Читать книгу Be My Baby: Her Parenthood Assignment / Three Weddings and a Baby - Фиона Харпер - Страница 13

A LASAGNE was bubbling away in the oven. Gaby fished her mobile phone out of her pocket and dialled a number while she had a spare minute.

‘Hello, Mum. It’s me.’

‘Good grief, Gabrielle. What are you doing calling at this hour? You know we always sit down to dinner at six-thirty sharp. Your father will only get difficult if his soup goes cold.’

‘Sorry, Mum. This won’t take long.’

‘Well? What’s the emergency?’

‘I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be away for a while.’

‘Oh, good heavens! You’re not going on holiday with that Jules you share a flat with, are you? She seems the sort to get into trouble in a foreign country, if you ask me. Always got too much flesh on display.’

Gaby closed her eyes, took a deep breath and answered. ‘No, Mum. I’m not going away with Jules.’

‘Just as well. I don’t know, Gabrielle. Your father and I didn’t raise you to go gallivanting off at the drop of a hat. I just don’t know what to think since you broke it off with David.’

‘Mum, David was the one who—’

‘Well, that’s beside the point, isn’t it? I don’t know why you can’t make another go of it—let bygones be bygones. Goodness knows, your brother and Hattie have had their problems, but they’ve been able to make it work. Look at them now, two lovely boys and another baby on the way. You’re running out of time, you know, if you want a family. And at your age it’s going to be hard to find a nice man to take you on with all your history.’

Gaby tuned her mother out and made the appropriate noises at the appropriate moments. Why did every conversation always end up with her mother pointing out that she wasn’t making a success of her life like her golden-boy brother? Next to him she just felt ordinary.

Once her mother had given up on her following Justin to Cambridge, she’d hatched a plan to train her up as a nanny and pack her off to look after Lord and Lady So-and-so’s kids. What a coup that had been at her afternoon teas.

Gaby sighed. She’d done everything she could to make her parents proud of her, but it was never good enough. She even wondered whether one of the reasons she’d married David, one of Justin’s university buddies, had just been so she could bask in some of the reflected glory.

She was jerked back to the present by the raised pitch in her mother’s voice. ‘I’m going to have to dash. Your father has just started bellowing.’

‘Bye, Mum. Send my love to—’

But her mother had rung off. Gaby walked over to the fridge, still staring at her phone. Her mother hadn’t even asked where she was going, or how long for. She popped the phone back in her jeans pocket and got on with making the salad dressing. There was a creak by the door as she measured out the vinegar.

Luke.

She wasn’t sure how she knew it was him, she just sensed it. She carried on pouring the oil into the dressing mixture and waited for him to say something. The fine hairs on the back of her neck started to lift and she became so self-conscious she whisked the dressing into a tornado.

In the end, she couldn’t stand it any more and she turned slowly. Her eyes met his.

‘Is there anything I can do to help, Gaby?’

She shook her head. ‘No. It’s just about ready. You could call Heather, though, if you like?’

He just stood in the doorway and kept looking at her. She looked back, doing her best not to fidget. And then he disappeared without saying anything. A shadow seemed to hover in the doorway where he’d been standing, as if the intensity of his presence had left an imprint in the air. The whisk in her hand was hanging in mid-air, dripping dressing on the floor. She quickly plopped it back in the jug and reached for the kitchen towel.

By the time Luke returned with Heather, the lasagne was on the table and Gaby was ready and waiting with an oven mitt in one hand and a serving spoon in the other. Heather slid into a seat and eyed the serving dish suspiciously. Gaby gave her a small portion, then spooned a generous helping on to a plate for Luke.

She waited, eyebrows raised and spoon poised to cut through the pasta, waiting for him to signal if he wanted more. He nodded so enthusiastically that Gaby couldn’t help but smile as she dolloped another spoonful on to his plate and passed it across.

‘Do start,’ she said, serving herself.

The Armstrongs weren’t ones to stand on ceremony, it seemed. Both Luke and Heather started to demolish their dinner without further hesitation. Gaby, however, took her time and watched. She tried with difficulty to keep the corners of her mouth from turning up as Luke closed his eyes and let out a small growl of pleasure. It was the first time she’d seen him genuinely forget his troubles and live in the moment.

She shook her head and stared at her own plate. Get real, Gaby! A nice lasagne is hardly going to undo five years of emotional torment. But when she looked up at Luke and Heather, both on the verge of clearing their plates, she couldn’t help feeling just a little triumphant.

‘This is even better than Granny’s,’ said Heather, her mouth only half empty before she shoved in another forkful.

‘I thought you were boasting this afternoon, but you were right. My taste buds are serenading you. Where on earth did you learn to cook like this?’

Gaby flushed with stupid pride. Luke’s approval shouldn’t matter. He was talking about her cooking, not passing judgement on her as a person. She really needed to calm down. ‘Just cooking courses at the local adult education college.’

Six of them. Including the Cordon Bleu one. David had insisted. He’d liked the idea of hosting dinner parties for his business associates. But he’d never savoured her food the way Luke was doing now, as if every bite was a small piece of heaven. Perhaps their marriage would have been salvageable if he had, but everything had been too salty, lumpy or cold for David.

Not for the first time, she sighed with relief that catering to David’s fussy eating habits was now Cara’s job. Or perhaps it wasn’t. She doubted that Superwoman did anything as mundane as cooking. The thought of David tucking into a plastic-wrapped meal with his silver-plated cutlery made her feel strangely warm inside.

A small smile still lingered on her face as she started to stack the plates at the end of the meal. This kitchen seemed warm and inviting and cooking for Luke and Heather had been a joy. She’d thought she’d be treading on eggshells while she stayed at the Old Boathouse, but it all felt very natural.

She balanced the plates on top of the serving dish and picked the pile up, only to find Luke step towards her and place his hands over the top of hers. The tingle where their fingers made contact was unexpected—so unexpected that her smile flickered out and she stared hard at the pile of dishes and tangle of fingers. They both went very still.

The tingling got worse and she gripped harder.

‘Thank you, Gaby. I really appreciate you doing that for us. It was the best meal I’ve had in a long time.’

Now pins and needles were travelling right up her arms until they broke through her skin in big pink blotches on her neck. She could feel it. That always happened when she was…

‘I’ll do the dishes,’ he said, giving the stack a little tug.

She nodded her response. The words wouldn’t come.

He smiled. ‘You need to let go of the plates, then.’

‘Of course.’ But her fingers were blatantly ignoring his very logical suggestion. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’

Then, before she knew it, fingers and dishes were whisked away. She wiped the remnants of the tingles away on the front of her jeans.

‘How do you take it?’ she asked him as the last of the plates were being stacked on the rack and the kettle was bubbling madly.

Luke dried his hands and looked over his shoulder. ‘Black, one sugar.’

The same as she did.

Somewhere inside, all the silliness to do with plates and fingers and lasagne and black with one sugar consolidated into a glow in the pit of her stomach. She tried to quench it, but the embers warmed her all the same.

She handed Luke his coffee and started to walk out of the room with her own.

‘Gaby?’

She turned.

‘Aren’t you going to stay and drink it in here?’

‘Um. No. I’ve got…things I need to do. Upstairs.’ She looked up at the ceiling and caught her breath. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Luke. I think I need an early night.’

He sat down at the table and supported his chin with his hand.

‘Okay, then,’ he said, breaking eye contact. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Gaby took a short trip back to London the next weekend to collect more of her things, and to let Jules know she wouldn’t need her spare room for a while. Jules was a friend from her art classes at the adult education centre.

She’d been lovely while the divorce had been going through and had offered Gaby her spare room when the marital home had been sold and Gaby had needed somewhere to stay while she’d looked for something more permanent.

She suspected she’d been cramping her flatmate’s style recently. Jules had just started dating a guy she’d had a crush on for months, and would probably be glad of the extra privacy.

Since most of Gaby’s larger possessions were already in storage, it was just a case of packing a couple of bags and she’d be ready to go. She was just stuffing the last few bits into a holdall when the phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Gabrielle?’

‘Mum!’

‘I thought you were going away with that Jules person.’

‘No, Mum. I—’ Hang on a second. ‘Why are you calling if you thought I’d be away?’

‘It’s obvious, dear. I was going to leave a message on your answer phone about Justin’s birthday for when you get back.’

‘Justin’s birthday,’ she said slowly. That wasn’t for another two months.

‘Just so you don’t double-book yourself.’

Of course. Harriet was having one of her big parties, but then Harriet always made a fuss about Justin’s birthday.

‘Well, Mum, I’ve got a new job. I’m not sure I’m going to—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t miss your own brother’s party. It’s the sixteenth, dear. Are you writing it down?’

‘Of course, I am,’ Gaby replied, looking at the pad on her beside table and doing nothing to move towards it.

‘I’ll be in touch in a few weeks to fill you in on all the details. Bye now.’

Then all Gaby could hear was the dial tone purring in her ear.

Luke tugged frantically on the strings of the kite, but it was too late. It fell out of the air and crashed on to the deserted beach. He sighed and trudged towards it. Gaby might be a bit of a shrinking violet at times, but she could talk an Eskimo into buying snow, and what was more, he’d love her for it!

This outing to the beach with Heather had been her idea.

You’re not working this Sunday, she’d said. The weather report says it’s going to be sunny but windy, she’d said. Great weather for flying kites. Heather would love it…

And before he knew it, he was buying a multicoloured contraption in town and spending his Sunday afternoon watching it nosedive into the shingle again and again.

Heather had lost interest after ten minutes. So now he was left to keep up the pretence while she and Gaby wandered along the shore, arm in arm, and collected shells and bits of quartz.

He stopped to watch them. They were deep in conversation, sharing girl-type secrets, no doubt. His heart squeezed a little. Gaby had made such a difference to their home in the last three weeks. He still had to duck when Heather was in a foul mood, but more and more she was laughing and smiling, and he’d even caught her singing to herself.

He could see glimpses of the happy little girl she’d once been. That same cheeky smile she’d had, aged three, when she knew she’d said something funny or cute. The way she stroked a strand of her own hair when she was tired.

And it was all down to Gaby. He couldn’t take credit for the tiniest bit of it. All he managed was to stretch his mouth into a smile when it was required, and to say the right things—as if he were reading from a script—and watch his daughter blossom.

Gaby was getting closer and closer to Heather and, miracle of miracles, Heather was letting her.

And, all the while, he stayed on the fringes and watched. He was just as much on the outside of his daughter’s life as he’d been all those years behind bars. Why he couldn’t work his way into the centre—where all the laughter and warmth was—was more than he could fathom.

He watched as Gaby and Heather broke into a run and chased each other along the edge of the surf. The wind was cold and it blew their scarves in front of their faces, which only made them laugh all the more.

How did she do it?

The woman he’d thought at first seemed ordinary, nothing special, had the ability to reach out to a heart and see it respond. A very rare thing indeed. He caught himself studying her, trying to work out what her secret was, where all that warmth and courage came from.

He alternated between admiring her and hating her for it.

He tore his gaze away and returned it to the kite lying a short distance away on the small round pebbles. It seemed injured, lying there fluttering half-heartedly. He walked over and surveyed it with dismay.

The two figures walking along the shore hadn’t even seen it crash.

It was all in a tangle and he didn’t know what to do with it.

Heather sat in the passenger seat of Gaby’s car and fiddled with the catch on the glove compartment.

‘Come on, Heather. You’re going to be late if you don’t actually get out of the car and walk through the gates.’

Heather grimaced and opened and shut the glove compartment a few more times. ‘Twenty’ she said, casting Gaby a weary look.

Okay. Heather was taking a cryptic tack again. Gaby was getting used to this. Heather had problems expressing her fears. Rather than blurting out how she felt, she would leave a trail of crumbs, making her interrogator work for answers she was actually desperate to give. But they didn’t have time for this; the school bell was going to ring in less than a minute.

‘Twenty what, Heather?’ Twenty more slams of the glove box and the whole car would fall apart? She took hold of Heather’s hand gently and removed it from the glove box catch. Heather pulled her hand away and tucked it under the school bag on her lap.

‘Twenty school days until the Easter break.’

Gaby’s heart went out to her, it really did, but she could see where Heather was going with this, and there was no way she was going to let the girl manipulate her. She was going to school today, and that was that.

‘It won’t be as bad as you think, sweetheart.’

‘How would you know? It was probably at least a hundred years since you were at school! You don’t know anything about it. Nobody does.’

Heather was giving her what Gaby always referred to as a laser vision stare—thanks to Luke’s apt description. She refused to take the bait, especially now she’d worked out that Heather created conflict when she didn’t get her own way. So she leaned across, pulled the handle and opened the door for her.

‘Come on, miss. Out. One foot in front of the other, walk through the door, sit your bottom on a chair and stay there. It’s not hard. And then, when you come out again, it’ll be nineteen days and counting.’

Heather flounced from the car, as only a disgruntled pre-teen could, dragging her bag behind her.

‘I’ll see you after netball practice,’ Gaby yelled after her. But Heather was too busy ploughing a path though her schoolmates to hear.

She pulled the door closed and started the car. Heather was making progress, but there was still a long way to go. She and Luke were enjoying a turbulent truce. They still didn’t know how to resolve their differences when a spat erupted, but at least in the in-between times she could see they were both trying.

Although she was very fond of Heather, she was determined to keep a professional distance. There were so many reasons why she couldn’t afford to lose her heart to this needy little girl and her silently aching father.

Distance. That was what they all needed. Luke certainly needed time and space to sort himself out. At least, that was the reason she gave herself for keeping out of his way in the evenings, and always, always leaving the dinner plates on the table for him to clear away.

Back at the Old Boathouse, she parked her car near the back door and let herself in. Seven and a half hours until she had to pick Heather up. It seemed an awfully long time. But she had a shopping list to write and she might as well check whether Heather had put her school uniform from last week in the laundry basket, rather than stuffing it under her bed.

By noon her shopping list was written in a small neat hand and every last sock of Heather’s had been accounted for and deposited in the washing machine. The beds were made, a pot of home-made soup sat bubbling on the hob and she had organised the contents of the freezer.

She sat at the spotlessly clean kitchen table and stared out of the window. It was a typically grey March day. Even so, the colours on the river here were wonderful. Steel greys, mossy greens and slate blues. And the light!

There was inspiration everywhere you looked, no matter the time of day or the weather. When she was younger, she’d have been out there on the beach, brush in hand, like a shot.

Gaby sat up a little straighter.

Why not? What was there to stop her? She’d missed the watercolour classes she’d taken while married to David. Since the divorce she’d had neither the time nor the money to lavish on things like that. But with Heather in school most of the week, she’d have plenty of time to unearth a talent she thought she’d buried for good, and still get all her work done. She jumped up, grabbed her keys and drove into town grinning all the way.

Down a cobbled street she found a shop selling art supplies. She emerged with a carrier bag full of paint tubes, brushes, paper and her head full of ideas for her first project.

She wandered through the town without really paying attention to where she was going and found herself in Bayard’s Cove, a little dead end street near the ferry. One side was open to the river, and a squat, ruined turret of an old fort built to guard the estuary sat where the road ended.

She dipped down and entered the fort through its low doorway. A row of arched windows framed the view up to Dartmouth Castle on the rolling headland.

She would just fit nicely in one of those arches, she decided. Soon her legs were dangling over the ledge, the water lapping below. She pulled a sketch pad and pencil out of her shopping bag and set to work capturing what she saw: bulbous clouds pushing across the sky like an armada, sail boats criss-crossing the water and the higgledy-piggledy houses of Kingswear on the other side of the river.

This was heaven. It had been so long since she’d done something just for her own pleasure. What started out as a quick sketch, rapidly grew in scale and detail. It was only when she glanced up and noticed the light was starting to fade that she checked her watch. Four o’clock. She had time to head home, drop off her bags, then run up to collect Heather from netball practice.

She took a second to consider her sketch, then flipped the pad closed, praying the traffic warden hadn’t slapped a ticket on her windscreen while she’d been sketching.

When she returned to the Old Boathouse, she was surprised to see Luke’s car parked at an angle in the lane. He wasn’t due home until at least seven o’clock. She wanted to show him what she’d been up to, so she fished the pad out of her bag as she walked up to the back door. Once in the mud room, she called out, ‘Hi there! What are you doing back so—?’

The look on Luke’s face as she entered the lounge brought her up short.

‘Where the hell have you been?’