Brody remained silent. It seemed she might have finally hit on a nerve.
‘You’ve got to find a way to forgive yourself, Brody.’
There was a sarcastic edge to his voice when he replied. ‘You mean I’ve got to bekindto myself?’
‘Yes,’ she replied simply.
‘I can’t,’ he said, his voice stretching so tight that Anna felt her heart begin to crack.
‘Can’t or won’t?’ she prodded softly.
Brody didn’t give her a reply.
Chapter Fifty
IT WAS THE last day of November, and the moors looked magical in the early morning sunshine. Brody had woken up with the urge to go for a long, bracing walk, and instead of doing his usual route on the slopes and valleys near his cottage, he’d jumped in his Land Rover and had driven eight miles east to Haytor, a coarse granite outcrop on one of the highest points of Dartmoor. He was ready for a fresh route, a fresh challenge.
He parked the car at the Dartmoor Visitor Centre, took a moment to admire the ancient tor at the top of the hill, and set off, Lewis bounding beside him.
Brody never wore headphones or took music with him when he went for a walk or run. He preferred to keep his senses alert, to take in the environment. The silence allowed his brain to produce its own noise when he needed to think about things.
And since he’d told Anna about Lena almost a fortnight ago, he’d had a lot to think about, good and bad. He’d had a couple of nightmares right afterwards, the same as those he’d had for years after Lena had died, but they’d eased off and he hadn’t had one in more than a week now. For some strange reason that made him feel optimistic.
Maybe it was because Ibrahim had declared he’d had a bit of a breakthrough. After weeks and months of careful desensitization, teaching his body and mind that a town full of ordinary people was nothing to be terrified of, they’d finally started to agree with him. He’d managed a full trolley shop at the supermarket in Totnes. Not at peak time on a Saturday afternoon, but still. As well as his usual supplies, he’d bought lemongrass, coconut milk and jasmine rice. And, after smiling at the woman on the checkout counter, he’d gone home and cooked himself a Thai green curry. When he’d eaten it, he hadn’t been able to help wishing Anna had been sitting across the table from him, sharing not only his meal but his victory.
That evening, he’d felt so invincible that he’d called her and told her he was going to be in London to meet her on New Year’s Eve. He’d considered asking her to make the location somewhere less public, somewhere less challenging, but he’d held back. He wasn’t ready to tell her about his agoraphobia yet, and he was worried she’d push for an explanation. If she knew what he struggled with, she might call the meeting off, and that was the last thing he wanted.
Hewouldtell her at some point. Maybe after Big Ben had chimed at midnight, announcing the new year. By then his demons would surely have been soundly routed. There was nothing that was going to stop him getting up to the seventy-second floor of the Shard and meeting Anna, from having a proper conversation face to face. Absolutely nothing.
Brody reached Haytor and stood, his hands on his hips. The rough grass had been glittering with frost further down the hill, but right up here, just covering the rocks and the grassy space at their base, was a light dusting of snow. Brody turned and stared at the village down below.He wasn’t ready to go back yet, so he just kept on striding.
And as he walked, his thoughts were not about imaginary characters or tales of faraway lands, but of his own story over the last year. He’d started January in the same dark, unforgiving place he’d been in for the past eight years, both mentally and emotionally. But he was no longer there. As he made his way along the ridge of a hill, miles of countryside stretching before him, he realized he felt lighter inside.
Oh, he knew he still had a way to go, that further progress needed to be made, but for the first time in years, he could see that the prison door in front of him was wide open. All he had to do now was take a step and walk right through it.
The lightness inside spurred him on, and when he reached a small rocky outcrop, he clambered on top of it and yelled for all the world to hear. At first, it was just noise, but then words started forming in his head, and he let them out too. ‘I’m out of the pit!’ he yelled to no one in particular. ‘I’mfreeeee…’
More words came into his head, and he had to let those ones out too. ‘I love her,’ he shouted into the wind, then absorbed the sound of those syllables, their weight and substance, let the certainty come back to him and sink into his bones. And then he turned towards the east, towards the sun – and London – and shouted again. ‘I love you, Anna Barry!’ Lewis barked and ran around madly below him.
It had felt good to say it out loud, even though he didn’t know what good it would do him. But letting the words free, so they were no longer trapped inside his head and heart, had seemed like the right thing to do. He could imagine them as a white dove that had been released from the pinnacle of the moors,now rising on thermals and disappearing beyond the horizon. He stood there for a few minutes, watching the sky, before exhaling heavily and making his way off the rocks. Suddenly, he was really hungry.
‘I think a massive fry-up is in order,’ he said to Lewis, who barked his agreement as they set off back in the direction of the Land Rover.
But it seemed his subconscious wasn’t finished with him yet. As he navigated through the gorse and jumped over peaty streams, a little voice began to whisper in his ear. A voice he hadn’t heard for years.
What about me?she said.You left me in a dark place, too.
Pip.
Once, he’d heard that little girl speak so clearly that she’d felt real to him. He’d written a handful of books before he’d stumbled across Pip, but she’d definitely been his favourite character: small and thoughtful, bold and resourceful. She’d appeared in his imagination one day, fully formed, with her short, tomboyish blonde hair and a determined look in her clear blue eyes. She’d almost felt like another daughter at times.
The resemblance between her and Lena, when she’d come along, had been both unsettling and magical, as if, in some cosmic way, he’d already known his child, the person she would become. For a long time, he’d refused to let himself think about Pip, but he did so now, imagining what the expression on her face would be as she reminded him of her predicament.
Sorry, girl, he replied silently.I left you camping in that Vale of Shadows, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to. It was only ever supposed to be a pit stop, but then… I just didn’t know how to get you out again. I didn’t know how to get either of us out.
Pip tilted her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.Do you think you could try?
Brody pondered her question as he turned to come back down the hill towards the car park.
