Chapter 61
‘You didn’t say that Joe was going to be staying late too,’ said Barry briskly. They were walking back down the hill to the restaurant where he had booked dinner. He’d announced this fact soon after collecting her from school, as though expecting praise, even though she had made it clear she couldn’t go out that night. ‘He did it as a favour so we could finish the scenery,’ Gemma retorted in an equally short, brisk manner. ‘Now the two of them are going to have to do it on their own.’
‘When you do the kind of job I do,’ he said carefully, reaching for her hand, ‘you realise that each minute counts when you’re with your loved ones. You never know how much time you have left.’
Kitty had warned her about that. Of course she was pleased for her, about her engagement. But after spending years waiting for her first love to turn up, did she really want now to wait months at a time for a man whom she didn’t know very well and who might, with the uncertainties of war, not even return? ‘Or,’ Kitty had asked with her usual ability to strike a nerve, ‘is that part of the attraction? You have the security of a relationship without it being on your doorstep.’
‘Of course I don’t want a long-distance engagement or even marriage, but that’s just the way it is,’ Gemma had replied.
Kitty hadn’t sounded convinced. Maybe it was because of her own army brother that Gemma understood more about the demands made by Barry’s job than he did about hers. Besides, people like Barry, she told herself, were doing a brave thing, unlike most other professionals. Take that poor kid who had been killed last week from friendly fire. He was only nineteen. Her heart had bled for his parents and his too-young pregnant fiancée, staring blankly out from the front page of her newspaper.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said now, reminding herself of this. ‘I know we don’t have much time left. It’s just that I feel I’m being pulled in all kinds of directions at the moment.’
They’d reached the restaurant by now and Barry had, rather overzealously she thought, reached over and unfolded her napkin for her. ‘By the way,’ he said, with a smile which irritated her, for no apparent reason, ‘your friend Kitty rang when you were at work. Apparently your mobile was playing up again so she left a message with me instead. She’s really sorry but she can’t make it after all, because she’s got a last-minute booking that her agent says she’s got to do.’
No! Kitty couldn’t possibly let her down like that! ‘She said there was no point ringing her,’ added Barry, watching her fish for her mobile in her bag. ‘She’s filming tonight. But she did suggest that you might step in as the fairy queen instead.’
‘Me? But I’ve got to supervise the children. And I’ve got nothing to wear.’
Barry passed her the menu. ‘She said you’d say that. So she told me to tell you that you could always wear your dress from Las Vegas. Something about it being a test.’ He frowned. ‘Any idea what she was talking about?’
Clever, clever Kitty. The dress would be a test, in more ways than one. Three, in fact.
Kitty clearly thought it would be a test for her, Gemma, to see if wearing her wedding dress made her feel as she had about her silver chain. If so, it might mean she still had feelings for Sam.
Obviously she couldn’t come between a man and his not-wife, especially as there was a child at stake. But if she did feel twinges about wearing the dress, she shouldn’t marry Barry. After all, it would mean that she hadn’t progressed emotionally since taking off the necklace.
The second test would be Sam’s reaction. What would he say when he saw the dress? Would he recognise it? And if so, would he suggest that they reconsider their future?
And the third test would be Barry’s. If she told him that her fairy-queen costume was her wedding dress, how would he react? If he accepted it, it meant he could accept her baggage. If not, then did she really want a man who was, she was beginning to feel, a bit of a control freak? It wasn’t just that he checked her phone every time it rang. It was also that he questioned her whenever she mentioned Sam’s name, despite also mentioning Nancy and Danny at the same time. And now he didn’t like her working late.
It was all those things, plus several smaller niggles that couldn’t be set aside easily. Not to mention the fact that she still wasn’t experiencing any fireworks. Maybe, she told herself shakily, her body was trying to tell her something that her mind refused to recognise: the uncomfortable truth that Barry wasn’t the right man for her after all.