Page 47 of Coming Home to Wishington Bay
‘Will you do it or not?’
It was kind of hard to say no to a face – and a body – like that but I wasn’t comfortable with the lie. But then his mum seemed lovely and I didn’t like to think of her fretting over Gabe unnecessarily when she obviously already had other family matters on her mind.
‘Fine,’ I sighed.
‘Great. Thank you,’ he said, his hands on my shoulders, his knees bent so that he could look directly into my eyes. ‘Thank you, I owe you,’ he whispered, and kissed me on the forehead.
‘Aah, now there’s a sight to warm the heart.’ His mum was back and had now stepped inside and was peeking around the corner.
‘Mum! You’re supposed to wait to be invited in. I only rent the other one!’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, waving him off. If I was going to do this, I may as well do it properly. ‘Of course she’s welcome in here.’
‘Sorry. It was a little bit rude. We were just a bit worried when you’d been gone a while.’
‘Oh, I—’
‘Holly’s had some trouble with panic attacks and she was concerned about getting one in front of you after struggling with the coughing and stuff.’
I cut my eyes to him. If this fake relationship was going to last longer than five minutes, we were going to have to lay some very real rules out. And the first rule would be that my panic attacks were my business and absolutely no one else’s. While I appreciated his help in learning how to deal with them, I’d already told him how I felt about them being discussed, in any capacity, and he’d promised not to do that. So much for that vow. By his expression, he knew he’d just screwed up big time and was waiting on my next move.
‘Aah, love. It’s probably not helped by all those long hours you’ve been putting in, and losing your gran,’ she said, coming and tucking her arm through mine. ‘You know, I used to suffer from them too for a while.’
‘You did?’ I asked, genuinely interested, and feeling a connection I hadn’t expected.
‘Yep, when we lost our little girl, I was a mess. And the fact that I still had two other children to care for – I had all this guilt. One that as a mother, I should have been able to save my baby girl, and then on the other hand, I was letting my boys down.’
‘I’m … I’m so very sorry about your loss …’ I stumbled, not quite sure what to say. ‘But I’m sure you were doing a brilliant job. I mean, look at him. He didn’t turn out too bad, did he?’ I said, smiling and rubbing her arm, pleased to see the fleeting veil of sadness that had shaded her eyes briefly lift as she looked up at her boy, pride radiating out of every pore.
‘No, I guess not.’
‘Definitely not,’ I assured her, understanding now why Gabe had specifically chosen paediatrics to specialise in, and how it must add another layer of emotion when something happened, as it clearly had the other week. He’d lost a young sister, and watched his parents suffer. Even with the little that I knew of him, it immediately made sense to me why he would choose a field where he could help prevent others from having to experience the same thing, even if it wasn’t always an easy thing for him to deal with.
‘So, are you on medication for the anxiety?’
‘Mum!’
‘What? Sorry, is that too personal for a first date?’ She laughed, and I couldn’t help but join her.
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘For the moment, I’m seeing what I can do for myself. I mean, obviously Gabe’s been helping me but to be fair to him, he’s not really known for very long that I’ve been having them.’
‘Oh, love. Did you not want to tell him? I can understand that. You don’t want to do what you might see as burdening other people. But you know he wouldn’t have felt like that.’
Oh crikey. I wasn’t sure how good I was going to be at this pretending thing I thought, as I tried to rescue myself from my blooper.
‘No. I know he wouldn’t.’ And I did know that. ‘It wasn’t that I was keeping them from him. It was more that I was only having them when I was in London, you know. Busy life.’
London … Was that the key? Was my London life the main trigger for my episodes?
‘Well, I hope things are better now you’re down here.’
‘They are, actually. Yes. I’m gradually learning to deal with them better, and will just see how it goes. Baby steps and all that.’
‘That sounds like a wise plan, love,’ his mum said, patting my hand.
We’d made our way back to the patio as we’d been talking and Gabe’s dad was sat quietly, the dog on his lap. He glanced over at his wife and smiled and I felt a stab somewhere deep in my chest. I’d seen that look before. A look of pure love. There weren’t many pictures of my mum and dad. It wasn’t like today when everyone had hundreds of pictures of nothing in particular. But there was one of them – Ned was sat on Dad’s knee and a chubby, slightly serious-looking baby rested in Mum’s lap, her arm supporting me. And Dad was looking across at her, just as Gabe’s dad had done just now. He knew his wife was happy, and therefore he was happy. It was enough.
I hated lies but I hated unhappiness even more and clearly this family had already had enough unhappiness. If I could spare them a little worry by pretending to be the girlfriend of their Adonis of a son, it wasn’t that much to ask. Yes, I’d have appreciated it not being sprung on me like it had but there wasn’t a lot of point worrying about that now. It was what it was.
