Tempting Fate (26 page)

She walks into the office, chatting briefly with the girls on the desk, all of whom she has known for years, all of whom are as friendly as they have always been, despite knowing she and Elliott are no longer together.

‘He’s stepped out for lunch,’ says Maria. ‘He should be back in about fifteen minutes.’

‘The usual place?’

Maria nods, and Gabby smiles a thank you and heads to the diner across the street. She sees him first, at the counter, hunched over a turkey and Swiss-cheese wrap, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, paper in front of him, so familiar she actually feels an ache.

Walking over, she sits quietly on the stool next to his, saying nothing, waiting until he turns his head to look over at her, his eyes widening when he sees who it is.

So much has happened between them, there are so many things unspoken, and yet, even now, there is
nothing to say. Everything is in Elliott’s face, as he looks into the eyes of the woman he loves; the woman he still wants to be with; the woman he wants to grow old with.

‘Elliott,’ Gabby whispers. It is all she needs to say.

‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Henry … happy birthday to you!’

Matt throws him up in the air, much to Henry’s delight, as Alanna and Olivia start ‘Are you one …’ before the room collapses in laughter, and Matt, Gabby, Elliott and the girls all lean over the one candle to blow it out. Then Gabby takes the cake back into the kitchen to cut slices for all the guests.

‘Can I help?’ Monroe, all endless legs in skinny jeans, messy almond hair and almost unreal gorgeousness, comes in and swipes a big dollop of icing from the cardboard base and sucks it off her finger, Gabby looking on in approval.

‘I thought you models never ate anything? How in the hell do you get to eat dollops of icing and stay the size of a stick?’

Monroe giggles. ‘I’m a total sugar addict. Don’t even talk to me about Reese’s Pieces. I’ve been known to put away a whole bag in a day. But I’m pretty disciplined when I’m working. I’ll juice for days to lose weight for a shoot, then celebrate with a chocolate binge. I know, disgusting. I really shouldn’t admit to it.’

‘You really shouldn’t. I’m so jealous I could kill you.’

‘What are you jealous of?’ Olivia, who has been following Monroe like a lovesick puppy, appears in the kitchen, pretending to be cool, but Gabby knows she’s desperate to become friends with the older girl.

‘Your mom thinks I can eat whatever I want and stay thin, so I was just telling her I have to juice to get into shape for shoots. You have an amazing figure, Olivia, so you don’t have to worry about it.’

Olivia blushes. ‘You think so?’

‘Look at you! You have natural beauty, and –’

‘Ladies? As wonderful as this love fest is, I need help. Here –’ Gabby hands each of them two plates with giant slices of cake – ‘hand these out then come back for more.’

She continues cutting as Josephine comes in to put the kettle on for more tea.

‘This is such a lovely party,’ Josephine says. ‘It’s hard to believe Henry is one already.’

‘I know. Luckily he’s still too young to notice that we’re celebrating a week late rather than on his real birthday – but I didn’t think we could ask people to come over on Christmas Day.’

‘I still can’t get over everything that’s happened in your life and that everyone’s here together. And my God! That Monroe! I can’t stand being in the same room as her, but she’s so adorable you can’t find it in your heart to hate her.’

Gabby laughs. ‘She does seem like a lovely girl. She and Matt look perfect together.’

Josephine peers at her. ‘Doesn’t it feel just a little bit weird? That the father of your child is here with his girlfriend, and your husband?’

Gabby pauses in her cutting of the cake to think about it. It should feel weird. It should, by rights, be awkward, uncomfortable; but, somehow, aided by the fact that everyone in this family has been open to change, willing to work with circumstances that are unusual, it doesn’t feel wrong.

It feels absolutely right.

As a young girl, with a mother who surrounded herself with people, Gabby shut herself away, feeling as if she didn’t have a family of her own, or at least a family who noticed her.

Here she is, as an adult, not only with a family of her own, but with the type of family that surrounded her as a child, the type of family she never knew she wanted, but the type of family she has spent her life looking for.

They are family through choice, hard work, acceptance and love. They are family because they have found each other, often in the unlikeliest of circumstances, and have chosen to stay together, even when it would have been so much easier to walk the other way.

Matt didn’t think he wanted children until he was much older and had settled down. He and Gabby were a moment in time, a brief obsession that was never destined to be anything more than it was, and shouldn’t, in fact, have even been what it was. When Gabby became
pregnant, by rights Elliott was supposed to have left her, and Matt was supposed to want nothing to do with the baby.

Gabby was supposed to be a single mother, struggling to raise her children on her own, working all the hours God sends to provide for them all.

Instead, here she is, slicing up a Carvel ice-cream cake, listening to shouts of laughter from the living room, knowing that in her house, right now, are all the people she loves most in the world.

Elliott comes into the kitchen to grab another bottle of Scotch. He kisses his wife as he passes, tenderly rubbing her back, as if no explosions had happened to blow apart their happiness, as if, in fact, they are newly-weds, which is how he so often feels, now that he,
they
, have been given a second chance.

Olivia, who at eighteen has come through the teenage years and is a young woman, beautiful, naturally beautiful, in a way Gabby never was, is getting ready to go off to college.

She will go to college provided, Gabby thinks wryly, she isn’t derailed by a potential modelling career. Oh God, please let that not happen. Gabby has had to handle too much in the past two years but
that
might actually derail her. She smiles.

Matt appears, holding Henry up for Gabby to plant a kiss on his cheek. How could she ever have contemplated a life without Henry? No matter how her life is going to turn out, Henry will never have been a
mistake. She fell in love with her daughters the moment they were born, but the love she has for Henry, a mother’s love for a son, is unlike anything she has ever known. She can’t bear to think she might have missed out on this.

Claire and Tim are in the other room. It is a slow journey back for Gabby. Things are not the same with her and Claire, and may never be exactly the same, but they are trying. The four of them have had dinner together once or twice, and those evenings go a long way to healing the rift. More than anything, Gabby has perhaps learned not to rely on friends in the way she once did, and that saddens her. When she had problems in the old days she would turn to Claire. Nowadays, she turns to her mother.

Her mother, who was always so busy sorting out the problems of the world that she never had time for her own daughter, is now the one person Gabby trusts to advise her, listen to her problems, offer a shoulder to cry on if need be.

Gabby carries the last of her plates herself, one for her mother, one for herself. She sits on the sofa next to Natasha and leans her head briefly on her mother’s shoulder as her mother smiles and strokes her hair.

It feels natural now to allow herself to be held in her mother’s arms, to have her hair stroked, to be kissed. She wonders if her mother has changed, has softened in her old age, but suspects that it is she herself who has changed. The fiery resistance Gabby used as her
armour when she was young has vanished. Life is too hard to get through alone, and it was her mother who stepped up when everyone else had gone.

Alanna squeezes up on her other side, the three of them looking around: at Elliott pouring out the Scotch for a toast, at Olivia and Monroe chatting, at Matt sitting cross-legged on the floor while Henry zips around him in circles, huge smiles on both their faces.

Natasha turned out to be a good mother, after all. Gabby watches her son and her elder daughter, as her younger daughter entwines her fingers with her own. I hope, she thinks, watching all the hope and possibility in Henry’s smile, I hope I turn out to be a good mother for my children. I hope I can give them everything they need. I hope I can raise them to make good choices, to be good people, to go into the world treating others with kindness and respect.

I hope our year of insanity – for this is how she and Elliott have come to refer to their separation, in terms thinly veiled with humour – I hope our year of insanity hasn’t damaged them, or destroyed their belief in the power of a strong relationship.

She looks up then, aware that she is being stared at, and Elliott, standing by the fireplace, gazes at her, his eyes filled with love. He just smiles, and she knows it’s all going to be fine.

Somehow, what they least expected – what they least
wanted
– has brought them full circle. A little family.
Her
little family.

As always, my extraordinary publishing team and home at St Martin’s Press, and my family at Penguin in the UK. Louise Moore for so much love and support over all these years together, and Jen Enderlin, who has swept into my life and dusted out all the corners, with so much wisdom, brilliance and talent.

My agents – Anthony Goff, who has blessed me with sage advice and true friendship for such a very long time, and the incomparable Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for whom I am truly grateful.

My friends – you know who you are.

Michael Palmer, who so graciously and kindly offered up his wonderful old farm in New Hampshire for me to use as a writing retreat. Without Michael, this book would not have been written, and that’s no exaggeration.

The friends who helped enormously in coming up with the story, and those that supported me throughout.

Glenn Ferrari, Alberto Hamonet, Dusty Thomason, Randy Zuckerman.

To the many people who were open and honest
enough to share their heartbreak and their stories with me.

Finally, my husband, Ian. Who is truly the only man I want to walk with, side by side, as we continue the journey.

Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
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First published 2013

Copyright © Jane Green, 2013

Cover images: window © Philip Lee Harvey/Getty Images; crouching woman © BJ Formento/Getty Images; bedsheets © PhotoAlto/Frederic Cirou/Getty Image; rocking chair©Blasius Erlinger/Getty Images; other chair © Andreas von Einsiedel /Alamy

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes

ISBN: 978-0-141-96731-8