Be My Baby. Fiona Harper

they were both trying.

      Although she was very fond of Heather, she was determined to keep a professional distance. There were so many reasons why she couldn’t afford to lose her heart to this needy little girl and her silently aching father.

      Distance. That was what they all needed. Luke certainly needed time and space to sort himself out. At least, that was the reason she gave herself for keeping out of his way in the evenings, and always, always leaving the dinner plates on the table for him to clear away.

      Back at the Old Boathouse, she parked her car near the back door and let herself in. Seven and a half hours until she had to pick Heather up. It seemed an awfully long time. But she had a shopping list to write and she might as well check whether Heather had put her school uniform from last week in the laundry basket, rather than stuffing it under her bed.

      By noon her shopping list was written in a small neat hand and every last sock of Heather’s had been accounted for and deposited in the washing machine. The beds were made, a pot of home-made soup sat bubbling on the hob and she had organised the contents of the freezer.

      She sat at the spotlessly clean kitchen table and stared out of the window. It was a typically grey March day. Even so, the colours on the river here were wonderful. Steel greys, mossy greens and slate blues. And the light!

      There was inspiration everywhere you looked, no matter the time of day or the weather. When she was younger, she’d have been out there on the beach, brush in hand, like a shot.

      Gaby sat up a little straighter.

      Why not? What was there to stop her? She’d missed the watercolour classes she’d taken while married to David. Since the divorce she’d had neither the time nor the money to lavish on things like that. But with Heather in school most of the week, she’d have plenty of time to unearth a talent she thought she’d buried for good, and still get all her work done. She jumped up, grabbed her keys and drove into town grinning all the way.

      Down a cobbled street she found a shop selling art supplies. She emerged with a carrier bag full of paint tubes, brushes, paper and her head full of ideas for her first project.

      She wandered through the town without really paying attention to where she was going and found herself in Bayard’s Cove, a little dead end street near the ferry. One side was open to the river, and a squat, ruined turret of an old fort built to guard the estuary sat where the road ended.

      She dipped down and entered the fort through its low doorway. A row of arched windows framed the view up to Dartmouth Castle on the rolling headland.

      She would just fit nicely in one of those arches, she decided. Soon her legs were dangling over the ledge, the water lapping below. She pulled a sketch pad and pencil out of her shopping bag and set to work capturing what she saw: bulbous clouds pushing across the sky like an armada, sail boats criss-crossing the water and the higgledy-piggledy houses of Kingswear on the other side of the river.

      This was heaven. It had been so long since she’d done something just for her own pleasure. What started out as a quick sketch, rapidly grew in scale and detail. It was only when she glanced up and noticed the light was starting to fade that she checked her watch. Four o’clock. She had time to head home, drop off her bags, then run up to collect Heather from netball practice.

      She took a second to consider her sketch, then flipped the pad closed, praying the traffic warden hadn’t slapped a ticket on her windscreen while she’d been sketching.

      When she returned to the Old Boathouse, she was surprised to see Luke’s car parked at an angle in the lane. He wasn’t due home until at least seven o’clock. She wanted to show him what she’d been up to, so she fished the pad out of her bag as she walked up to the back door. Once in the mud room, she called out, ‘Hi there! What are you doing back so—?’

      The look on Luke’s face as she entered the lounge brought her up short.

      ‘Where the hell have you been?’

      CHAPTER FIVE

      WAS he yelling at her?

      Gaby took a quick look over her shoulder, just to double-check no one had walked in behind her, but they were alone in the room.

      ‘Well? Where have you been?’

      Her fingers twitched as she waited for her voice to work. She waved the pad a fraction of an inch. ‘I’ve been sketching…’

      Her voice trailed off. He’d lost his rag with Heather over the last few weeks, but never had she seen this kind of raw fury in his eyes. A familiar feeling crept over her. She’d experienced it many times when David had lost his temper with her, but she’d never expected to get it from Luke.

      ‘You know Heather gets out of school at three-thirty! You’d better have a bloody good reason for leaving her standing in the playground with her teacher, while you were out messing around with crayons!’ Luke took the pad from her, gave it a cursory look and tossed it behind him on to the sofa. It bounced and skittered across the floor.

      Gaby stood rooted to the spot, although inside she felt as if she was backing away. He just ploughed on.

      ‘The school called me at work, wanting to know why nobody was there to pick my daughter up!’

      Finally her tongue unwelded itself from the top of her mouth. ‘Oh, my goodness! Heather…’

      She looked frantically round the room then tried to rush past him to look in the kitchen. Luke lunged forward and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Now you’re worried. Why weren’t you thinking like this an hour ago?’

      ‘But…but she had netball…’

      ‘No. She didn’t!’

      ‘But she always has netball on a Monday afternoon! It’s right there—’ she waved a hand towards the kitchen ‘—on the calendar!’

      ‘Not this week. There was a letter to say it was cancelled because Miss Blackwell is on some training course.’

      Her hand flew in front of her mouth. ‘I didn’t know,’ she stammered through her fingers.

      ‘It’s your job to know!’ Luke ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. ‘What kind of nanny are you? Unbelievable!’ With that, he turned and marched to the bay window.

      Gaby ran to the kitchen and tugged at the sheaf of papers clipped beside the calendar. A list of the term dates, a letter about the school choir and a reminder to bring household rubbish in for recycling were all she could find.

      She ran back out into the lounge and stopped a few feet away from Luke. He was ignoring her, staring out across the river. The way the muscles of his back clenched told her he was better left alone.

      ‘Luke? Where’s Heather?’

      He turned round and gave her a look that made her want to shrivel.

      ‘When the school phoned I gave them permission to let Jodi’s mum take her home. It was going to take me at least half an hour to get there, and Patricia Allford had offered to give her tea, so it seemed like the least painful solution for everyone.’

      Gaby’s stomach quivered. ‘So…you came back here to look for me?’

      Luke just blinked, long and slow. She swallowed.

      ‘There was me thinking you were lying unconscious on the bathroom floor or something. Stupid, huh?’

      She closed her eyes. ‘Luke, I’m sorry. I really am. I just don’t know how I could have—’

      ‘Forget it.’

      The look on his face said it was anything but forgotten.

      ‘Let