Chapter 2 #3
Peter hugged his parents and said goodbye and then climbed into his car. They waved him off as he pulled out into the road and Peter gave his horn a soft toot, knowing his father liked it when they did that as they left.
It was only a short drive across Hamblehurst to where Peter lived on Victoria Road. As he reached the junction with Riverside Road at the end of his parents’ street, he thought of an errand he could usefully deal with before going home.
In the boot of his car was the squash racket he’d borrowed from a friend at the weekend.
He got together with friends most Saturday mornings at the leisure centre for a few games, and the strings on his racket had snapped during their most recent session.
The friend who’d loaned him a spare racket had left early to pick up his daughter from football practice and Peter had promised to drop the borrowed racket back to him during the week, because he’d be too busy the following Saturday working on the final arrangements for the school careers fair to make it along to their usual game.
As his friend lived on Foxglove Street, just a couple of streets down from his parents’ house on Juniper Avenue, it was a good opportunity to deal with the errand and return the racket.
Peter turned onto Foxglove Street and parked at his friend’s house, where it turned out to be the kids’ bathtime. With his friend up to his neck in wet kids and other parental responsibilities, Peter didn’t linger after returning the squash racket. Back in the car, he set off again for home.
He was halfway along Foxglove Street and heading towards the high street at the opposite end when something made him look away from the road and at one of the terraced houses on his right-hand side.
And as he glanced at the house a memory hit him, a memory from a summer long ago when he’d been eighteen years old and had fallen in love with a girl who’d made his head spin.
Gaby.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about her and had no idea why she’d come into his thoughts now. They’d only known each other for a few short months before they’d gone their separate ways.
Gaby’s aunt lived in the house he was passing and she’d spent the summer staying there before starting university. When the summer ended, she’d left for London and Peter had returned to Manchester to start his second year of the maths degree he was studying.
Parting had been torture and he’d missed Gaby during the tough weeks of autumn that had followed.
Only the increasing difficulty and challenges of his maths studies had finally stopped him thinking about her.
He remembered they’d promised to keep in touch but the messages they’d exchanged had eventually dwindled as life took them in different directions.
He could see Gaby now in his mind’s eye, with her auburn hair shining beneath the summer sun, her green eyes sparkling, her soft lips brushing against his…
Peter quickly turned his attention back to the road, realising he was in danger of crashing the car if he didn’t watch what he was doing. The few seconds of daydreaming were unexpected and certainly enjoyable, but ultimately dangerous.
And not just because he might cause an accident.
But because remembering that long ago summer and the girl who’d knocked his world off its axis would only remind him that in the years since he’d never come close to finding another woman who made him feel the way that she had.
Peter glanced one last time at the terraced house as he drove past, the memories still pulling at him, rich with emotion and surprised remembrance.
He’d driven along this street plenty of times over the years since he’d returned to live in Hamblehurst and yet hadn’t thought of Gaby once.
Peter couldn’t help but wonder what had made him think of her now.
* * *
Gaby opened the front door and stepped outside into her aunt’s front garden to refill the bird feeders that hung in the cherry tree.
Over dinner, Jill had mentioned how she planned to pass the time while recovering from surgery, and after listing the books she wanted to read and the films she wanted to watch and the podcasts she hoped to catch up on, she’d added that if she got bored of all those things she’d content herself with looking out the living room window and enjoying the birds who visited the feeders she’d set up in the front garden.
This had prompted Jill to wonder if the feeders might not need refilling after being unattended during the time she’d spent in hospital.
Gaby had found the bag of wild bird seed her aunt kept in the small pantry by the back door and decided to deal with the task there and then, so that the feeders would be full for the birds arriving in the morning.
As she stepped off the garden path and crossed towards the cherry tree that grew in the middle of the small patch of lawn, Gaby glanced at the car that had just driven past the house.
A strange and indefinable tug pulled at her chest as she watched the car disappear around the curve towards the high street. She had no idea why. She knew no one in this town other than her aunt and couldn’t even see the driver behind the wheel because it was dark.
And yet her eyes stayed glued to the spot in the road where the car had driven around the curve and off into the distance.
Peter.
The idea that it might have been him who was driving the car was ludicrous.
Yes, she’d been thinking of him earlier and remembering the summer they’d spent together as teenagers, but that didn’t mean he’d been the one driving that car.
He probably didn’t even live in Hamblehurst anymore and had almost certainly moved off to bigger and brighter things somewhere else after university, much the same as she had.
So why was she still standing staring at the spot where that car had been right before it vanished around the curve?
Gaby couldn’t answer that question. Perhaps the long day spent travelling from Madrid to London and then to Hamblehurst had tired her out more than she’d realised and her mind was playing silly tricks on her.
She turned her attention to the bird feeders.
The light thrown by the front door lamp and the streetlamps was enough to help her refill the containers and return them to the tree branches.
As she hung up the last of the three feeders, she glanced up at the crescent moon she’d noticed when she’d arrived on the street earlier.
The moon had risen higher in the night sky, pulling a shimmering blanket of stars along with it.
Suddenly, a bright burst of starlight shot across the black sky. Gaby gasped in surprise and delight and realised it was probably a meteor she was seeing, burning up as it skipped across the earth’s atmosphere.
The stunning and elegant spectacle filled her with joy… and left a lovely thought inside her mind.
A shooting star is an omen of good things to come.
With one final glance at the sweeping night sky, and another for the road and the spot where that passing car had inexplicably caught her attention, Gaby turned back to her aunt’s house and went inside still smiling.