But Anna couldn’t let that make a difference, so she launched into the story of what happened two years, nine months and eight days ago: how her husband had gone out one evening to the corner shop to buy a bottle of wine. How he’d never returned because someone else had drunk too much wine the very same evening, and then that person had got behind the wheel of a car. It had only been a three-minute walk to the shop.
She’d told Jeremy how she’d heard the sirens as the ambulance arrived and how she’d just known that something was very, very wrong. How she’d left the front door open and had run out of the house in her bare feet, even though it had been March. How she’d seen Spencer lying in the road, surrounded by paramedics. How their faces had been white. Grim. How he’d been pronounced ‘dead on arrival’ when the ambulance had made it to the hospital.
She told Jeremy every last detail while he watched her, not horrified or embarrassed, but with compassion in his eyes. True compassion, not pity.
And that was why Anna made sure every word was a brick, and that she built each brick into a wall. A boundary line. And when she had finished her tale, she was on one side, and Jeremy was on the other.
Still he didn’t turn tail. Damn him.
‘About the salsa lessons…’ he began. ‘I get the feeling they’re more Gabi’s idea.’
‘They are,’ she said simply. Truthfully.
He nodded, understanding there would be no salsa-ing for the two of them any time soon. Probably not ever.
‘It was nice meeting you, Anna,’ he said gently, looking her straight in the eye. Not in a romantic way (she’d definitely squashed that vibe) but in an honest way, letting her know he really meant it.
Anna nodded in reply and swallowed down the stray words forming in her throat, afraid they might form a request for him to stay, to keep talking to her as if she was a human being and not a walking tragedy that needed gentle handling.
He glanced towards the house. ‘There’s someone I need to…’ He didn’t finish the sentence but gave her a rueful smile before turning and walking back indoors. Anna watched the back of his head appearing and disappearing as he made his way through the crowded kitchen.
He’d fallen back on the old invisible friend routine after all, but far from hating him for it, she was grateful. He’d done it to save her any further discomfort,not himself. Jeremy had seen her bricks, he’d seen her wall, and he’d respected them. Tears sprang to her eyes.
She was still standing there, staring blurrily through the vast folding glass doors into the house, when Gabi bounded up. ‘Where’s Jeremy?’
Anna was pretty sure her friend was here asking her this question because she’d spotted him back inside the house on his own. ‘He had someone he needed to talk to,’ she said, and ignored the flicker of warmth at the idea of being connected to him through this little white lie, a secret just between the two of them. She turned to face the lawn and stared out into the darkness.
Gabi looked crestfallen. ‘But… But it looked as if you were getting on really well.’
‘We were.’
‘You were talking for ages.’
Anna nodded again. She felt a stab of guilt in her stomach. She really hadn’t been fair to Jeremy, chatting to him for so long. And then the knife of guilt, only a flesh wound at that point, plunged itself deeper, twisted and turned. She hadn’t been fair to Spencer, either. ‘What were youthinking, Gabi?’
Gabi feigned ignorance for only a split-second before she crumbled. She looked beseechingly at Anna and shook her head. ‘I don’t know… I was just thinking that he’s a nice guy and that… And that…’
Anna’s jaw tightened. ‘If you say I need to move on, I’m going to dump this glass of champagne right over your head.’
Gabi’s expression grew earnest. ‘But youdoneed—’
That was it. Anna had had enough. She didn’t make good on her threat,but she did fling the glass over the railing of the deck and onto the lawn, where it rolled down the slope and landed under a bush. Vanessa would kill her if she ever found out.
‘I don’t need to move on!’ she yelled. ‘It’s only been two years!’
Gabi opened her mouth, and Anna knew she was going to – quite correctly – point out that it had been closer to three, but she took in Anna’s warning expression and shut it again.
‘What am I supposed to do? Just snap my fingers and say, “Oh, well! The love of my life, the man I adored with every fibre of my being, is gone, so I’d better just pick a replacement?” As if he was last year’s fashion trend?’
‘Okay, no… I…’
Anna could see the hurt in her friend’s eyes, but it didn’t slow her down one bit.Too bad, Gabi. You’re the one who pushed and pushed, the one who prodded this tiger out of its numb sleep, and now you’re going to hear it roar!
‘When you’ve had a relationship that’s lasted more than eighteen months, maybethenyou can start telling me how to live my life!’
Gabi flinched. Anna knew she’d hit below the belt, that she was going to feel horrible about this when she calmed down, but she had to make Gabi stop. She had to make hersee.
There had to be an end to the Italian lessons, to the jewellery making and the salsa dancing. To theJeremys.Because Anna knew there would be more of them paraded out for her to meet if she didn’t stand up for herself now. She had to make Gabi understand that she wasn’t going to magically get over Spencer if she learned to conjugate the verbessereor perform a perfect ‘side basic’. She wasn’t going to get over himever.
