Her Parenthood Assignment

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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.’