Page 90 of The Key to the Last House Before the Sea

NESSA

Nessa stared at her mobile phone before shoving it back into her pocket. She couldn’t do it, she thought, pacing back and forth across the clifftop. She couldn’t ring him, not after how things had been left. It was all too complicated.

Complication number one: they’d kissed. She and Gabriel had kissed during the storm, and she had no idea how he felt about that. To be honest, she had little idea how she felt about it either.

She rather feared he regretted it now because she doubted she was his type. He preferred women with names like Seraphina who probably employed personal shoppers and never stepped outside the door without a full face of make-up.

Or perhaps he’d been trying to worm his way into her affections for nefarious business reasons, so he’d have more sway in persuading her to abandon her fight to save the cottage and the Ghost Village.

This possibility was more upsetting than him having subsequent doubts about spontaneously snogging her. And she found some comfort in the fact that his behaviour since then – keeping her absence from the cottage quiet from his father – shot holes in that argument.

Complication number two: since they’d met, she’d done nothing but make his life more complicated. The last few days of soul-searching had given her some perspective.

All Gabriel had wanted to do was get a building project underway to impress his scary father, and she’d been nothing but trouble from the start. True, it was a horrible project with upsetting consequences but he didn’t have the same emotional attachment to the Ghost Village that she did, so why would he care? Why should he?

Complication number three: she hadn’t heard from him between their kiss and the meeting with his father, or since. Surely, if he had proper feelings for her he’d have been in touch? She wasn’t expecting him to ask her out, especially not now. But he could have texted, or rung, or sent a carrier pigeon, or something.

And complication number four, the biggie: she’d believed that he’d told his father she’d gone AWOL from the cottage, when it had been Valerie all along.

It turned out that Gabriel had kept quiet for Nessa’s sake, which was noble in the extreme. But she’d automatically believed that he’d blabbed.

She hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt at all. She’d forgotten the man he was when he sat painting barefoot in the sunshine and had only remembered him as the aloof, suited and booted man he was on the day they’d met.

The whole thing had become a terrible mess and she couldn’t believe that her grandmother would be very proud of her right now.

‘Sorry, Gran,’ she said out loud to the seagulls circling high above her, and then felt foolish. It wasn’t her dead grandmother she needed to apologise to. It was Gabriel.

Grabbing her phone again, she scrolled through her contacts and jabbed on ‘Gabriel Gantwich’ before she could lose her nerve.

Hopefully he wouldn’t answer and she could leave a message. Or a text! Why wasn’t she texting? That was a coward’s way out but she was feeling cowardly today so an apologetic text would do just fine.

She was about to end the call when she heard Gabriel’s low voice.

‘Hello.’

When Nessa stared at the phone, rather than saying something… anything, he asked, ‘Is that you, Nessa?’

‘Mmm, yep, it’s me. It’s Nessa, just giving you a quick ring at work.’ Nessa’s shoulders slumped. She sounded like an idiot. ‘Are you busy?’

‘Not right now. Is everything all right?’

‘Yeah, well, no, not really.’ This conversation wasn’t getting any easier. Nessa took a deep breath, trying to erase the image that had just popped into her head of Gabriel leaning towards her to kiss her, the cottage bright with lightning. ‘Actually, I was ringing up to apologise, though maybe I should have texted instead.’

‘No, ringing is fine.’

‘Good.’ Nessa paused, took a deep breath and said quickly, ‘I’ve found out that you didn’t tell your father about me leaving the cottage when Lily was sick so I wanted to say sorry for thinking it was you, and thank you for not telling him when you could have. I know family dynamics can be difficult and, even though I don’t like what your family firm is doing to the Ghost Village, I hope you didn’t get into trouble for not telling your dad because I wouldn’t want that. Not at all.’

She stopped, partly because she was burbling on, but mostly because she’d run out of air. She waited for Gabriel to say something but there was nothing. Only silence. Had the phone signal dropped out? Had she made a heartfelt apology into thin air?

‘Hello?’ she said, her voice high-pitched. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here,’ said Gabriel. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to call and I didn’t know that you knew I didn’t tell my father.’

‘Why didn’t you text to tell me it wasn’t you who told him?’

‘Would you have believed me?’

Nessa looked out across the sea and the blue sky that was streaked with the vapour trails of aircraft heading for places far away.

---