‘Fair enough.’
‘She wasn’t very happy with me.’
‘I’ll sort it out.’
‘Well, yes. That’s the plan. I’m hoping she’ll forgive me eventually. Sisters should not fall out over men.’
‘Fine,’ he muttered, and started once more for the garden.
‘Rafael?’
‘What?’ He stopped again, patience so clearly not one of his virtues that Luc started to laugh and Gabrielle rolled her eyes.
‘I got you something to give to Simone. I didn’t think you’d mind.’ She speared him with a pointy finger and then pointed to the ground at his feet. ‘Wait right there.’ She disappeared back through the kitchen doorway and returned moments later with a small butter-coloured bundle in her arms.
Rafael looked closer.
The bundle had a nose. Two ears. Paws. Liquid brown eyes.
‘It’s a puppy,’ he said stupidly.
‘It’s a golden retriever,’ said Gabrielle as she bundled it into his arms. ‘And it’s a she.’
‘She’s fat,’ he said next.
‘Puppy fat,’ said Gabrielle as she stroked the puppy’s head. ‘Don’t you listen to him, sweetheart. You’re not fat, you’re Rubenesque, and you’re going to grow up to be a rare beauty.’
The puppy squirmed in Rafael’s arms. ‘What is it you would have me do with this puppy?’ he asked.
‘You give it to Simone. As a gift.’
‘Why?’
‘Because.’
As far as reasoning went, it seemed a little…loose. ‘Is this a pregnancy thing?’ he said suspiciously.
‘No, it’s a “you need something to help you even get a hearing” thing,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Whatever it was you did to Simone, or said to her or didn’t say to her, you hurt her, Rafael. Badly. You need to be part of a puppy package deal.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ He eyed the warm ball of puppyhood currently chewing on his watchband sceptically. Colour him practical, but he wasn’t at all convinced that what Simone needed right now was a puppy. ‘I really don’t think you’ve thought this through.’
‘Trust me,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Just do it.’
He found her in the old orchard, planting bulbs beneath an apple tree. She wore cut-off denim shorts, a pale pink T-shirt, a pair of old gardening gloves, and she’d pulled her silky black hair back into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck. Freshly pulled weeds sat in a pile on one side of her, fresh bulbs sat in a pile to the other side of her. He put the fat puppy down and watched in resignation as she headed straight for Simone and the bulbs and the dirt.
‘Hello. Where did you come from?’ Simone’s voice came to him on the breeze, amused and welcoming. The puppy thought there was welcome in that voice too and, with her tail wagging furiously, she began to chew one of Simone’s gardening gloves. Simone tapped the puppy lightly on the nose. ‘And where are your manners?’
The Rubenesque puppy sat back, scratched its collar and promptly fell to chewing on the pile of weeds. Simone laughed and looked around, presumably for the puppy’s owner.
And saw him.
Her laughter died as she scrambled to her feet and took the gloves off and brushed the dirt from her clothes. Apart from that first startled glance, she didn’t look at him once.
‘I like what you’ve done with the garden,’ he said, by way of small talk. At this point, any type of talk would do, but Simone did not reply. Instead, she bent down and patted the puppy for at least half of eternity.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked, after carefully checking the puppy’s collar for a tag.
Name? What name? Pet owners decided on names. Not him.
‘Or am I to assume that, like so many other animals in your possession, she simply doesn’t have one?’ said Simone.
‘Ducks and swans do not need names,’ he said a touch desperately. ‘And this is…ah…’ He watched in silence as the puppy abandoned its investigation of the weed pile in favour of digging in the dirt and retrieving some of the bulbs Simone had planted. What was he supposed to say? Yours? What on earth had his sister been thinking? ‘Ruby,’ he said. ‘Ruby N Esquire.’
‘How long have you had her?’
‘Not long,’ he said.
Simone stood up, shoving her hands in her back pockets as she did so. Her gaze held his for a moment before skittering away.
‘I heard you were in Maracey,’ she said quietly.
‘I heard you were pregnant.’ So much for small talk.
‘Yes.’ She lifted her chin, a tiny tilt of her head that he remembered of old, from the days when as a young girl she would square up and step up to take the blame for something that someone else had instigated. The children of Caverness protected their own. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Is it mine?’
‘It’s a funny thing, the concept of ownership,’ she said softly. ‘I mean, we can care for things and tend things—I tend to this garden—but do we ever really own them?’
‘Yes.’ Rafael had no problem with the concept of ownership. ‘Answer the question, Simone. Is this baby mine?’
‘Given that hard-line ownership seems to be your thing, I’m going to start in the middle and call it ours.’ She looked at him then and he saw it in her eyes already: a mother’s protectiveness, fuelled in full by a mother’s love. He wanted to weep.
He needed to apologise.
‘Simone, those things I said to you at the hotel. I’m sorry. I was wrong and I knew it the moment I said them. I wanted to come after you. I wanted to talk to you about a million things. I wanted—’ You. Just you. But the neediness of that statement made it too hard to voice. ‘I wanted to come after you.’
‘But you didn’t.’ She smiled tiredly and it struck him like a knife wound to his soul how fragile and defeated she looked. ‘You never look back, Rafael. And sometimes…sometimes you should.’
‘Come with me to Maracey,’ he said desperately.
‘Why?’
‘So I can take care of you.’
‘Look around you, Rafael. Am I short of money? In need of help?’ She shook her head. ‘If I need care, I can get it here. No. If you want me to accompany you to Maracey or Australia or wherever else you might end up, you’ll need to offer me something else.’
