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Heather’s voice was clearly recognisable through the closed guest room door. Gaby tried not to listen as she brushed her hair, but there wasn’t much chance of escaping the exchange between father and daughter.
‘It’ll be good for you to get to know some of your classmates better. You’ve been there half a term and you haven’t made any friends.’
‘Good for who? You just don’t want me here!’
‘Heather! You know that’s not true!’
The only answer Luke got was the slam of Heather’s bedroom door.
Gaby closed her eyes. She felt like collecting her car this morning, then driving back to London at eighty miles an hour, without stopping. She wanted to tell Luke she couldn’t take the job after all. It was all too close, too raw. What if she couldn’t do this?
But if she left, Heather and Luke would be separated again and their relationship might not survive. The thought that she might be able to turn the tide and see father and daughter happy together made her wrap all of her own feelings of insecurity in a bundle and pack them away somewhere dark inside herself.
Luke had offered her a lift down to the village to get her car. Not because it was too far to walk, but because it was drizzling on and off and her most sensible shoes were still slightly damp from the day before.
When Gaby got outside, Heather was already in the back seat of the Range Rover, arms folded and looking as if she were willing it to sink into the mud. Luke locked up the house, opened the driver’s door and got in without a word.
She turned to smile at her charge and Heather rolled her eyes. Gaby pressed her lips together to stop herself smiling. She wasn’t going to encourage Heather to be cheeky, but she was glad the girl saw her as an ally, not another enemy.
It was only a matter of minutes before the Range Rover had ploughed through the muddy lane and arrived in the village. Luke pulled in near to the jetty to let Gaby out.
‘Just out of interest, why exactly did you leave your car over the other side of the river and get the ferry over?’
Gaby shuffled in her seat and bent to pick her handbag up from the footwell. ‘Well…it’s a little difficult to drive and navigate at the same time in these lanes.’
‘In other words, you got lost.’
‘No! Well, just a bit. I was following directions for Lower Hadwell. I just didn’t notice the little boat on the signs.’
Luke sighed. It was a world-weary noise that said typical very eloquently. Why couldn’t he just laugh at her, like the ferryman had? She could handle that. He shook his head and pulled out of the parking place.
Where were they going now?
Obviously Luke had made an executive decision of some kind and didn’t think it was worth discussing with a dimwit like her. She was tempted to roll her eyes à la Heather, but she just clutched her handbag with rather more force than necessary and looked out of the window. They were climbing up the steep hill that led out of the village.
‘Where are we going? I need to get my car.’
Luke didn’t bother looking at her when he replied. In fact, it seemed as if he was taking it as a personal affront that she should dare ask. ‘I’m going to drop Heather off at Jodi Allford’s, then we are going to get the ferry and fetch your car round.’
‘We?’
‘I don’t want my new nanny ending up in Cornwall when I need her here.’
She glanced across to see if that was a joke. His mouth was set in a hard line.
He was treating her like a child! And if this was only a fraction of what he dished out to Heather, she could see why father and daughter were getting along so famously. Talk about a complete sense of humour failure!
But then, this man didn’t have a lot to smile about. Her fingers loosened their grip on her innocent bag. She wasn’t being fair.
‘Are you going to navigate, then?’
‘That’s the plan. Don’t worry. You’re not putting me out. We’ll pass through Totnes and I was intending to go to the bank there this morning anyway.’
Her put him out!
Old resentments bubbled below the surface. She did not need another man treating her as if she only had one brain cell. She slumped down into her seat and fumed. No would you mind if I came along…? or what do you think if…? She ought to tell him to drive himself to the flipping bank. She could do just fine on her own.
Instead she just nodded and said, ‘Okay.’
Then she rolled her eyes at herself. Why did she always do this? Swallow what she really wanted to say and give the nice, polite, acceptable answer?
That little exchange set the tone for the whole journey. Luke merely nodded at Ben, the ferryman, when they hopped aboard his little boat, and he hadn’t said much more than ‘next left’ and ‘second exit’ since they’d driven away from the quay in her battered old car.
There was hardly any traffic in the lanes this time of year and Gaby had time to let her mind wander. What was wrong with Luke this morning? Yesterday evening, once the storm with Heather had blown over, he’d been polite and, while not chatty, she’d thought they’d begun to form an acceptable sort of working relationship. Even outbursts of frustration were better than this stony silence. He seemed so distant.
‘Straight on at the crossroads.’
There it was again! That little edge in his voice that made it seem like an order and not a request. As she slowed to wait at the junction, she looked sideways at him. His face was blank and he was staring straight ahead.
At least he wasn’t criticising her driving. David had always had something to say about how fast she was going. Well, how slow, to be exact. He always had an opinion on how things ought to be done. But he’d seemed so charming and knowledgeable in the early days of their relationship—and she’d been so young—that she’d deferred to him on everything. He’d been her husband, after all, and she’d wanted to make him happy.
A little dig here, a cutting remark there, and David had moulded her into the image of the perfect corporate wife. And the really tragic thing was she’d let him, without hesitation or question, because she’d been so stupidly grateful a dashing young banker like him had even looked at her, let alone wanted to marry her.
She suspected now he’d just seen her as a blank canvas. And when they’d separated she’d gone about changing herself, scrubbing away the traces of his influence on her.
She’d lost quite a bit of weight. That had given her a grim satisfaction. David had always made little remarks about how she should get down the gym more. And now she dressed how she wanted to dress, in comfortable clothes, not a designer label or a gold earring in sight.
She had never really loved him, she knew that now. She’d just been so terrified of losing him that she’d erased her own personality. And, in doing so, she’d paved the path to rejection herself. He’d run off with Cara, a career woman, who was exciting and intelligent and unconventional…All the things she wasn’t, according to David.
She’d become a suburban version of Frankenstein’s monster. A patchwork person, put together with all the right bits in the right places, but somehow the life—the spirit—had been missing.
Luke’s voice boomed in her ear. ‘I said, “Get into the right-hand lane.”’
‘What?’ She came to and realised they’d reached the outskirts of a town. ‘Sorry. Must have drifted off.’ She didn’t look at him, but she could tell he was giving her a long hard stare. When he thought he’d made his point, he folded his arms and looked straight ahead.
She turned right, following his directions, and managed to park near the town centre without further embarrassment. Luke unfolded his long frame from the passenger seat and got out, slamming the door as he did so. When she’d finished untangling her handbag strap from around the gear stick and joined him, she found him staring down the street.
‘I’ll meet you back here in half an hour,’ he said and marched off without looking back.
He walked into the car park and spotted her leaning against the car, a crowd of shopping bags at her feet. She looked like so many of the other shoppers in her jeans and hooded jacket. If he hadn’t been looking out for her, he probably wouldn’t have given her a second glance. She looked quite ordinary.
But he was looking out for her. And, as he looked more closely, he noticed something. Even without make-up and her hair scragged into a ponytail, she looked fresh and vibrant—not in the same way as Lucy, who’d been packed so full of restless energy she had hardly been able to contain it—but in the sense that she seemed full of untapped potential. On the cusp of something. He envied her that.
He’d expected to shed the sense of hopelessness with the regulation uniform when he’d walked out the prison gates. But it still weighed him down and he didn’t know how to shake it off. And now, here was this woman doing it all so effortlessly. He wasn’t sure whether he was fascinated or frustrated.
She turned to him as he neared the car and he said something—anything—to hide his confusion. ‘What have you got in those? Clothes?’
‘Food.’
‘But we don’t need any—’
‘Luke, I looked in your freezer this morning. It’s full of cardboard boxes and shrink-wrapped nasties. It’s about time you and Heather ate something with nutrients in it. Goodness knows, it might improve both your moods.’
Luke was about to protest that his mood was just fine, thank you very much, but then he remembered how tightly clenched his intestines were all the time and how Heather just had to give him one of her glares and his head would swim with the effort of keeping a lid on his temper.
He grunted and saw a small smile appear on Gaby’s lips.
‘Just you wait. Your taste buds will sing.’
‘Pretty full of yourself, aren’t you?’
Still, she was probably right. The food inside had been even worse than the contents of his freezer. In comparison, the ready meals tasted like ambrosia. Perhaps he shouldn’t have subjected his growing daughter to such a limited diet.
‘I didn’t hire you to cook, you know. I’m not paying you any extra.’
‘I like cooking. And besides you did hire me to look after Heather. And I feel I would be failing miserably if I let her eat fast food and junk all day long.’
‘I’ve looked after Heather just fine up until now, thank you.’
‘I didn’t mean…’
She rummaged in her pockets and pulled out the car keys. He watched her unlock the car, shaking her head as she did so, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to answer him.
He picked up the shopping bags and put them in the boot. He hadn’t meant to bite her head off like that. It was just that he should have thought of the quality of the food he was giving his daughter, not left it up to a stranger who’d been in their lives less than twenty-four hours. It was just another area he was failing in.
He wanted to say sorry, but the words wouldn’t come. Too many years of burying all sense of civility had left their toll on him. It had been too dangerous to show any sign of weakness, so he’d had to act tough to survive. He’d blithely thought that, once he was home, he’d be able to flick a switch and return to the man he’d once been, but it wasn’t that simple. What had once been a choice had now become a habit.
As they climbed in the car and drove away, he looked across at Gaby. Two little creases had appeared between her eyebrows while she concentrated on the winding roads. He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. He’d been like a bear with a sore head this morning and she’d just taken it. No screaming, no temper tantrums. She seemed to understand that he was struggling with a new addition to the household and gave him space accordingly.
He cranked the handle by his side to open the window a little. The air was cold and very fresh, but he needed a break from the smell of her. Nothing fancy. No perfume or expensive cosmetics, just the scent of a clean woman. A good woman. She had to be a saint to take his family on. And perhaps this good woman could help him remember how to be a good father. Once it had been so effortless.
But that was the problem. He wanted Gaby here for all the obvious practical reasons, but a part of him was resisting her presence. There was something about her that eroded his barriers while he didn’t even notice. He’d laughed with her. Had actually laughed. He’d opened up with her. Those kinds of things were dangerous. If he didn’t look out his iron-plating would buckle and then he’d lose control—and that would be no good at all for Heather.
However much this Gaby made him want to breathe out and smile, he had to resist it.
‘Next left.’
Gaby didn’t move.
‘Gaby, I said next left! Now look…We’ve gone past the turning. You’ll have to stop in the passing place up ahead, then go back.’
He watched her fingers tighten over the gear stick and she jerked it into place. His eyes widened slightly.
So, he was getting to her. Perhaps she wasn’t as au fait with his sore-headed-bear routine as he’d thought. Well, good! It would be easier to keep her at arm’s length that way. Then he wouldn’t be bothered by her clean smell and the warmth in her eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
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.
