The Last Goodbye

I beg your pardon?

Just what Spencer would have said, but it hadn’t been filled with barely contained laughter or the husky softness she would have expected. He’d sounded so serious, so sad. As if he’d been aching every bit as badly as she had at their separation.

That made sense, in a weird way. But also, it didn’t. Why, if she’d invented it, hadn’t she imagined Spencer’s usual cheeky tone? That was what she’d been yearning to hear, after all, his very Spencerness, captured in an inflexion, a nuance, to hear the smile in his words. Why had she made him sound so mournful?

Spencer would have laughed at her for letting her imagination run away with her, but was it really so ridiculous? They’d always said their love was special. Once, when they’d been at a dinner party and one of his friends had said he’d want his wife to move on and marry again if something happened to him, Spencer had quipped that he wasn’t that generous, that he’d find a way to come back because Anna was his and always would be his. What if he’d found a way to do that? No one really knew what happened after you’d died, did they? It was the one area where science could never prod its curious fingers. What if something beautiful, something impossible, had occurred?

No, she told herself. Just no.

It couldn’t be true. Because what was she going to do if it was? March into her in-laws’ house for lunch and calmly announce that she’d had a chat with their dearly departed son the night before? It sounded ridiculous. It was ridiculous.

Okay, good. Anna released a shaky breath. Putting it in context like that helped. So what if it hadn’t all been a dream? That didn’t mean all of it had been real, either. It was probably a mixture of reality, imagination and emotion – that was what she was going to tell herself if she started freaking out about it again. And she would keep telling herself that all the way through lunch that afternoon.

Chapter Five

WHAT I COULD really do with, more than anything else, Anna thought, as she arrived at Spencer’s parents’ house and killed the engine, is a hug, plain and simple. She wished she were pulling up to her own parents’ house, that it was her mother who would dry her hands on a tea towel and come running to the front door to greet her, but that wasn’t possible. Not unless she wanted to jump on a plane and travel almost three thousand miles.

Her parents had moved to Canada not long after she and Spencer had married. Anna’s mother worked as a conference centre manager for an international chain of hotels, and the kind of position she’d been working towards her whole career had come up. The only snag? It was in Nova Scotia. Anna’s father had just retired from being a civil engineer, and their only child was settled, so they had taken the leap. The plan was to move back to the UK when her mum retired. Anna visited, of course, and they had Skype calls regularly, but it wasn’t quite the same. You couldn’t hug a screen.

Anna ran from her car and rang the Barrys’ front doorbell. Quarter past one. She’d never been this late before.

Gayle answered. She smiled at Anna, but there was a stiffness in her posture as she leaned in and kissed her briefly on the cheek. No hug was forthcoming. ‘You’re running a bit late,’ she said, taking in Anna’s woolly jumper and jeans, which were definitely not as smart as her usual family lunch attire, but Anna had barely had time to find anything clean, let alone iron anything.

‘Um… yes. Traffic was a bit bad.’ She nodded towards the rain, still falling in large, icy drops beyond the overhang of the porch.

‘Well, we managed to hold off a bit,’ Gayle said, opening the door wide. ‘But you’re here in the nick of time – we were just about to sit down.’ And she led the way through the house to the large dining room that overlooked the garden.

Spencer’s older brother, Scott, was already there, helping to carry covered dishes in from the kitchen. Anna always felt a little jab in her ribs every time she saw him. He looked so much like his younger sibling. Both boys had inherited their mother’s fair hair and blue eyes, although Spencer had always looked the more boyish. Scott’s features were sharper, his expression naturally more sombre.

He and his wife had announced just before Christmas that she was expecting their first child at the end of May. Teresa gave Anna a little nod as she arrived from the kitchen, carrying a dish full of stuffing balls. Anna couldn’t help looking at her stomach, trying to work out if there were the beginnings of a bump there under her loose top. While she was overjoyed for the couple, she felt a little flush of envy every time she thought about it.

She tried to help but was shooed away, so she slid into her normally assigned seat at the bottom of the table. Spencer’s dad, Richard, winked at Anna, making her feel slightly less as if she had her tail between her legs for being late. Spencer had taken after his father, a man who had, apparently, been telling ‘dad jokes’ well before he’d actually become a dad. Anna gave him a conspiratorial smile back and felt her shoulder muscles unclench.

When lunch was over, they retired to the living room. This was Anna’s favourite part of the afternoon. The tradition had started right after Spencer had died. To while away the hours doing something other than drinking endless cups of tea, they’d looked through the photo albums together, trying to pick a few for the upcoming funeral.

It hadn’t been an easy job to narrow it down to just a couple. With his mischievous blue eyes and boyish grin, Spencer had been very photogenic. And even after the funeral, they’d kept going with it. It had been comforting to see him smiling back from the pages at them, just being Spencer. It still was.

Gayle went to the special shelf on the bookcase that contained the large albums, all arranged in date order, and pulled one from the left-hand end.

Toddler pics? Again? It seemed an awfully long time since they’d looked at anything from the other end of the shelf, from any of the albums Anna might have a chance of featuring in, and she really could do with seeing some solid evidence of her time together with Spencer today, because everything seemed to be upside-down and back-to-front. An anchor of some sort might have been helpful.

She nodded along as usual anyway as Gayle leafed through the album, making the appropriate noises at the right times, and it wasn’t hard to do because she did love seeing all these favourite pictures of her husband – the one of him on top of a lion in Trafalgar Square, or the one of him with the snowman he’d built in the back garden.

Anna looked over at her mother-in-law, with her perfectly coiffed, Mary Berry-style hairdo, her erect posture and precise movements. Her fierce loyalty and protectiveness towards her family were truly admirable, but they came with a downside. Gayle was the sort of mother who believed no woman was good enough for her baby boys, and it had taken a while for Anna not to feel like an outsider at family gatherings.

But after Spencer had died, that had changed. Gayle had clung to her, opened her arms and welcomed Anna into the family in a way she never had before. They were united in their loss, their grief. She’d needed Anna. Both Scott and Richard didn’t do emotion, one buttoning down hard, the other finding safety in humour when things got too much, so Anna had been the one person Gayle had been able to talk to. They’d cried and laughed and remembered together.

Anna’s parents had come to stay as soon as they could after Spencer had died. They’d even offered to move back to England permanently, but Anna had refused, telling them they couldn’t put their lives on hold indefinitely for her. However, once they’d actually left, she’d realized how much it had helped having someone else in the house. She knew one or both of them would have dropped everything again if she’d told them she was feeling lonely, but that wouldn’t have been fair on them. So having this new, closer connection with Gayle had meant everything.

Once the photo albums were put away, a conversation began about how they’d all spent New Year’s Eve, but nobody lingered on their tales, because it was glaringly obvious that someone was missing from all of them. To make up for that, Scott relayed a story about the millennium New Year when they’d had a big reunion with Gayle’s side of the family. Anna had heard the anecdote countless times before, but it still made her smile. Fifteen-year-old Spencer had crept out of a long and boring dinner and lit £500-worth of fireworks meant for midnight while the rest of the family were still enjoying their desserts. He was lucky he hadn’t blown himself to kingdom come.

Anna glanced across the room and saw Gayle smiling widely, but her eyes were glittering, and she kept looking down at her lap as the others laughed and delved into the memory in greater detail. She suspected her mother-in-law was thinking exactly the same thing as her: that it seemed so unfair. Everyone had always joked that Spencer’s reckless side would be his undoing, so it seemed wrong that he’d been minding his own business, sensibly walking across the road, when the end had come. It made his death even harder to bear.

When there was a gap in the conversation, Anna said, ‘What about that night when Spencer stayed in and missed going up to London with everyone because Lewis was sick? He wasn’t always impossible.’

‘God, I loved that dog,’ Richard chipped in, smiling. ‘Only one in this household who took me seriously!’

Gayle turned to face Anna. ‘Did Spencer tell you about that?’

‘No.’

‘But you weren’t on the scene then, were you?’

Anna took a moment before she answered. She didn’t want to contradict her mother-in-law, but she wasn’t going to lie. ‘We’d only just got together. It was all very new.’

Gayle frowned. ‘I don’t think you were.’ And she went on to supplant Anna’s story with one of her own.

Anna stayed quiet. She knew she was right, because that had been her and Spencer’s first New Year’s Eve together. They’d spent it here in this house, cuddled up on the sofa with the poorly dog. Even if her mother-in-law didn’t remember, why had she pressed the point, and – to be honest – been a little snippy? Was this punishment for holding up lunch?

However, if Gayle was annoyed, she showed none of it as she recounted an incident from when Spencer had still been in primary school. In fact, her usually prickly demeanour melted away and she laughed and gesticulated as she told how Spencer had hidden behind the sofa so he could stay up to watch the new year in with the family. They’d found him asleep there in the morning, after a great deal of panic about his empty bed. This memory was safe territory for Gayle. No danger of anyone not born a Barry accidentally trespassing in it.

Anna nodded and smiled along – she couldn’t do anything else, having no personal knowledge of the incident – but as she sat there, she realized this hadn’t been the first time that Gayle had been a little ‘off’ with her in recent months. She hadn’t thought anything of it at first. Her mother-in-law had never been an easy person to get along with, so she’d merely assumed it was just Gayle being Gayle. Maybe she was being uncharitable, but now she was starting to think otherwise.

Chapter Six

ANNA FELT A little nervous as she walked up the path to Gabi’s block of flats. She’d stopped off at a service station on the way back from Gayle and Richard’s, where she’d picked up a bottle of red wine and a large Toblerone. She balanced them in one hand while she pressed the intercom with the other.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ Anna said, her voice less confident than she wanted it to sound. ‘Can I come in?’

Usually, the buzzer would have sounded immediately, but today there was thick silence. After a few seconds, however, the door hummed and clicked. Anna stepped inside the communal hallway and began to climb the stairs to the first floor.

Gabi opened her front door, smile noticeably absent, and allowed Anna to walk past her into the living room. Anna perched on the edge of the sofa and looked around the room she knew so well. While she went for clean lines and neutral tones, Gabi’s decorating style was more colourful and eclectic.

What always stood out to Anna was the number of photograph frames cramming every single surface, of all Gabi’s family back in Brazil. Not only were there plenty of pictures of her parents and siblings – two brothers and three sisters – but there were snaps of uncles and aunties, nieces and nephews too. From what Gabi had told Anna, they were a large, close-knit family, always in each other’s business but always there when they needed each other. Being an only child, Anna had often wished for a family like that.

She and Gabi had met in their early twenties when Gabi had moved from São Paolo to London for university, and they’d instantly hit it off. However, it was after Anna’s parents had left for Canada that they’d really become close, bonding over both having their family thousands of miles away. Gabi had become the sister Anna had never had, which was why she was determined to fix this.

She placed the chocolate and the bottle of wine on the coffee table. Gabi sat down on the armchair across the room, back straight, arms folded.

‘I’m so sorry, Gabi. I was a total bitch last night.’

‘Yes, you were.’

Anna swallowed. ‘Did you get home okay?’

Gabi raised an eyebrow and shot Anna a look that said: Seriously?

Anna buried her face in her hands. ‘I know, I know… I don’t know what I was thinking! I was just…’ She looked up again. ‘You know I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose, don’t you? Because you’re the best friend anyone could ever have. You try to help me, put up with all my crap, and this is how I treat you. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to speak to me at the moment. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to speak to me ever again!’

Gabi’s expression softened a little. ‘There you go, being all dramatic again.’

Anna paused for a few moments and thought hard. There wasn’t much more she could say but: ‘I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?’

Gabi sighed. ‘Maybe. But things need to change.’ She tucked one leg up underneath herself and reached for the Toblerone. ‘You need to change.’

‘I’m okay,’ Anna said, mostly on reflex.

‘No. You’re not. You walk around like a zombie most of the time, and when you do connect with the world around you – with the people around you – you go crazy!’ She shook her head. ‘It is not healthy, Anna.’

Anna wanted to disagree, but the events of the previous night loomed between them as evidence. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

Gabi sighed again, and it struck Anna that Gabi did that a lot when she talked to her these days. She hadn’t realized she’d become the sort of friend who was hard work, but she obviously had. Maybe she hadn’t realized that because, as Gabi had so eloquently put it, she was a zombie.

And that was exactly what it felt like: as if a piece of her had died with Spencer and she’d been shuffling through life – sleepwalking – ever since.

‘I understand that some days are good, and some days are bad,’ Gabi said gently. ‘And that Christmas and New Year are hard for you, but…’

‘I know,’ Anna said again. It was all she could say. Last night was a mirror held up in front of her, one she couldn’t look away from, and she didn’t much like what she saw.

Gabi shifted, sat up a little straighter. ‘So… What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Anna replied slowly, and she really didn’t. She’d done it all. Grief counselling? Tick. Self-help books and support groups? Tick. Nothing seemed to work. ‘I wish I did.’

Gabi didn’t say anything; she just smiled.

‘What?’ Anna said, slightly scared of the answer to her question.

‘How about salsa?’

‘Really?’ she replied, hoping that Gabi was just pulling her leg. The determined pair of eyes that sat above the troublesome smirk said otherwise.

‘Really. If you go to salsa, we won’t talk about New Year’s Eve again.’

Anna hesitated. Gabi was still sitting with her arms folded, watching her. Waiting. Anna swallowed.

‘It will be fun,’ Gabi added, without smiling this time.

‘You really think I need to—’

‘Yes. I do.’ Gabi’s answer was hard, but her eyes gave her away. Behind the determined stare, Anna could detect quiet pleading. Gabi was worried about her. Really worried. That was why she was clinging on to this idea as if it was a lifeline. It wasn’t about the dancing or the classes. Her friend was just desperate to know there was hope, that Anna could find some way to be happy again.

She nodded. ‘Okay.’ She’d do just about anything for Gabi. Even salsa.

Gabi jumped off the armchair, squealing, and ran across and dived on Anna, wrapping her in a hug. ‘I will ask Jeremy about—’

Anna pushed Gabi back enough to look her in the face without going cross-eyed. ‘Hold on! No one said anything about Jeremy!’

Gabi tipped her head to one side and gave Anna an exasperated look. ‘But Jeremy is very nice – and very hot!’

‘You go salsa dancing with him then!’

‘No one is asking you to marry him. It’s just dancing. Think of him as… What is the word? Training wheels! You can take them off when you are ready for more.’

Anna folded her arms. ‘I said yes to salsa, not to Jeremy. And if you’re going to make me salsa at all, then you are going to be my partner.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Gabi held out her hands and beckoned to Anna with her fingertips. ‘Show me!’

Reluctantly, Anna got off the sofa and joined her friend. Gabi wouldn’t let her sit back down until they’d tried a few steps of what seemed like salsa, but it all got out of hand when Gabi tried to dip Anna and lost her balance. They ended up on the floor in a heap, giggling.

‘It’s good to hear you laugh,’ Gabi said.

Anna sighed. ‘I know.’

They pushed themselves onto all fours and then crawled back onto the sofa. ‘I’m going to get glasses,’ Gabi said, nodding at the wine. ‘Do you want to sleep here tonight?’

Anna crawled over to Gabi’s end of the sofa and gave her a big, fat, squishy kiss on the cheek. ‘I love you, you know that?’

Gabi gave her a squeeze back, then shoved her off so she could stand up. ‘I know. It’s hard not to.’

Anna gratefully accepted the large glass of red wine Gabi handed her a minute or so later, and the duvet and pillows that were thrown at her when they’d polished the bottle off so she could nest down on the sofa. Gabi even produced a pair of freshly laundered, brushed cotton pyjamas for Anna to wear.

‘Thank you,’ Anna said as she took them and held them to her chest.

‘They are too small for me now. You can have them if you want.’

‘Not for the pyjamas, you dafty – although they’re lovely – I meant for everything.’

‘I just want you to be happy.’

Anna nodded. She knew that. But it was safer not to reply in words, because she also knew that what Gabi wished for her just wasn’t possible. There was a difference between having a quick giggle about falling over your best friend’s two left feet and being truly content and peaceful. Anna wasn’t convinced she could ever feel that way again. How was it possible when a huge piece of herself was missing, and always would be?

ANNA RETURNED HOME the following morning and headed straight for the shower, leaving her clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. It was her first day back at work after the Christmas holidays, and she didn’t want to be late, even if it wasn’t the most thrilling job in the world.

Before Spencer had died, they’d worked together, but it hadn’t always been that way. He’d left university with a degree in Computer Science and, after a few false starts, had ended up working for a medium-sized video game developer. However, as the popularity of smartphones had risen, Spencer had become obsessed with creating a game app that would go viral. He’d tried all sorts of different things, from racing cars to flying sheep or bubbles that needed popping. He’d earned enough from a couple of them to go part-time, but he’d never quite come up with the big success he’d been looking for.

The problem was that Spencer was a mass of overflowing energy, and he struggled with focusing on one task for a consistent length of time. This became more apparent when he worked whole days at home with no structure. Anna had just accepted that was who Spencer was, but it had frustrated him no end.

He’d begun a search to find a time-management method that worked for his butterfly brain, but nothing had seemed to stick until he’d stumbled upon the concept of ‘block scheduling’, which gave him the structure he needed without pinning him down too hard. However, the only relevant app he could find was not only a bit basic but hot pink. Spencer had ranted at length about that – who on earth made their app all pink with no option to change the colour scheme? Anna had finally got fed up and told him to stop moaning and start creating an app of his own. He had the skills to do so, after all.

And Spencer had done just that. He’d teamed up with a couple of other guys he’d known at uni, and together they’d built ‘BlockTime’, a stylish, intuitive time-management app that (a) wasn’t hot pink and (b) integrated seamlessly with existing calendars, to-do lists and other apps. And, thanks to Spencer’s attempts to create the next viral game, it was more than a little addictive to use. It had taken time, but eventually it had grown in popularity.

Anna had quit her job as an HR assistant manager and had gone to work for the three guys. At first, she’d just done the admin and kept the books, but as time had gone on, she’d become involved in the design side. She had an eye for that kind of thing, it turned out, and while the ‘boys’ had plenty of innovative ideas, sometimes they weren’t always very practical. They’d needed someone to keep them grounded, to make sure the app was the kind of thing people would find easy to use, as well as being cool and full of technical wizardry. She’d loved working alongside Spencer, seeing him do what he was good at. When the money had finally started arriving, they hadn’t been rich, but they’d been comfortable.

She’d taken time off after he died, of course. But two months had turned into three, and then three into six. Eventually, she’d had to admit that she just couldn’t face going back into the office. Vijay and Rhys, the other directors, had understood. She’d inherited Spencer’s share in the business and received a monthly cut from that, but other than that she left them to it. At least one thing she didn’t have to worry about as a widow was money.

But she’d needed something to fill her days, so she’d applied for an admin job at a successful family-run plumbing business, and she’d now been there more than two years. What with it being winter, pipes freezing and boilers giving out, there was likely to be a lot of paperwork to catch up on after the Christmas break. Today was not the day to be late.

When she emerged from the shower, pink and scrubbed, she wrapped a towel around herself and hurried out onto the landing, but then she hesitated. The next logical place to go was the bedroom. She needed fresh clothes. But she hadn’t been in there since she’d fled the house the day before.

Stop being daft, she lectured herself. There’s nothing to be frightened of.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she walked into her bedroom. Spencer had very helpfully pointed out that one of her weaknesses was bottling everything up until she reached boiling point and then, when it exploded out of her, she did and said bizarre things. Was it too much of a stretch to think that she’d hear bizarre things as well?