The Last Goodbye Read online

  Dedication

  For Amanda, the best partner in crime an author could wish for.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part 1

  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 2

  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

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part 1

  Chapter One

  Anna was lying in bed with the duvet pulled up over her head. A thing not so unusual in itself, perhaps, 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 cheery. 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 when she was 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 traveled downward 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 disheveled 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 in 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 breakup 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 brokenhearted. 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 mouthwatering. 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 expat 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 semidetached in Sundridge Park, but it seemed like a different world.

  She trailed round 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 percent 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.

  They’d barely pulled out of Anna’s road when Gabi had said in a very offhand way, “Did I mention Jeremy is coming tonight?”

  Anna had glanced sharply across at her friend in the passenger seat. Gabi had been sitting calmly, hands folded in her lap, the hint of an angelic smile on her lips. That had troubled Anna, because Gabi didn’t do cool and matter-of-fact. Gabi did squeals and smiles and showers of confetti. Over everything. The churning in the pit of Anna’s stomach had intensified.

  “Oh?” she’d said, deliberately keeping her tone light. “Remind me who he is again?” Even though she’d known full well that Jeremy was a pal of Vanessa’s. Even though she’d known he was a graphic designer and had an “amazing” flat in Beckenham.

  Anna had known it was only going to be a matter of time before that particular grenade landed because Gabi had been casually dropping his name into conversation for weeks now, almost as frequently as she hinted—not always so obliquely—that it was time for Anna to “move on.”

  But Anna didn’t want to move on. She wasn’t ready.

  However, the fact she’d said this a thousand times had obviously had no impact on Gabi at all, because there her friend was, smile barely contained, weaving her way through the crowded kitchen with a man in tow.

  And the penny finally dropped. It hadn’t been her own romantic prospects Gabi had been getting all sparkly and hopeful about earlier on that evening—it had been Anna’s.

  Anna turned to slip away in the opposite direction but found herself blocked by a gaggle of Vanessa’s beauty salon employees, blinged up and colorful like exotic birds. They’d set up camp next to the glass-fronted fridge containing nothing but champagne and didn’t seem inclined to budge.

  “I thought I’d lost you!” Gabi said, breaking into one of her Julia Roberts–style grins. She glanced over to the man whose arm she had hold of, who, it had to
be said, wasn’t looking as enthusiastic about this encounter as Gabi was. “This is Jeremy!” Gabi said, with the same degree of fanfare more suited to announcing an Oscar winner. Tall with sandy-blond hair, Jeremy had the kind of sharp cheekbones that reminded Anna of the detective in the Swedish crime series she was currently bingeing on Netflix.

  “Remember I told you about him?”

  Anna shot Gabi a look. Seriously? You’re really doing this?

  Undeterred, Gabi countered with a look of her own—Don’t mess this up!—and carried on talking. “You know you were saying you wanted to try salsa classes? Well, Jeremy here has been going to some at the civic center. He can tell you all about them.” Gabi then came to the startling realization that everyone’s glasses needed topping up and, despite being right next to a fridge packed with champagne, skipped off in the opposite direction to find some. That left Anna and Jeremy staring awkwardly at one another.

  Anna took a breath, smiled and said, “Hello.” Yes, she was feeling a bit antisocial at the moment, but she wasn’t rude. That was also why, as they began tiptoeing through the small talk, she didn’t tell him salsa classes had been Gabi’s idea. Something to get Anna out of the house. Something to take her mind off things. Before that, it had been conversational Italian, and before that, silver jewelry making. Even flipping car maintenance.

  And so that was how Anna ended up talking to Jeremy in the kitchen for half an hour. He was a nice man, she decided. Not too full of himself. Not boring. And he’d obviously been blindsided by Gabi’s not-so-subtle attempt at matchmaking too. He was trying his best to hide it but not quite succeeding. Anna liked him more for that.

  When he suggested moving outside to get away from the crush and noise of the kitchen, she followed him. “So, how did you become such a salsa expert?” she asked, as they made their way out onto the deck overlooking the immaculate back garden.

  Jeremy made a face. “I definitely wouldn’t call myself an expert.”

  “No? How long have you been taking lessons?”

  He rubbed a hand over his face and laughed. He had a nice smile, Anna decided. There was a twinkle in his eyes, a warmth there, something genuine. “Well, that’s just it . . . I’ve only been a handful of times, and that was because my sister was desperate to go and my brother-in-law flat-out refused.”