The Last Goodbye
FIONA LUCAS is an award-winning author of contemporary women’s fiction. She has written heart-warming love stories and feel-good women’s fiction as Fiona Harper for more than a decade. During her career, she’s won numerous awards, including a Romantic Novel Award in 2018, and chalked up a no.1 Kindle bestseller. Fiona lives in London with her husband and two daughters.
Writing as Fiona Harper:
The Memory Collector
The Other Us
The Summer We Danced
The Doris Day Vintage Film Club
The Little Shops of Hopes and Dreams
Make My Wish Come True
Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020
Copyright © Fiona Lucas 2020
Fiona Lucas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © December 2020 ISBN: 9780008371920
Version 2020-12-07
Note to Readers
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For Amanda, the best partner in crime
an author could wish for.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
Part One
Chapter One
ANNA WAS LYING in bed with the duvet pulled up over her head. A thing not so unusual in itself, except for the fact it was half past seven on a Thursday evening, and she was fully dressed, bar her shoes. Somewhere in the distance, her doorbell was ringing. She was doing her best to ignore it.
She’d climbed into bed about half an hour ago, and she had no intention of getting out again that evening. Maybe not ever. It was nice in her cocoon. White. Calm. The world had been too bright today, too noisy. Just too flipping cheerful. But this was a lovely solution. She should have come up with it sooner.
The letterbox clattered. ‘Anna?’
Anna stared hard at the cotton duvet cover and began to count the individual threads above her nose. Maybe she should consider some sort of soundproofing?
The voice came again, louder. ‘Hey, there! I’m here. Open the door!’
Deep breathing… That was supposed to be good for keeping calm, wasn’t it? Anna decided to try it; she wanted so badly to hang on to this velvety, white numbness. The only problem was that it had been a very long time since Anna had been able to take a deep breath. Two years, nine months and eight days, to be exact.
Had it truly been that long? It still felt like yesterday.
She rolled over onto her side and curled into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut.
The voice called through the letterbox again, but it no longer sounded bright and happy. More irritated. Maybe even a little desperate. Anna blew out a shaky breath. Her bubble of calm was in a precarious state now. Cracks were appearing. She tried to pretend these intrusive noises were happening on a different plane, in a different reality. At least, she did until the voice became softer, more pleading.
‘Anna? Minha querida? Are you okay?’
Anna covered her face with her hands and let out a sound that was half-growl, half-sigh, then forced her legs out of her duck-down nest and found the floor with her feet. The rest of her followed a second later and then she walked mechanically out of her bedroom and down the stairs into the hall.
‘Thank goodness for that!’ her best friend said when Anna opened the front door. ‘I was worried you’d fallen down the stairs or slipped in the bath!’ Gabriela’s tone was cheery as she stepped into the hallway, but there was a tightness to the accompanying laughter and there were questions in her eyes. Anna knew Gabi wasn’t going to ask them, but she heard them anyway. You are okay, aren’t you? Or do I need to be properly worried?
Everyone Anna knew had questions in their eyes these days when they spoke to her. Often, the same questions. But they were afraid of saying the wrong thing. Or not saying the right thing. Anna lived in a minefield of eggshells.
Gabi thrust a cake tin into Anna’s hands. ‘I was missing my mother’s carrot cake, but I made far too much.’
‘Thank you,’ Anna said, receiving the tin and hugging it into herself. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ Her friend’s bright-orange Brazilian version of the cake, slathered in chocolate sauce, was amazing.
Gabi’s eyes held a mixture of worry and hope. ‘Will you?’
This was more than cake. Gabi had always moaned that her curves were a result of her mother equating loving people with feeding them, but it seemed she was more like her mother than she realized.
Anna nodded awkwardly. ‘Of course.’ And then she went and placed the cake tin in the kitchen, out of sight, hoping it would curb any further discussion.
She appreciated that her friends and family cared about her, but she was sick of being watched, of every word that left her mouth, of every gesture, being judged and weighed and measured so they could compare notes, so they could encourage each other with the tiny pieces of evidence they collected that she was finally ‘getting over it’.
When Anna returned to the hall, Gabi squinted at her. ‘What have you done to your hair?’
Anna reached up and discovered that her shoulder-length brown hair was all fluffed up at the back. She smoothed it down with her hand, trying not to make it obvious. She didn’t dare glance in the mirror by the front door. She hadn’t left the house since Christmas Day, and she feared she’d see someone scruffy and pasty-looking. In comparison, Gabi looked immaculate. Her hair fell in dark, silky spirals around her shoulders and the cobalt-blue dress she wore complemented her warmer skin tone perfectly.
‘You are ready for the party, aren’t you?’ Gabi’s gaze travelled downwards to the crumpled little black dress Anna was wearing and to her stockinged feet. ‘It’s only a few hours until we will all shout “Happy New Year” and I don’t want to be late!’
Happy New Year…
Oh, how Anna would like to do a little bit of surgery on that phrase. The first word should be chopped off and discarded, for a start. However, ‘new year’ was a fact. Nothing she could do about that. Time was going to march on whether she wanted it to or not, but ‘happy’ just seemed ridiculous, maybe even a little insulting.
A rush of emotion hit her, engulfing her so completely that she briefly considered sprinting up the stairs and diving back under her duvet. She turned to Gabi, ready to make her excuses, but the look in her friend’s eyes silenced her. Although she was clearly perplexed at Anna’s dishevelled state and more than a little concerned, there was something else shimmering under the surface, a look Anna recognized.
‘There’s someone you like at this party, isn’t there?’ she asked, because that sparkle behind Gabi’s eyes only ever appeared when romance was on the cards.
Gabi blinked at her innocently. ‘No.’
Hmm. Anna wasn’t so sure she believed that.
‘Don’t look at me that way,’ Gabi added, frowning. ‘After Joel, I’m done with men, remember?’
Anna nodded slightly. ‘I do remember you telling me that.’ Whether it lasted remained to be seen. Right at that second, Anna would have bet twenty quid on her friend’s lips being locked onto someone else’s come midnight.
But Anna couldn’t begrudge her that. The break-up with Joel had been almost five years ago. To be honest, Anna hadn’t been sad to see the back of him – he hadn’t appreciated Gabi nearly enough – but Gabi hadn’t seen it that way and she’d been broken-hearted. Since then, there had been a handful of short-lived relationships. Gabi liked guys who were confident, but more often than not, ‘confident’ turned out to be ‘cocky and self-absorbed’. Not qualities that lent themselves to a mature, long-lasting partnership.
‘It’s true,’ Gabi added, looking so convincing Anna almost believed her. ‘Are you ready?’
Anna glanced up at the staircase, beyond which her duvet cocoon lay waiting, and sighed. At least one of them should have something to hope for this evening as they crossed the threshold from this old, tired year into the fresh blankness of the next.
She forced the corners of her mouth to turn up. ‘Of course. Give me two seconds. I’ll just grab my coat and put on my shoes.’
Chapter Two
IN AN IDEAL world, Anna thought, I would arrive at every party an hour and a half late. That way she could skip the beginning, when everyone was buzzing with optimism about the night ahead, full of loud hellos and instantly forgotten introductions.
Gabi worked as a food stylist, in charge of making the pictures of dishes in cookbooks and magazines appear mouth-watering. Over the years, she’d encountered an eclectic mixture of people, from photographers and art directors, to magazine editors, stylists and TV presenters. The party that evening was being hosted by an ex-pat Californian who owned a chain of south London beauty salons. Vanessa lived in Chislehurst, and as Anna drove to their destination, the houses became progressively grander, the streets leafier. It was only a couple of miles away from Anna’s semi-detached in Sundridge Park, but it seemed like a different world.
She trailed around the ground floor of the stylish house behind Gabi, a glass of untouched fizz in her hand. Every time Gabi managed to extricate herself from one group of excitable extroverts, she was instantly dragged into another, most of whom Anna didn’t know. Anna just hovered around the edges, keeping her expression friendly but neutral, and avoiding eye contact as much as possible.
The advantage of having a more outgoing friend who seemed to know ninety per cent of the other guests was that the conversation eddied around Anna, much the same way a stream flowed around a rock in its path, and that was fine by her. Because with small talk came questions, and she wasn’t particularly keen on questions, not the personal kind, anyway, and the one question she really didn’t want to hear was—
‘Hey, Anna! How are you?’
She fixed a smile in place and turned to find another of Gabi’s creative, interesting friends smiling at her. ‘Oh, er, hi…’ Anna trailed off, partly because she couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but mostly because this one simple question always left her in a quandary. She was basically an honest sort of person, so when somebody asked her how she was, her automatic response was to tell the truth.
Big mistake.
Back in the early days, she’d done just that, launching into a description of how each second of the day was a painful knife-stab in her heart, how she dreaded opening her eyelids each morning. It had been so wonderful to let it all out.
But she’d soon discovered it was a great way to make her friends’ faces fall, to cause them to stammer awkwardly. More often than not, they’d invented someone on the other side of the room they urgently needed to talk to and had scurried away.
No one really wanted to hear how she was. Not after two years, nine months and eight days. Not even Gabi. Instead, they wanted to hear she was putting herself back together, that it was possible to heal from something that tragic and move on. It was selfish, really, because they were asking her to give them hope. They were asking her to reassure them that if something that awful happened to them, they’d eventually be okay too. But Anna wasn’t okay. She wasn’t even close.
Gabi’s friend was looking at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer.
‘Doing good,’ Anna replied, nodding, and noticed, once again, how grief had turned her into a big fat liar. ‘How about you?’
The woman – Keisha! Her name was Keisha – nodded philosophically. ‘Oh, you know. Same old, same old…’ And then her brows drew together. ‘I heard about… you know… I’m so sorry.’ And then she did the worst possible thing: she placed a sympathetic hand on Anna’s arm. It burned.
Anna wanted to shrug it off, to glare at Keisha for stepping over an unmarked boundary, but she didn’t. ‘Oh, look!’ she said, staring at the air past the other woman’s head to the opposite side of the large and glossy open-plan kitchen. ‘I think Vanessa is looking for you.’
Their hostess was actually nowhere to be seen, but two could play at the ‘invisible friend’ game. Keisha looked torn for a brief second, then gave Anna a swift one-armed hug and hurried off. Anna breathed out and escaped in the other direction.
She was glad when the hour hand on her watch slid past nine and people got beyond the ‘meet and greet’ phase and settled into small groups, leaning against kitchen counters, staking out their places in the various seating areas. It made it easier to skirt around the edges of the party, glass of warm fizz in hand, giving the impression she’d just finished a fabulous conversation with one person and was on her way to another, when really – aside from that brief exchange with Keisha – the only person she’d properly engaged with all evening had been Gabi, and that had been in the car on the way there.