CHAPTER THREE

ONLY it hadn’t been like that, Gemma reflected grimly, coming out of her reverie and walking over to her bedroom window. When she had gone to the clearing that afternoon Luke hadn’t been there, nor the afternoon after, nor the one after that. And so it had gone on for more than a week before she finally accepted that Luke wasn’t going to come back, and that through her own folly she had destroyed something infinitely precious.

She must have hurt him very badly indeed, she now recognised with the wisdom of maturity. She had after all thrown in his face the very thing he was fighting so hard to overcome, and his reaction to her cruel taunt had been very much the same as hers would have been had he, for instance, mocked her for her most private insecurities.

She had deserved to lose his friendship. She sighed faintly and stared out unseeingly at the landscape.

Could the Luke she had known and this man her mother had mentioned be one and the same person? Perhaps it was not so far fetched that they might after all. Luke had often expressed to her his desire and determination to make a success of his life. He had had the intelligence to do it, and the willpower. If he was the same person … She felt her heart leap like a salmon leaping upriver, and a wry smile twisted her mouth.

If he was, she doubted that he would be all that pleased to see her—if he remembered her. The summer had been spoilt for her when he had gone, but she had recognised that she had deserved to lose his friendship, and she hadn’t made any attempt to seek him out, fearing a further rebuff.

Now when she thought about him it was with a mingling of gratitude and embarrassment. He had been very kind to her. She squirmed a little with embarrassment at the memory of how she had asked him to teach her how to kiss, aware of her very contradictory emotions at the thought of seeing him again.

One part of her hoped that he had made a success of his life and achieved everything that he had wanted, while the other … Even now, she still blushed for her fourteen-year-old self.

She heard a car coming up the drive, and realised that her mother was on her way back.

David and Sophy arrived soon afterwards, Sophy exclaiming enviously over Gemma’s outfit.

‘You’re so lucky to be so tall and slim.’ She made a wry face. ‘I never manage to look elegant.’

Gemma could see the surprise in her mother’s eyes. She wasn’t used to other women envying her daughter. In her view, of the two, Sophy was by far the more attractive. Couldn’t she see that small Sophy might well have a weight problem later in life? Gemma wondered wryly, standing up and excusing herself.

‘Don’t forget, will you, darling, that Daddy’s bringing people home for dinner,’ her mother called after her as she headed for the hall.

Behind her Gemma heard David asking, ‘Anyone I know?’ while Sophy chirruped that she had better go home and get changed.

She could see why her parents were so pleased about David’s marriage, Gemma reflected as she walked into her bedroom. Sophy would make him exactly the right sort of wife. David wasn’t like her. He had never questioned their parents’ values, or their way of life. David wanted a wife like their mother and in Sophy, Gemma suspected that he had probably found her. Although Sophy was, as her mother termed it, ‘well connected’, her aunt was relatively poor. Gemma hadn’t missed the faintly avaricious gleam in Sophy’s eyes when she talked about their new home and the Spanish apartment that her parents had given them as part of their wedding present.

What was the matter with her? she asked herself as she showered. People married for all sorts of different reasons and it wasn’t up to her to question or criticise David’s and Sophy’s motives.

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