Gayle flashed that fierce but brittle look that Anna was starting to recognize. ‘But itwillbe like replacing him if you do find someone new, won’t it? There will be another man beside you at family functions, another man sleeping on his side of the bed.’
‘You have a new baby to fuss over and love, to take a gazillion snaps of to fill new photo albums. Does that mean you’ll love the son you lost less?’
Gayle pressed her lips together and shook her head. Anna handed her a serviette from the holder on the edge of the table.
‘And neither will I,’ she said, then reached for a napkin herself and blew her nose. ‘I will always love Spencer. Always!’
Gayle dabbed under her eyes with a corner of the rough tissue. ‘He’ll always be your first love,’ she said, nodding, not really asking a question but stating a fact. ‘And you’ll never love anyone the way you loved him.’ She looked at Anna with a mixture of hope and desperation in her eyes. ‘Because they won’t be Spencer. They won’t behim.’
‘No,’ Anna said, acknowledging the truth that no one ever would quite be like Spencer, while at the same time her last conversation with Brody came back to haunt her.
I can’t feel about you the way you want me to… Because you’re not Spencer…
Was that what she really wanted? Always to know the best was behind her? She brushed the thought away and turned back to her mother-in-law.
‘If we can, I’d like to put this behind us. And I’d like to remain part of your family because…’ she breathed in, staving off the tears, ‘because I love you all, and I know that’s what Spencer would have wanted. But we’ve got to start cutting each other some slack, Gayle. Are you willing to do that, no matter what we’ve said and done in the past? Can we try and start again, let our love for him keep us together instead of pushing us apart?’
At that moment Teresa arrived with a tray of cappuccinos, muttering something about incompetent staff and temperamental coffee machines. She put the tray on the table, sat down and looked first at Anna, then at Gayle. ‘Well?’
Anna looked at her mother-in-law too, aware Gayle had yet to answer her question.
‘Yes,’ Gayle said. ‘I can do that. I’dliketo do that…’
Anna rose and gave her mother-in-law a hug. Gayle, rather than being stiff and cold, softened a little and patted her, just once, on the back. Anna smiled as she pulled away and gave Teresa a sneaky wink. Oh, she had no doubt it wouldn’t be plain sailing with Gayle from here on in, but she’d staked out her boundaries, quite effectively, she thought, and she was pleased about that.
Little Spencer gurgled at that moment, and instead of sitting down again, Anna went to crouch by the side of his pushchair. ‘Hello there, young man,’ she said, grabbing his foot lightly and giving it a little wiggle.The baby turned his head and gave her a beaming smile.
For a moment, Anna couldn’t do anything but stare at him. There was a cheekiness in his expression, a twinkle in his eye, that was so familiar. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ she said, turning to Teresa and Gayle. ‘He reallydoeslook like Spencer!’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
SHE WAS ALREADY waiting for him in the coffee shop when he got there. Brody walked over to her table. She looked up as he drew close. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
‘Long time no see.’
He nodded.
‘What has it been? Five years?’
‘Six, I think.’
Katri motioned for him to sit opposite her. Her blonde hair was loose around her shoulders, shorter than he remembered it, but her blue eyes were as sharp and observant as they’d ever been. ‘You look well,’ she said, with her customary forthrightness.
‘Thank you.’
‘You weren’t in a very good place last time we met.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I wasn’t. And it only got worse…’ He went on to tell her his story: the cottage, the isolation, everything.
She let him talk, and when he’d finished, she reached out and touched his arm. ‘Oh, Brody.’ That’s what he’d loved about her once, that alongside the no-nonsense approach to life, she was warm and compassionate.
‘But I’m here,’ he said, gesturing to the café, which sat on the edge of Richmond Park and, despite the damp Wednesday morning, was half full. ‘I’ve been seeing someone – a professional. I realized I needed to let someone help me, that maybe there were some things I could do with talking about.’
Katri put her coffee cup down and gave him aWell, yeah!kind of look. He couldn’t help laughing softly. It was good to remember that it could be this way between them. The last couple of years of their marriage had been filled with tears and arguments, angry silences.
‘I’m glad you got in touch,’ she said. ‘Especially about today.’
