Her Parenthood Assignment

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.

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.