He had a strong chin, green-flecked hazel eyes rayed at the corners where he had screwed them up in laughter or against the sun, and the sort of Grecian nose you could open letters with. Rich, darkest-honey hair spiralled tightly round his face like a wet water spaniel’s.
‘Are you all right, Fran?’ Nia asked suddenly. ‘Only you look a bit startled. Your mouth’s open and you’ve gone awfully pale.’ She looked from me to the screen, where my nemesis had now reappeared in the flesh wearing one of those archaic winged smiles full of inner amusement. ‘Mind you, he is pretty stunning – he can dibble my beds any time!’
‘And mine!’ agreed Carrie enthusiastically.
‘Of course I’m all right,’ I croaked, though I was by no means certain I hadn’t suddenly flipped. ‘Would you really say he was good-looking? He’s not exactly handsome, is he?’
But distinctive; so very distinctive that a face whose features I had thought safely forgotten suddenly reclaimed its place in my memory, like the last piece of a puzzle locking into place.
‘Back track,’ I said urgently. ‘I think that’s Rosie’s father!’
Nia had replayed the DVD so Gabe Weston’s face was frozen in mid-smile like a mysterious male Mona Lisa, and just as informative.
‘It’s got to be him – there can’t be two men who look like that and have the same beautiful voice with a West Country accent,’ I said, feeling strangely breathless. ‘Unless I’m going crackers!’
‘You already are crackers,’ Nia said, ‘but I believe you. Only I thought his name was Adam?’
‘So did I.’
Carrie, who had been sitting looking totally bewildered, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Rosie’s father is Gabe Weston? But I thought it was Rhodri!’
‘Rhodri? Are you insane?’
‘But you were here all that summer working at Teapots, and thick as thieves with him!’ she said defensively.
‘We were old friends, and Nia was away most of that summer, so he was the first person I told when I realised I was pregnant – but not because he was the father!’
‘Well,’ Carrie said, ‘it wasn’t just me who got the wrong end of the stick, especially when he became Rosie’s godfather! I’m sure half the village still think it.’
‘They think wrong, then.’
She looked at me doubtfully. ‘But are you sure it was Gabe Weston? And if so, how come you never told him about Rosie?’
‘I’m sure – and it wasn’t an affair, it was a one-night stand.’
‘That doesn’t sound like you, Fran!’
‘I was drunk and I’d just split up with my boyfriend. All I knew about the man I slept with was that he was called Adam – which, as it turns out, was a lie – that he came from Devon and was a gardener. Even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have found him from that information.’
‘And until now you had no idea who Gabe Weston was?’ Carrie said. ‘Well, isn’t that just amazing?’
‘Tragic, more like,’ Nia said. Then she set Gabe into motion and speech again and we all watched him silently, and in my case angrily, though I don’t know why. He hadn’t sneaked away without a word, it was me who’d done that. All he was guilty of was carelessness.
‘I don’t suppose he’s ever given me a thought since,’ I muttered bitterly.
‘But what about Rosie?’ Nia asked.
‘What about Rosie?’
‘You aren’t going to tell her who her father is, now you know?’
I shuddered. ‘Who her father probably is – and let’s not open that can of worms. You know what Mal’s like, and he’s always sort of assumed Rosie’s Tom’s baby. We’ve been through all that. And if I told Rosie who it was she might try and contact him and be rebuffed, which would be terribly hurtful. Things are better left as they are.’
‘And it sounds like there’s an outside chance she might not be his anyway,’ Carrie said helpfully. ‘So it would probably come down to DNA testing, and just imagine if the father really was your ex-boyfriend after all!’
‘Thanks for that thought, Carrie.’
‘It gets even better,’ Nia said. ‘Tom, Fran’s old boyfriend, has just emailed her and he wants to come and see her.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t answer, so he’s probably got the message,’ I said hopefully. ‘After all this time I don’t want either of them to pop back into my life and mess things up.’
I looked at the screen again. Gabe Weston was smiling, but then I expect he has a lot to smile about, being a successful TV personality. ‘He’s probably married with his own family by now,’ I mused aloud. ‘Even if Rosie were his he wouldn’t want to know.’
‘Divorced,’ said Carrie knowledgeably. ‘His only daughter lives with her mum in America, but his name’s been linked with quite a few other women since.’
‘I bet it has,’ Nia said drily.
Carrie regarded me admiringly: ‘Well, you’re a dark horse, Fran! It’s so romantic, just like The French Lieutenant’s Woman.’
‘I can’t see where The French Lieutenant’s Woman comes in,’ Nia said critically. ‘Gabe Weston looks more like Meryl Streep than Fran does.’
‘And I certainly haven’t been waiting for him to come back,’ I objected. ‘In fact, I’m going to try and forget I ever recognised him. Let’s just let sleeping gardeners lie – that’s seemed to work for me pretty well so far.’
‘Then perhaps you should stop humming “Look What You’ve Done to Me”?’ suggested Nia.
Mal phoned late that night after they’d gone home, and strangely enough I felt as guilty while I was talking to him as if I’d just spent the night with Adam the gardener all over again.
I would have liked to have blotted the memories out in Mal’s arms, but instead I simply had to obliterate them with leftover cake and a bar of chocolate.
In the early hours of this morning I got up, found a torch that worked and went to hide the Restoration Gardener DVD in my studio in the box marked ‘Miscellaneous’.
At that hour the oddest things seem strangely logical.
As I made my way back I saw the pallid glimmer of one of the Wevills watching me from their bedroom window, so I suppose this will go into their next report to Mal, along with my girlie night in transformed into some kind of orgy. I don’t know what made them look out at that time of night because
