O’Rourke to thank for that.
Luke O’Rourke. Of course it couldn’t be the same man. The coincidence of the Luke O’Rourke she had known and her father’s new business acquiantance both being in the construction industry was no more than just that. The Luke she had known had been nothing more than a labourer working as part of a gang of itinerants. She moved slowly round her bedroom, drifting back to her bed and sitting down on it, letting her mind take her back. Her fingers absently touched the bedspread that was now shiny and tailored in deep coral, but had once been soft baby pink, frilled and flounced.
It had been a hot dry summer that year, and she had been bored and restless, impatient of and embarrassed by her mother’s petty snobbishness, and resentful of her father’s masculine condescension. She had come home from school with high marks in all her classes, only to be told rather reprovingly by her father that girls didn’t need to be clever and that they should certainly never be competitive, this last rebuke having been earned because she had done much better at school than her brother.
At fourteen she had sensed that she wasn’t the daughter her parents wanted, although then she hadn’t really known why. All she had known was that she felt constrained and uncomfortable in the persona they were tailoring for her. Her mother made her feel embarrassed when she went out shopping with her. Gemma didn’t like the way she talked to the people in the shops who served her. Manchester was their nearest city, but her mother didn’t shop there. She preferred Chester, but when Gemma asked her why, when it was so much smaller, all she would say was that it was much more ‘our sort of place’. Occasionally her mother shopped in London and came back with dark green bags from Harrods. Gemma already knew that she had a privileged life; her father was fond of pointing out to her that not many daddies could afford to spoil their daughters the way he spoiled her, but Gemma was always left with the feeling that his gifts weren’t given freely and that they had to be paid for. She also knew that somehow she disappointed him.
With the onset of puberty she was growing tall. Gangly was how her mother had described her. Her skin was smooth and faintly olive, her eyes a deeply serious grey. She often looked in the mirror and was puzzled that she didn’t look more like her pretty blue-eyed and blonde-haired mother.
Her father was very dark and she knew that people thought her parents made a very attractive couple. Mrs Moreton, their daily, was always saying so.
David, two years older than her, had been sent away for the summer on a special adventure training course in the Welsh mountains. She would dearly have loved to go with him, but her father had frowned and told her that it wasn’t suitable for girls.
‘Oh, no, darling, it isn’t at all ladylike,’ her mother had told her when she pleaded to be allowed to go. There were very few children locally for her to play with and so she had been reduced to spending long hours alone riding her pony, Bess.
It was while on one of these sojourns that she had first met Luke …
The Cheshire countryside, surrounding the village was pretty and criss-crossed with public footpaths and walks. In July the fields were heavy with their crops, a blue haze clouding the far distant Welsh hills to the west, and the Derbyshire peaks to the south east.
It was a hot afternoon, and Gemma was content to let fat little Bess amble along at her own pace. While she quite enjoyed riding, she was not strongly obsessed by it.
It had been her mother’s idea that she learn to ride. Mrs Parish had seen it as the right sort of hobby for her daughter, expecting that it would lead to Gemma’s inclusion amongst the rather stand-offish local county set, whose sons and daughters all learned to ride almost before they could walk, but these children were all taught at home, not at the exclusive riding establishment to which Gemma’s parents sent her, and once she realised that the only people they were likely to meet through Gemma’s riding were in much the same position as themselves she had soon lost interest in the whole idea.
Bess had been a tenth birthday present, and although her mother often now complained that the pony was an unnecessary expense, Gemma had insisted on keeping her. She was sturdily enough built to support Gemma’s slim frame, even if her ever-growing legs did dangle rather dangerously either side of Bess’s plump little body. The pony spent most of the year greedily enjoying the luxury of her comfortable paddock adjoining the house, good-naturedly ambling along the country lanes with Gemma on her back when she was at home at a pace not much faster than her rider could have walked.
Her destination on this occasion was a small wood where, the previous summer, she had seen a family of otters at play on the banks of the river that flowed through it. She found the clearing by the river easily enough, dismounting to tie Bess’s reins to a handy tree trunk. Here the ground smelled hot and moist, the sun shading eerily through the umbrella of leaves overhead. Pine needles and other vegetation covered the ground, giving it a stringy texture. Although she couldn’t see it, Gemma could hear the sound of the river. She felt in her pocket for the sandwiches she had brought with her, and the book. She could have read quite easily in the garden at home, but somehow she felt over-exposed and uncomfortable there, and if her mother came back early and caught her slopping around in her old shorts and T-shirt, she would complain.
Neither of her parents approved of Gemma wearing shorts or jeans; they both liked her to wear dresses, preferably with fluffily gathered skirts. Gemma hated them. She felt they looked ridiculous on her. All those frills with her arms and legs sticking out like thin sticks.
Although she was fourteen she had practically no figure at all yet. Not like some of the girls in her class. Well, she did have some figure. Her breasts had started to develop and she was wearing a bra, but she knew that her mother had been shocked to see how tall she had grown this last term.
She found a comfortable place to sit down not far from the river, her back supported by the trunk of an ancient oak. She felt in her pocket for her sandwiches, before spreading her jacket on the ground. They were doing Lawrence at school next term, and she had bought some paperbacks with her pocket money. English Lit. was one of her favourite subjects.
Within minutes she was so deeply engrossed that she was only aware of the intruder when she felt the cold drops of moisture from his skin fall on to her arm.
She looked up, her eyes widening in shock and alarm as they encountered the tall, muscular frame of the man standing looking down at her. He must have been swimming in the river, she realised, because droplets of water were running down over his chest still, darkening the springy mat of hair that grew there. He was wearing jeans that were old and very faded, but his feet were bare. His arms and torso as well as his face were burned dark by constant exposure to the sun. Tiny lines radiated outwards from the corners of his dark blue eyes. His hair clung sleekly to his scalp and it was very dark.
Gemma moistened her lips nervously, suddenly feeling extremely alarmed.
‘It’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you.’
His voice rumbled from the depth of his chest, but it was gentle and reassuring, tinged with an accent she recognised as Irish.
The moment she heard it Gemma felt herself relax. She knew instinctively and beyond any shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t lying to her, and that he meant her no harm.
He looked down at the book she was reading and smiled at her. ‘Lawrence, eh? Now there’s a fine writer. Not as robust as some maybe, but a fine writer nonetheless.’
‘Do you … do you like reading, then?’
There had been an odd pause then while he looked at her for a moment, and then he had said quietly, ‘I like it fine when I have the time.’
And that was how it had all begun.
IN retrospect, that afternoon seemed to have a fey, almost magical, quality to it.
Gemma remembered that she had offered to share her sandwiches with him and that he had equally gravely