‘I might not want to be on my own for the rest of my life, Gayle. Surely you can understand that?’

Gayle looked away. She did understand, Anna guessed. She just didn’t want to.

Gayle spent a long time staring at her grandson, holding his hand and playing with his chubby fingers as he beamed back at her, and then, without looking around, she said, ‘I saw you with him, and I… I…’ She turned and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I thought it was him at first, you see. Just for a split second. The same sort of height, the same colour hair…’

‘Oh…’ Anna replied, her voice trailing away as she realized she didn’t know how to respond to that. Did Jeremy look a little like Spencer from the back? She hadn’t thought so, but maybe he did. ‘That must have been… hard.’

Gayle’s mouth wobbled slightly. ‘And then when I realized it wasn’t him, that you’d chosen someone who looked so much like him, as if you’d just… replaced him…’ She shook her head disbelievingly, ‘I saw red.’ She took a moment to compose herself. ‘I am very sorry, Anna, for what I said to you that night. It was wrong, and I didn’t mean it. I’ve wanted to tell you that for months now, but every time I thought about calling you or dropping around I… couldn’t.’ Her gaze dropped to the tabletop. ‘I was just so ashamed of myself.’

‘I appreciate that, Gayle. Thank you. But it wasn’t just the party, was it? Even before that I could sense that you were freezing me out. Why?’

‘Because it didn’t seem fair,’ Gayle muttered, eyes still downcast. ‘You could marry again, find someone new to love… But I’ll never be able to replace my son.’ She looked up at Anna. ‘And I could sense it coming,’ she said, looking both fearful and distraught. ‘I could tell you were getting ready to do that, and I suppose I was jealous that you could find someone to fill that hole in your life when I would never be able to. The easiest thing was to push you away, so I didn’t have to deal with it.’

Anna swallowed. This was something she definitely couldn’t judge her mother-in-law for, especially as it was a Herculean effort to hold everything she’d been feeling since New Year’s Eve at bay. ‘I understand that.’

‘I don’t hate you, Anna, honestly I don’t. In fact, if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have been bothered about any of this, but I just got so wrapped up in how I was feeling that I didn’t stop to…’ She looked at Anna pleadingly. ‘I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me?’

As Anna regarded Gayle, she discovered she could. She nodded, but before they ended this discussion, she realized there was something else she needed to clear up, otherwise it was just going to rear its ugly head again in the future. ‘I’m not seeing Jeremy anymore,’ she said, and saw Gayle’s expression brighten. ‘But I might find someone someday. If it had been me who had died instead of Spencer, if he was sitting with you here today, wouldn’t you want him to be happy?’