Luke made himself ease off the accelerator. Driving at this speed in winding country lanes was not a good idea. But if he allowed the adrenaline surge to subside, he was going to have to face thoughts he was trying to avoid. Like the fact that Gaby had made a simple mistake. It could easily have been him in her position. He only half-remembered the letter in question himself, and probably would have forgotten all about it if the school hadn’t phoned.
He also didn’t want to face the fact that anger had been bubbling under the surface since the beach trip. Unreasonable anger. Jealousy, if he put the proper label on it. Stuipid, childish jealousy he could do nothing to quench.
He tapped the lever for the windscreen wipers. The good weather had held on long enough and now the rain was falling thick and fast. It was too early to go and get Heather. Patricia Allford had said to pick her up at six, and it was only just five o’clock.
He drove into the village and parked his car along the front. A walk on the beach might clear his head. It would serve him right if he got drenched. Part of him welcomed the punishment.
He ran to the boot of his car, got his waterproof out of the back, and set off down the shingle beach, enjoying the cold wind on his face. Before long his hands grew icy and he stuffed them in his pockets. He hadn’t worn the coat for a couple of weeks and was surprised to find the spare keys for the back door in the right hand pocket, along with a scrumpled piece of paper.
He spent five minutes or so feeling the pattern of the wrinkles as he walked. Finally, he grew curious and pulled it out to investigate. As soon as he saw the school’s logo on the top of the page, he knew he was in trouble. He didn’t even need to read the letter to know what it was.
He folded the paper up precisely and put it back in his pocket. He’d picked Heather up from school the Wednesday before last. It had been raining then too. She’d run out through the school gates and waved a letter under his nose.
Oh, hell!
He was feeling bad enough about letting rip at Gaby as it was, and now it turned out the whole episode was his fault alone. No wonder she hadn’t remembered the letter! It had been sitting in his pocket the whole time, stuffed inside after he’d given it a quick once-over.
Gaby would be livid with him. At least, she ought to be.
He frowned.
She should have given as good as she’d got earlier on—but she hadn’t. She’d just taken everything he had to hurl at her, yet again. She’d apologised and hadn’t even answered back. Why was that?
He turned and headed back to the car. A thorough soaking was not going to atone for his behaviour this afternoon. He was going to have to do some quick thinking to stop Gaby whizzing back up the motorway to London. He’d do anything to get her to stay.
His stomach bottomed out. She’d only been with them a few weeks, but the Old Boathouse without Gaby seemed a hollow prospect. Heather would be devastated if she left. And he wasn’t ready to handle his daughter without her yet. Strike that. More like he was too scared to handle Heather without her. What if he failed?
There was only one thing for it. He would have to convince her to stay. He needed her.
Luke hatched a plan on the way to collect Heather—who was surprisingly unfazed by the afternoon’s turn of events. She didn’t even mention how much she hated Jodi on the drive home.
Heather rushed into the house as usual, once they’d parked the car, but he took his time hanging his coat up and ridding himself of his dirty shoes. He had no idea what the atmosphere was going to be like inside.
By the time he reached the kitchen, Heather was pestering Gaby for home-made cake. But he needed a chance to talk to Gaby. Alone.
‘Heather, you can’t possibly be hungry already. You’ve only just had dinner.’
Heather gave him a ya-think? kind of look.
‘Anyway, it’s homework time.’ He picked up her school bag and handed it to her. ‘Finish your geography, and then we’ll talk about banana cake.’
She took the bag and sloped off in the direction of her room without saying a word. Too wary of spoiling her chances of cake to answer back, he supposed.
Gaby had her back turned to him, stirring something that looked like onions in a frying pan.
‘Gaby?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’ She kept stirring and didn’t turn to face him.
‘Well, I just wanted to apologise…for what I said earlier. I shouldn’t have reacted like that, no matter what had happened.’
The stirring stopped. ‘It’s fine, Luke, really. You shouldn’t be apologising to me.’ The wooden spoon started moving again, slower this time. ‘It was my fault. I got it wrong.’
‘Well, actually…’He couldn’t stand talking to the back of her head any more. Three strides and he was across the kitchen, right next to her. He took the spoon out of her hand and rested it in the pan. ‘What I’m trying to say…’
Where had all his effortless charm gone? Before he’d gone away the right words would have been there, waiting for him to pluck them out of the air. Now it was an effort to string more than one or two together. At times like this he realised just how much polish had been sandblasted off him in prison. Especially when faced with a large pair of brown eyes with ridiculously long lashes.
He took a deep breath and started again. ‘What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t your fault, it was mine. And I’m truly sorry I spoke to you the way I did.’ He offered her the crushed letter he was holding.
Brown eyes that hadn’t looked away all the time he’d been talking now fluttered to the piece of paper in his hand. She took it from him and smoothed it out.
‘I found it in my coat pocket earlier. As I said, it really was my fault.’
She looked back at him. Something inside her seemed to swell, and then the shutters came down.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, blinking once. But he knew they were empty words. There was no sense of release, no closure. She broke eye-contact, picked up the spoon and toyed with the onions some more.
He didn’t move away, but watched her in silence. Then he realised he’d seen her do this before—shut herself away and gloss over something. He didn’t want this. He wanted her to shout, to cry—anything but smile and tell him everything was fine.
That was what Lucy had used to do. No, nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine. And it clearly had been anything but fine if she had been sleeping with her boss the whole time. He hated that word with a passion now.
It would do Gaby some good to admit what she was feeling, really let rip. He stepped back and rested against the counter. What the hell did he know? Letting rip was the only way he seemed able to communicate these days, and it wasn’t helping matters in the slightest.
Maybe Gaby was better off the way she was. He certainly couldn’t do the warm and fuzzy stuff she did.
He finally admitted defeat and headed upstairs for a shower. Maybe she just needed time to cool off. He shouldn’t expect her to snap out of it just because he was ready for her to.
When he came back downstairs, Gaby hadn’t moved. The onions had been joined by tomatoes and herbs and what looked like the start of a pasta sauce was bubbling away on the stove. She was stabbing rather violently at lumps of tomato to break them up.
‘That smells good. What is it?’ Oh, yeah, really smooth.
‘Just