There was an ache beginning inside her, a yearning for something more, but when it came to nailing down specifics, she just couldn’t create a picture in her mind. And with no vision of her future to guide her, she found herself stalled.

She signed up to a few job search websites. Some of the positions listed seemed interesting, but she never quite got to the point of filling in an online application. She didn’t want to set off down the wrong path; there was no point swapping one unfulfilling job for another. Until she decided what she wanted to do next, she might as well stay put at Sundridge Plumbing and Heating.

Maybe she just wasn’t ready for that level of change? It had been almost three months since she’d been to the race track, and she couldn’t evade the feeling that since that day everything had turned upside-down, even though on the surface life seemed pretty much the same. It was as if her mind and emotions had been shaken up and jumbled about like the flakes in a snow globe, and she was still waiting for everything to settle and return to normal.

But that wasn’t an entirely bad thing. There were good signs, shoots of spring after her long emotional winter, things she’d forgotten had once been part of her life. She found herself laughing more, but also crying more, too. Sometimes, with sheer frustration, when it came to thinking about her mother-in-law.

Gayle. What was she going to do about Gayle?

Teresa kept trying to broker a truce, but Anna wasn’t ready to say sorry. She knew her behaviour had not been good, but she also knew that if she went and grovelled to Gayle, her mother-in-law would stiffly accept her apology, then refuse to take any responsibility for all the terrible things she’d done. Anna’s outburst at The Cinnamon Café hadn’t happened in a vacuum.

There were other reasons too… Anna could see now that she’d tethered herself too strongly to the past, but now she had begun to let some of these things go, she felt cast adrift.

And that was the problem with Gayle. She was still firmly camped in that dark place Anna was so desperately trying to get away from. Anna sometimes wondered if that was why she kept putting off getting in touch. It was all so new, so fresh, this feeling of freedom. Maybe she was scared of losing it, scared Gayle would suck her back into being that way too?

Her one constant in this sea of internal change was Brody. They spoke at least four or five times a week now. Despite a few further requests from Anna, they still hadn’t FaceTimed. It wasn’t that Brody had ever squashed the idea completely, more that it never seemed to come to fruition. Maybe he wasn’t very good with technology. Maybe there was something about his appearance he felt self-conscious about, who knew? She’d decided to stop pushing and let him come around to the idea at his own pace.