do . . . do you?”

  Brody pondered that for a moment. “Not most days,” he said, with just a sliver of surprise in his tone. “Not anymore.”

  They fell silent, but it wasn’t like the silence at the end of the line when Anna had first phoned Spencer’s number after he died, vacant and cold. It was warm and comforting. It breathed.

  “Thank you, Brody.” Anna lay back on the pillow, suddenly exhausted. “Can we do that thing again, where we don’t hang up straightaway? While I don’t like saying ‘goodbye,’ I like saying ‘good night.’ It’s nice to think of you here beside me.”

  There was a strange tone in Brody’s voice when he replied. “Sure,” he said. “I’d like that too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Brody woke up feeling unusually energized. For the first time in ages, he’d slept through the night without tossing and turning or spending at least a couple of hours staring at the ceiling in the wee hours in the morning. Maybe it had something to do with the phone on the bedside table next to him. He’d drifted off listening to Anna’s soft breathing as she slept.

  He practically sprang out of bed, startling Lewis, with the idea of going on an extra-long run, but as he began to get dressed, he realized it wasn’t a run he needed; it was something else.

  This strange buzzing feeling needed to be let out, but he knew instinctively that a run wouldn’t help. It would still be there when he returned, muscles aching, damp with sweat. And he definitely needed to do something to expel this feeling. Not because it was bad, but because that’s what you were supposed to do with it.

  So that was why, after a strong coffee and a steaming bowl of porridge, he found himself at his desk. His heart was pounding as it always did when he sat there these days, but something was different about that too. It wasn’t fear alone that was making his pulse race; there was something else in the mix.

  Instead of reaching for pen and paper, he opened a drawer and pulled out his laptop. Initially, he’d abandoned this method of capturing words because it had been too hard, returning to pen and paper, which somehow helped his imagination flow better, but after a while, even that had become stagnant. Holding his breath slightly, he clicked on an icon and opened up his preferred writing software.

  New project. New document. New everything. He stared at the blank rectangle on the screen in front of him, waiting for letters and words, sentences and paragraphs. But that white space was no longer an impenetrable fog, because as he waited, it began to clear. He could make out a figure, a child, standing with her hands on her hips and her chin lifted in defiance.

  He closed his eyes to shut out the picture, shifted in his seat, readying himself to stand, but as he planted his feet on the floor and twisted to do just that, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. The elf. Or the “not elf,” as he’d begun to think of her. She wasn’t looking his way, just staring past him into the distance, but it was as if she’d whispered something to him. Brody sat back down, placed his hands on the keyboard, and his fingers began to move.

  Thirty minutes later he was halfway through what might turn into a short story, maybe even a novella. It was rough. No planning had gone into it—he’d just written what he’d seen inside his head, whatever had come out of the fog. It started with the Not Elf sitting in a woodland glade, the sunlight warm about her shoulders, the grass cool and full of daisies. He’d described her in detail, then how
she’d woken up from a deep and dreamless sleep. Without a kiss. Without a prince or anyone else to save her, just because she was ready.

  He paused, fingers frozen above the keyboard, as the next set of images began to form. He continued to type, describing how she stretched, her muscles stiff and unfamiliar after so long, how she wobbled to her feet like a newborn foal. But as she’d raised herself to full height, something had happened. Strength came, filling her with purpose. She turned and looked at a dark and difficult path that led between the trees. She was about to go somewhere. She was about to leave her sleepy woodland glade.

  Brody took his hands from the keyboard and pushed himself back from the desk. The sentence he’d been writing was only half-completed, but he found he didn’t want to scoot the chair forward again to finish it. He didn’t want to know where this woman who wasn’t an elf was going to go.

  He spun his chair around and stood up. Time to take a tea break. There was no point pushing himself so hard he just locked up again. Besides, it was always good to leave a chapter or a scene half-done. That way he wasn’t starting from nothing the next time he sat down to write. It had been a technique he’d used many a time when this had been his career. Nothing wrong with that. Tomorrow, he could just pick up the threads and carry on.

  He made it look casual, even to himself, but he took great care not to make eye contact with the little wooden woman on the other side of the room as he turned and left the study.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sorry, but the person you’ve called isn’t available at the moment . . .”

  Anna tapped at her phone screen to end the call. That was the sixth time she’d gone straight through to Gabi’s voicemail since getting home from work. It was most frustrating. Did Gabi have a job Anna didn’t know about? It wasn’t unusual for her to get last-minute bookings, but she wasn’t usually incommunicado for forty-eight hours. Anna hadn’t talked to her since just before her “big night” with Lee on Saturday, and now it was Monday evening. She was starting to get worried.