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Her chest folded in on itself as she remembered that terrible conversation at the hospital four weeks ago, and Gabriel’s quiet but adamantine assertion.
‘All this is about putting the past behind me. All of the past. Including you.’
He could have hardly made it clearer, and yet even as she’d walked back towards her mother she had hoped he might follow her, grab her arm and spin her around, tell her that he didn’t mean it, that he was just scared, that he loved her...
Only he had done none of those things.
He had left her, just as he had six years ago. Only this time there was no mix-up, no interference. He had gone because he’d wanted to go. Because she wasn’t a reason to stay. She had made a fool of herself for nothing.
And yet she was glad she’d done it. It had been the right thing to do even if it had been the wrong man to do it for.
Her throat tightened momentarily. That was progress, at least. But then she wasn’t alone this time.
Instead of hiding her pain, trying to cope, pretending that she was all right, she had walked straight back into that waiting room and burst into tears. She had cried for a long time, and then it had taken even longer to tell her mother everything.
Her mother had been amazing.
She had listened and comforted her, and then she had called the Silva Group in London and told them that her daughter was taking compassionate leave.
So now Dove was at home, organising her mother’s house move. At first she had been worried that she wouldn’t have enough to do, but every morning her mother handed her a list written in her neat, copperplate writing and she worked her way through it.
Most of the tasks required nothing more than a phone and a fair amount of determination, but everything took a surprising amount of time and effort, and the days had turned into weeks.
It was hard, getting used to Gabriel not being there in her heart, but one of these days she knew she would wake up from a Gabriel-free sleep and not think of him. It wouldn’t always feel as if she’d had open heart surgery without an anaesthetic. Like he’d said, she would get over it—get over him.
In the meantime, there were other things—good things—to take the edge off the pain. Now that she was off the acquisition there was her job, and there was this new and entirely astonishingly effortless version of her family—and, best of all, Alistair was coming home this afternoon.
Alistair had recovered well. He was still tired, but he couldn’t seem to stop smiling, and it was a joy to watch him and her mother laughing and teasing one another about their upcoming wedding. Their easy love for one another was building on her newfound faith in relationships, and she no longer imagined marriage as a trap or a cage. Rather, she could see how it could be a partnership, with boundaries, but also room to grow and be your best self.
She cut the packing tape and yanked it over the bulging box, and then sat on it quickly as it threatened to burst open.
Now that they were together officially there was no need for Olivia and Alistair to have a house each. Dove glanced around the kitchen, with its surfeit of cooking implements and spice jars. She had no idea how they were going to fit all of this in one house, though. But they would work it out, she thought, and it was a good feeling being able to think that.
She heard the doorbell ring and felt a rush of relief.
Now, where was that list?
Sticking her head through the open window, she shouted up to the man who was presumably joined to the pair of trainers she could see on the doorstep.
‘It’s open,’ she called up. ‘Just let yourself in. I’m downstairs.’
She heard the door open, then close, and footsteps on the staircase.
‘Thanks for fitting us in today. I thought we’d start in the bedroom, if that’s all right with you?’
‘The bedroom sounds perfect.’
Her heartbeat faltered. Her mouth seemed to lose its shape and she felt her legs sway beneath her.
Gabriel was standing in the kitchen. Against her mother’s pastel pink saucepans and delicate floral blinds and tablecloth he looked too big, too male, and she edged to the other side of the table as memories of facing him across another table jostled with her heartbeat for space inside her head. It was only six weeks ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
‘What are you doing here?’
For a moment he didn’t reply, and then he said quite calmly, as if he was in the habit of turning up in her mother’s kitchen unannounced, ‘I need to talk to you about the acquisition.’
She stared at him in disbelief, feeling the blood rushing to her head, and a kind of mindless anger that had no name swelling inside her. Was he insane? Did he actually think he could just walk in here and start talking to her about acquisitions after everything that had happened?
‘Firstly, I’m off work,’ she told him. ‘On compassionate leave—not that I’d expect you to understand the concept of compassion. Secondly, I don’t want to talk to you about anything. So I suggest you go back up the stairs you just came down. Oh, and shut the door on your way out,’ she added.
