by Fiona Harper
Gaby frowned. Another rogue thought of her ex intruded. The only time she’d been to Venice had been with David. He’d liked the first-class holidays and exotic destinations. Although she suspected it was more for the dinner party stories he could tell later, than for the experience itself. He hadn’t stopped moaning the week they’d stayed in Venice; it had sucked all the joy out of it for her.
Both Gaby and Heather didn’t need to be called when dinner was ready. Smells were emanating from the kitchen and Gaby’s tummy suddenly rumbled. She hadn’t stopped to eat on the journey down here—not even a plastic sandwich at a service station. She’d been too intent on making it to Lower Hadwell before dark.
They arrived back in the kitchen just in time to see Luke slapping pizza slices on to plates. Her appetite took a nosedive. It looked like the worst sort of convenience food. Luke and Heather didn’t seem to mind. They attacked their share with relish.
Gaby gingerly put a slice to her lips. Anaemic cheese and a cardboard base. Yuck! Still, she wasn’t going to be rude. She took as big a bite as she dared and chewed the minimum amount of times before swallowing.
‘Is there any salad?’
Two pairs of eyes locked on to her. She might as well have asked them if they wanted a side order of slugs. Vegetables were obviously a foreign concept in this household.
‘Never mind. This is…lovely.’
She looked out of the window to try and take her mind off the artificial taste. The sky was a beautiful slate-blue. It was getting quite dark. Suddenly she stopped chewing and scanned the kitchen for a wall clock.
She gulped down her mouthful. ‘What time is it?’
Luke looked at his watch. ‘Just gone six.’
Drat! Just when she’d thought the day couldn’t get any more complicated.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘I think I just missed the last ferry.’
Luke put his pizza slice down. ‘You came over on the ferry?’
‘I left my car across the river.’ She stood up. ‘It’s a long story. I’m not very good with…If I run, do you think I can catch the ferry guy?’
She started off in search of her shoes. Luke followed her into what Heather had called the ‘mud room’ during their tour.
‘It’s too late. Ben will be in the Ferryboat Inn by now and the only thing that’ll move him is the bell for last orders.’
Gaby dropped her face into her hands and massaged the kinks out of her forehead. ‘Today was not supposed to be like this!’ Her return to being a nanny was going to be marked by a new, calm professionalism. Not ferries and mud and little girls with big round eyes. Suddenly everything felt so tangled and messy.
Luke’s voice was taut. ‘Are you saying you don’t want the job?’
‘Yes!…No. I mean, I’m not sure I’m what you and Heather are looking for. I need time to think.’
Silence.
Her hands dropped to her sides. He was staring at her, but he didn’t look angry, he just looked…defeated.
‘Of course, I understand your decision. Not everyone is comfortable taking on a family with a history like ours. That narrowed down the candidates considerably in the first place.’ He swallowed. ‘Heather will just have to go and stay with her grandparents while I sort something out.’
Now it was her turn to swallow. The look on his face was all her fault.
‘Are you sure you can’t stay, Gaby? I know it might not look like it, but Heather has taken a shine to you. She didn’t manage to speak at all to the other interviewees. She just grunted and tried to evaporate them with her laser vision.’
Gaby let out a little giggle. Luke seemed completely taken aback, as if he’d forgotten he could be funny and had just surprised himself. She put a hand over her mouth and tried to stifle her growing smile. It was no good. The smile accelerated into a laugh.
‘I can just see it!’ she blurted between giggles. ‘Heather plotting to put crabs in their beds…’
And then Luke was laughing too. That was all she needed. It started her off again. And while she leant against the wall for support, her mind drifted free and she wondered if this was the same kind of hysterical laughter that attacked people at funerals, because there truly wasn’t anything to laugh about.
The laughter finally ebbed away and they stood there looking at each other in the gathering gloom. Luke sobered.
‘It’s a pity. I have the feeling you could be very good for us…for Heather, I mean.’
Gaby felt her heart beating in her chest and knew she was going to say something truly stupid.
‘I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.’
CHAPTER THREE
LUKE checked the digital clock on the oven. Five forty-five. Much too early to make breakfast, or wake Heather, or do anything else he could think of to fill the time. He carefully opened the kitchen door and went outside.
It was dark, really dark. He still hadn’t got used to that. In prison, there had always been the harsh yellow glow of a bulb somewhere. Always a clang, or a hum, or a shout to break the silence.
Here on the river it was completely still. The water was glassy and inky black, reflecting the myriad stars above. On a clear night here you couldn’t even see the main constellations, there were so many stars in the sky. Like now, he could see the dusty sweep of the Milky Way and, if he kept really still, sometimes he could see a satellite cutting its way through the overcrowded sky in a clean even line.
He shivered and looked back at the water. He couldn’t spend too long watching the sky when it was like this. It felt too big.
If only he could sleep better. It might stop him feeling as if he had to hold himself together, as if the world had too many possibilities and he had to stop himself from thinking about all the choices, the different avenues life could take. Right now he had to concentrate on being still, on being solid. On being someone Heather could depend on.
Having Gaby here was going to help. He looked up at the guest room windows and envied the long, unbroken sleep she was having. There had been nothing for it but to have her stay the night. Her car was the other side of the river and there was nowhere to stay in the village. He supposed she would have to return home and collect some things before she moved in full time.
Thank heavens she’d changed her mind at the last minute. He was starting work at the medical centre next week and, if he hadn’t managed to sort something out, Heather would have had to stay with Lucy’s parents again, and then they’d be back to square one.
Since it was low tide again, he went down the steps outside the kitchen and on to the beach, careful to keep close to the house so the lights from the kitchen gave him some idea of where he was treading.
Heather had changed so much in the last few years. When he’d left, she’d been in her first year of school. Her uniform had been too big and Lucy always used to do her hair in cute little bunches.
Lucy’s parents had brought her to see him on visiting days and he’d seen her change over the years. Not smoothly and slowly, hardly noticing the little differences, but in fits and starts, like flicking through a series of snapshots. He smiled when he thought of the time she’d arrived and shown him her first missing tooth, announcing proudly, ‘Look Daddy, my tongue has a window!’
Over time, the gaps between visits had got longer. Her grandparents had begun to send notes saying it was upsetting Heather too much to come and see him. They thought she needed to have a normal life, as much as possible. And, in their book, seeing your father across a dingy prison table, being artificially bright and pretending nothing was wrong, was obviously not normal. Hell, it wasn’t even normal in his book.
He picked up a handful of small flat stones and concentrated on throwing them into the water. The reflected stars distorted and scurried away. He kept throwing until the light turned a milky grey and the thoughts he didn’t want to stir were lying at the bottom of the river with the pebbles.
Gaby could see him out there on the beach—a dark f
igure, barely visible in the dull glow of the kitchen lights. What on earth must he have gone through to make him turn out like this? It didn’t bear thinking about.
But she would have to face it sooner or later, because she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be able to help Heather unless she helped Luke first. In her experience, the parents often needed training more than the children did.
She walked away from the window and got back into bed. The sheets were still warm and she snuggled down and thought about the future. Luke seemed to want her to start as soon as possible. And since she was here—with a bag packed for a week—and she’d started to bond with Heather, it seemed daft to leave so soon.
She could always go and visit Caroline in a couple of weeks. Now she’d be closer, she could go for the weekend or something.
She rolled over and tried to ignore the fact she was already making little sacrifices for this family, already putting their needs before her own. It always started this way…
‘I don’t want to go to Jodi’s to play! I hate her.’
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.