Be My Baby

by Fiona Harper

  ‘Stop that, Luke!’ she heard Lucy say. ‘I know exactly what you’re up to. Grow up!’

  She heard Luke laugh again and then it suddenly cut to later on in the party. Gaby jumped slightly as she was jolted out of what had been a very intimate moment between husband and wife. She felt sick and jealous and shaky. And then she felt ashamed that she felt any of those things.

  Luke had had a wife, she’d known that all along. It was just that he never talked about her. It was almost as if Lucy had never existed. She understood why he’d banished anything that held memories of her from his house now. It must be too painful to remember.

  There was a noise behind her. She dropped the cardboard sleeve she was holding and twisted round swiftly, legs still crossed, to see what it was.

  Luke was standing in the doorway, his face blank, but there was pain in his eyes.

  She looked back at the screen. It was a wider shot of the party now, but Lucy was still centre screen most of the time and, even when she wasn’t, you couldn’t help watching her.

  She looked back at Luke, her mouth slightly open, and struggled for the right words. She picked up one of the discarded tapes and held it up as evidence.

  ‘I was looking for a tape for that film that’s on tonight…’

  He looked at the tape in her hand, then turned his face away as if he couldn’t bear to see what was flickering on the television screen.

  ‘Turn it off.’ It was a command, plain and simple.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know what it was. I just—’

  ‘Turn it off, Gaby.’

  She put the tape she was holding down and reached for the button on the video recorder. When she turned round again, he was gone.

  She ejected Lucy’s tape and placed it carefully back into its sleeve. Then she tucked it away at the back of the cabinet where she had found it. Recording her film seemed unimportant now, anyway.

  How long had he been standing there? She winced at the thought.

  Well, she’d thought he’d erased every trace of his wife from his life and she’d been wrong. There was still a tiny part of him that couldn’t let go. He hadn’t been able to get rid of everything, and she could see why.

  The way the camera had followed her said it all. Luke had been desperately in love with his wife, a woman who just happened to have all the style and grace of a movie star. And the dark shadow in his eyes just now told her everything she needed to know on the subject.

  Luke was still in love with his dead wife.

  How in heck was she ever going to compete with that?

  The waitress hovered and Luke waved her away. He checked his watch. Quarter past. Gaby was late. Which was odd, because Gaby was never late.

  If he believed in signs, he’d think it was a sign. Just another indication that things weren’t quite what they should be. It was as if, a couple of weeks ago, there had been a subtle shift in the universe while he’d slept. The first sign was when he’d got up in the morning and gone down into the kitchen to find Gaby in a skirt. Gaby never wore skirts. He didn’t even know she owned one.

  Then he’d guessed she’d worn it to make an effort for him and something in the back of his brain gave him a sharp poke and told him he’d better say something to show he’d noticed. When had talking to Gaby got this hard?

  In the end he’d mumbled, ‘You look nice.’ It was hardly going to win him any awards on the compliment front, but it was the best he could come up with at short notice. In truth, he didn’t care what she wore as long as she still looked at him with that bottomless warmth in her eyes.

  Gaby had looked pleased he’d noticed, anyway.

  But he wondered if he should have encouraged her at all. Things were gaining momentum. Now it wasn’t just skirts, it was shoes with pointy little toes and lip gloss, for goodness’ sake!

  The restaurant door opened and his head jerked up automatically. And then his mouth dropped open automatically too. Gaby was handing her coat to a waiter and it gave him time to clench his jaw shut before she saw him.

  ‘Sorry I’m late! There was a backlog at the hairdressers.’ She shook her hair, stopping slightly as she took in his puzzled expression, then she smiled. ‘If I hadn’t said anything, you probably wouldn’t have noticed, would you? You men are all the same.’

  Of course he’d have noticed!

  Gone were the slightly messy, and very sexy, tumbling waves, replaced by shiny, straight hair with all the life ironed out of it.

  ‘Luke?’

  Gaby was staring at him and he remembered he hadn’t even said hello or anything yet.

  ‘You look nice,’ he mumbled. Then he looked more closely. ‘It’s a different colour!’

  Gaby ran a hand through her sleek hair. ‘I decided to go a few shades darker. Nice, isn’t it?’

  He nodded, but he was lying—if you could call a head movement a lie. Where were all those lovely golden bits that lit up in the sunshine? Gone. Buried under a shade of brown that was richer and darker, yes, but fake all the same.

  He didn’t know what to say. All he knew was that he wanted to reach over the table and ruffle the perfect style with his hand.

  ‘We’d better order.’ He picked up his menu and stared at the words. He didn’t need to look; he’d already decided what he was having while he was waiting.

  He kept looking at her as they ate. Something was different, something more than hair and skirts and pointy little shoes. When she laughed, it seemed a little too loud. No more smiles that started off shyly and blossomed into a huge grin; now she smiled as if she was merely displaying her teeth for a toothpaste advert.

  Gaby was pretending.

  What she was pretending to be, or why she was doing it, was a complete mystery, but he knew he was right; he’d seen the signs before. And, in his experience, when the woman in your life started pretending, a whole lot of trouble was going to follow. The sinking feeling that had been creeping up on him finally turned itself round three times and settled in his chest.

  His fingers strayed to the little velvet ring box in his pocket. They stroked its softness, feeling its shape, the domed top and the flat bottom, and when he’d explored every millimetre he took his empty hand out of his pocket and rested it on his napkin.

  Not now. Not today.

  No stars tonight. Gaby leaned on the railing of the terrace and peered at the sky. All she could see was a murky blackness, the only relief a silvery slit in the felt clouds where the moon poked through.

  When they’d got back from London, after Justin’s party, Luke had rapped on the little door that led from her bedroom on to the terrace. She’d opened the door, about to scold him for breaking the ‘no sneaking around’ rule so quickly, when he’d pushed a finger to her lips, taken hold of her hand and led her silently out on to the terrace.

  She’d never seen a sky like it. So many stars that she couldn’t even begin to imagine how many there were. She’d snuggled into the space under Luke’s arm and just stared in wonder. They’d kissed and talked and kissed some more until the pinprick stars disappeared one by one and the sky started to turn grey.

  He still hadn’t said it right out to her, that three-word phrase she was longing to hear. He’d got close. She’d had a couple of me toos when she’d told him she loved him, and he’d said plenty of things that indicated he cared a great deal for her. She sighed. Luke was a man who found it difficult to say what he felt, she knew that. Patience was what was needed. Patience and hope.

  She looked up at the sky again. Even the moon had deserted her. As she turned to make her way back to her room, she took a long hard look at Luke’s door. It looked firmly shut, but it felt bolted. He’d been hidden away in his study all evening. Essential paperwork, he’d said. And then he’d gone to bed early.

  She walked into her room and shut the door behind her. Luke was a night-owl. He never went to bed before midnight at the very earliest. Her alarm clock told her it was only just eleven. Something was wrong and she had a good id
ea she knew what it was.

  Lucy’s ghost was haunting them. It sounded a little dramatic, but that was how she felt. It had started with the party video but, even though she’d tucked it away to get dusty again, the images seemed to be swirling in the atmosphere. Even though Lucy had never lived in the Old Boathouse, Gaby felt her presence everywhere.

  Everything she said and did seemed to be measured against what Lucy would have done. She found herself guessing how the other woman would have laid the table, or kissed Heather goodnight, and was never sure whether she should do it the same way or go for the opposite approach.

  And what was truly awful was that she knew Luke was making the same comparisons too. She saw it in his eyes, the disappointment.

  She went into her en suite shower room and began scrubbing off her make-up with some lotion and a cotton wool pad. What did they put in this waterproof mascara? It was practically welded on! She finished one eye and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked all lopsided. And that was kind of how she felt at the moment.

  But it was all going to get better. She would just have to try harder, that was all. She could be the kind of woman Luke needed. She could do vivacious and witty and elegant. Their future happiness depended on it.

  David had grown bored of his mousey little do-as-she-was-told wife and she wasn’t going down that road again, oh no. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AN HOUR and thirty-seven minutes, that was how long she’d been waiting for Luke. Technically, it was her night off tonight, although the lines between personal and professional were getting so blurry these days it was hard to tell the difference. But she’d planned an evening of pampering and relaxation.

  A nice hot bath, then eyebrow plucking and a face pack. Okay, getting the tweezers out was not going to be relaxing exactly, but the results would be worth it. No pain, no gain, after all.

  Luke and the pizza he’d promised Heather as a treat for tea were nowhere to be seen. Heather had got grumpier as her stomach got emptier and in the end Gaby had given up and whipped up a simple pasta supper.

  The empty bowl and fork were still sitting on the table. She glanced at the clock. An hour and thirty-eight minutes.

  It was not that she minded getting Heather a quick supper, she thought as she automatically picked up the dirty dish. It was the fact that Luke hadn’t rung, hadn’t bothered to let her know he was running late.

  She looked at her reflection in the window as she stood up from placing the pasta bowl in the dishwasher. Her eyebrows really weren’t that bad. Not the finely arched brows she had in mind, but they were hardly big and bushy. She ran a finger along one. Perhaps she’d leave them after all. Luke probably wouldn’t notice anyway.

  She was starting to think he wouldn’t notice if she had a limb removed. These days he was in his own little universe. He spent a lot of time in his study with the door closed. Catching up with the latest research, he called it. More like avoiding Gaby because you’ve suddenly realised she isn’t the love of your life and you don’t know how to tell her, she thought.

  She was kidding herself, she knew. Despite all her efforts to be the best Gaby she could be for Luke, things were getting worse. He could hardly look her in the eyes these days. They both knew something was terribly wrong, but neither of them were brave enough to come out and say it.

  She’d almost confronted him a couple of times, but if he said what she feared he’d say, that he’d made a mistake and they really didn’t have a future after all, she’d have to leave. And, stupid as staying here when he only saw her as an also-ran to his dead wife was, it was better than never seeing him again.

  She wiped away a tear that bulged from her lower lashes. Damn! She’d promised herself she’d never be so pathetic over a man again. And here she was, cooking and cleaning and watching the clock.

  Her eyes rested on the row of neatly stacked plates in the dishwasher and she gave the door a hefty shove and ground the dial round so the water started swooshing. For years now, ever since the honeymoon period of her marriage was well and truly over, she’d hated the sight of all those neat white plates sitting smartly in the dishwasher tray. It made her want to scream—which was ridiculous, they were only bits of china. But something about the whole image had reminded her of her life: ordered, functional…sterile.

  And the really tragic thing was that, despite all her efforts to make her life go in a different direction, it was settling back into the same pattern. Only this time it was worse. She had never loved David the way she loved Luke. Now there was something worth screaming about.

  She turned abruptly and headed for her room. It was her night off, Heather was watching TV, her homework done and checked by yours truly, despite the promise Luke had made to help her with her maths.

  She was going to make the most of this time because she’d had enough. Enough of being taken for granted, enough of being left to cope and, most of all, enough of being invisible. All her life she’d felt that others only saw a ghostly version of her, never stopping to look inside to see how she might feel or ask what she might want.

  Luke had been the one person she’d thought that saw her properly. The real Gaby and her heart had not been able to resist the thought, tumbling deeply in love with him. Only now, after a few short weeks, it seemed as if he had looked past the outer shell and discovered there wasn’t anything underneath. Either that or he didn’t like what he saw. Both options hurt like hell.

  David had reached the same conclusion.

  Well, she wasn’t going to let Luke treat her like David had! That part of her life was over. Tonight, when Luke got back, she was going out. She didn’t know where. She didn’t even care. Just somewhere other than the Old Boathouse.

  She applied a fresh coat of lipstick and pouted at herself in the mirror. Then she grabbed the bottle of perfume she’d picked up at the department store a few days ago and sprayed liberally. She looked down at what she was wearing. Knee-length skirt, high-heeled boots, cute little jumper. That’d do for a night out in Dartmouth. It was hardly a raging hotspot.

  She was in the hall checking her purse was in her handbag when she heard Luke’s key in the lock on the front door. The noise made all the hairs on her back stand on end.

  Just that one noise.

  All her life she’d pushed all the hurt and anger down inside herself, never daring to show it, and now it was coiled up tight inside her chest so she could hardly breathe.

  She turned to face the door as it opened, her spine lengthening into a steel rod. Luke bustled into the hall, threw his coat on a chair rather than a hook, and marched right past her.

  It wasn’t that he was ignoring her. He just hadn’t seen her standing there. And that fact alone prompted the coil of bitter feelings to spring up like a cobra preparing to strike.

  Luke reached the safety of his study and dropped into the chair behind the desk. He splayed his fingers on the polished wood in front of him. They were shaking.

  It was over. More than six years since the night Lucy had been killed and it was finally over.

  He’d found a voice mail message from the detective working on Lucy’s case just as he’d been leaving work. It had taken more than forty minutes to get hold of him when he’d tried to ring back. He’d stayed at the surgery in the little office, sure this was a call he didn’t want Heather to overhear.

  They’d got him. Lucy’s killer.

  It had been Alex, her boss, her lover. Not her husband, as the world had once thought. He’d been ruled out in the original inquiry because he had an alibi, and with what had looked like watertight forensic evidence on the husband, nobody had delved any further. Turned out the woman who’d given him his alibi had been his other girlfriend.

  The details were sketchy, but it seemed Lucy had discovered the other woman’s existence and had flown into a rage. There’d been a fight and he’d shoved Lucy to stop her clawing his eyes out, so he’d said.

  Luke
grimaced. No one knew better than he how much of a hellcat Lucy could be when she lost it. The story had a ring of truth to it. He would almost have been able to feel sorry for the man if he hadn’t deprived Heather of her mother. And, not only that, but he’d kept her father away from her with his lies while he’d moved to another part of the country and took up with another married woman.

  It made his blood boil. It was just as well the creep would be banged up in prison where he wouldn’t be able to get his hands on him and tear him limb from limb. He picked up the first thing to hand, a pencil pot, and hurled it over the other side of the room.

  At the same time the door to the study flew open.

  Gaby was standing there, eyes bright with fire. She’d left the ever-present mask of composure somewhere else at last. She looked so radiant he was very tempted to go and kiss her senseless, but the look on her face said he’d better not try it.

  ‘Where the heck do you think you’ve been for the past two hours?’

  ‘At the surgery. There’s something I need to—’

  ‘You know what, Luke? I don’t care!’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Are you not listening to me as well as not seeing me? I said I didn’t care.’

  He stood up and started to round the desk. She held him at bay with a raised hand.

  ‘I’m taking the night off.’

  ‘The night off? But—’

  ‘You remember the concept, don’t you? The one where I’m your employee, not your skivvy, and I get to do less than twenty-four hours a day?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Good! I’m off, then.’ She spun on the heels of a pair of deadly-looking boots, her hair flying outwards as she whipped her head round. He started to follow.

  ‘But Heather—’

  ‘Is in the lounge watching TV. She’s been fed, which is just as well, unless you managed to fit a pepperoni special in your briefcase.’

  He looked at the bag sitting just inside the door of his study, bewildered.