Chapter One

Kisses as soft as kitten’s whiskers trickled down my back, fluttering, floating, spreading into the dip of my spine and onto the rise of my buttocks. I sighed and squirmed, just a little, inviting more of the blissful sensations I was being woken with.

Matt ran his finger down my side, from just below my breast into the hollow of my waist. So light it was barely a caress, so gentle it was hardly there. It tickled but in a good way, and I smiled, my cheek bunching on the pillow.

I could picture him hovering over me, ruggedly handsome, with his morning stubble heaviest on the indent of his chin. His broad shoulders and thick biceps would be tensing as he took his weight through his arms.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” I murmured, shifting my legs and wondering where his touch would travel next.

The duvet twisted around my ankles. I was naked, but my skin was warm—the night- time had done nothing to ease the English heatwave.

More sweet kisses, down my left leg this time and onto the back of my knee. I nibbled my bottom lip and forced my body still. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to just lie there. My need for my husband was so big it was an energy that could give birth to stars. He was my everything, my world, my reason for breathing—the man I got out of bed for every morning.

I turned but kept my eyes closed, enjoying the remnants of sleep and the waft of his breath on my stomach, my breasts and my neck. I stretched my arms above my head, arched my back and pointed my toes, waiting to see where he would adore me next.

Was it Sunday? I hoped so. That way we could stay in bed all morning, worshiping each other’s body, connecting our souls, feeling whole.

“Kiss me,” I mumbled, tilting my chin and expecting to feel him pressing his lips to mine. “Matt, I want you.” I smiled as I spoke and reached for him.

Birdsong filtered into my consciousness. The treetops outside my bedroom window were home to a family of doves, their coos a near constant melody. I pictured them, fat breasts, pale feathers, their devotion to each other endearing.

“Matt,” I said again, flailing my arms.

As I’d spoken his name, the ‘a’ had caught in my throat. A strangled feeling clawed at my neck, and a rush of agony tumbled into my chest. I let my hands drop heavily onto the mattress.

My favorite part of the day was over. That empty moment between sleep and awake, horizontal and upright, before reality kicked in and dreams held court—when my memory hadn’t remembered.

I shivered as kisses turned into a light breeze weaving through the open window. I kept my eyes tightly shut, hoping that might stop the usual tears from forming. But one persistent drip grew and seeped out anyway, its journey down my face unhindered by me. What difference did one more salty addition make when there’d been so many?

The usual leaden anvil of grief grew fat and ugly in my belly. All day and all night it would sit there, generating nausea, hopelessness and depression. I hated it, that damn grief. Why couldn’t it let up, just for a few minutes? Why did it tail me like a ball and chain?

I tried to shift my thoughts back to a few minutes ago when Matt had been with me, kissing me, touching me. So many times he had, more than I could count. What I wouldn’t do to be with him again, just once—just one night to say goodbye.

Was that too much to ask?

Of course it was.

A sudden rattle and the rev of an engine made me jump—the neighbors cutting their lawn at some ridiculous hour. I glanced at the clock. Well, it was gone ten, so I couldn’t really complain. For a moment I thought I’d had a good, long sleep, but who was I kidding? The sun had been washing the eastern sky pink before I’d even lain down.

Bracing myself, I sat. This was the first hurdle of the day, getting out of bed. Most people rose, put their feet on the floor, and that was it. They were off. But that chunk of lead in my stomach... It made this bit especially hard. For a while, it had been impossible. It was just too damn heavy, and I’d stayed in bed for days, weeks, waiting for it to lighten.

It hadn’t. Not in the least. But I’d learned how to get up again. It had to happen in careful stages. First I let the pain hit—I had to brace for that—then wait for it to settle. Once it had seeped into every pore and my brain had compartmentalized my reality into bite-sized snippets—yes, I’d be eating breakfast alone. No, he wouldn’t be meeting me for lunch. Yes, the bed would still be empty tonight—then I sat and placed my hands behind myself with my elbows locked, kind of like a prop for my torso.

When I sat, that was when I saw him. The picture of us on our wedding day still had pride of place on my dressing table. I’d wondered about moving it, putting it on the windowsill or even downstairs, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Perhaps it was torturous to have him smiling at me from a photograph when he never would again in real life. Maybe it was detrimental to the ‘healing process’. But I couldn’t help it. Looking at him in the morning was a compulsion. He’d been the start and end of my day for so many years. Why should I suddenly change that? How could I just ‘put him away’?

I liked his eyes in that particular picture. We’d been lucky on our wedding day. It had been beautifully sunny, not a cloud in the sky. After our vows, we’d had photographs with family members then, sneakily, before the reception, the photographer had taken us around the back of the church to stand beneath an archway made up of delicate pink roses. It had matched the flowers in my bouquet and hair perfectly. Matt had hugged me close and told me I even smelled of roses.

I’d laughed and asked him if he could cope with thorns. He’d replied, “No marriage is without a few thorns, Katie, but for better or for worse, good times or bad, we’re together now until death do us part.”

He’d kissed me on my right temple, and the close-up shot had been taken. His eyes had been dreamy, soft, their dark depths mellow and his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks.

I recalled his smooth, clean-shaven chin against my face as clearly as I remembered my next words, spoken through a smile. “We’ll still be together when we’re old and gray and one hundred and ten.”

How wrong I’d been.

I swung my feet to the floor and stared at my toenails—the dark pink nail varnish was hideously chipped—and forced myself to stand. There, that was it. I’d made it through the first painful moment of the day—only a million more to go.

I wandered into the bathroom, flicked on the shower and drowned out the sound of the mower. It was Saturday and I had the day off for a change so I didn’t have to worry about getting into work and finding a smile to wear.

To start with it had been okay for me to be sad, quiet, closed in on myself. But since the first anniversary of Matt’s accident had gone by ten months ago, I kind of got the feeling that people expected me to be ‘getting on with my life’, ‘pulling myself together’. Really? A year and ten months to get over losing the man I’d spent over half a decade in love with, whose babies I’d wanted to carry and who I’d seen myself with for all eternity? It seemed it was. But I didn’t have the energy to argue or try to justify the loss that still followed me everywhere, so I slapped on a smile, put a chirp in my voice and acted as if I cared about the goings-on in the shop.

The shower water was only just warm, but that was okay. The forecast had been for another scorcher, so starting off cool was a good plan. That’s what Matt and I had done on our honeymoon in Thailand. We’d had cooling showers several times a day to lower our body temperatures, although sometimes, if he’d snuck in beside me, it had gotten pretty damn steamy in the bathroom, even with the faucet turned to cold.

I smiled at the delicious memory and stepped out, dried, then pulled on knickers and a thin sundress that had a built-in bra. The lemon-colored cotton was soft on my skin, and I recalled wearing it to a candlelit seafood dinner on the beach in Koh Samui. It’d fit a bit nicer back then. I’d filled it out properly. Now the material at the chest gaped slightly and it drowned the thin flare of my hips. But Matt had liked it, so I still wore it.

After piling my hair high, I wandered into the kitchen. As I put the kettle on I heard the letterbox rattle. My heart gave a familiar flip. I’d been waiting nearly eight weeks to hear back from Brian Davis. Would today be the day?

The brown hessian doormat held the usual bills and junk mail, but there was one slim white envelope with my name, Katie Lansdale, printed on the front. Quickly, I ripped it open, pulled out a sheet of paper and saw the words Brian Davis, Private Detective, written in bold print at the top.

I juddered in a breath, willed myself to keep calm, not to tear the paper in my urgency to unfold and read. My knees were weak so I headed into the kitchen, forced myself to lay the letter on the table, then made a cup of tea. The ritual of milk, squeezing the bag then stirring settled my movements, if not my nerves.

Questions without answers spun in my head like a sticky web, each one leading to the next, but not if I couldn’t navigate the way. Would Brian have found anything out about the man who stomped through my thoughts? Had that man even survived this long? And if so, where was he now? In Britain? Europe? The other side of the world?

Eventually, tea made, kitchen door flung open to the back garden and the doves now pecking on the patio, I sat at our round kitchen table and unfolded the letter. The impulse to scan the sentences was strong, but I controlled it and started from the beginning, slowly, each word forming in my head.

Dear Mrs. Lansdale,

Further to our meeting on the 2nd of May, I have undertaken an investigation. Your request was unusual and did pose some ethical issues, but it seems fate has been on our side and I’ve found the man you seek.

He’d found him! I took a sip of tea, holding it over the table but away from the letter— my hand was shaking and I didn’t want to spill a drop and risk blurring any precious words.

His name is Ruben Strong, and as you were already aware, he is thirty-three years old.

From what I can gather, he is doing extremely well health-wise. He is a UK resident and lives in Northampton, England, working as a curator in the town’s park museum.

Since, as we discussed, address details cannot be revealed from health service documents, that is the extent of the information I can share. I trust that will satisfy your curiosity and have enclosed an invoice for the remainder of my fee, which should be settled within three weeks.

Personal Investigative Services

“Ruben Strong.” The name sounded hard and alien on my lips and so different from melodic Matthew Lincoln Lansdale. Yet he had a part of Matt. He was a part of Matt. I re- read the letter, soaking up the information anew. Northampton. That was only an hour away from Leicester. In fact, I was pretty sure the cosmetic shop I worked for had a branch in the town center there. Here was me thinking he could be anywhere in the world and he was only forty miles away.

And after all this time he was doing well.

That’s good, isn’t it? Yes, of course it is.

It meant something positive had come out of the senselessness of Matt’s death. He was dead, but someone else was alive. Not just alive but ‘doing extremely well’.

I read the letter twice more then picked up my tea and stood in the doorway, my shoulder huddled against the frame as I sipped and stared out at the garden. The doves sat side-by-side on the wooden bench, fussing each other’s feathers. The sun beat down on my dry and crinkled lawn. I’d been unkind to it and had forgotten to put the sprinkler on night after night. Matt would have remembered. He’d been good like that.

But I didn’t linger on the withered grass. Instead, I wondered if Ruben Strong was like his name—strong, big and tough. Not likely. Not if he’d needed a new heart and lungs. Maybe he’d had formidable strength once, but perhaps he’d always been sickly. He could have spent thirty-three years hoping someone would die in tragic circumstances so he’d get the chance of a normal life.

What must that feel like, to hope a stranger dies so you can live?

A bitter taste sat in my mouth. The tea wouldn’t wash it away. It was the unfairness of it that was sour. Why did anyone need to die or be ill in the first place? Young men, all in the prime of their lives, taken or about to be taken. I shut my eyes and tipped my face to the sky, wondered. What divine creator would dream up such unfair scenarios?

The sun beat down on me, unrelenting, unconcerned, just blistering. The neighbor thankfully turned off his cranky old mower.

I sighed then took a deep breath. The scent of summer filtered toward me—the pink roses that sat beneath the kitchen window were in full bloom. Matt had planted them on our first anniversary, and they were content in their south-facing position with the occasional jug of water thrown over them. I decided to cut several stems for the table. That was a normal thing to do, wasn’t it? Have a vase of flowers in the kitchen?

I swapped my empty mug for a pair of scissors and set about snipping. The velvety petals were a delicate baby pink and smaller than usual roses. Their heads were dainty and didn’t droop with weight. I gathered a dozen or so and stepped back into the shade of the house, already feeling a drip of perspiration in my cleavage.

After reaching for a glass vase then filling it with water, I dropped in the stems.

“Ouch. Bugger!” A thorn had caught on the inside of my index finger. Quickly, I sucked the drip of blood to take away the sting. As I stared at the haphazardly landed roses, an urge rushed into me. It was like getting hit by a moving object. It railroaded through my chest, swirled up that weight in my stomach—hurricane-style—and sent my heart rate rocketing.

I’d been a fool. A damn fool to think just knowing his name and where he worked would be enough. Didn’t I know anything about myself? Had I learned nothing about grief and its obsessive, dark, manipulative nature?

It was obvious I hadn’t. Because if the thorn in our marriage had been Matt’s death, the thorn in me now was that I’d be unable to rest until I’d seen Ruben Strong.