Chapter 9
On Monday afternoon, the nurse came and removed Jill’s stitches from her knee. Gaby saw the look of relief on her aunt’s face when the procedure was over, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
Once the nurse had completed her work and answered Jill’s questions about the next steps in her rehabilitation process, Gaby thanked her and showed her out. When she returned to the living room, her aunt was already on her feet and using her crutches to move back and forth across the floor.
“That feels so much better,” Jill said. “The pressure around the wound feels entirely different with the stitches removed. I already feel like I can move more easily.”
“I’m so glad, Aunt Jill,” Gaby said. “From what the nurse said when she examined you, the recovery is going brilliantly.”
“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel. This past week has been difficult and painful at times and it’s felt like a bit of an uphill slog. Surgery takes its toll, even if it’s for the greater good. I’m just relieved to put the tough bit behind me now.”
“I think you deserve a cup of tea after enduring the nurse tugging those stitches loose,” Gaby said and gave a shudder. “And some cake too. We’ve still got some flapjacks from the Sweet Treats bakery to use up as well as those iced cupcakes I bought there.”
“I’ll be the size of a house once this convalescence is over.
If I ask you to buy any more cake while you’re here, just ignore me.
I can’t be trusted. And my neighbours keep bringing goodies too, and I can hardly refuse to accept their home baked gifts when they’ve all been so kind.
Although if they keep it up, we may have to redistribute some of these cakes and treats amongst them all otherwise I’ll be adding to my poor knee’s trouble by piling on pounds of weight. ”
Gaby left her aunt to her pacing exercises and went to make the tea.
While the kettle boiled, she checked on the vegetable curry she’d cooked earlier and which was marinading on the hob.
She liked keeping her aunt fed with tasty wholesome meals while she was staying here and tonight’s curry was packed with plenty of healthy veggies and warming spices to aid with her healing.
Once she’d laid a tray with the tea things and a plate of cakes, she carried it through and served her aunt a cup. When she passed Jill an iced cupcake, her aunt rolled her eyes and laughed before taking a bite.
“If these weren’t so tasty I might be able to control myself,” Jill said. “But my goodness, Mel from Sweet Treats is some sort of sorceress when it comes to baking.”
Gaby laughed and sipped her tea. “I hope you don’t mind if we eat dinner a little earlier this evening so I can go and help Harry Goodwin over at the Riverford Hotel again.”
“That’s fine with me. You’re very kind to help him and his family. What’s the situation with that poor woman who was involved in the road accident and whose daughter you’re filling in for?”
Gaby gave a brief summary of what she knew, which wasn’t much.
The woman was still in hospital and it looked likely that she’d need another operation to deal with the injuries she’d sustained.
The Goodwins had given their employee full compassionate leave while things remained uncertain at the hospital.
They’d managed to redeploy staff and bring in temporary cover to deal with the unexpected loss of their events manager, but a couple of gaps remained.
When Harry had called Gaby on Saturday evening and asked if she’d be willing to help them again, she’d been happy to say yes. Tonight she’d step in to manage a corporate networking function at the hotel and she’d also agreed to oversee another booking later in the week.
“The Goodwins have done a great job dealing with the staff absence, but they have a busy schedule of events booked and I’m glad I can lend a hand,” Gaby said when she’d finished filling her aunt in on what was going on.
“I’m proud of you,” Jill said. “And I had Harry’s great-aunt Anita on the phone earlier while you were busy cooking the curry and she wanted me to know how grateful they all are for your help.”
“Like I said, I’m happy to be useful.”
Jill set her teacup down. “Thank you for that cuppa, my dear. Now I’m keen to get moving again and complete my exercises.” She grabbed her crutches and the printed exercise sheets she was following as part of her physiotherapy programme.
“While you’re busy doing that, I’ll go upstairs and work a little more on my notes for this guest talk I’m giving at Peter Bailey’s school tomorrow afternoon.”
Jill’s face lit up. “That’s another thing I’m so pleased about. You and that nice Peter Bailey spending time together while you’re here. I’m thrilled. It’s wonderful that you two crossed paths again.”
“It’s nice to see an old friend from the past.”
“And did I mention how handsome I thought he looked when he came to the house last night?”
“Only about a thousand times, Aunt Jill.”
Jill laughed and waved this off. “Well, he is handsome. He’s grown into a remarkably attractive man.
Of course, I seem to recall he was a handsome boy too, when you knew him all those years ago.
Naturally you don’t need me to tell you that either, or else why would you have spent every waking moment with him during that summer you stayed here? ”
“Not every waking moment.”
“As good as. And it was just as well too, because he put a smile on your face that I worried I’d never see again when you first came to stay.”
Her aunt’s comment stopped Gaby in her tracks as she gathered up the tea things. “Yes, I suppose I was a bit long in the face when I arrived here that summer.”
“With good reason. Your parents had a lot to answer for. Quite what they were thinking battling each other in front of you and dragging you into their miserable arguments, I’ll never know.
Marriages break down, everyone knows that, but they should’ve been mature enough to handle it better and to prioritise you instead of themselves. ”
Jill must have seen Gaby’s pained expression at the mention of her parents and the calamitous end of their marriage, because she waved a hand as if to dismiss them and the memories she’d evoked.
“Anyway, that’s all in the past, thank goodness,” Jill said and smiled. “But seeing how happy you were last night when Peter came to take you out reminded me of how much he brightened up your world all those years ago, just when you needed it. It’s lovely that you two are catching up again.”
“I’m glad we ran into each other. It was fun chatting about the old days last night.”
“I’m sure it was. And now you’re volunteering to help Peter with this school careers fair he’s in charge of. You have a good heart, Gaby.”
Gaby laughed at this. “Peter didn’t give me much choice. It was an ambush and I could hardly say no when I’d already told him about how I’d volunteered to help Harry Goodwin at his hotel.”
“I know you’re nervous about speaking to a bunch of secondary school students, but you’ll be brilliant, I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t know about brilliant. At this point I’ll settle for not making a complete fool of myself, which means I need to keep practising my speech.”
“Of you go then and get busy, and I’ll work on my exercises.”
Gaby dealt with the tea tray and then went upstairs to the guest bedroom.
Every time she stepped into the cosy haven, she couldn’t help admiring the pretty room all over again.
She was so used to the basic and typically minimalistic apartments or flat shares that she chose while moving from place to place for work that she’d forgotten how nice it was to enjoy some of life’s little luxuries when it came to interior surroundings.
The hotels and resorts where she worked were usually so decadent and exquisitely appointed that she didn’t mind keeping things basic with her living arrangements.
The long hours she worked meant she spent more time at the hotels and resorts than she did in the rentals she chose, and because she loved to explore and immerse herself in the cities and localities where she worked, she didn’t use her rental accommodations for much more than sleeping.
Which was why she was enjoying her aunt’s guest room so much. Just as she’d imagined when she arrived, it was a treat to stay there and feel indulged by the pretty interior décor and plush bedding and feminine touches.
And as she found herself doing each time she stepped into the room, Gaby walked first to the window for a peek outside. For some reason she couldn’t quite pin down, she liked looking out at Foxglove Street and seeing the comings and goings.
This afternoon, there were a couple of dog-walkers meandering along the pavement and chatting to each other while their dogs sniffed here and there, and further along she saw the postman on his rounds and making good progress around the letterboxes.
In the other direction, a front door opened and an older man stepped out into his garden carrying a heavy-duty broom and began sweeping the path between his door and gate.
The door of the adjoining house opened and a man walked outside and stopped at the fence to chat to his neighbour while he swept the path.
Soon, the first man was leaning on his broom and his neighbour was leaning on the fence and the two of them were having a grand time putting the world to rights.
Gaby smiled at the peaceful street and the quiet activities of the folks who lived there. She had no idea why these occasional glimpses out the window to see what was going on were so appealing to her, but they were.
Or perhaps she was just delaying getting on with the task that had brought her up here in the first place. She was supposed to be working on her speech for the school careers fair, not standing around at the window and watching the world go by.
Once she was comfortable on the bed, she opened the notebook she’d used to sketch out her talk for the kids.
After making a few changes, she read it out aloud to herself, cringing at how silly she felt talking to an empty room.
She wondered if anything she planned on saying would be even remotely interesting to a bunch of teenage kids.
“You have to keep it interesting,” she muttered to herself, scrubbing out a couple of lines of scribbled notes and adding something different which she thought might sound more appealing.
If she talked less about the day-to-day management tasks she handled in the hotels where she worked and more about the glamorous resorts and fantastic cities and beautiful destinations she got to enjoy thanks to her language skill advantages, that might appeal to the kids more.
A few more scribbled notes and strike-outs on her notepad and she’d crafted some decent remarks about how she hadn’t particularly enjoyed learning Spanish at school to begin with, and hadn’t been especially good at it either, until she realised how much she wanted a career in hospitality and that language fluency would unlock opportunities that would be out of reach otherwise.
Gaby wrote and revised and practiced her short speech once more, feeling silly all over again for talking to herself. Her voice sounded stilted and awkward, and unless she learned to relax and sound more natural, the kids would tune her out regardless of what she was saying.
“Damn it Peter, I can’t believe you talked me into this,” she muttered.
But it was impossible to be upset with Peter about this, because if she was being honest with herself, she was glad they had a good reason to spend more time together.
Torturing herself by making a speech in front of teenagers was a complicated way to go about it, but at least Peter’s request for help meant the time they’d spend together tomorrow would come cloaked as a helpful favour instead of something more… significant.
And the dinner he’d offered to buy her after she’d finished her guest speaker gig at the school? Well, that was just him showing his gratitude. It would be rude to turn him down when all he wanted to do was say thanks for helping him out of a tight spot.
“Sure, keep telling yourself that,” Gaby muttered, still flicking through the pages of her notepad.
They could both pretend there was nothing more to their dinner plans tomorrow than a token of thanks or another chance for two friends to catch up on old times.
But Gaby knew differently and she suspected Peter did too.
Their time together in the pub last night had made her want more—more time with him, more opportunity to learn about the man he’d become, more conversation.
She shouldn’t want those things but couldn’t seem to help herself, couldn’t seem to stop her mind drifting back to him. Any lingering doubts she’d had about getting together for a drink had vanished the moment they’d left the house together.
And in the hours they’d spent in each other’s company, she’d felt at complete ease with him.
The same ease and comfort she’d felt during their summer of love.
It was as if the fifteen years that separated then and now had simply vanished.
Gaby didn’t know what any of this meant. The flicker of attraction she’d felt when he turned up at the door yesterday had only deepened as the evening went on.
What would that flicker feel like after another evening in each other’s company?
Perhaps dinner together was a really bad idea. Rekindling an old flame was just plain bad judgement. She was leaving in a weeks’ time and she’d come to Hamblehurst to help her aunt, not to have some mad affair.
She blushed when she realised just how wild she was letting her mind run. In a matter of seconds she’d turned a thank-you dinner into an epically ill-conceived fling.
Gaby closed her notebook and checked the time and was stunned to discover she’d been working on her speech—and fantasising about Peter Bailey—for over an hour.
Harry Goodwin had arranged to pick her up at five-thirty to drive her to the hotel for the corporate networking function she was managing, which meant she ought to get moving on early dinner preparations.
As she hurried downstairs, she was glad she’d be busy tonight at Harry’s hotel because it would keep her crazy thoughts about Peter at bay.
For a while, at least.