The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,72

the quiet withdrawal of affection when I didn’t fall in with her plans? Weren’t they just bullying by the back door? ‘I don’t feel like she bullied me,’ I said quietly. ‘I could always have said no.’

Now Gabriel looked directly at me, blinking those big dark eyes behind his glasses. One hand let go of the pumpkin and reached across to touch mine on the steering wheel. ‘And what about after your father died?’ The question was very quiet. ‘What about when she realised that you weren’t going to live her ambitions for her? What then?’

The wind squealed past us. We were heading down the steep slope towards the café and I could see the waves hurling themselves up onto the beach in great grey curls of foam and angry water. ‘She was upset,’ I said flatly. ‘The things she said – I know it wasn’t really her. She’d lost her husband and we’d had to move.’

‘But she took it out on you. Made it your fault. That’s bullying too, Katie. And it was never your fault – how could it have been?’

‘If I’d been better. If we hadn’t switched horses…’

‘If you hadn’t then the car might have swerved and still hit your dad. His horse might have behaved differently with him and not run into the hedge. It was an accident, that was all, and she had no right to make you a scapegoat to save her facing up to that fact.’

We reached the car park outside the café. There was only one other car there; this wasn’t the weather for holidaymakers to be walking the beaches. Spray was being thrown far enough to be splattering down off the café roof, mingling with the occasional rain and peppering the car park with gobbets of weed. The sparse grasses that grew up the dunes were bent double under the wind, and the sands were shifting.

‘Gabriel.’ I stopped the car and we sat as the engine ticked into quiet, backed by the booming roar of the waves. ‘I know it wasn’t my fault. I know it was an accident. I suspect my mother knows that too, but it’s gone too far for both of us now. All I can do is try to protect Poppy from ever feeling the way I did when I was her age. If it sometimes makes me a controlling mother, then that’s the price I pay for making sure she knows I love her.’

‘And it’s why you’re nervous of Patrick?’

His eyes moved over my face. They kept coming back to my mouth, which was distracting.

‘I’m not nervous of him, as such. I just know how unpredictable horses can be. Kelly had never ever tried to whip round on me before, never shown any signs of being nappy. He was a gentle soul, young and green but coming on really well, and I don’t know what he saw in the hedge that day that made him shy but… anyway. I don’t want Poppy anywhere near horses. They aren’t safe.’

‘Safe.’ He moved in his seat so he was closer to me. ‘Katie, nothing is ever completely safe. Even my sewing machine has been through my hand a few times. I’ve poked myself in the eye with my sodding glasses and they’re blunt and plastic and only one step away from remedial cutlery.’ He touched my cheek, his fingers gently stroking along the plane of my face until he cupped my chin. ‘Nothing is safe,’ he repeated. ‘And you need to remember that.’

I was leaning in, as though he were magnetic and I was some kind of bendy metal. My lower half stayed put behind the wheel but my top half was pulled towards him, in his big black coat, until his hand moved to the back of my head and he was kissing me. His lips were firm, his mouth was hot and there was toothpaste and wine and something else that tasted rich and dark like a secret promise on the edges of that kiss.

When we broke apart I just sat and looked at him for a moment. ‘Is that a warning?’

He frowned. ‘No, that was a kiss. Understandable confusion there, but warnings usually come with sirens or klaxons or something.’

‘I meant you saying that nothing was safe. Are you oh-so-subtly trying to tell me that you aren’t safe?’

The car rocked in the wind and the wiper blades howled. Gabriel blinked once or twice. ‘Katie,’ he said slowly, ‘in five, ten, years, I could be unable to