As soon as Nicole had left the office, she grabbed her phone from her bag and called her mother—the one person she really needed to talk to about the bequest. But the call went straight through to Susan’s voicemail. Then again, at this time of day her mother would be in a meeting or with one of her probationers. Nicole’s best friend Jessie, an English teacher, was knee-deep in exam revision sessions with her students, so she wouldn’t be free to talk to Nicole about the situation until the end of the day. And Nicole definitely didn’t want to discuss this with anyone from work; she knew they’d all tell her to sell the place to the company who wanted to buy it, for the highest price she could get, and to keep the money.
Her head was spinning. Maybe she would sell the cinema—after all, what did she know about running a cinema, let alone one that hadn’t been in operation for the last five years and looked as if it needed an awful lot of work doing to it before it could open its doors again? But, if she did sell the Electric Palace, she had no intention of keeping the money. As far as she was concerned, any money from Brian Thomas ought to go to his daughter, not skip a generation. Susan Thomas had spent years struggling as a single mother, working three jobs to pay the rent when Nicole was tiny. If the developer really was offering a fair price, it could give Susan the money to pay off her mortgage, go on a good holiday and buy a new car. Though Nicole knew she’d have to work hard to convince her mother that she deserved the money; plus Susan might be even more loath to accept anything from her father on the grounds that it was way too late.
Or Nicole could refuse the bequest on principle. Brian Thomas had never been part of her life or shown any interest in her. Why should she be interested in his money now?
She sighed. What she really needed right now was some decent caffeine and the space to talk this through with someone. There was only one person other than her mother and Jessie whose advice she trusted. Would he be around? She found the nearest coffee shop, ordered her usual double espresso, then settled down at a quiet table and flicked into the messaging program on her phone. Clarence was probably busy, but then again if she’d caught him on his lunch break he might have time to talk.
In the six months since they’d first met on the Surrey Quays forum, they’d become close and they talked online every day. They’d never actually met in person; and, right from the first time he’d sent her a private message, they’d agreed that they wouldn’t share personal details that identified them, so they’d stuck to their forum names of Georgygirl and Clarence. She had no idea what he even looked like—she could have passed him in the street at any time during the three years she’d been living at Surrey Quays. In some ways it was a kind of coded, secret relationship, but at the same time Nicole felt that Clarence knew the real her. Not the corporate ghost who spent way too many hours in the office, or the much-loved daughter and best friend who was always nagged about working too hard, but the real Nicole. He knew the one who wondered about the universe and dreamed of the stars. Late at night, she’d told him things she’d never told anyone else, even her mother or Jessie.
Maybe Clarence could help her work out the right thing to do.
She typed a message and mentally crossed her fingers as she sent it.
Hey, Clarence, you around?
* * *
Gabriel Hunter closed his father’s office door behind him and walked down the corridor as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
What he really wanted to do was to beat his fists against the walls in sheer frustration. When, when, when was he going to stop paying for his teenage mistake?
OK, so it had been an awful lot worse than the usual teenage mistakes—he’d crashed his car into a shop front one night on the way home from a party and done a lot of damage. But nobody had been physically hurt and he’d learned his lesson immediately. He’d stopped going round with the crowd who’d thought it would be fun to spike his drink when he was their designated driver. He’d knuckled down to his studies instead of spending most of his time partying, and at the end of his final exams he’d got one of the highest Firsts the university had ever awarded. Since then, he’d proved his worth over and over again in the family business. Time after time he’d bitten his tongue so he didn’t get into a row with his father. He’d toed the party line. Done what was expected of him, constantly repented for his sins to atone in his father’s eyes.
And his father still didn’t trust him. All Gabriel ever saw in his father’s eyes was ‘I saved you from yourself’. Was Evan Hunter only capable of seeing his son as the stupid teenager who got in with a bad crowd? Would he ever see Gabriel for who he was now, all these years later? Would he ever respect his son?
Days like today, Gabriel felt as if he couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was time to give up trying to change his family’s view of him and to walk away. To take a different direction in his career—though, right at that moment, Gabriel didn’t have a clue what that would be, either. He’d spent the last seven years since graduation working hard in the family business and making sure he knew every single detail of Hunter Hotels Ltd. He’d tried so hard to do the right thing. The reckless teenager he’d once been was well and truly squashed—which he knew was a good thing, but part of him wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t had the crash. Would he have grown out of the recklessness but kept his freedom? Would he have felt as if he was really worth something, not having to pay over and over for past mistakes? Would he be settled down now, maybe with a family of his own?
All the women he’d dated over the last five years saw him as Gabriel-the-hotel-chain-heir, the rich guy who could show them a good time and splash his cash about, and he hated that superficiality. Yet the less superficial, nicer women were wary of him, because his reputation got in the way; everyone knew that Gabriel Hunter was a former wild child and was now a ruthless company man, so he’d never commit emotionally and there was no point in dating him because there wasn’t a future in the relationship. And his family all saw him as Gabe-who-made-the-big-mistake.
How ironic that the only person who really saw him for himself was a stranger. Someone whose real name he didn’t even know, let alone what she did or what she looked like, because they’d been careful not to exchange those kinds of details. But over the last six months he’d grown close to Georgygirl from the Surrey Quays forum.
Which made it even more ironic that he’d only joined the website because he was following his father’s request to keep an eye out for local disgruntled residents who might oppose the new Hunter Hotel they were developing from a run-down former spice warehouse in Surrey Quays, and charm them into seeing things the Hunter way. Gabriel had discovered that he liked the anonymity of an online persona—he could actually meet people and get to know them, the way he couldn’t in real life. The people on the forum didn’t know he was Gabriel Hunter, so they had no preconceptions and they accepted him for who he was.
He’d found himself posting on a lot of the same topics as someone called Georgygirl. The more he’d read her posts, the more he’d realised that she was on his wavelength. They’d flirted a bit—because an internet forum was a pretty safe place to flirt—and he hadn’t been able to resist contacting her in a private message. Then they’d started chatting to each other away from the forum. They’d agreed to stick to the forum rules of not sharing personal details that would identify themselves, so Gabriel had no idea of Georgygirl’s real name or her personal situation; but in their late-night private chats he felt that he could talk to her about anything and everything. Be his real self. Just as he was pretty sure that she was her real self with him.
Right now, it was practically lunchtime. Maybe Georgygirl would be around? He hoped so, because talking to her would make him feel human again. Right now he really needed a dose of her teasing sarcasm to jolt him out of his dark mood.
He informed his PA that he was unavailable for the next hour, then headed out to Surrey Quays. He ordered a double espresso in his favourite café, then grabbed his phone and flicked into the direct messaging section of the Surrey Quays forum.
And then he saw the message waiting for him.
Hey,