An emotion flitted across Gabriel’s face at that – annoyance, acceptance, hurt? Nessa wasn’t sure but wished she hadn’t been so blunt and rude. Her grandmother wouldn’t be happy with her.
‘What I mean is—’
‘Your meaning is crystal clear,’ said Gabriel tartly.
He gave her a curt nod before stepping outside and walking up the hill towards his shiny, locked car.
* * *
Gabriel slid into his car, closed the door and sat there without moving. Had he just arranged to call at a derelict cottage twice a day to spy on a woman he hardly knew? A woman who couldn’t stand him?
Not for the first time recently, Gabriel pondered his life choices.
He gazed at the seascape in front of him. It was one of those startlingly hot days that led to a heat haze shimmering over the land. But the sea, sparkling in the sunlight, made him feel cooler. He could imagine throwing off his suit and diving into its inky depths.
What he really wanted to do was set up an easel and capture this strange, ruined community on canvas. He thought of Nessa’s great-grandmother, who had embedded a beautiful work of art into the plaster of her home. He had no experience of making mosaics and collages. But his brush strokes would capture the tumbled stones, streaked with lichen, that had become a part of the earth. And the cottage standing whole but isolated, the only survivor of the tragedy that had struck this place.
Unfortunately, his father didn’t value his artistic talent, even when he was offered a place at art college. Especially when he was offered a place at art college, which his father deemed full of ‘layabouts and wannabes’. And Gabriel didn’t have time now for hobbies. When not in the office, he was either networking to further the business or catching up on sleep.
That was an excuse, of course. He opened the window to let some air into the stifling car. He could find time to paint if he really wanted, but what was the point?
He’d chosen the course of his life the day he’d turned down his college place. His future lay in property development, rather than slapping paint onto canvas and creating half-decent pictures.
Half decent wasn’t acceptable in the Gantwich family. And, as his father had been quick to point out, ‘mucking about with crayons’ wouldn’t bring in a fraction of the money that the family business generated each year.
Not that money was everything. Gabriel shook his head. Even thinking such a thing felt vaguely rebellious.
He watched as Nessa stepped outside the cottage and shook a dustpan into the wind. She’d looked so determined and full of hope when she’d told him she would beat his father. He hated that he would have to quash her dreams.
But he’d had dreams too, and they’d been quashed. It was simply a rite of passage that adults had to pass through before reality came crashing in.
So he would call in regularly and wait until she contravened the lease – there was no way she’d last thirty nights in that lonely cottage. And then he’d report it to his father, who would pat him on the back before razing everything in Sorrel Cove to the ground.
That was the way it was. That was business.
Nessa glanced up at him, probably surprised that he was sitting in his car, going nowhere.
She was very wrong about one thing, he realised. He was a total arse. But it was too late to change the entire direction of his life now. Nessa was trapped through financial insecurity and the responsibilities of single parenthood. His life was far more privileged but, in effect, he was trapped, too, by family expectations.
Turning away from the seascape, Gabriel started the car and drove off along the potholed road. He had work to do and his father was waiting for an update from the Ghost Village.