The tears fell now, hot and stinging. Gaby stifled a sob.
“Why are you saying all this, Aunt Jill? What good is this doing? I can’t even remember why you brought this stuff up.”
Jill pushed herself up from the armchair and joined Gaby on the sofa and pulled her into a hug.
“I’m certainly not saying any of this to upset you, my lovely girl. But I can’t help thinking that your desire to always keep moving on from place to place, travelling endlessly around the world, isn’t just about your passion for adventure and seeing new things. Naturally, that’s a big part of it, of course it is. But beneath it, there’s a shard of insecurity, a worry that if you stay anywhere long enough to become part of something meaningful, you might get hurt all over again.”
“That’s not true,” Gaby said, her voice hitching as she sobbed. “I have friends all over the world. I’ve had romanticrelationships with lots of lovely men who’ve meant so much to me.”
“But none of them have ever been enough to keep you in one place. And so perhaps you think, deep down, that this must mean you aren’t worthy of real love. Romance, yes. Love, no. After the way your parents behaved and let you drift away, it’s easy to understand how you might think, subconsciously, that you are somehow unlovable. But now you realise you’ve been labouring under a misapprehension all this time.”
Gaby wiped away the last of her tears and looked at her aunt, baffled all over again.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You are worthy of love, real love. And you are capable of feeling real love, too. That’s what you’ve discovered since you came here and met Peter again.”
Gaby let this sink in, trying to make sense of it.
“All these years you’ve spent rightly enjoying your life of travelling around the world, and at the back of your mind perhaps consoling yourself, even if subconsciously, that such a life of adventure was the most you could ever hope for.”
Jill smiled, her eyes warm as she squeezed Gaby’s arm.
“But then you came back here and ran into Peter and spent time with him again. And you realised that your first love was your true love.”
Gaby jolted as her aunt’s words struck home.
“And now you have no idea what to do about it because doing anything at all will shatter all the dimly understood beliefs you’ve held until now. You kept moving around the world because it pleased you but also because you worried, deep down, that the fact you never wanted to stop and settle anywhere, with anyone, must mean those things were beyond you. But that wasn’t it at all. You never stopped and settled, and never found anyone you wanted to settle with, because you’d already foundthe man you loved. You were just too young back then to realise it.”
Gaby turned it all over in her mind, wondering if what her aunt was saying made sense.
“That’s a lot of psychoanalysis, Aunt Jill,” she said, needing to lighten the moment with a jolt of humour.
“Perhaps,” Jill smiled. “Or perhaps I’m simply able to see fate and destiny at work, while you’re too emotionally muddled right now to understand it clearly. I think you ended up back here in Hamblehurst for a reason, and it wasn’t just because of my surgery. You’ve lived a wonderful, fulfilling and exciting life during your fantastic travels around the world, Gaby. But perhaps your heart now wants something different and it found it the moment you and Peter met again. It’s just taking your clever brain a little longer to catch up.”
Jill dabbed at a stray tear on Gaby’s face and Gaby squeezed her aunt’s arm, grateful for her care and guidance even if she didn’t know what to do about any of the things she’d told her.
“I have a job waiting for me,” she said at last, because it was true. “I’ve wanted to return to work on a cruise ship for a long time. I’ve wanted to visit the Caribbean for a long time, too. I don’t think I can risk my reputation with the agencies and employers I work with by pulling out of the commitment I made just because I’ve lost my marbles over a boy I used to know.”
“I understand the risks. Only you know if they’re worth taking.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. Gaby hoped her aunt might say more, but apparently she’d said all she wanted to say and was now leaving it to sink in.
Jill rose from the sofa. “You need time to mull things over. Go upstairs and freshen up after your day working at the Riverford and see how you feel afterwards. Then we can think about our dinner plans and if you want to talk more, we can do that.”
Jill shuffled out of the room. Gaby sat for a moment longer, reeling from everything that had happened over the last half an hour.
Peter turning up and telling her he loved her.
Jill’s pep talk and home truths—most of which, Gaby already knew, were right on the money.
She needed time to recover from the emotional rollercoaster and think about what it all meant and what she wanted to do about it.
Gaby decided to take her aunt’s advice and freshen up. Perhaps a hot shower would wash away the turmoil and help her find the answers she needed.
Because surely those answers must be out there somewhere.
27
