Chapter Fifty-Six
ANNA LAY ON her back, the covers pulled up over her head. She stared at the underside of her duvet. It was Sunday morning, and she’d got up three hours ago, but now she was back in here, at a loss for anything else to do. Would someone please tell her how to make it stop hurting, how to get that nice, calm, white bubble thing going again? That would be really helpful, thank you.
Oh, God, she was such a coward.
Especially after everything he’d told her.
He’d been wrong about her. Spencer had been wrong about her. She wasn’t strong. She was pitiful. She was a jellyfish.
And whoever had said ‘knowledge is power’ was also wrong. This knowledge of how she felt about Brody didn’t make her any stronger. It didn’tchangeanything. Because what she had told Brody was true. She didn’t have it in her to love that way again. Not because she didn’t want to but because she just… couldn’t. It would break her. Weren’t people always saying prevention was better than cure? This was the perfect example.
And here she was,thinkingagain, when she’d deliberately been trying to do anything but.
Anna sighed and felt her warm breath reflected back to her by the duvet cover. She lay there for ten more minutes before she flipped it back and stared at the ceiling. The second day of January was as grey and heavy as she felt, and she could just about make out the reflected shape of her sash windows on the painted plaster above her head.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her phone lying on the bedside table. She itched to reach out and pick it up, to dial the one source of comfort she’d found when things were dark and bleak, but that was impossible now, wasn’t it? Pain and comfort had been rolled into one convenient package.
It seemed like a lifetime since she’d last talked to him. Not fourteen hours and twenty-five minutes…No!
Not those numbers. Those were thewrongnumbers.
Anna threw the duvet off and got out of bed, something driving her. She found herself in front of Spencer’s wardrobe and opened the doors, but there was no row of soothing shirts inside, only a higgledy-piggledy pile of ugly black sacks.
She pulled out the top one and rested it on the bed, then she plunged her fingernail into the stretchy black plastic, tearing the hole she’d made in the early hours of New Year’s Day wider. It was very satisfying. She hooked both hands on either side of the rip and pulled outwards. Spencer’s shirts, which had been neatly folded and stacked, spilled onto the floor.
One at a time, she picked them up and returned them to their hangers, smoothing out the creases on the shoulders as she went. And then she disembowelled bag after bag, returning their innards to their proper places, until everything was right and neat and exactly the way it had been before – three years, nine months and ten days ago.
BRODY’S PHONE LAY in its new home on the kitchen counter. He glanced at it as he walked past. The screen was black and empty. When he’d got it, he’d thought of it as being a piece of equipment that would allow him to contact the outside world. It hadn’t occurred to him – or mattered – if any communication could come back the other way. Now it was all he could think about.
In the past week, he’d called her a handful of times, not wanting to be too pushy. She hadn’t replied. He’d described Anna as brave, amazing, kind… But now he knew he could add ‘stubborn’ to that list. If he hadn’t been feeling so dull and empty inside, he might have laughed about that. This level of pig-headedness made them the perfect match. But he wasn’t finding it very funny at present. Not at all.
Brody thought for a moment, then turned and headed for his study. He hadn’t been in this room much this past week. Every time he sat in that old armchair it only made it seem all the more glaring that his phone remained silent, so he’d just stopped sitting there. He didn’t want to bethatguy. Watching, waiting. Pining.
In fact…
Brody stared at his armchair. If possible, it looked shabbier than it had done before. He stared for a few seconds more, then walked over, picked it up by the arms, and wrestled it out through his cottage and into the yard, where he dragged it into a secluded corner around the back of one of the outbuildings.
Once he got it in exactly the right spot, he marched into the workshop, picked a plastic container of fluid off the shelf and returned outside.He unscrewed the lid, poured the barbecue lighter all over the upholstery and arms – silently thanking the gods that the chair’s age meant it was constructed of wood and metal and horsehair rather than toxic foam – and then he lit a match and tossed it onto the seat. The flames caught even before the match landed. He stood there, watching it burn, and a slow smile formed.
He felt the warmth of the flames on his face and chest, and he thought about Anna. He’d hoped that they could go forward together, but no matter what she chose, he needed to be able to do it on his own.
The armchair crackled as the flames began to eat through the upholstery and into the padding underneath. Brody turned and walked back across the yard towards his house.
Moving forward.
That meant he had a few phone calls to make.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
THE NEXT DAY, Anna arrived far too early at Tullet’s Garden Centre, having encountered a bewildering lack of traffic even for a Sunday afternoon in early January. She made her way to the café, ordered a latte, opened a reading app on her phone and settled down to wait. She’d managed three chapters of her novel by the time her phone pinged into life – a text from Teresa:ETA five minutes.
Anna carried on reading, every now and then glancing up to the end of the café that merged into the sales floor, and after a few minutes she spotted Teresa navigating her bulky pushchair through the display stands full of Wellington boots and gardening gloves. Anna stood up and was about to wave when she saw another figure alongside Teresa.
Gayle.
Their mother-in-law strolled behind Teresa, hair set, posture perfect. Gayle spotted Anna when they were about twenty feet from each other. She stopped briefly, her jaw tightening, then began walking again. It seemed that neither of them had been expecting an extra guest.
Anna turned to Teresa as she parked the pushchair beside the table. She was looking nervous but resolute. She gave Anna a hug,while Gayle stood stiffly by, then Teresa pulled out a chair and sat down. Anna looked across at Gayle, and Gayle looked back at her, and in the absence of any other ideas, they both sat down too.
