‘Oh,’ Anna said loudly and then again more softly. ‘Then who…?’

Brody’s heart thudded.

When she spoke again, she sounded confused, maybe even a little suspicious. ‘I’m not making it up, am I? You did say you’d lost someone too?’

Brody walked over to the other side of the room to stare out of the blackened window. He couldn’t even see the silhouette of the ragged trees that lined his boundary. Darkness began to seep through the panes, filling him. ‘I did.’

There was a moment of pure silence, both where he stood in his study but also at the other end of the line.

Anna whispered, ‘Who?’

‘I…’

The wave hammered down on him. Without warning and without mercy. No clues it had been looming. No tingling fingers, no tight chest. God. Nine years. He thought he’d outrun it to a certain extent, but here was proof to the contrary: the pain was still as fresh and raw as it had been that day almost a decade ago.

Brody turned and began to run, even though it was a foolish thing to do in his tiny cluttered cottage. He knocked over a lamp in his rush to get to the back door, and it crashed to the floor behind him. He wrenched the door open and ran out into the yard, the frost suspended and waiting in the night air, chilling his face and hands.

‘Brody…?’ The voice was muffled from where he held the phone against his chest.

He tried to talk, he really did, but no sound would come out. Hardly surprising, since it felt as if someone had launched a wrecking ball into his chest. He dropped the phone and staggered away from it, heaving in rasping breaths that made his entire body shudder. And then he fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob.

Chapter Forty-Eight

‘THANKS FOR COMING over to help,’ Anna said to Gabi as they walked across the landing and into her bedroom. ‘I couldn’t face doing this on my own.’

Gabi sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘No problem. I have nothing better to do…’

‘Thanks!’

Gabi rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’

Anna did know. She remembered feeling the way Gabi did not so long ago. The heaviness. The feeling that everything was too much effort, and there was no point to anything. She was worried about her. It was six weeks since Gabi and Lee had split up and she still wasn’t quite her old self. Normal Gabi was bright and bubbly and full of bounce. This Gabi reminded Anna of a half-deflated beachball. They could both do with the distraction from their thoughts that this chore would bring.

It had been eight days since her last conversation with Brody. Eight days and not a word. Oh, Anna had tried calling. She tried calling a lot. But Brody wasn’t picking up. It made her feel sick every time she thought about it.