The Proposal Plan (6 page)

Elizabeth sighed. She was quiet for a moment before saying, ‘Relationships, Lucy,
good
relationships, don’t come along by accident in my experience. You have to work at them. Both of you. One of you doing everything just isn’t enough—it has to be a partnership. Gordon and I have had our ups and downs—goodness, we’ve been married a long time now. But we’ve always pulled together. He’s a pain sometimes but I wouldn’t be without him, not for anything.’

Lucy grinned.

‘Only you can say if this Ed puts enough effort in. You make sure he’s the right one for you. You deserve nothing less.’

Shortly afterwards they returned to the house and Lucy was glad when she and Gabriel left for Bath. Talking to Elizabeth had stirred her mind up far too much for her to relax on the journey home. She sat in silence in the car
next to Gabriel, the memory coming unbidden to her in all its clarity of the first time she’d met Alison, and her face flushed with mortification as she remembered the circumstances of that meeting.

If Gabriel had guessed how she was feeling after he left for uni, he never let on, just behaving the way he always did, full of news about his course, his new life and his new friends. Yet her delusions had grown until she’d believed herself to be in love with him. The brotherly hugs he gave her and the occasional holding of her hand she’d begun to construe as reciprocation of her fledgling feelings, and she would lay awake at night thinking about him.

She blushed as she remembered her behaviour. A typical stupid teenage crush, that was what it had been. And she’d come so close to Gabe finding out about it that the memory alone still made her heart hammer and her cheeks burn.

Shortly into Gabriel’s second term, his visits home began to dwindle and he was useless at keeping in touch. Lucy phoned him so often that she later realised she must have been becoming a pest. She recalled now that there were many occasions when his housemates had
told her he was out. With the benefit of age and maturity she now saw that he was probably fed up with her constant contact and was trying, albeit gently, to avoid her.

Convinced Gabriel would feel the same about her if she could just see him and declare her feelings, she’d decided on impulse to visit him one day, when missing him had all become too much. She remembered gazing out of the window of the bus from the train station and thinking to herself how busy and vibrant Oxford seemed compared to the Cotswold villages she was used to. She remembered the butterflies in her stomach on the bus to his digs as the miles between them fell away…

She was snatched back from her thoughts of the past when Gabriel touched her hand briefly before replacing his on the steering wheel. ‘You’re quiet, Lu. Everything all right?’

‘Fine. I’m just tired.’ Her hand tingled at his touch and she stared down at it.
Oh, what is happening here?
She felt the blush creep up her face, as if Oxford had happened yesterday, and she was grateful that his attention was focused on the road so he wouldn’t notice. She remembered that she only managed to stomach an hour or so of seeing the two of them together. Alison was studying medicine and
they both had rooms in the shared house. She could see they were besotted with each other. Lucy had been so full of excitement at seeing him, believing him to be unknowingly in love with her, expecting to fall into his arms as it all became clear to him. Well, she’d certainly found him in love, just not with her.

She’d managed to hold it together at the house but she’d sobbed her heart out all the way back to Gloucestershire on the bus and then the train. The only comfort she’d had was that she’d stopped short of making a fool of herself by exposing her feelings to him.
His baby sister.
It stung. She was so hurt and humiliated that her first instinct had been to avoid him completely. She stopped calling him after that. But she quickly realised how stupid she was to think she could cut him from her life. She needed him far too much for that.

So when he’d brought Alison back to the manor she hadn’t stayed away. It had crushed her to see how happy he was. It became clear that their relationship was not going to be over quickly. That it was a proper, adult relationship. Alison completed him in a way Lucy never had. They’d been all things to each other for so long and now she wasn’t enough for him
any more. And she began to see with growing, frightening clarity that there could very easily be no place for her at all in all this. She was totally dispensable in the face of his perfect future with Alison. And under threat of losing him altogether, she’d made a decision. Better to keep him as a friend than to lose him completely from her life because of her own stupid pride.

And so it was that she had played the part of childhood best friend until it became no longer an act and was second nature to her. In the years since she had managed to convince herself that her behaviour had been nothing more than a ridiculous teenage crush, brought on by the sudden gap he had left in her life when he went to university, combined with the worsening hell that was her inescapable home life.

Since that awful moment at sixteen she’d never again allowed herself to consider Gabriel as more than a friend, a brother, but that apparently hadn’t stopped his parents doing just that. Thinking about it now made her feel suddenly hot, as if she’d walked into a sauna. Before she could stop herself she was trying the idea for size in her head. Her stomach fluttered
and she covered it angrily with her hands. It had been a
crush.
Nothing more.

Then why did you blush when his mother mentioned it?
She fought that thought with all her might. She couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which she would lay their friendship on the line. Gabriel was useless at relationships; they rarely lasted longer than a month. He just didn’t seem to have it in him since Alison died. Lucy’s talk today with his mother had highlighted that more strongly than ever. What if they got together and it didn’t work out? For the first time since she was sixteen she considered what it would be like to have a life without Gabe in it, and it shocked her to the core now as it had then. She would never allow that to happen.

‘Come on up.’

The moment the buzzer sounded as Lucy unlocked the outer door of her building, Gabriel shoved the door open and leapt up the stairs two at a time. The door of her flat was shut, which struck him as a little unusual because she usually left it ajar for him when she buzzed him up. The reason became clear when he gave it a brief double tap.

‘You can’t come in!’ a determined but high voice called out. It was followed by fumbling sounds as the door was opened and Lucy appeared in the gap with an apologetic expression.

‘Sorry, Gabe. This one thinks he’s Spiderman. I had to keep the door shut in case he wandered out looking for Dr Octopus.’

Opening the door wider, Gabriel saw a small figure dressed in a Spiderman costume standing behind Lucy, who was looking red and flustered. Her unruly hair was even more uncontrollably curly than ever. Unable to stop himself grinning, Gabriel knelt down to one knee so his eyes were level with the mask on the child’s face. A pair of alert brown eyes blinked at him through the eyeholes.

‘Hello, Spiderman,’ he said. ‘I’m Lucy’s friend, Gabriel.’ He held out his hand and the child shook it solemnly.

‘Shall we go into the living room?’ Lucy said impatiently from above them, and led the way without waiting for a response. ‘Steven, I’ll put your Fireman Sam DVD on.’ As Gabriel caught up with her she added over her shoulder, ‘Thank goodness you’ve arrived. Back-up at last!’

It was Monday night. The day after their lunch in Gloucestershire. Gabriel had taken advantage of the car journey home to organise yet another opportunity to spend time with Lucy. At this rate she and Ed would grow apart through lack of contact without his having to do or say anything at all. When Steven was settled in front of the television with a cup of milk, Gabriel joined Lucy in the kitchen. She made them each a mug of coffee and they watched Steven through the open door as he sat perfectly still, his attention focused on the TV screen.

‘He’s Sophie’s boy,’ Lucy said. ‘You know, she works part-time in the shop?’

Gabriel nodded, continuing to watch the child. ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Sophie’s mum was rushed to hospital this afternoon with chest pains. I think there’s some kind of history of heart problems. Sophie is her only family, so I said I’d have Steven overnight while she’s at the hospital. He’s been here since six.’

‘Where’s Ed?’

She made an impatient noise and Gabriel glanced at her in surprise. ‘He made an early exit to go for extra football training. To be
honest he looked pleased to be going. I don’t think the prospect of entertaining Steven was his idea of a good time.’ She ran a flustered hand through her hair. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say, he refuses to take the Spiderman suit off. He’s going to have to sleep in it at this rate.’

As they watched Steven lifted the mask off his face just enough to fit the rim of his cup of milk underneath it.

‘I mean, he’s only four,’ Lucy said, almost to herself. ‘How hard can it be?’

Gabriel burst out laughing. ‘For goodness’ sake, Lu, lighten up. Remember when we were kids and you practically lived in that tutu one summer? All kids like dressing up. Just let him get on with it.’

She looked at him crossly. ‘I don’t mean that, you idiot. I admit it’s a bit weird not seeing his face but I actually think the superhero outfit is quite cute. I mean he keeps asking me about his gran and I don’t know what to tell him.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I got the impression it was touch and go and I don’t want to give Steven false hope.’

She looked up at him worriedly and he put an arm around her and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

‘Don’t worry. It’ll be OK. We can sit with him together and I’ll distract him until bedtime. Then tomorrow Sophie can take over and talk to him.’

She smiled up at him, relieved, and he realised how happy it made him just to help her out with the slightest thing. It always had done, no matter how old they were. He felt protective of her in a way he never had about anyone else.

An hour later Lucy watched from the doorway, her empty coffee mug held against her chest unnoticed. She was totally absorbed by the sight of Gabriel playing with Steven and she couldn’t stop herself comparing it with Ed’s sharp disappearance when she’d told him Steven would be staying. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might need a hand, had it? But Gabriel hadn’t batted an eyelid. She realised, in all the years she’d known Gabe, she’d never watched him interact with children before. Not so surprising, she supposed. He was an only child like her, so there were no nieces or nephews to get involved with, and his friends were very much like him. Generally they were single sports-obsessed professionals with no fixed girlfriend. Yet to see him now you’d think Gabriel
came into contact with four-year-olds every day of the week. She felt a tug at her heart and shook herself. She had deliberately banished those ridiculous feelings from yesterday’s lunch. It was just cold feet about making things permanent with Ed, that was all.

‘I’m not really just Lucy’s friend, Gabriel, you know,’ she heard him telling the child. ‘I just let Lucy think that—it’s part of my cover. I’m really Sonic Man. I can hear things that happen miles and miles away. That’s my super power, just like you can climb walls and spin webs.’

Lucy watched the small dark head looking up at Gabriel. ‘My nana’s in the hospital,’ she heard Steven say in a small voice. ‘She got taken away in an ambulance.’

‘I know she did,’ Gabriel said. ‘Lucy told me. Your nana’s very ill, Steven, but they’re going to do the best they can to make her better. And she’s in the best place she possibly could be. There are lots of brilliant doctors there. I’m sure your mum will call soon, so try not to worry, OK?’ He smiled at Steven. ‘Shall we ask Lucy for a biscuit before you go up to bed?’