It was a sign.

Not from her deceased husband or anything stupid like that, but it was a sign. Why else would this man have not only her husband’s phone number but also a dog with exactly the same name as his favourite childhood pet? This was another connection that couldn’t be ignored.

‘Can I call you again?’ she blurted out.

He took a moment to reply. ‘If you need to.’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

‘Goodb—’

She jumped in before he could finish. ‘Is it okay if we don’t say that word? I know it sounds strange, but I’ve had too much of “goodbye” today. Can we say something else or just hang up?’

He must have got used to her strange ways by now because he just said, ‘Fine’, not sounding offended in the slightest. Thank goodness. ‘Sleep well, Anna.’

She used all her determination to press her thumb onto her phone screen and make him disappear. After staring at her mobile for a few seconds, she turned out the light, thoroughly exhausted. She turned onto her back and lay staring at the ceiling, and for the first time that day, Anna breathed out. All the way.

Chapter Thirteen

BRODY STARED AT his shiny new phone. It was silent now, but the echo of Anna’s last words was still ringing in his ears. Lewis was nudging at his hand, asking for attention, but Brody kept his gaze on the screen. He didn’t actually expect it to jump into life again, but he kept looking at the display of recent calls. There were only four, all from the same number.

Each entry was just a row of digits. Eleven, to be exact. That was all that was left of her after she’d hung up. It seemed a little impersonal after the conversation they’d had.

He pressed ‘Add new contact’. All the while he was typing her name into the correct field, he told himself he didn’t really need to do this because she was the only person likely to call him in the foreseeable future – and that was only a vague possibility – but he carried on anyway until he was finished.

There was an icon next to her name, a lifeless little grey silhouette of a woman’s head on a paler background. It seemed too bland, so he pulled up the library of pictures that were preloaded onto the phone and chose one: an arching stalk of lily of the valley. For some reason, it seemed the most fitting.

She’d sounded young, more than a little fragile. Lost.

Brody knew what it was like to feel lost. He knew it very well. Maybe that was why he’d kept listening instead of hanging up.

He stuffed his phone in his jeans pocket, then went and fetched Lewis, let him out of the back door of the cottage one last time before they both settled down for the night – Lewis in his bed in the kitchen near the oil-fired Aga, and Brody upstairs in one of the low-ceilinged, black-beamed bedrooms. He lay in his bed and stared at the misty, moon-soaked clouds through the open curtains, thinking about the conversation he’d had with Anna.