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