She followed him to the house next door that had been her home for so many years of her life.
Stepping through the door gave her a feeling of warmth and comfort. There was the wonky pot she’d made for her dad when she was eight which still had pride of place on one of his shelves, and a photo of her dad with her mother, sitting on the beach at sunset, laughing together. It was her favourite. She had the same photo in her own cottage.
She settled herself at the table in the kitchen and glanced out of the window at the red-streaked sky.
“Amazing sunset.” She’d spent hours at this table doing her homework.
“Yes, looks as if it’s going to be another hot day tomorrow. How was your run?”
“Glorious.” She didn’t add that for once she’d been too stressed to enjoy it.
He put a large dish of lasagne in the centre of the table, golden on top and still bubbling from the oven.
“That smells good.” She served him and then herself, and then did the same with the salad. “Thank you for this.”
“Anytime.”
They ate in a companiable silence and she had second helpings, even though she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t.
“It’s delicious.”
“You can thank your mother for that. She was the one who taught me to make it, as you know.”
She did know. She had a notebook in her kitchen full of recipes that her mother had written out in her neat handwriting.
“I should make it myself, but somehow I prefer eating yours.
It’s the perfect comfort food.”
“And do you need comfort?”
He always knew. He always saw. She wondered sometimesif it was because he looked harder than other people. He paid attention.
She resisted the temptation to pour out her problems. She wanted people to treat her as an adult at work and the first step towards that was surely behaving like an adult. She couldn’t lean on her dad every time she had a problem. She needed to handle this by herself. He couldn’t make decisions for her.
He put a coffee down in front of her but before she could take a sip her phone rang.
She had no intention of answering it because her father had a strict rule about no phones at mealtimes, but she couldn’t resist glancing at the screen and was immediately filled with panic.
“Boston.” She snatched the phone up. “Head office.”
Her stomach quaked. Was this it? Was he about to tell her they were going to be closed down?
She sent her father a look of apology.
“Take it,” he said gruffly and carried his coffee into the living room, closing the door behind him.
She answered her phone, palms sweating, a hundred bad scenarios spinning through her head. Her heart was pounding. She was afraid she was about to have a heart attack and end up in hospital next to Gerald.
The call lasted ten minutes and when she eventually put the phone down she felt dazed.
“Well?” Her father came back into the room. “Was it something important?”
“Oh—no, nothing major. Why do you ask?”
Her father transferred the remains of the now cool lasagne to a smaller dish and covered it. “Because that white-haired man with eyes like a weasel who stayed at the hotel last month wasn’t enjoying a mini break. He was doing a valuation and looking for commercial opportunities.”
She gaped at him. “You knew that?”
