‘You know, Gordon and I always hoped you and he might end up…’ Elizabeth spoke wistfully, then quickly pulled herself up short.
Lucy jumped a little, as if she’d taken a whiff of smelling salts. She felt the heat of an unexpected blush creep slowly upwards from her collar and was momentarily flustered. A long-buried memory surfaced and she tried her best to push it back to the depths of her mind from where it had come. The very idea of her having a relationship with Gabriel should be laughable. She was sure Gabe would laugh out loud at the suggestion. She certainly shouldn’t be having this reaction. Heart rate increasing, temperature rising. She felt embarrassed and hoped fervently that Elizabeth wouldn’t pick up on how agitated she was.
The truth was there had been a time, long ago, when her feelings of friendship for Gabriel had become something more. Only in her mind, of course, never his. She pondered for a moment that you never realised the true value of something until it had gone. She had learned that when Gabriel left for university all those years ago. Up until then he’d been hers. Two years older. Protector. Brother. His mother had a dislike of boarding school, instead sending Gabe to a nearby prep school. Lucy, of course, had gone to the local primary school. Their education was a world apart, just like their houses, their parents, their backgrounds, but none of it had mattered to them. They had remained close despite and, she thought now, perhaps because of their differences. Each was everything the other needed. She had been an antidote to his stuffy school atmosphere and her sense of fun had brought him respite from the intense studying it had demanded. He had been her port in a storm. The rows and upheaval at home had gradually worsened through her teens and she’d found herself relying on him more and more. His reasoned thinking had encouraged her to consider the long term, to believe that it wouldn’t be like this for ever, stuck in a village in the middle of nowhere with her warring parents and no means of escape. One day she would have her own life and she would be free.
Gabriel had never been taken away from her until he’d accepted a place to study law at Oxford. Her initial delight for him had given way to a growing, gnawing dread as the day had approached when he would start his first term. She hadn’t realised how heavily she’d come to depend on him. She was used to barely a day going by without speaking to him.
She’d missed him painfully, dreadfully, and she’d imagined he must be feeling the same way. Her sense of embarrassment now was rooted in the memory of how in his absence he’d begun to take on more than just the role of friend in her mind. She’d begun to fantasise about them being together as a couple, falling in love, having a future together. On his brief weekend visits home his touch had begun to make her skin tingle and her heart had begun to race when he entered a room. Greedy for his time and attention, she’d hung on his every word.
‘I’m sorry, dear.’ Elizabeth spoke apologetically, bringing Lucy sharply back to the present. ‘It’s nothing to do with us, of course. It’s simply that, well, I remember the first time he met you, knocking on the front door, only about six you were, looking for your lost kitten. Gabriel must have been about nine. It was that really hot summer.’
She was relieved at the change of subject. This part of memory lane she could cope with. ‘Sooty,’ she remembered. ‘I was beside myself. We’d only just moved in and my mother had let him out before he’d had a chance to get used to the house.’
‘Gabriel spent the entire afternoon searching with you, until you found him, remember?’
‘He’d just got shut inside one of the outbuildings.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I was frantic.’
‘All Gabriel wanted to do from that moment on was look after you and make you happy. I’ve watched him over the years and he’s never changed. You’ve always been so close, I suppose I hoped it might one day become more than just a friendship.’
‘We’re more like brother and sister really,’ Lucy said, firmly, for her own benefit as much as Elizabeth’s. She cuddled closer to the old lady. ‘I was always so jealous of him when I was little. I wanted to be part of your family, too. I was so happy up here at the big house. And he’s always been there for me. He’s never once let me down.’
Elizabeth smiled at her. ‘How is your young man, dear?’ she asked politely. Lucy felt a rush of sudden guilt. Her mind had been full of Gabriel and talking about their shared past had made her feel happy and nostalgic, but also unsettled. She could kick herself for feeling so girly and flustered at the suggestion of them ever being a couple. She hadn’t spared a thought for Ed all day. But that didn’t necessarily mean she was betraying him, did it? It was just this place, nothing more. Being here was bound to stir up her feelings. Her past here had been so turbulent, it would surely be strange if it didn’t evoke strong emotions.
‘Ed? He’s well, thank you.’ She felt a sudden desire to confide in Elizabeth, to affirm to her, and perhaps also to herself, that romantic thoughts in her head were linked only to him and not for a second to Gabriel. ‘Between you and me I was hoping we might settle down and get married, but he doesn’t seem to take the hint. Gabriel thinks he’s lazy and doesn’t do enough to look after me, but you know how overprotective he can be.’
Elizabeth sighed. She was quiet for a moment before saying, ‘Relationships, Lucy, good relationships, don’t come along by accident in my experience. You have to work at them. Both of you. One of you doing everything just isn’t enough—it has to be a partnership. Gordon and I have had our ups and downs—goodness, we’ve been married a long time now. But we’ve always pulled together. He’s a pain sometimes but I wouldn’t be without him, not for anything.’
Lucy grinned.
‘Only you can say if this Ed puts enough effort in. You make sure he’s the right one for you. You deserve nothing less.’
Shortly afterwards they returned to the house and Lucy was glad when she and Gabriel left for Bath. Talking to Elizabeth had stirred her mind up far too much for her to relax on the journey home. She sat in silence in the car next to Gabriel, the memory coming unbidden to her in all its clarity of the first time she’d met Alison, and her face flushed with mortification as she remembered the circumstances of that meeting.
If Gabriel had guessed how she was feeling after he left for uni, he never let on, just behaving the way he always did, full of news about his course, his new life and his new friends. Yet her delusions had grown until she’d believed herself to be in love with him. The brotherly hugs he gave her and the occasional holding of her hand she’d begun to construe as reciprocation of her fledgling feelings, and she would lay awake at night thinking about him.
She blushed as she remembered her behaviour. A typical stupid teenage crush, that was what it had been. And she’d come so close to Gabe finding out about it that the memory alone still made her heart hammer and her cheeks burn.
Shortly into Gabriel’s second term, his visits home began to dwindle and he was useless at keeping in touch. Lucy phoned him so often that she later realised she must have been becoming a pest. She recalled now that there were many occasions when his housemates had told her he was out. With the benefit of age and maturity she now saw that he was probably fed up with her constant contact and was trying, albeit gently, to avoid her.
Convinced Gabriel would feel the same about her if she could just see him and declare her feelings, she’d decided on impulse to visit him one day, when missing him had all become too much. She remembered gazing out of the window of the bus from the train station and thinking to herself how busy and vibrant Oxford seemed compared to the Cotswold villages she was used to. She remembered the butterflies in her stomach on the bus to his digs as the miles between them fell away…
She grinned as she climbed the steps to his front door, thinking how pleased he would be to see her. She was wearing a new sea-green top, which she knew brought out the colour of her eyes, and she ’d spent ages trying to get her hair to behave itself. But the broad smile she’d been unable to keep off her face dwindled as the door opened. Not Gabriel but a slender and impossibly pretty blonde girl.
The girl smiled kindly at Lucy. ‘Can I help you? ‘