The Last Goodbye

‘So, what are you doing today instead?’ her mum asked.

Anna brightened. ‘We’re going to Camber Sands,’ she said, smiling to herself.

‘In March?’

Anna laughed. ‘Yes, in March.’ She didn’t mind what month it was. ‘It was one of Spencer’s favourite places. The Barrys used to rent a cottage right on the beach almost every year when he was a kid. His dog, Lewis, used to love it there, ran around like an idiot on the sand all day long. We rented a place there for our first anniversary, a little wooden bungalow on the road just behind the dunes. Do you remember? The website pictures made it look like shabby chic, but it turned out to be just plain shabby.’

Her mother laughed. ‘Oh, yes! Didn’t the electricity cut out?’

‘The first time we tried to boil the kettle. We had to light candles and wait until the owner came the next morning to show us how to deal with the temperamental fuse box.’

She and Spencer hadn’t cared. Not only had the candlelight made everything more romantic, but Anna had been secretly pleased. They’d never forget that anniversary now. They had another anecdote to file away under ‘Anna and Spencer’s marriage’, one they’d share with their friends, and years later with their children and then their grandchildren when they took them to the beach. This was gold in the treasure chest of her soul.

But now Spencer was gone, those shiny moments she’d collected and cherished were all she had left. Only sometimes they felt like arrows in her heart instead of riches. Sometimes they were both at the same time. It was all very confusing.

Her mother must have guessed her thoughts, because she said, ‘I know it’s hard, darling. Especially as you didn’t have a proper chance to say goodbye to Spencer…’

Anna’s breath hitched and tears stung the backs of her eyes.

‘But maybe today will be a good day to try and do that? Not forget him, of course, but find a way to, you know…’

Anna’s shoulders slumped, and she mouthed the next words along with her mother: ‘move on.’

Her mother was almost as bad as Gabi, suggesting projects to fire her passion, different support groups and self-help books.

‘I suppose so,’ she said. It was just that nothing seemed to excite her anymore, nothing seemed to light her passion. It was very hard to move forwards when you felt like a flat tyre.

‘Listen… I’m just pulling into the hotel car park, so I’ve got to go, darling, but I want you to know I’ll be thinking of you all day. Call me again if you need me.’

‘I will,’ Anna said hoarsely. ‘Thank you, Mum.’

‘Nonsense. It’s what I’m here for.’

‘I know. But I appreciate it anyway.’ Anna heard her mother’s engine cut out. ‘I’d better let you go… Love you, Mum.’

‘Love you too…’ And then her mother was gone.

Anna concentrated on the road again, chewing over what her mother had said. It made her think of that stupid phone call on New Year’s Eve. That’s what she’d been hoping for, she realized now – a chance to talk to Spencer, to say all those things she wished she’d said to him but never had. And then that hope had been snatched away again when she’d realized it was just her imagination conjuring up things she wanted to be true.

And she was sad it wasn’t true, even if it had been a ridiculous idea. Even if it had been just that one time, it might have been enough. A chance to say a proper goodbye. Their last goodbye. Because she needed to do that. Or at least start to do that. Her mother and Gabi were right. She needed to learn to live without Spencer, no matter how nonsensical the idea seemed.

As she drove, she pictured herself standing on the dunes at Camber Sands, looking out across a beautifully ruffled sea, the wind rustling the long, waxy grass, the pale sun low in a slate-blue sky. She imagined herself breathing out. That was all she was asking for today. Not complete peace and healing. Just some space to close her eyes, think of Spencer, and breathe out. All the way.

Chapter Ten

ANNA PULLED INTO a near-deserted car park an hour or so later. She turned off her engine and opened the car door, glimpsing flat grey sea between the Marina Café, public toilets and other low buildings. The moment her head rose above the level of the open door, the wind whipped her hair in front of her face. She left it there, too busy thinking about the last moments of the journey itself to bother pushing it out of the way.

On the drive down the narrow, dead-end road that led to the beach, she’d passed her and Spencer’s bungalow, and even though it had been remodelled and extended, she’d recognized it straight away.

This had been a good choice for today. The whole place was full of memories of Spencer, even this car park nestled in a gap in the dunes, with its ever-present drifts of sand that curled and swirled in the breeze. In her mind, she could see him at the pay-and-display meter, swearing colourfully as it refused his 50-pence piece over and over. And there near the café was the sandy slope he’d carried her up from the beach because she’d just dried her feet off from paddling and hadn’t wanted to get them gritty again.

She sighed. She couldn’t wait to just start wandering around, letting those happier moments come back to her. She needed them.

She turned as another vehicle arrived – Gayle and Richard’s ancient but pristine Rover, with Scott and Teresa in the back. It pulled into a space on the opposite side of the car park, near the café. Anna locked her car and began to walk in that direction.

Gayle emerged from the Rover in a smart black dress with matching jacket, her hairdo defying the blustery weather – how did she manage that? Shellac? – and supervised with military efficiency as Richard removed a canvas shopper from the boot and donned wellingtons.

‘Hi,’ Anna said as she strolled over.

‘Oh, hello,’ Gayle said, smiling slightly. ‘You’re here.’ And then she took in Anna’s jeans, dark-green jumper and her usual black coat. Her eyebrows lifted an infinitesimal amount. Anna had gone for comfort over style, but even if she’d decided to dress more smartly, she wouldn’t have chosen all black for today. She didn’t want to dress up like it was his funeral all over again.

The others emerged from the car and greeted her, all three of them giving her a hug and kissing her on the cheek. Richard and Scott wore dark suits, and Teresa a demure charcoal dress similar to their mother-in-law’s. None of them looked as if they were ready for a day at the beach. Had someone forgotten to give Anna the memo? What was the deal here, anyway?

‘Have you got the bag, Richard?’ Gayle asked.

‘Roger that,’ Richard replied, holding it slightly higher for his wife’s inspection.

She nodded, then turned and set off in the direction of dunes that rose from the far edge of the car park, undeterred by her unsuitable footwear. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Come on. First stop is “our” picnic spot in the dunes.’

Oh, Anna thought. There was a plan. Of course there was. One, obviously, that she’d had no part in putting together and hadn’t been consulted about. Well, Anna had a plan of her own, one that was just as important. She stood taller and pulled her coat tightly around herself. ‘Actually… Gayle?’ she called out.

Gayle turned around, her expression a mixture of bafflement and irritation.

‘Before we head off, could we just backtrack to the bungalow – the little yellow one – along the road? It’s just that Spencer and I—’

‘Maybe later,’ Gayle said, turning and continuing in the direction she’d been going, and then added over her shoulder: ‘If we’ve got time… We don’t want supper this evening to be too late, do we?’

‘Supper?’ Anna echoed.

‘Back at our house. I’ve got sandwiches and vol au vents ready. Richard sent you an email about it, remember?’

Anna’s mouth fell open, but she had nothing to say. She did remember getting an email, but to be honest, she’d just skimmed it for where and when to meet. Richard had a tendency to waffle on somewhat.

Maybe she couldn’t be cross about that, but she was more than a little irritated at being dismissed and overruled. Gayle seemed to be forgetting that this day was for all of them to remember Spencer, not just her. Anna was just trying to work out how to say that without seeming too bitchy, when what her mother had said to her on the phone came back to her. Being in control was Gayle’s way of coping. This wasn’t personal, she had to remember that.

Anna stood there for a moment, irritation and compassion warring for the upper hand inside her, then her shoulders sagged. Okay, despite being royally ticked off by Gayle’s imperious attitude, she’d hold fire for now. But make no mistake, she’d be visiting that yellow bungalow later on that afternoon, come hell or high water, and Gayle would just have to deal with it.

Anna blew out a breath that did little to calm her jagged emotions, dug her fists into her pockets, and trailed behind the tight-knit group heading up the large dune that constantly threatened to swallow up the eastern boundary of the car park.

ANNA MOVED THROUGH the next hour or so as if she was outside herself, as if she were watching a film of the proceedings and the camera had pulled back for a long shot. It was the only way she could cope. Gayle had cast herself as chief mourner, even though every single person there ached just as hard as she did. Anna was relegated to loyal sidekick, having to stand next to Gayle as she gave a speech at the family’s favourite picnic spot, as they wrote messages to Spencer on scraps of paper, then rolled them up and stuck them in a bottle, which was then buried in the sand at a location Gayle had chosen.

Anna would have liked a little more than the two minutes Gayle had allotted to work out what she’d wanted to write because when she’d stared at the blank strip of faux parchment (Gayle never did anything by halves), she just couldn’t make her brain work. She’d kept staring at it up until the last ten seconds, and then she’d scribbled ‘I love you’ and stuffed the paper in the bottle. Heartfelt. True. But not very eloquent. Also, not the ‘goodbye’ she’d been revving up to. How could she rush that?

And then they were hurried on to the next place of significance to everyone but Anna and Teresa, now almost six months pregnant, who was waddling up and down the dunes without a squeak of protest. It would make Anna look bad if she said anything.

She tuned out her mother-in-law’s voice, let it become part of the background noise, like the squawking of the seagulls, as she tried to find that still place in her heart where she could talk to Spencer, tell him what she’d wanted to say today. She’d just about gained the right amount of focus to start when Gayle clapped her hands and announced, ‘Well, I think it’s time we got to the most important part of the afternoon, the reason we chose to come here this year… Richard, have you got the bag?’

Richard, who’d hardly said a word since they’d arrived, nodded. Anna’s attention was drawn once again to the canvas shopper he was carrying. He’d been lugging it around all over the dunes. What exactly was inside it?

He held the bag up to Gayle and she reached in and reverently pulled out a small pewter urn. The kind with a lid. The kind used for…

But, no. That couldn’t be right.

‘We’ll walk out to the shore now the tide’s out,’ Gayle said, ‘and then Richard and Scott can scatter the ashes in the sea.’

Ashes?

She can’t have just said that, Anna thought, even though the urn in Gayle’s grip was evidence to the contrary, but she hardly had time to process that before Gayle added, ‘We’re all agreed this is the right place?’ There were murmurs and nods of agreement as Gayle looked from person to person. ‘This is where he would have chosen if it had been up to him.’ And then she shifted her gaze to Anna.

‘Ashes?’ Anna echoed weakly. It was the only word going around her head at that moment.

Gayle nodded.

‘Spencer’s ashes?’

Teresa shot a nervous look at her mother-in-law and then her husband. Scott was busy studying an abandoned plastic spade half-buried in the sand and didn’t seem inclined to glance up.

Gayle stood a little straighter. ‘Yes.’

‘But Spencer’s ashes are in the Garden of Remembrance at the crematorium!’

Gayle’s stare didn’t waver. ‘Your half of them are. Our half are here…’ She patted the urn in her hands gently. ‘And we’re going to scatter them in my son’s happy place, the place where he had most joy.’

Their half?

Anna stood open-mouthed as the rest of the family headed down the side of the dune that led to the beach. They were carrying a piece of her husband with them. A piece that she’d never known existed!

She dug back in her memory to that foggy time after Spencer’s accident, a period when she’d hardly been functioning. Richard and Scott had stepped in and done a lot of what had been needed: meeting with the funeral directors, dealing with probate. It was possible that they could have kept half of the ashes for themselves without telling her, but why would they do that? Why hide it from her?

But maybe they had consulted her. They could have asked if it was a good idea to have circus performers and pink-spotted elephants at the funeral, and she probably would have nodded and said, ‘Fine… Whatever you want…’

The rest of the group had descended the far side of the dune and were already out of sight. Anna started to run after them, but now the sand had been disturbed, the top layer kept sliding over the layer underneath, taking her with it. It was like running up a ‘down’ escalator. She forced herself to stand still for a moment, caught her breath, then chose a different path and planted purposeful feet, one in front of the other, until she made it to the top.

When she crested the dune, she found Teresa waiting for her and they fell into step together, eyes fixed on the other three members of the Barry family, who were now some distance away. Camber Sands was one of those shallow beaches perfect for families on summer holidays, because at low tide the sea retreated almost to the horizon, leaving pools of seawater to be warmed by the sun for children to paddle in. On a day like today, though, it was a long and blustery walk to the waves.

‘You didn’t know?’ Teresa asked as they trailed behind the others.

Anna shook her head.

‘Cow,’ Teresa muttered.

Anna shot her a surprised look. She’d never once seen or heard any hint that her sister-in-law did anything but toe the party line, but the response resonated with her. It resonated quite a lot, actually.

Gayle was being a cow today, and Anna had put up with all of it, ignoring all the little digs and snubs, because she was trying to be the daughter-in-law Spencer would want her to be – kind and supportive, making allowances for the other woman’s pain – but it had become startlingly clear in the last half hour just how much of a one-way street that was.

Spencer had adored his mum, but he hadn’t been blind to her faults, and if there was one thing he’d prefer his wife to be, rather than a doting daughter-in-law, it was someone who had a backbone. He’d always encouraged her to stand up for herself, to be more assertive.

Spurred on by that thought, she marched towards the small cluster of people where the shallow beach met the waves. The furnace of her rage roared brighter with every step. Teresa plodded along behind her, doing her best to keep up.

Anna’s first urge was to stride up to Gayle and let rip, but then she thought about how both Spencer and Gabi had always said that she bottled everything up until she couldn’t hold it in any longer and then it all came pouring out in an unintelligible eruption, ‘unintelligible’ being the operative word. She couldn’t have that. She needed Gayle to get this, to understand that it was not okay to have excluded her from today’s plans so completely.

When she reached her in-laws, Anna fixed Gayle with a steady stare and opened her mouth to begin. At the very same moment, Richard unscrewed the lid of the urn and Anna choked back the words, hit by a pain in her chest that was as powerful as it was unexpected.

A high-pitched wailing pierced the bluster of the wind around them, not a cry of despair but something primal and raw.

Anna guessed that she must have lost her internal battle after all, that the moment the lid had come off the urn, the boiling emotions she’d been trying to keep at bay had overtaken her like a tidal wave. She clapped a hand over her mouth as Gayle crumpled beside her, dropping to the wrinkled wet sand, and Anna realized it wasn’t her making the noise after all. It was her mother-in-law, her perfectly put together mother-in-law.

The sand and saltwater were making an awful mess of Gayle’s smart outfit, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy trying to grab a breath between the heaving sobs, supporting herself with one palm splayed against the damp sand, her fingertips digging in so deep they disappeared.

Anna wanted to grab Gayle by the arm and force her to stand up again, to make her stop that horrible noise. No, she wanted to scream. This was not your moment. This was not your husband. He was mine! And I was his happy place, not this soggy, dirty beach. I was what brought him the most joy!

Both Richard and Scott attempted to help Gayle up, but she batted their hands away, and her raw sobbing continued. Anna stared down at Spencer’s mother, and words from that strange late-night phone call on Valentine’s Day drifted into her mind.

When life changes suddenly and unexpectedly, there’s a grieving of what was and what can never be again. I would call that being human…

Yes, Anna reminded herself, finding steadiness – strength – from those words in what was otherwise a day full of vertiginous twists and turns. They grounded her, brought her back to what was real and true. Whatever Gayle has done today, she is human. And she deserves my compassion.

Slowly, carefully, she got down on her knees beside Gayle, put an arm around her shoulder and drew her close.

Chapter Eleven

ANNA FOLLOWED GAYLE and Richard’s Rover back from Camber Sands to their house, sitting stiff and tight-lipped behind the wheel of her car. Her anger had been quenched briefly when Gayle had broken down on the beach – no one could have remained unmoved by that gut-wrenching sorrow – but it had begun to grow again as she’d stood by helplessly while Richard and Scott had scattered Spencer, or what was left of him, onto the waves.

She guessed it was supposed to have been a dramatic send-off, but the tide or the currents must have been doing something strange because the tiny little pieces of her husband had floated in a greyish-white scum on top of the silt-laden water and lapped around their ankles. It had been horrible. She couldn’t have thought of a worse ending to an already unbearable day.

She’d been so bewildered that she hadn’t even remembered about the little yellow bungalow until she was halfway back to Gayle and Richard’s. The whole journey back the words she’d collected ready to say to her mother-in-law circled in her head, and now she felt like one of those unexploded Second World War bombs. The tiniest touch, the slightest wrong move and – Boom! – she would detonate.

She pulled into the drive behind Richard and Gayle. Getting out of the car was an effort, and not just because she was stiff from driving; she felt utterly exhausted and her body was rigid with tension. The front door of the house was open, Gayle standing beside it, ready to shoo her guests inside. Anna approached the threshold but stopped before stepping over it.

‘Anna?’ There was a whiff of irritation in her mother-inlaw’s tone and Anna felt her blood pressure rise. She couldn’t look at Gayle. She couldn’t even look at the hallway through the open door. She was only just about holding onto her last shred of self-control.

If she went in there and had to make polite conversation after all that had happened that afternoon, that bomb inside her would go off. She was just so angry. Horribly, horribly angry. But having a meltdown over cucumber sandwiches and teacakes wasn’t going to help anyone this afternoon.

‘I’m sorry…’ she muttered. ‘I think… I think I’ve got a migraine coming.’ And before Gayle could say anything else, Anna ran back to her car, jumped inside, and reversed out of the drive.

She knew Gayle would be staring after her as she drove away. What about the finger sandwiches, Anna? What about the vol au vents? But Anna didn’t care about the sodding vol au vents.

She drove home with her fingers tight around the steering wheel, jaw clenched, resisting the urge to use the accelerator to vent her anger. Hold on, she told herself. Just a little longer, then you can close your front door behind you, sink against it, and let it all out.

Almost an hour and a half later, thanks to a snarl-up around junction five, Anna hauled herself from her car and stared at her house. Just the sight of it almost brought tears of relief to her eyes. The walk to her front door seemed to go in slow motion, but she finally put the key in the lock, opened the door and then banged it closed behind her.

Thank God.

She sank against the back of the door and waited for the emotions to start flowing…

But nothing spilled out, nothing exploded. There was no pounding of fists on the tiled floor of her hallway or shouts of rage echoing up the stairwell. She opened her mouth, giving permission for the howl of fury she’d been keeping inside all the way back from the beach to emerge, but all she could hear was her own shallow breathing. She closed her eyes, giving tears a chance to gather behind her lids, but when she opened them again, they were as dry as Gayle’s pork and sage stuffing.

She let out a growl of frustration and made her way upstairs to her bedroom, where she lay down on the unmade bed and pulled the duvet up over her head. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. It was all too much.

But the usual comfort of her blank, white cocoon didn’t help her today. Even so, she closed her eyes and breathed in and out, at a total loss for anything else to do.

One moment, that was all she had wanted.

One moment to be still today, to remember him in the way she wanted to, so she could start doing what everyone was always telling her she needed to and move forward. But it seemed she wasn’t allowed that.

As much as the focus was always on Spencer when she visited his family, she couldn’t talk freely to Gayle, even though she wished she could, and she didn’t want to worry her own parents. Gabi tried, God bless her, she really did, but she only wanted to hear good and positive and healthy things, and the truth was, some days Anna was anything but those things. Sometimes she needed to be despondent and negative and toxic. It was the only way to let the poison out.

She lay under the duvet in a half-trance, letting her thoughts wander, like a bird hopping from branch to branch in search of a roost. They came to rest in an unexpected place.

There had been one person who’d listened, a someone who’d seemed to actually understand.

But this person was also a no one, an anonymous voice at the end of a phone line, completely unconnected from her life, from all the emotional baggage anyone who’d known her or Spencer came with.

Things happen, he’d said. Things that turn you upside down and your life takes a very different path.

Spencer’s number had been assigned to him, the no one. She really wanted to call that number again, she discovered, which was more than a little surprising. Maybe it was because, in her mind, he was still part of that connection to Spencer.