Her Parenthood Assignment. Fiona Harper
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relish.
Gaby gingerly put a slice to her lips. Anaemic cheese and a cardboard base. Yuck! Still, she wasn’t going to be rude. She took as big a bite as she dared and chewed the minimum amount of times before swallowing.
‘Is there any salad?’
Two pairs of eyes locked on to her. She might as well have asked them if they wanted a side order of slugs. Vegetables were obviously a foreign concept in this household.
‘Never mind. This is…lovely.’
She looked out of the window to try and take her mind off the artificial taste. The sky was a beautiful slate-blue. It was getting quite dark. Suddenly she stopped chewing and scanned the kitchen for a wall clock.
She gulped down her mouthful. ‘What time is it?’
Luke looked at his watch. ‘Just gone six.’
Drat! Just when she’d thought the day couldn’t get any more complicated.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘I think I just missed the last ferry.’
Luke put his pizza slice down. ‘You came over on the ferry?’
‘I left my car across the river.’ She stood up. ‘It’s a long story. I’m not very good with…If I run, do you think I can catch the ferry guy?’
She started off in search of her shoes. Luke followed her into what Heather had called the ‘mud room’ during their tour.
‘It’s too late. Ben will be in the Ferryboat Inn by now and the only thing that’ll move him is the bell for last orders.’
Gaby dropped her face into her hands and massaged the kinks out of her forehead. ‘Today was not supposed to be like this!’ Her return to being a nanny was going to be marked by a new, calm professionalism. Not ferries and mud and little girls with big round eyes. Suddenly everything felt so tangled and messy.
Luke’s voice was taut. ‘Are you saying you don’t want the job?’
‘Yes!…No. I mean, I’m not sure I’m what you and Heather are looking for. I need time to think.’
Silence.
Her hands dropped to her sides. He was staring at her, but he didn’t look angry, he just looked…defeated.
‘Of course, I understand your decision. Not everyone is comfortable taking on a family with a history like ours. That narrowed down the candidates considerably in the first place.’ He swallowed. ‘Heather will just have to go and stay with her grandparents while I sort something out.’
Now it was her turn to swallow. The look on his face was all her fault.
‘Are you sure you can’t stay, Gaby? I know it might not look like it, but Heather has taken a shine to you. She didn’t manage to speak at all to the other interviewees. She just grunted and tried to evaporate them with her laser vision.’
Gaby let out a little giggle. Luke seemed completely taken aback, as if he’d forgotten he could be funny and had just surprised himself. She put a hand over her mouth and tried to stifle her growing smile. It was no good. The smile accelerated into a laugh.
‘I can just see it!’ she blurted between giggles. ‘Heather plotting to put crabs in their beds…’
And then Luke was laughing too. That was all she needed. It started her off again. And while she leant against the wall for support, her mind drifted free and she wondered if this was the same kind of hysterical laughter that attacked people at funerals, because there truly wasn’t anything to laugh about.
The laughter finally ebbed away and they stood there looking at each other in the gathering gloom. Luke sobered.
‘It’s a pity. I have the feeling you could be very good for us…for Heather, I mean.’
Gaby felt her heart beating in her chest and knew she was going to say something truly stupid.
‘I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.’
CHAPTER THREE
LUKE checked the digital clock on the oven. Five forty-five. Much too early to make breakfast, or wake Heather, or do anything else he could think of to fill the time. He carefully opened the kitchen door and went outside.
It was dark, really dark. He still hadn’t got used to that. In prison, there had always been the harsh yellow glow of a bulb somewhere. Always a clang, or a hum, or a shout to break the silence.
Here on the river it was completely still. The water was glassy and inky black, reflecting the myriad stars above. On a clear night here you couldn’t even see the main constellations, there were so many stars in the sky. Like now, he could see the dusty sweep of the Milky Way and, if he kept really still, sometimes he could see a satellite cutting its way through the overcrowded sky in a clean even line.
He shivered and looked back at the water. He couldn’t spend too long watching the sky when it was like this. It felt too big.
If only he could sleep better. It might stop him feeling as if he had to hold himself together, as if the world had too many possibilities and he had to stop himself from thinking about all the choices, the different avenues life could take. Right now he had to concentrate on being still, on being solid. On being someone Heather could depend on.
Having Gaby here was going to help. He looked up at the guest room windows and envied the long, unbroken sleep she was having. There had been nothing for it but to have her stay the night. Her car was the other side of the river and there was nowhere to stay in the village. He supposed she would have to return home and collect some things before she moved in full time.
Thank heavens she’d changed her mind at the last minute. He was starting work at the medical centre next week and, if he hadn’t managed to sort something out, Heather would have had to stay with Lucy’s parents again, and then they’d be back to square one.
Since it was low tide again, he went down the steps outside the kitchen and on to the beach, careful to keep close to the house so the lights from the kitchen gave him some idea of where he was treading.
Heather had changed so much in the last few years. When he’d left, she’d been in her first year of school. Her uniform had been too big and Lucy always used to do her hair in cute little bunches.
Lucy’s parents had brought her to see him on visiting days and he’d seen her change over the years. Not smoothly and slowly, hardly noticing the little differences, but in fits and starts, like flicking through a series of snapshots. He smiled when he thought of the time she’d arrived and shown him her first missing tooth, announcing proudly, ‘Look Daddy, my tongue has a window!’
Over time, the gaps between visits had got longer. Her grandparents had begun to send notes saying it was upsetting Heather too much to come and see him. They thought she needed to have a normal life, as much as possible. And, in their book, seeing your father across a dingy prison table, being artificially bright and pretending nothing was wrong, was obviously not normal. Hell, it wasn’t even normal in his book.
He picked up a handful of small flat stones and concentrated on throwing them into the water. The reflected stars distorted and scurried away. He kept throwing until the light turned a milky grey and the thoughts he didn’t want to stir were lying at the bottom of the river with the pebbles.
Gaby could see him out there on the beach—a dark figure, barely visible in the dull glow of the kitchen lights. What on earth must he have gone through to make him turn out like this? It didn’t bear thinking about.
But she would have to face it sooner or later, because she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be able to help Heather unless she helped Luke first. In her experience, the parents often needed training more than the children did.
She walked away from the window and got back into bed. The sheets were still warm and she snuggled