He absorbed her words for a moment. ‘You feel guilty for even thinking someone could fill their shoes.’

‘Yes,’ Anna said, sounding quietly relieved. ‘You’ve felt that way too?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. Such a small word for all it encompassed.

‘What happened to—?’

Anna’s voice was drowned out by Lewis, who suddenly leaped to his feet, ran to the French doors in the living room and started barking at the blackness outside.

‘Sorry,’ Brody muttered as he ran after him, grabbing him by the collar and leading him back to the study. ‘He’s been a bit of a nightmare since he heard that owl outside last week. Every time there’s the slightest noise, he’s off, just in case it’s come back.’

Brody had just about got his dog back to the study, but Lewis wriggled, pulling his collar out of Brody’s grasp, and raced back to the French doors, making twice as much noise as before.

Anna laughed. Brody had to stick a finger in his free ear so he could hear her properly. ‘I’d better let you go and sort him out,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Brody, for listening. I’m so glad you picked up when I called.’

Brody nodded to himself. ‘So am I,’ he admitted, before ending the call to go and deal with his dog. He opened the doors to let Lewis run around the garden. Hopefully, it would confirm the owl was long gone.

When Lewis finally trotted back inside, panting, Brody didn’t scold him. Instead, he gave him a treat, reached down and scratched his head. ‘Good boy,’ he said softly. ‘Excellent timing.’ Because he’d had a nasty feeling Anna had been about to ask him a question he didn’t want to answer. There were some things he’d really rather she didn’t know about him.

Chapter Fifteen

BRODY OPENED THE door to his study just before dawn and flicked on the light. He walked over to the desk and took a moment to look out over his garden through the window. There was only just enough light to differentiate the edges of the bushes and the trees from the receding night.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he pulled a notebook from a stack crammed into one of the shelves and leafed through it to see if there were any empty pages. There were. Lots of them. Only a few at the front had been filled. As he glanced at them, he noticed how much his handwriting had changed in the years since he’d last used it. The scrawl in these pages wasn’t that of a schoolboy, although it had something of that innocence, that optimism. These days, he printed carefully, making deep black scratches in the paper.

Okay, he thought to himself. It’s just words. Nothing to be scared of. Once upon a time, you used to be good at this.

Years ago, a little voice in his head whispered. And how many times have you tried since then? How many times have you walked away leaving nothing but a blank page? Plenty, he told himself. But he hadn’t pulled a notebook off this shelf in at least five years, possibly more. It might be different this time.