You couldn’t face having to turn around and see Gabi standing there, silent tears stinging her eyes, a little voice inside her head goaded, but Anna drowned it out by wrenching the gate open and slamming it shut behind her hard enough to make the latch rattle. And then she marched to the cul de sac where she’d parked her car, climbed in, and drove herself home.

Chapter Three

ANNA DIDN’T BOTHER turning the lights on when she got back home. She headed straight up the stairs and into the master bedroom. The digital alarm clock on the bedside table blinked the time: 11:36. She turned away from it.

If she didn’t look at it, she couldn’t see the numbers getting higher and higher, finally reaching that dreaded row of zeros. And if she couldn’t see them, it wasn’t real. Midnight was a threshold she didn’t want to cross. Not just this particular midnight, which loomed over her like a threatening shadow, but every midnight. Every day without him was one too many.

Anna had developed little rituals to help her get through the days and nights, and she needed one of those now. She walked over to Spencer’s built-in wardrobe. After dropping her handbag on the floor, she curled her fingers around the handles and eased the doors open. All his suits and shirts were still hanging there just where he’d left them. She knew it was a horrible cliché, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw them into a bin bag or take them down to the charity shop.

She sighed and pulled the sleeve of the nearest shirt towards her, held it up to her face and breathed in. His scent was no longer there, even though she refused to wash any of them, but she pretended it was. Every time she did this, she tried to recall it precisely, but it was getting harder and harder to do.

Spencer would have laughed at her for being so sentimental, but then Spencer had laughed at everything, made a joke of everything. It had charmed and infuriated her in equal measures. He’d even done it the first time she’d told him she loved him.

That frosty November evening nine years earlier had been magical. They’d been out to dinner in central London to celebrate their two-month anniversary, but instead of catching the Tube back to Charing Cross, they’d opted to wander beside the Thames, strolling along Victoria Embankment, with its sturdy stone walls, globe-like lamps decorated with ugly, bulbous-headed Victorian fish, and wooden benches with strange mythical creatures woven into the wrought-iron supports. The lights of Festival Hall and the Southbank Centre had twinkled across the water at them, and the London Eye, glowing bluish-white, had kept watch.

Spencer had pulled her into his arms and kissed her, before holding her face between his palms, looking deep into her eyes and saying, so simply, so seriously, ‘I love you.’ Then his face had broken into a huge grin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said, laughing, ‘I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.’