Chapter Twenty-eight
When she next woke, the car was cruising smoothly on the open road. It was dark. Much darker than anywhere in London, where
the city never slept.
“Where are we?” she said sharply, sitting up in a panic. “Where are you taking me?”
“We’re going home.”
“What home?”
“Middlemass, of course.”
“I can’t!” said Imogen, her voice rising in panic. “What about Ruth?”
“Look behind you.”
Turning, she saw Ruth strapped into a car seat in her pajamas. She was sound asleep, her long dark eyelashes fanned across
her cheeks.
“Your mother took her back to your flat and got her ready for you. All her stuff’s in a bag in the boot, plus some bits and
pieces for you.”
She turned to face the front. “How far is it now?”
“Not long to go.”
Peace stole over Imogen for the first time in weeks. Of course, Gabriel knew that Storybook Cottage had been sold by now, to that couple with the baby. She wondered where he was taking her and then found that she didn’t care. She felt safe. She and Ruth were with Gabriel. Louise was gone. Nothing else mattered. Imogen dozed off again.
She woke as the car drew to a halt. They were in Middlemass, but not at the Hall as she had expected. Instead, they were outside
Simon and Genny’s house. Despite it being the middle of the night—the lights in the kitchen were on, and Genny came bouncing
out to meet them. Seeing Ruth was still asleep, she stopped bouncing and put her finger to her lips.
“Hi,” she whispered, giving Imogen a hug as she clambered stiffly out of the car.
Imogen caught Genny and Gabriel sharing a look. Genny gave a little nod.
“Look at the gorgeous little thing. She’s got so huge since I saw her last!” she breathed, looking at Ruth in the car.
“Gabriel, can you get the car seat out, do you think?” she asked. “You could just bring her in asleep. I’ll take her bag.”
Genny bustled efficiently.
“Now, I’ve got some hot chocolate ready to go. Why don’t we have that, and then you can grab a few hours kip while Ruth is
asleep—you don’t want to be carting her around all over the place. You can go and see the cottage in daylight. That’ll be
better, won’t it? You won’t believe how it looks now, all beautiful again. The boys have done a grand job renovating it.”
At the talk of the cottage, Imogen almost cried again. She just wanted to get it all over with. She didn’t understand why she had to go and see a home that was no longer hers. The place where she had dreamed of raising Ruth. It seemed cruel to dangle what she wanted so much but could no longer have. As they all sat drinking hot chocolate around the kitchen table, she was aware there was an atmosphere, a secret current of communication going on between Genny and Gabriel, which—in her exhausted state—she just couldn’t interpret.
Ruth slept on beatifically in the car seat beside Imogen on the terra-cotta floor of the kitchen. She looked around. It was
all so familiar and so perfect. Storybook Cottage could have been perfect too but instead it was being painted magnolia and
flogged to some couple with their baby, a little family that Genny was already speaking so excitedly about. The idea that
life in the Middlemass community would continue without her and Ruth was almost too much to bear.
“Shall we go?” she said, interrupting Simon’s easy chat about difficult patients he had seen recently and Genny bringing her
up to date on the latest in the school saga, which was, basically, all good, thanks to her brilliant leadership, as Simon
claimed proudly.
They all turned to look at her. Genny seemed suffused with excitement, her eyes dancing in anticipation. “It’s dawn,” she
said, pointing out of the kitchen window. “You go, Gabriel. You can leave Ruth here if you like?”
Imogen looked at her daughter doubtfully. She probably wouldn’t wake up. Not if she and Gabriel were quick, and why wouldn’t
they be? It was going to be the most perfunctory check, she was sure.
“I’ve got breakfast waiting for you when you come back— fresh croissants and real coffee—but there’s no rush. You take as long as you like.” She looked at Gabriel for instructions.
“I’m sure it’s all fine,” Imogen said in a small voice, once they were in the car. “Genny said you kept an eye on the work.
I’m really grateful.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Sweeping up the drive in front of the house, she noticed fresh gravel had been laid from the light of the headlights. She
could see the first light of dawn in the east too, over past the orchard. The garden had recovered well, transforming from
a mud slick to a riot of lavender and roses, with a particularly gorgeous honeysuckle over the door, swags of it drooping
with the abundance of its flowers.
In the hall, the flagstones had been scrubbed clean, and a Persian rug she didn’t recognize laid in the center. In a dream,
she wandered into the biggest sitting room off the hallway. The first glimmers of low morning light crept softly into the
room, its rays slanting through the French windows across the oak floor, which was now gleaming with beeswax and effort. Overlaying
the polish smell was the scent of a jug of billowing roses sitting on a grand piano. A few petals had already dropped onto
the glossy wood. In front of the fireplace, a pair of sofas faced each other across a low table. They were simply covered
in white linen with a selection of cushions and throws that invited a visitor to sit and relax.
“It’s beautiful,” said Imogen. “Just like I always imagined it would be one day,” she added, remembering how she had kept the door closed on the room with its odd collection of Nigel’s furniture—his Eames chair and that heavy mahogany tallboy. She had been unable to make it feel like a home.
“Most of the furniture that was in here went in a skip, I’m afraid,” said Gabriel as if reading her thoughts. “I made sure
the insurance people valued it all, of course. You’ll have a big cheque coming to you. Come and see the rest.”
A brief tour of the other downstairs rooms showed fresh new paintwork, mainly in soft, creamy whites and grays that flattered
the elegant detailing and made the most of the light. The kitchen was clean and cozy-looking with new cupboards and oak worktops.
The stone sink looked just the same but had a new draining board. Strangely, someone had washed and arranged her Denby jugs
and put them back on the newly painted dresser.
What was he doing? she wondered. Showing me what I gave up? It was his idea to sell, for goodness’ sake. Surely, he knows?
“Gabriel,” she said.
“Shush,” he replied. “Come upstairs.”
He led her up the stairs, not to the attic floor, where her studio and bedroom had been, but to the main bedroom at the front,
with its high ceiling and its pair of huge windows.
She gasped.
“It’s beautiful,” she said at last. And it was. The peeling wallpaper had been removed, the walls painted the most delicate duck egg blue, and the shutters at the window freed from the layers of paint that had glued them closed and obscured their detailing. Painted in a chalk white eggshell and partly open, they filtered the morning light. There was a cheval mirror in the corner, a chest of drawers, and a large iron bedstead.
“How did you do all this?” marveled Imogen. “The colors, the finishes, it’s all perfect.”
“Oh,” said Gabriel rushing to explain, “that wasn’t me. Or Genny. My mate’s wife did it. Fenella. She’s this amazing interior
designer when she’s not looking after their baby. You’ll meet her soon enough.”
But will I? thought Imogen. They were all being so insensitive. Clearly Gabriel couldn’t know... He was examining the bed
with interest. It was heaped with inviting plump pillows and eiderdown, all encased in crisp white cotton with ladder-stitched
borders.
“That’s good,” he said. “I asked Genny to make up the bed.”
“Gabriel,” tried Imogen again.
“Yes,” he said at last, turning to face her.
“There’s this other family. The house is gone.”
“I know.”
“It’s not mine.”
“I know,” he said, cupping her face in his hands with such gentleness, it took her breath away.
“The owners could be moving in at any time.”
“They just did,” he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb and letting his eyes rest on her mouth.
“They’re here?” said Imogen, panicking.
“Yep, right here in this room,” he breathed, leaning in and brushing her lips with his own.
“I—I don’t understand,” she stuttered when, thrillingly, his lips moved to her neck.
“It was mine,” he said. “You knew that?”
Imogen nodded, understanding at last. That had been the deal, in return for the repairs liability being written off.
“I bought it. And now I’m giving it back to you,” he whispered in her ear. “For us, so I hope you like it.”
“I do.”
“Now, that,” he said, “is the response I was hoping for to a number of questions, not least of which is do you like this new bed? ”
At that, he pushed Imogen gently backward onto it, his arms either side of her, his eyes ranging over her body.
“I’ve wanted to do this since we met,” he said, slipping the straps off her shoulders and stroking her breasts. “Have you
any idea how difficult it’s been to keep my hands off you?”
“But,” protested Imogen, “I thought I annoyed you.” She shivered deliciously as he ran his hands down her body to cup her
buttocks, pulling her toward him so their hips ground together.
“You do—intensely,” agreed Gabriel, “and never more so than when you keep telling me how I feel about things and then running
away from me. Now, stop talking.”
“But me being here just reminds you how perfect it was when Annabel was alive.”
“There you go again,” he said, covering her mouth with his own.
And then neither of them said anything much for quite a while.