paused, wondering if she’d gone too far. God, Lucy, you never ask him about the girl for nigh on ten years and then put him on the spot. You’ll be lucky if he ever speaks to you again. Is that really what you wanted? For a moment there was silence in the room, and still Gabriel didn’t look up at her. He simply stared down at his glass of wine. But then, just as she was wondering if she really should let the subject drop after all, he spoke.
‘We talked sometimes about having kids,’ he said quietly, almost to himself. She had to strain to pick up on what he was saying because she couldn’t see his lips move. ‘She always used to say she wanted six. A tribe, she called it.’ He uttered a strangled laugh. ‘It sounded a good plan to me. I’d always wanted a big family.’
‘I never knew that,’ Lucy said gently, marvelling that she’d known him most of her life and yet he’d never mentioned it. And worse, she’d never thought to ask him. How shameful that was. ‘You never told me.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t want to do any of it without her so there wasn’t much point telling you, was there?’ he said quietly and glanced up at her for the first time since he’d started talking. His eyes were dry and his voice showed no sign of emotion. Lucy tried to put a finger on how he sounded. Empty. He sounded empty.
There was a long pause. Lucy forced herself not to speak, hoping that he would continue. He was looking down at his hands.
‘I didn’t want to do any of it without Alison,’ he said eventually. ‘Without her I’d rather not do it at all. I didn’t even want to think of having a family, being a husband or a dad, because she was always meant to be part of the deal.’
‘And do you still feel like that?’ Lucy asked him, biting her lip. For some reason the question seemed incredibly important to her. Out of concern for him, of course, she told herself. Certainly not for her own information. It had no real impact on her, after all. She was Gabe’s friend, nothing more.
‘I don’t let myself think about it, so I really wouldn’t know.’ He glanced up at her for the briefest moment and his expression was one of such suppressed sorrow that she felt her heart constrict inside her chest. Poor Gabriel. So strong and full of life but never really addressing the feelings at the centre of his soul. He’d put his grief in a box ten years ago and thrown away the key. What an absolute tragedy that after all this time he was no closer to moving on and putting what happened to Alison behind him than he had been at the time.
Lucy couldn’t bring herself to press him any harder. She decided to ease up, change the subject. But this is a breakthrough, she told herself. Just getting him to discuss it. She resolved to find a way to help him get over the past and be the complete person she knew he should be. That was what she should be doing, as his friend. That was where her role was in his life. She stood up.
‘Tell you what, I’ll put some more coffee on.’ She smiled at him supportively. ‘And then I’ll tell you the latest news from Planet Ed. Did I tell you he’s bought me Elvis Presley’s film collection? As if bombarding me with his music isn’t enough, he’s decided we can watch them back to back!’ She felt the tension in the room lift as Gabriel laughed. She could see he was relieved at the shift in subject. That was enough soul-searching for one night. But I’m going to bring it up again soon, she thought. This burial of emotion just wasn’t what she wanted for him.
Gabriel let himself into his house on autopilot three hours later. His mind swam. It was the first time he’d discussed Alison with anyone in at least eight years. During that time he’d built a new normality, he’d become so used to sidestepping conversations about her, to avoiding even thinking about her, that it had become second nature.
This evening all that had changed. He felt… he struggled to find the correct word… exposed was the closest he could get to it. Laid bare. And the person who’d enabled that to happen was the person he was already confused about beyond all reason.
Turning on the lights, he walked purposefully through his sitting room, straight to the desk in the far corner. Opening one of the deep drawers, he rummaged inside it until he found what he was after. He drew out a small book, its slightly rough burgundy cover interrupted by a single word embossed in cream. ‘Photos.’
Not allowing himself to pause, he sat down on the nearest chair and rested his fingertips against the cover for a few moments, steeling himself. It had to be six years at least since he’d opened this book. He knew so well what was inside it but he’d deliberately cut those images from his mind. That was why he’d hidden the book away. He didn’t want or need tangible reminders of the past; he had enough of a battle keeping the memories inside his head at bay. He gripped the book tighter for a moment, forcing himself to recognise that hiding these reminders from himself was not a healthy way to live.
With a small intake of breath he opened the book and stared down at the first picture before him. A smile touched his lips. Alison with her pale blonde hair smiled back. No tears came to his eyes, no lump constricted his throat. He’d shed all his tears the first year or two after she’d gone. Night after night when sleep refused to give him respite and he was totally immersed in his grief. Now, looking down at the picture, he realised that he had moved on in a sense. Not that Lucy would agree, he thought wryly. She seemed to believe that serial dating was symptomatic of long-term grief, but she was wrong. He wasn’t stuck grieving; he knew that. He’d chosen not to get involved with anyone since because he didn’t want to go back to that period of dreadful loss. Not ever again. But the touch of Lucy’s hand tonight, the rush of excitement he’d felt when she’d curled her arms around him and kissed him goodbye on the cheek, made him consider for the first time that maybe in denying that closeness with someone he was only living half a life.
For the last ten years his main thought when he met an attractive woman was how many dates it would take to get her into bed. Now perhaps he could begin to contemplate that there could be more to it than that. The only problem was that his inclination to get any closer than that seemed to be conditional on the particular woman he was thinking of. And ever since he’d taken Lucy shopping there had been no one else for him.
He closed the photo album. Was it possible that he’d had feelings for Lucy even before her recent talk of marriage plans? Perhaps. He just hadn’t had any reason to give them any credence before. Why should he, when he already had her friendship without having to take the scary step forward to make it into anything more? Why try to fix something that wasn’t broken? But now… Now he wasn’t sure if her friendship was enough. And that one thing, he supposed, was the strongest indication that he was ready to move on and put the past behind him. Properly behind him, this time. As a gesture to himself, he deliberately didn’t rebury the book in the drawer he never looked inside. Instead he left it on top of the desk, where he could see it any time. Where he would see it, often.
He lay awake into the night knowing that Lucy belonged to someone else. All those things she’d said to him, about moving on, finding someone new and having the family he’d chosen to forget he wanted. She meant finding some other girl. Not her. She already had her happy ever after sorted. And after all this time, was he capable of sustaining a proper long-term relationship? Was it a skill that you had to relearn or did it just come back to you, like swimming or driving? His mind swam with confused feelings. He wasn’t about to chance his friendship with Lucy by telling her how he felt. Not when he wasn’t even sure himself. And definitely not when their friendship might be the biggest casualty if it all went wrong. Turning over in bed, he resolved to keep his feelings well and truly to himself. Maybe if he did that and kept Lucy at arm’s length, these new feelings for her would pass. If he could keep some distance between them until her betrothal to Ed was a done deal, he knew he would never compromise her future and maybe then he could finally move forward properly.
