“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, heishandsome. 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.
