‘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 thishim? 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 ismyparty,’ 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 co-exist 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?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. I’m expecting her around eight thirty.’
‘And Little Spencer?’
Teresa nodded towards 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. Blonde, 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 approached 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 towards 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 around 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 banqueting 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 pretence of going to the Ladies. She was halfway down the plush, carpeted corridor before a steely voice rang out behind her.
