by Sue Horsford
I looked from him to Gabriel in confusion. “Son?” I said to him. “They’re your parents?”
“Now you know why I don’t talk about them,” he said.
Barbara was staring at him, her eyes wide and imploring, but he never even glanced in her direction. Instead, he glared at Andrew. “You look like shit,” he said. “And what the hell is the gun for?”
Andrew said nothing. He began rummaging through his pockets, then he brought out a bottle of pills. He tried to open the top with one hand and was obviously having trouble, but stubbornly kept hold of his gun.
“Put the gun down,” said Gabriel, his words clipped with contempt. “It’s not as if you’re going to use it.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” snarled Andrew. But he said it without conviction. It was as if Gabriel’s entrance had exposed Andrew for what he was—a pathetic bully who liked to terrorize women. He was gasping for each breath now, then he let the gun fall to the floor and, clutching at his chest, he dropped to his knees. The pill bottle dropped from his hand, and Gabriel strode over to him, picked up the gun and placed it on the mantelpiece. He knelt beside Andrew and opened the bottle, shaking a pill into his hand. Andrew had keeled over onto his side and was mouthing at the air like a fish caught in a net.
Gabriel looked at his mother for the first time. “Well?” he asked her.
Barbara appeared to have regained her composure. “He’s still your father,” she said. “Put it under his tongue.”
Gabriel did as his mother told him then took out his phone and rang for an ambulance. Without giving his father another glance, he came back to me.
“What happened to your hand, sweetheart?” he spoke gently, as if coaxing the truth from a child.
“Your… He broke it, I think.”
I didn’t want to refer to that creature lying on the floor as Gabriel’s father. Thank God he didn’t look anything like him. Now that I saw Gabriel and Barbara together, though, I could see a definite resemblance between them. They had the same high cheekbones and the same beautiful eyes, though Barbara’s were a more ordinary shade of brown than Gabriel’s.
“What do you want to do about it?” he asked me.
“I suppose I should go to A&E.”
“Well, yes, but I meant, do you want to press charges?”
I looked at my attacker. He was still breathing, but only just, and he hadn’t made a sound since Gabriel had given him his pill. Barbara was now sitting with her hands in her lap. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Gabriel.
“Do I have to decide now?” I asked him.
“Not if you don’t want to,” he said. “But if what’s stopping you is the fact he’s my father, don’t worry. I’d happily see the son of a bitch in jail even if she wouldn’t.”
Barbara flinched, and I wondered what on earth she could have done to make Gabriel so bitter.
An ambulance siren wailed outside and Gabriel got up to let the paramedics in, putting the gun back in the safe on his way to the door. Barbara leaped to her feet and ran to the safe where she grabbed a pile of photographs and put them into her handbag.
As the crew put Andrew into the ambulance, Gabriel said, “This lady’s hand needs looking at too.”
“Do you want to come in the ambulance?” the man asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Andrew.
“My mother will go in the ambulance,” Gabriel said. “I’ll follow with Faye.”
Barbara’s eyes grew wide with fear, as if she thought he would disappear if she let him out of her sight.
“I’ll see you at the hospital,” he told her.
“Do you promise?”
He sighed. “I’m taking Faye to have her hand checked out, aren’t I? I’ll come and find you when we get there.”
As he helped me into the passenger seat of his car and fastened my seatbelt for me, I asked him, “How did you know where I was?”
“You left me a message. I phoned you back to tell you not to come here. I know what my father is capable of. But you didn’t answer so I thought I’d better come down and make sure you were all right.”
He started the engine and turned to me with what was supposed to be a stern look, but I could see the relief in his eyes. “And thank God I did come,” he said. “I know it’s your job, but I can’t believe they expect you to go to people’s houses on your own.”
“Well, actually…” I bit my lip and looked at him with a guilty expression.
“I see,” he said. “Well, we’ll need to have a little talk about that at some point.”
“But how did you know the Barbara I was working with was your mother?” I asked as we drove away. “I never mentioned her surname. I didn’t know her surname.”
“Well, I did speak to my father on your phone last week, remember? I would never forget that voice. But I’d known for weeks you were working with my mother. The letter you brought to me? That was from her. She’d seen us together that day we were out shopping and suddenly she had a way of getting in touch with me, through you.”
“But you didn’t say anything. Why on earth didn’t you tell me she was your mother?”
For the first time since I’d met him, Gabriel seemed ill at ease. “I didn’t want you to think I was like him,” he said, his voice so low I could hardly make out the words.
“I would never think that.”
“Good, because what we do together is not about you being scared of me.”
“I’m not scared of you,” I said. “I feel safe with you.”
“Well, I’ll remind you of that when I’m caning you for today’s little escapade.”
That was the Gabriel I knew and loved and I smiled to myself. Despite not looking forward to the caning one bit, it was reassuring to know I was back in the capable hands of my Master.
“I’m sorry about our weekend,” I said.
“We can still go to the cottage,” he said.
“Really? But I’m not going to be good for much like this.”
“You’re going to need taking care of,” he said. “I’m not about to leave you alone after what you’ve been through today. It seems silly to waste the chance of a weekend away.”
At the hospital, Gabriel gave the receptionist my details then left me in the waiting room to go in search of Barbara. When he came back, she was with him.
“Faye,” she said, “I’m so, so sorry. If I’d been ready to go when you arrived, none of this would have happened. But I just couldn’t leave without my photographs of Gabriel.”
“Did you remember the one you took of me at my graduation?” Gabriel asked. “Oh no, that’s right, you didn’t go, did you?”
Barbara just gazed at him, a lifetime of apologies in her eyes.
“Were you really about to go into a refuge?” he said, more kindly now.
She nodded.
“Things must have got really bad, then.”
“Yes.” She attempted a smile. “Did Faye give you my letter?”
“She did.” Gabriel stared at the floor.
“He’s been keeping her prisoner for weeks,” I told him.
Gabriel shook his head in disgust.
“Have they said how he is?” I asked Barbara.
“Not good.” She smiled tiredly. “Perhaps I won’t need the refuge after all. I don’t really want to go back to the house, though, if there’s any chance he’ll come back. What do you think I should do, Faye?”
“I don’t think you should be alone tonight,” I said, looking pointedly at Gabriel.
He stared at me. “Can you give us a moment, please?” he asked his mother.
She went off to the ladies’ and Gabriel said to me, “Are you suggesting we take her with us to the cottage?”
“Gabriel,” I said, “if your father should die over the weekend, don’t you think you should be there for your mother?”
“Are you sure this isn’t some misguided attempt to patch things up between us?”
“Well, maybe
a little bit, but I just think she’s going to be feeling a bit lost at the moment, and she needs us to be there for her.”
“Us?” He gave me a searching look.
My cheeks grew warm. “You.”
His face took on a resigned expression. “And this is something you really want, is it?”
“It is.”
He sighed. “Well, I can hardly refuse you anything at the moment, can I? Okay, sweetheart, if it’s what you really want, we’ll play happy families.”
The triage nurse, then a doctor, examined my wrist, which by now had turned an impressive shade of blue, and I was sent off to wait for an X-ray. Barbara came with me and Gabriel went off to pick up Barbara’s luggage and also to swap his car for mine as his wouldn’t carry three.
Left alone with Barbara, I didn’t know how to speak to her. Previously, we’d been worker and client, now she was my lover’s mother, and our relationship couldn’t be more different.
“Why didn’t you tell me Gabriel was your son?” I asked her.
“I didn’t feel I had the right to tell you,” she said. “Obviously, he didn’t want you to know or he would have told you himself when you gave him my letter.”
“He said he didn’t want me to know in case I thought he was like his father.”
Barbara shuddered. “Gabriel is nothing like Andrew, thank God!”
“Did Andrew ever hit Gabriel?”
“No, Gabriel was the apple of his father’s eye. And I think he knew if he ever laid a finger on Gabriel, I would have left him.” She frowned. “You did tell me you were married, Faye.”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“So where does Gabriel fit in?”
“We’ve been seeing each other for…” I had to think for a moment. “Just over a month.” Was that all? It felt as if he’d been a part of my life for a lot longer than that.
“You’re having an affair?”
I stared down at my feet. “I know you must think I’m awful.”
“I don’t know the facts,” she replied.
I looked up at her, expecting to see disapproval, but saw only compassion.
“Is your marriage very unhappy?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not unhappy, no. Just not…satisfying.”
Now it was Barbara’s turn to blush.
“I don’t mean physically not satisfying,” I explained hurriedly.
“What do you mean?”
I sighed. Good question. Just what did I mean?
“By the time I first met Paul, I’d already had two steady boyfriends,” I said. “I don’t think the first one ever actually cheated on me, but he would have done given time. The second one was a moody so and so and I got sick of his constant moaning and sulking. So when I met Paul, I just loved the fact that he was normal, he was so easy to be with. He was attractive, intelligent, reliable, he made me laugh and everyone liked him, even my mother, but I just don’t think, looking back, that all that was enough reason to commit myself to a lifetime with him.”
“He sounds wonderful,” said Barbara.
I closed my eyes against the guilt. What wouldn’t Barbara have given for a man like Paul?
“He’s a good man. And I loved him, I really did. But all those qualities he has… I don’t know, it just wasn’t enough. Something was missing. The whole never added up to more than the sum of its parts, if you get my drift. There was no chemistry, no spark. And I had lots of doubts over the years, but I just pushed them to the back of my mind.” I smiled at her. “Working at the center helped. Whatever may have been lacking in my marriage, I knew Paul would never raise a hand to me, and I was always reminding myself how lucky I was. But should I need to remind myself? Doesn’t that say a lot in itself?” As I spoke, I realized Paul and I had been over for a long time, long before my discovery of the photos. I’d just never faced up to it before.
“Have there been other affairs?”
“No, never! My marriage may not have been everything I wanted it to be, but I never thought I’d cheat on Paul. He was my husband and I loved him. But then I met Gabriel and he turned my whole perception of what love is on its head.” I gave her a wry smile. “I’ve never been a romantic, Barbara. If people said things like, ‘it was love at first sight’ or ‘he’s my soul mate’ I thought, what a load of nonsense. They’d obviously been reading too many romance novels. I mean, love takes time to grow, doesn’t it? It has to put down roots and establish itself. You can’t love someone at first sight. How on earth could you?”
“But it was love at first sight with Gabriel?” Whatever Barbara’s thoughts on infidelity, she couldn’t hide the pride in her voice when she spoke of her son.
I fell silent for a moment, remembering our first meeting, the unsettled feeling that had come over me as we’d made eye contact.
“It wasn’t love. It was more like an immediate recognition, like he knew me in a way Paul never could, like he could give me something Paul never could, something I didn’t even know I needed.” I paused. What more could I say? I couldn’t very well tell her I’d recognized him as my Master and ever since that first moment all I had craved was to submit to him. “I am in love with him now,” I said. “With all my heart and all my soul, I love him. I didn’t know love like this existed.”
“And does Gabriel feel the same?”
“I think he must care a little for me, otherwise he wouldn’t have come looking for me today, but as for being in love with me, no, he’s not.”
“That’s a shame,” said Barbara. “Personally, I think you should try your hardest to make your marriage work. Your Paul sounds like a lovely man. But if you weren’t already married, I should love to have you as my daughter-in-law.”
I was saved from having to answer by a nurse calling me in for my X-ray.
The X-ray showed no broken bones, but the doctor told me I had a torn ligament. He gave me a wrist splint to wear for at least a week, and a sling, which I was to wear to keep my wrist elevated until the swelling went down. He also gave me some strong painkillers and I swallowed two immediately.
I’d just finished seeing the doctor when Gabriel returned. He’d been up to the cardiac ward and had left his phone number with the staff so they could inform him if there was any change in Andrew’s condition.
Barbara and I went out to where Gabriel had parked the car. He held the door open for me and I looked at him with concern. Purple shadows darkened his eyes and fine lines of strain had appeared about his mouth.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive all the way to Anglesey?” I asked as he was fastening my seat belt for me. “You seem worn out.”
“Well, I’m in a lot better shape than you,” he replied. “You’re not going to be able to drive for a while. You’ll need to stay off work, too, I should think.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh, my God! Work. I forgot to phone Steph. I said I’d ring her after dropping Barbara off at the refuge and I should have rung the refuge, too, told them Barbara wasn’t coming tonight.”
“I’m surprised Steph hasn’t rung you,” Gabriel said, unzipping my bag for me as he could see I was having trouble.
“She’s probably been trying,” I said, looking at my phone. “My battery’s flat.”
“Use mine,” he said.
Steph was almost hysterical when she heard my voice. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick! I thought you’d just forgotten to phone, but then I phoned the refuge to check what time you’d dropped Barbara off and they said she’d never arrived. And your phone’s just been going straight to voicemail.”
“It’s a long story,” I said weakly. I’d not eaten since my meager breakfast and suddenly all I wanted to do was sleep. “Can I phone you back later?”
“Are you okay? You sound weird.”
“I’m fine. I’ve just hurt my wrist and I’m a bit wiped out at the moment.”
“What happened? Who are you with now?”
“
I’m with Gabriel. We’re on our way to the cottage. I’ll ring you back later.” I gave Gabriel his phone and closed my eyes.
I must have dropped off at some point. The next thing I was aware of was the sound of tires scrunching on gravel, and I opened my eyes as Gabriel pulled up outside a white-painted stone cottage. Yellow roses climbed the walls with joyful abandon, their petals burnished gold in the evening sun, their warm velvet perfume mingling with the tang of the nearby sea. I got out of the car and looked around me, smiling with such an intense burst of happiness it was almost painful.
The front door of the cottage opened straight into a whitewashed living room with oak beams, two plump, red corduroy sofas and a huge stone fireplace with a wood-burning stove and a wicker basket of logs on the hearth.
I curled up on one of the sofas while Barbara unpacked the car and Gabriel lit a fire, although it was a warm evening and we didn’t really need one.
“Would you like to lie down while I make dinner?” he asked me, tilting my chin up with his finger and gazing down at me, his eyes warm with concern.
I smiled up at him. “No, I’ll be fine here on the couch.”
When he was out of earshot in the kitchen, Barbara sat next to me and said, “I think he cares about you a great deal more than you realize.”
I shrugged. “Don’t get my hopes up, Barbara.”
She picked up her handbag, drew out the photos she’d taken from the safe earlier and handed them to me. They were all of Gabriel. There was one of him as a small boy on a tricycle, another in a go-cart, wearing a red helmet, various school photos, some as a teenager and one with what may have been his first car. On most of them he wasn’t smiling.
“He looks so solemn,” I said.
“Yes, well, with a father like Andrew, he had to grow up very quickly. I’m afraid his childhood wasn’t exactly carefree.”
“You said Andrew never hit him. Did Gabriel see his father hitting you?”
“Andrew wanted Gabriel to be the perfect son,” she said. “Nothing was too much trouble, and if it was expensive, we simply went without so Gabriel could have what he wanted, or rather what Andrew wanted him to have. So Gabriel had piano lessons, riding lessons, extra tutoring during his exams. When he was fourteen, we took him on a skiing holiday and Andrew paid the top instructor in the resort to give Gabriel lessons. That’s how important it was to him that Gabriel was perfect at everything he did.