‘Like gin?’ Anna asked.

‘No, like gin tasting. We live our lives… We try one thing, we try another thing, until we find out what works for us.’ She took a sip and then looked back up at Anna. ‘What do you want your life to be, Anna? If you could choose? What would you do next?’

Anna blinked and looked back at Gabi. If only she knew the answer to that question.

Chapter Seventeen

ANNA GRIMACED AS she knocked on Gayle and Richard’s front door. It had been almost a month since the Camber Sands outing, and she hadn’t attended the Barry family lunch the fortnight before, due to an actual migraine this time, not just a fake one. In that time, she hadn’t called Gayle, and Gayle hadn’t called her. Mind you, they’d never spent much time talking on the phone, so nothing had really changed there.

Her mother-in-law answered the door. She gave Anna a lavender-scented kiss on the cheek as usual, but the memory of that blustery, grey day at the beach loomed between them as Gayle ushered her inside. Anna quickly joined Scott and Teresa in the dining room to help set the table. Scott pulled a chair out for his wife, raising his eyebrows.

Teresa rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not sitting down,’ she said, answering his unspoken request. ‘I’m fine.’

Scott scowled until Teresa went over and thanked him by kissing him softly on the cheek. His hand drifted possessively towards her protruding stomach and he rubbed it gently, which earned him a glowing smile from his wife.

It was touching that the pregnancy was bringing this protective side out in Scott, but Anna had to turn away and busy herself with the large canteen of cutlery inherited from Gayle’s mother. Is that what Spencer would have been like with her, with their baby? She wished she’d had a chance to find out. But not wanting to put a dampener on the afternoon, she sucked in a breath and hurriedly swiped at her eyes.

Lunch continued as countless other lunches before it had, with the polite passing of covered vegetable dishes, the obligatory compliments to the cook and exclamations on how crispy the roast potatoes were. Richard, as always, filling a moment of silence with, ‘Well, this is keeping us all quiet!’ as he grinned broadly around the table. They all knew which parts they were supposed to play, which lines were theirs. In some ways, this made it easier. Anna discovered she could park the irritation she’d been feeling on the drive there and just skate over the top of it.

As Teresa passed her the custard jug for dessert, Gayle lightly coughed. ‘Is that okay with you too, Anna?’

Anna looked at Gayle, the jug warm in her hands. She must have drifted off and missed something. And she obviously hadn’t heard Gayle correctly. For a moment, it had very much sounded as if her mother-in-law had asked her opinion on something.