Her Parenthood Assignment. Fiona Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 down and thought about the future. Luke seemed to want her to start as soon as possible. And since she was here—with a bag packed for a week—and she’d started to bond with Heather, it seemed daft to leave so soon.

      She could always go and visit Caroline in a couple of weeks. Now she’d be closer, she could go for the weekend or something.

      She rolled over and tried to ignore the fact she was already making little sacrifices for this family, already putting their needs before her own. It always started this way…

      ‘I don’t want to go to Jodi’s to play! I hate her.’

      Heather’s voice was clearly recognisable through the closed guest room door. Gaby tried not to listen as she brushed her hair, but there wasn’t much chance of escaping the exchange between father and daughter.

      ‘It’ll be good for you to get to know some of your classmates better. You’ve been there half a term and you haven’t made any friends.’

      ‘Good for who? You just don’t want me here!’

      ‘Heather! You know that’s not true!’

      The only answer Luke got was the slam of Heather’s bedroom door.

      Gaby closed her eyes. She felt like collecting her car this morning, then driving back to London at eighty miles an hour, without stopping. She wanted to tell Luke she couldn’t take the job after all. It was all too close, too raw. What if she couldn’t do this?

      But if she left, Heather and Luke would be separated again and their relationship might not survive. The thought that she might be able to turn the tide and see father and daughter happy together made her wrap all of her own feelings of insecurity in a bundle and pack them away somewhere dark inside herself.

      Luke had offered her a lift down to the village to get her car. Not because it was too far to walk, but because it was drizzling on and off and her most sensible shoes were still slightly damp from the day before.

      When СКАЧАТЬ