Be Careful What You Wish For (27 page)

‘Hmmm,’ he shrugs. And looking unconvinced, the sergeant gives us a curt nod and climbs back into his car.

It’s early evening by the time we reach the turning for Port Isaac. Pulling off the motorway Gabe shifts down a gear and slows the bike to a leisurely purr along the winding country lanes. I slide open my visor and take a deep lungful of Cornish air. Mmmm, delicious. It smells of salt, surf and wood smoke and, as always, I’m hit by nostalgia. This is the smell of my childhood. Of days spent on the beach collecting seashells and writing my name in the damp yellow sand. Of walks along the clifftop, holding hands with my parents, who swung me high into the air as I squealed with laughter and begged for more. Of playing hide and seek in the wooden fishing-boats tied up in the harbour, and fighting with Ed when he threatened to tell on me.

The exhaust is reverberating loudly now as we weave along the narrow lanes, past the patchwork of fields dotted with grazing sheep who raise their heads to acknowledge us as we pass. I smile at them and they stare back with bored, unblinking expressions, quite unimpressed by the sight of a motorbike being driven by an American tourist with a red-haired local girl riding pillion.

Gradually the green meadows give way to rows of stone cottages, and as we whiz past them up the hill I feel a tingle of anticipation. I love this part of the journey. It’s like unwrapping a gift, waiting for the moment when you get to see what’s inside. Because in just a second I know we’re going to get our first glimpse of the sea. I hug Gabe tightly. I’m bursting to point over his shoulder and yell at him to watch out for it. But I resist with difficulty. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

And now we’re flying over the brow of the hill and it’s there. A silvery blue streak clinging to the horizon.

‘Wooo-hooo,’ howls Gabe into the wind.

The sea stretches out in front of us, like the cinema screen before a movie. Wider and wider, until it’s filling the entire horizon, the frothy peaks of the waves turning pink, red and orange in the setting sun.

Gabe pulls over to the side of the road and turns off the engine. The bike splutters into silence, and yanking off my helmet, I shake out my hair. My ears are buzzing. It seems so quiet after the noise of the engine.

‘Wow.’

I watch Gabe walk to the cliff edge and stare out at the horizon. I climb stiffly off the bike and go to join him. He’s standing there, completely still, and when I reach him he doesn’t move, just gazes straight ahead. I follow his eyes, watching the sun sink slowly into the sea, and for a moment we stay like that. Side by side. Silhouetted against the sky, changing from orange, to red, to purple. Listening to the faint rhythm of the waves lapping against the deserted beach.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see him turn to me. I hold my breath tight inside me. Is he going to do what I think he’s going to do? The air between us seems charged. I lift my face towards his and shyly meet his eyes.
Is he going to do what I want him to do?

‘Shall we go?’

His voice brings me crashing to earth. Embarrassment washes over me like the waves on the shore below.

‘Erm . . . yeah . . .’ I fluster. It was all that damn sunset’s fault. I misread the signs and got carried away. Deserted clifftop, beautiful scenery, attractive man by my side—

‘By the way, I must warn you about my stepmother,’ I say.

‘Why? Does she bite?’

Despite myself, I giggle.

Gabe watches me thoughtfully. ‘Do you know? That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you laugh at one of my jokes,’ he says.

Abruptly, I stop. ‘I laugh at you all the time,’ I protest defensively.

‘At me, but not my jokes,’ he says, pretending to be offended.

At least, I think he’s pretending but I can’t be certain. I feel myself sliding into an awkward situation. I can’t admit to hating stand-up comedy, that my idea of hell is listening to a man on stage making unfunny observations about his girlfriend, and I’m certainly not going to confess about the time I heard him practising and thought he was terrible.

The wind whips at my coat, like a child tugging at its mother for attention, and all at once I notice how dark and cold it’s become. I glance at my watch. ‘It’s getting late, we should go.’ This is true, but it’s also an excellent way to create a diversion. ‘They’ll be waiting for us back at the cottage,’ I add for emphasis.

Gabe pulls a face and, with his hands still in their big leather gloves, pretends to bite his nails.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,’ I reassure him, and link my arm through his to walk back to the bike. So what if I misread the signs? I didn’t want him to kiss me anyway.

 

A
s it turns out Gabe is an instant hit with my family, including Rosemary who, from the moment he walks into the kitchen and shakes her rubber-gloved hand – ‘Stepmother? No way! You look like sisters’ – is eating out of his hand. Blushing like a teenager she pours him sherry in one of her best Waterford crystal glasses and never once tells him to take his shoes off, while the rest of my family crowd round him, shaking hands or, in the case of my father, slapping him vigorously on the shoulder as if beating dust from a carpet.

Meanwhile I’m left to pour my own sherry and not allowed off the doormat until I’ve removed my boots. Honestly, everyone makes such a fuss of him that I almost feel miffed.

‘So, what happened to the muzzle?’ I whisper, once the introductions are over and we’re squashing ourselves round the dining-table, which is laden with a glistening roast and all the trimmings.

‘She seems pretty cool . . .’ shrugs Gabe, shuffling past Ed’s wife Lou, who’s listening politely to Rosemary’s daughter Annabel and her husband Miles explaining how they’ve decided to go for laminate flooring rather than carpet ‘because of the twins’. ‘. . . although she did give me some of that funny brown stuff to drink.’

‘Sherry,’ I inform him, then notice he’s about to walk straight into an exposed beam and yell, ‘Watch out.’

But it’s too late.

He bangs his head hard and grimaces. ‘Ouch. Jesus, that hurt!’

‘Oh, yes, mind your head,’ pipes up Ed. Ed being one of those annoying people who take pleasure in warning you after the event. ‘Those old beams can be very dangerous.’

‘Yeah, you’re not kidding me.’ Gabe forces a smile, while he rubs his temple. Pulling up a chair, he tries cramming his long legs under the table. He’s still wearing his orange boiler suit but my family are pretending not to notice. ‘The people who built this place must have been tiny.’

‘Indeed,’ nods Ed, gravely, his six foot five frame stooping low over the table. ‘Their poor diet stunted their growth.’

‘Wow that’s terrible.’ Concern flashes across Gabe’s face. ‘You knew them?’

A bellow of raucous laughter erupts from Lionel as he sweeps into the room with a handful of wine glasses and two dusty bottles of cabernet sauvignon he’s raided from his cellar. ‘Dear boy, this cottage was built in 1642. It’s over three hundred and fifty years old.’

There’s a pause, and just as I’m worrying that Gabe is offended by my father’s brusqueness, he replies good-naturedly, ‘Hey, what can I say? I’m American and the oldest thing we have is Joan Rivers.’ Which, as Gabe’s jokes go, isn’t bad at all. But there’s just silence and looks of confusion around the table.

‘Joan who?’ asks Annabel, politely, tucking her neat blonde bob behind her ears.

‘She’s kind of a comedian,’ explains Gabe, ‘and she’s gotta be nearly a hundred but the woman’s had so much surgery . . .’

I look at the blank faces around the table. They don’t have a clue what he’s going on about. Unlike me, my family are not on first-name terms with celebrities.

‘Oh, I know the one! Her face makes her look like she’s in a wind-tunnel,’ says a voice from the hallway.

Startled I look up to see . . .
Rosemary.
Appearing through the door with a jug of iced water she pops it in the middle of the table. ‘There was an “At Home” spread about her in one of my magazines.’

I look at her with surprise, and, I have to admit a certain grudging respect.

‘In the
Lady
?’ asks Annabel, frowning.

Last year Annabel bought Rosemary a year’s subscription to the
Lady
for Christmas, and whenever I go to Bath, copies are always spread out like a fan on the glass coffee-table, filled with riveting articles on needlepoint and how to deal with wayward nannies. Rosemary hides her secret stash of
OK!
and
Hello!
in the pantry. Now, caught out, she stutters incomprehensibly, her middle-class cover threatening to crack under Annabel’s glare.

Around the table we’re preparing ourselves for one of their arguments to erupt when Lou deftly changes the conversation, ‘So, Gabriel, what brings you to England?’ she asks, throwing him a friendly smile and passing him a bowl of buttered Brussels sprouts. He looks at them for a moment with absolutely no clue what they are, before tentatively taking a spoonful. ‘The Edinburgh Festival,’ he says, then bites into one suspiciously. ‘I’m going up there in a couple of weeks to put on a show.’

A couple of weeks? I feel a jolt of surprise. The time has passed so quickly. He’ll be gone in no time. I snatch a sideways glance at him, feeling vaguely troubled.

‘Oh, bravo, a theatre man!’ Lionel bellows, from across the table where he’s carving. He’s thrilled: my father lurves the
thee-at-re.

‘No, actually, comedy’s my thing,’ corrects Gabe, swallowing with what appears to be great difficulty. When he thinks no ones looking, he surreptitiously slides the remainder of the sprout off his fork. ‘Stand-up.’

‘So how did you two meet?’ asks Rosemary, dabbing the corners of her mouth daintily.

‘Through an ad,’ says Gabe, and then, realising how that sounded, smiles. ‘Not that kind of ad, Mrs Hamilton. Heather was advertising for a roommate, and I needed a place for a few weeks.’

‘So you’re not Heather’s new boyfriend?’ demands Ed.

‘With the Range Rover,’ accuses Rosemary, in a tone that tells me she doesn’t believe a word of it. I glare at her as my cheeks redden.

‘Nope, that’s not me,’ says Gabe, good-naturedly.

‘So, where is your new boyfriend, Heather?’

Rosemary says ‘new boyfriend’ as if she’s putting inverted commas round the words and it’s only now I realise the table has suddenly gone quiet.

‘You mean James?’ I wonder why I feel as if I’m facing a jury. A jury consisting of seven pairs of eyes – six belonging to couples. ‘He had to work,’ I explain.

‘On a Saturday?’ pipes up Annabel.

‘It was really important,’ I protest, which is true. So why do I feel as if I’m making all this up, as if I’m trying to defend him?

‘Well, it would have to be,’ Rosemary murmurs, spooning a tiny portion of glazed carrots on to her plate, ‘for him to let you down at the last minute.’ She says this in such a way that I might think she was being genuinely sympathetic – if I didn’t know her better.

‘Yes, but did she tell you about the bouquets?’ interrupts Gabe, squeezing my hand supportively under the table. I throw him a look of gratitude. What a star.

‘Bouquets?’
repeats Lou, dark eyes sparkling. ‘Ooh Heather, how romantic. The most I ever get is a bunch of daffs.’ Turning to Ed, she pouts playfully while he looks all affronted and indignant.

‘Yep, he sent three separate bouquets – a dozen red roses in each,’ continues Gabe, laying it on thick. ‘The guy’s crazy about her.’

‘And who can blame him?’ booms Lionel, with fatherly pride. ‘Wouldn’t you say, Rosemary?’

Rosemary has fallen unusually quiet. Silenced, no doubt, by the astonishing fact that I actually have a man sending me flowers and, no, I haven’t made him up. ‘Yes, absolutely,’ she says tightly. ‘More Brussels, anyone?’

After dinner everyone heads off to bed, until it’s just me and the boys in the front room, eating second helpings of apple crumble and custard and talking about – yes, you’ve guessed it – football.

‘Are you a soccer fan?’ Gabe is asking, prodding doubtfully at his custard. I made it earlier to show I’m not completely crap in the kitchen, although admittedly it did come from a packet.

‘Absolutely,’ says Ed proudly.

‘Yes old son,’ says Miles, slapping Ed’s arm. ‘An amazing win we had the other week. A real stroke of luck. The papers described it as a miracle.’

Ed and I exchange a look. ‘Uhm . . . yes, so they did,’ he says, and fills his mouth with apple crumble. It’s been a few weeks since that strange night at the pub, and although Ed and I have spoken on the phone, he hasn’t referred to it. Not that I’m surprised. Ed’s way of dealing with anything he doesn’t understand is simply to ignore it.

‘I heard England won a big game,’ says Gabe. ‘Awesome.’

‘Well, we’ve got some really good players, so I’m hoping for big things from them . . .’ grins Ed, delighted to be talking about his beloved football. ‘With any luck I’m pretty much going to be glued to the box these days. Thank goodness for Sky Sport, hey?’

‘I bet the missus isn’t too happy about that,’ grins Miles, nudging Ed knowingly.

Ed smiles uncomfortably and I get the feeling that Miles might have touched on a sore subject there. Oh dear, I hope I haven’t caused any trouble with that silly wish of mine.

‘Erm, Heather?’ Gabe is looking at me with a nervous expression. ‘About this custard stuff you all love . . .’

I glance at his bowl. His spoon is standing upright.

‘I don’t suppose you’d have any ice-cream,’ he asks apologetically.

‘Is it that bad?’ Shit, I really must be an awful cook. I can’t even make custard from a packet.

‘Worse,’ he confesses, trying not to a smile.

‘There might be some Häagen Dazs left from when I was last here,’ I whisper, not wanting Miles and Ed to hear me and want some too. Not that they’re listening. Their conversation has moved on to the housing market. ‘I’ll go and look in the freezer.’ Then I lean close to his ear: ‘Meet me upstairs in the bedroom in five minutes.’