her and, even in extremis, a woman had her pride.
‘Did Grace McAllister manage to get hold of you, Josh?’
He’d flown direct to Sydney from Nepal, stopping at his office to pick up urgent messages before going home to catch up on sleep.
‘Grace?’ He frowned, looking up from the list of messages his PA handed him. ‘Grace rang me?’
‘Last week. Sunday. I gave her the Hong Kong numbers but I knew you’d be on the move so I gave her your cellphone number, too,’ she said. ‘She said it was urgent. I hope I did the right thing.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, reassuring her.
Last week? On Sunday he’d been in the mountains, thinking about his brother. Thinking about Grace. There had been a message alert on his phone, but he’d ignored it….
‘I dropped the damn thing off a mountain. Can you get me a replacement?’ Then, ‘Did Grace say why she was calling?’
‘Only that it was urgent. It’s the middle of the night there now,’ she reminded him as he picked up the phone, hit the fast dial for her number.
‘It doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t have called unless it was…’ He stopped as the call went immediately to the answering machine.
“This is Grace McAllister. I’m sorry that I can’t take your call at the moment. Due to a family bereavement, all classes have been cancelled until further notice. Please check the Web site for further details.”
Bereavement?
He felt the blood drain from his face, put out a hand to grasp the desk. Posie…
It had to be Posie. Small babies were so vulnerable. Meningitis, cot death… After so many years of waiting, so much heartache.
‘Cancel everything, Anna. Get me on the next available flight to London,’ he said, dialling his brother’s number.
Someone whose voice sounded familiar, but wasn’t Michael, wasn’t Phoebe, wasn’t Grace, answered the phone.
‘It’s Josh Kingsley,’ he said.
There was a momentary hiatus and then she was there—Grace, her familiar voice saying his name.
‘Josh…’
It was all it took to stir up feelings that he’d done his level best to suppress. But this last year he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head….
‘Josh, I’ve been trying to get hold of you….’
‘I know. I rang your number. Heard your message,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘What’s happened? Who died?’
He heard her take a long shuddering breath.
‘Grace!’
‘There was an accident. Michael, Phoebe… They were both killed.’
For a moment he was too stunned to speak. His brother was dead. ‘When? How?’
‘Last Sunday morning. I’ve been calling, leaving messages. When you didn’t get back to me I thought… I thought…’
‘No!’ The word was wrenched from him. He knew what she’d thought and why, but it didn’t hurt any less to know that she could believe him so heartless.
But then she already believed that.
She had been so happy that she was having a baby for her sister, couldn’t understand why he’d been so desperate to stop her. And he hadn’t been able to tell her.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘The police said that the car skidded on a slick of mud. It went through a fence and then it rolled. It happened early in the morning and no one found them…’
‘The baby, Grace,’ he pressed urgently. ‘Posie…’
‘What? No! She wasn’t with them. She was here with me. Michael and Phoebe were away for the weekend. It was their wedding anniversary but they left the hotel early. They couldn’t wait to get back….’
Long before she’d stumbled to a halt, he’d clamped his hand over his mouth to hold in the cry of pain.
‘Josh?’
‘It’s okay. I’m okay,’ he managed. ‘How are you coping?’
‘One breath at a time,’ she said. ‘One minute. One hour…’
He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, but in a situation like this words were meaningless. And in any case she would know exactly how he was feeling. They were faced with the same loss. Or very nearly the same.
Grace wouldn’t have to live with his guilt….
Instead, he kept to the practical. He should have been there to deal with this, make the necessary arrangements, but it had been over a week already.
‘Who’s with you? What arrangements have been made? When is the…’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.
‘We buried them on Friday, Josh. Your father insisted on going ahead and, when you didn’t call back, no one could reach you…’ He heard her swallow, fight down tears, then she furiously said,
‘Where were you?’
‘Grace…’
He looked up as his PA returned. ‘There’s a car waiting to take you to the airport. You have to leave now,’ she said, handing him a replacement BlackBerry.
‘Grace, I’m leaving now for the airport.’ Then, ‘Keep breathing until I get there.’
Grace let Elspeth take the phone from her as she leaned weakly against the wall.
‘Maybe you could get some sleep now,’ she said gently, handing her the pills the doctor had left when he’d called after hearing the news. ‘You’ve left plenty of milk in the fridge for Posie. I’ll manage if you want to take a rest.’
‘I know.’ She put the pills in her pocket, knowing she wouldn’t take them. She didn’t want to go to sleep because when she woke she knew there would be a moment when she’d think it was just another day.
Then she’d remember and have to live through the loss all over again.
But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she hugged her and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘We’re here, Mr Kingsley.’
Josh glanced up at the façade of the tall Georgian town house that Michael had bought when he had married Phoebe McAllister. It was a proper family home with a basement and an attic and three floors in between. Endless rooms that they’d planned to fill with children.
Instead,
