Escape for Christmas: A Novella (The Escape Series Book 2)

by Ruth Saberton

  Oh. My. God.

  Now it was all starting to fall into place. The pitiless sense of exhaustion, being emotional, feeling nauseous, her boobs trying to compete with Fifi’s, the ever-tightening waistbands even though she’d had a phase of eating less...

  “You didn’t know, did you?” asked Rob. He looked stricken. “Oh Gemma, I’m sorry; I thought you must know and be afraid to say.”

  Gemma shook her head. “I didn’t… I don’t…”

  Her brain was racing. She’d been so caught up with the whole Aoife business that she’d not really paid attention to much at all, even something as obvious as her own body. So much suddenly made sense. Of course. Of course…

  Gemma’s hands were shaking. All she wanted to do was call Cal and tell him, but instinct told her that this was the last thing she should do. Cal had to want to be with her because he loved Gemma the way that she loved him – the love so much a part of yourself that it was in your every cell and every heartbeat, the other person the first thought when you woke up and the last when you fell asleep. Spending the rest of her life wondering whether he was only with her out of obligation would be like the slowest and most painful death imaginable.

  “It’s Christmas Day,” Rob said, pointing to the clock on the dashboard. He kissed her cheek; this time it was a chaste kiss, unplugged from the crackling electricity of earlier. “Happy Christmas birthday, Gemma. I really hope you manage to work it out with Cal.”

  “Happy Christmas, Rob,” Gemma said, kissing him back. Not a frisson or a jolt of anything now. She couldn’t help being relieved. “I hope so too, but somehow I doubt it.”

  And Happy Christmas to you too, Cal, she added silently, once Rob had driven away and she was alone under the starry sky. I think you’re going to be very surprised when you find out what Santa’s brought us this year!

  Chapter 20

  If this was what being thirty felt like then Gemma wished she’d stuck at twenty-nine. Every bone in her body ached, her breakfast was curdling in her stomach and the smell of the cooking Christmas dinner threatened to send her retching to the bathroom. She was retching and wretched, Gemma thought miserably, as she sat curled up on the sofa with the Bread and Butlers Christmas special playing in the background and a glass of untouched Buck’s Fizz in her hand. So far she’d managed to avoid sherry, mulled wine and even the Baileys, but Gemma knew it was only because her mother was so busy cooking and her brothers were out working on the farm that nobody had time to think this suspiciously out of character.

  How on earth had she managed to miss the fact that she was pregnant? Gemma couldn’t believe she’d been so swept up in all the drama that she’d failed to notice something so fundamental. In fairness to her, she had always been irregular – crash diets and stress not helping matters much – and her love life had been fairly sparse lately. But even so…

  As soon as Rob’s comment had left his very kissable lips (she couldn’t really think like this anymore, could she?), everything had fallen into place like counters slotting into the winning line in a game of Connect Four. All the anomalies of the past few months, the bone-grinding exhaustion, the ridiculously over-the-top emotions, the lurking nausea and even the tightening of her waistbands – although in fairness this wasn’t really anything unusual – made perfect sense. Gemma didn’t need to drive to a late-night chemist and demand a test to know that Rob was right: every fibre of her being told her he was spot on. Still, this morning she’d gone online to find the nearest emergency chemist and driven over to pick up a test. Peeing on a stick in a public loo wasn’t quite the setting Gemma had imagined for the discovery of her first pregnancy, but there’d been no way she could wait a second longer. She’d done the deed and then sat on the loo seat, her heart racing while the longest three minutes in history passed. Sure enough two blue lines had duly appeared.

  So. There it was. The undeniable truth. She was up the duff. Knocked up. Had a baker’s bun in the oven. It didn’t matter how you described it; the question was, what on earth was she going to do? Things between her and Cal could scarcely be worse. How could she break this news to him now?

  As she watched the on-screen Angel and Laurence greeting their guests, Gemma chewed her nails and tried to think of a solution. When Cal appeared, looking gorgeous in a moss-green cord shirt and faded Levi’s, her heart felt as though it was going to punch its way through her ribcage. What was she doing here, so far away from him? It wasn’t long ago that they’d told one another everything, even waking up in the night to talk things over or share ideas for new recipes and ventures. When did things change?

  Around the time that Cal began visiting his ex-girlfriend in London and lying about it, that’s when, Gemma thought sadly. She guessed that if he wanted to be with Aoife then that was something she would just have to come to terms with, no matter how much it hurt. Although she was desperate to call Cal and tell him her news, Gemma knew that she couldn’t breathe a word until she’d established exactly what was going on. If Cal wanted to be with Aoife then Gemma needed to know this for certain; she had to hear it from him, otherwise how would she ever be sure that he was with her for the right reasons rather than out of some misplaced sense of duty? Gemma couldn’t think of anything more painful than spending the rest of her life wondering whether Cal was only with her because he was doing the right thing while deep down wishing he could have been with another woman.

  No. There was no way she could speak to Cal about this until she knew what was really happening with him and Aoife. For now she was on her own.

  Gemma’s hand fluttered to her stomach and rested there wonderingly. Everything felt just the same as it always had – and yet all of her instincts told her without a shred of doubt that it was all totally and utterly different. So maybe she wasn’t entirely on her own? Not if she really was going to have a baby! Her stomach lurched with sudden terror. Oh Lord. Was she fully ready for this? Was anyone ever ready?

  On the screen the guests were arriving at Kenniston and gathering in the Great Hall by the Christmas tree, sipping champagne and kissing hello. The camera was following Fifi’s entrance now. She was poured into a bodycon dress that wouldn’t have conned anyone, given that her famous assets were well and truly displayed in all their fake-tanned and glitter-dusted glory – and she was flinging her arms around Cal. Even though Gemma knew that there was nothing between Fifi and Cal, and that she’d only been invited because she was TV gold, seeing a glamour model all over the man she loved was more than Gemma could stand. Picking up the remote control, she turned the television off with a howl of misery.

  “Are you all right, love?” Demelza Pengelley appeared in the doorway, apron on and face flushed from the heat of the kitchen. She glanced across at the television and frowned. “Aren’t you going to watch Cal on the show?”

  Gemma shook her head. She couldn’t do it.

  “But it’s the live Christmas special!” Wiping her hands on her apron, Gemma’s mother joined her on the sofa. “Don’t you want to see what they’re all up to? And Cal too, of course.”

  The room blurred as Gemma’s eyes swam with tears. She couldn’t bear to watch Cal having fun at Kenniston without her, to know that he’d chosen Aoife and the show over her, to wish with all her heart that things had worked out differently…

  “Sweetheart, these are your friends and this live show is a really big deal for them,” Demelza insisted, reaching for the remote control. “I really think you ought to watch.”

  What on earth had got into her mother, thought Gemma, feeling rather irritated. Normally Demelza was oblivious to the television, and she’d never shown any great interest in Bread and Butlers before. The Pengelleys were generally far too busy with the farm to watch reality TV. How her mother knew that today was a live show was a total mystery.

  “Mum! You do know that Cal and I have broken up? It’s over with us!” Gemma flared. Once spoken the words sounded harsh and ugly, hanging in the air like the trails of sparklers on Bonfire Night,
real now and horribly final. She gulped back her misery and added, “He’s with his ex-girlfriend now, and if you don’t mind I’d rather not watch it all being played out on national television.”

  Her mother’s eyes widened. “I knew you two were having problems but I had no idea you’d split up forever. And Cal’s with his ex-girlfriend? When did all this happen?”

  Gemma shrugged. “About the same time he refused to tell me why he’s been secretly meeting his ex in London?”

  “Oh Gemma,” sighed her mother, “not this still? Why can’t you just trust him when he says it’s innocent? He’s said he’ll explain. Why won’t you wait until he does that before making any decisions in anger?”

  “You’re taking his side?” Gemma was outraged. Weren’t your parents supposed to root for you? Her hand fluttered to her stomach. She’d defend this little person to the death. There was no way she’d stick up for its cheating, fibbing partner.

  “Gemma, this isn’t about sides: it’s about give and take and trusting your partner,” Demelza told her wearily. “Relationships are never black and white, love. They’re messy and they’re blooming hard work. There’s a reason why fairy tales end with a wedding – that’s the part where the graft really starts.” She rose from the sofa and handed the remote control back to her daughter. “Before you offer, I don’t need any help in the kitchen. Just watch the show. You never know, it might help.”

  Personally Gemma though watching Bread and Butlers, a show that she partially held responsible for the crumbling of her relationship with Cal, would be about as much use as boiling water in a chocolate kettle. Besides, she had no intention of torturing herself further by watching Cal’s antics. Instead she flipped to an ancient Bond movie and pretended to be glued to Roger Moore as he raced speedboats, seduced women with big hair and raised his eyebrow at villains. By the time Bond had saved the world, the Bread and Butlers Christmas special was long finished.

  This was torture. Cal was the only person Gemma wanted to speak to – the only person she could talk to about the shock of suddenly realising she was pregnant – and he’d never been further away from her. She was thirty, pregnant and all alone; this wasn’t how she’d pictured Christmas when she’d booked the cottage for her and Cal, Gemma reflected sadly. Some thirtieth birthday this had turned out to be. It was always rubbish having your birthday on Christmas Day, but this was something again.

  Christmas dinner passed in a blur for Gemma. As always the food was wonderful because Demelza Pengelley was a fantastic cook, but for once Gemma’s appetite had vanished. It didn’t matter that the roast potatoes were crispy and golden with goose fat and fluffy inside, or that the turkey was moist, the gravy was as rich as Croesus and the chestnut stuffing melted in the mouth; her throat was too tight with misery to swallow even the smallest mouthful. Great. Not only had Cal ruined her birthday and broken her heart, but now he’d even stopped her from enjoying her Christmas dinner. While Gemma’s brothers heaped their plates several times over, she picked at her food and felt alarmed that all of a sudden the sprouts seemed appealing. When she found herself about to spoon a third helping onto her plate, Gemma caught herself just in the nick of time. If passing on the wine hadn’t already made her sharp-eyed mother suspicious, then seeing her daughter tucking into sprouts really would raise the red flag. Gemma was still trying to get her own head around what was happening to her; the last thing she needed right now was her mother on the case.

  Once pudding was eaten, the dishwasher was thrumming away in the kitchen and the family was hunkered down in front of the fire with a tin of Quality Street and the EastEnders special, Gemma decided it was time to get some fresh air. Pulling on her boots and the old waxed jacket, she set off across the fields.

  It was a bright but cold afternoon and already the sun looked like a red Babybel balancing on the horizon. The cows huddled against the hedges and Gemma’s boots crunched over the still-frozen ridges of plough. Rather than climbing the hill as she had yesterday (Yesterday? How was it possible that so much had changed in twenty-four hours?), Gemma turned away from the farm and headed into the woods, where the only noises were the rooks caw-cawing and the snapping of twigs underfoot. Dapples of late afternoon sunshine danced through the branches, while above them seagulls wheeled high in the cloudless sky. Almost without realising what she was doing, Gemma found herself choosing the lower path that zigzagged through the trees and down to Penmerryn Creek.

  Talk about wanting to torture yourself, Gemma thought grimly. She dug her hands into her pockets; outside the shelter of the woods there was a chilly wind whipping up the river, numbing her fingers and slicing into her cheeks. Yes, what great idea this was! Why not revisit the place where she and Cal had been so happy and rub it in a little more?

  She paused at the water’s edge and glanced across at the cottage. The renovations were finished now, by the looks of it. The windows were sparkling and the woodwork was freshly painted in a minty green. Even the garden had been tidied up, and a small Christmas tree had been placed outside the front door. The new owners must have arrived for their first Christmas in their Cornish bolthole. Maybe even now they were in front of the wood burner and toasting their good luck? The car was pulled up on the freshly raked gravel. It was the same sporty black BMW that belonged to the scary woman with the bob. Next to it was a white Range Rover just like the one Cal owned.

  Wait a minute…

  Gemma’s eyes narrowed. Maybe it was a hitting-thirty thing and her eyesight was on the blink, but for a moment she could have sworn that was Cal’s Range Rover. The model was exactly the same and it even had an identical dent in the right wing where somebody might have accidentally clouted it on the Lion Lodge’s gatepost. (Not that that particular somebody had been Gemma. Of course not. How that dent had got there remained a complete and utter mystery!)

  Shading her eyes against the brightness of the setting sun, Gemma walked a little closer to the cottage until she could see quite clearly the registration plate of the car. This was when her heart really did begin to hammer like rain on a barn roof. There was absolutely no mistaking that personalised registration, picked out in tasteful gold and, as Cal had teasingly assured her, every bit as much a vital part of the Premier League footballer’s kit as the WAGs and mock-Tudor mansions.

  It was, without a shadow of a doubt, Cal’s car.

  Gemma’s head was spinning. It wasn’t possible. Cal was in Devon. He’d been in a live TV show only a few hours earlier, so there was no way he could be in Cornwall already – and even if he were in Cornwall, why on earth would he be down at Penmerryn Creek? It just didn’t make any sense.

  Mysteries were not Gemma’s forte. She never watched Sherlock or Midsomer Murders because trying to figure out the answers always gave her a mammoth headache. Unlike Angel, who thrived on complications, Gemma much preferred life to be straightforward. That was one of the things she’d always loved so much about Cal: he didn’t have a tricky or deceitful bone in his body. He was honest and kind and a completely open book.

  Or so she’d thought. How ironic that, as it turned out, Gemma didn’t actually know the man she loved at all…

  She picked up pace – all that tramping up and down the drive to Kenniston had made her fitter than she’d realised – and stomped along the path to the cottage. Her heart pounding painfully, Gemma took a deep breath and then banged her fist on the door. Whatever Cal was up to, whatever games he was playing, it was time he told the truth. Whatever it was and however much it hurt her, she had to know.

  “Just coming!” called a cheerful female voice, followed by the sounds of footsteps on flagstones. “One minute!”

  Gemma felt the blood freeze in her veins, and for a horrible minute she thought she was going to pass out. There was absolutely no mistaking those lilting Irish tones – no mistaking them at all.

  Aoife O’Shaughnessy was here with Cal.

  Chapter 21

  “Oh my God! Gemma!”

  If circumstanc
es had been different, i.e. if she hadn’t just discovered beyond all reasonable doubt that the man she loved really was seeing his ex-girlfriend, Gemma would have found Aoife’s expression of total horror comical. Whoever it was that the Irish woman had expected to see on the doorstep, it certainly wasn’t Gemma; Aoife’s green eyes were wide with shock. As usual she looked Photoshop perfect with her glossy dark hair, peachy skin and slim figure, but for once Gemma was beyond caring. It didn’t matter that her own nose was red with cold and her hair whipped into a bird’s nest by the wind, or that she was wearing a rather stinky wax jacket that she suspected the dogs had been sleeping on. All she wanted was to find Cal.

  “Yes, it’s ‘Oh My God Gemma’,” she agreed calmly, amazed that her voice sounded low and reasonable when she was teetering on the brink of doing the full fishwife. “I’ve come to see Cal, Aoife, and this time please don’t lie to me and pretend you haven’t seen him for months. We both know he’s here.”

  Aoife gulped. “He is here, Gemma, but it’s not what you think.”

  “Oh please!” Gemma raised her eyes to the heavens. “It’s exactly what I think. Let’s not waste any more time. Where is he?” She glanced over Aoife’s slender shoulder and peered into the hallway. Goodness, for a renovated house this place looked pretty unfinished. The walls were smoothly plastered in pink, yet remained unpainted; the light fittings were just bare wires protruding from the walls; and the skirting boards were still plain wood. There was no smell of Christmas dinner either, which was odd. Cal loved Christmas dinner, and he would have missed the one at Kenniston. Why would he and Aoife run away to an unfinished cottage? Was Gemma going mad?

  Her head swimming, Gemma clutched at the doorframe. The world cartwheeled around her and black dots speckled her vision. Moments later she was slumped in the hall with her back against the bare plastered wall and her head between her knees while the place went round and round like something from Disneyland. It’s a Small World would be appropriate, Gemma thought bleakly. Why, Cal! Fancy bumping into you and your lover in the very place where we promised we’d be together forever. What a big surprise.