Josh, coming down the stairs of the Hershon Gallery where Elan was exhibiting, caught sight of the back of a woman who seemed familiar to him. She was half turned away from him as she stood inspecting one of Elan’s paintings. She was wearing a stunning, very expensive-looking little black number and strappy little shoes. Her dark hair was shiny and cut to just under her chin. David, beside him, was staring at her, too. Her arms were tanned and something about her was exotic, relaxed, sexy.
At that moment she turned smiling to the tall, dark man beside her, and Josh saw with a sick shock that it was Gabby. Rooted, he could not tear his eyes away from her. He felt a strange falling away, a glimpse of a person he did not know, a snapshot of someone other than his mother. He wanted to turn and run out of the gallery, but he could not move.
‘Do you know her?’ David asked, seeing Josh’s expression.
‘Yes, I know her,’ Josh said under his breath.
‘Well, come on, introduce me. Wow! I want to be her toy boy.’
Josh was so angry he wanted to slam his fist into David’s jaw. He was going to leave now, quickly, before Gabby saw him; but at that moment his mother turned his way. A strange thought flashed through Josh’s mind as Gabby saw him. For one second, he wondered, Is it really her? Is it her double? Gabby had had her hair cut and she never wore clothes like that. Is her face going to fall with shock at the sight of me?
Gabby gave a start, her eyes widened in shocked surprise, then she gave a small instinctive squeak of pleasure and rushed towards him holding her arms out. She was hugging him, smiling at David, turning to introduce the man she was with.
‘Josh, this is Mark Hannah. He brought the figurehead I’ve been working on back from Canada. Do you remember? I told you about it.’
Josh breathed out suddenly. God, I’m stupid.
‘This is my son, Josh,’ Gabby said proudly. ‘Darling, what are you doing here? I thought you couldn’t come tonight?’
Josh grinned and relaxed. ‘You’ve had your hair cut! I didn’t recognize you!’ It was all right. It was bloody all right. For a second he had thought … but it was only Gabby in work mode. How extraordinary to see it for the first time. As if she was someone quite else.
‘This is David Matthews,’ he said. ‘We’re on the same course. I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it, but our last-minute rehearsal was changed to Sunday, so change of plan.’
Gabby shook David’s hand. ‘We’ve been here quite a while, we were just leaving. Elan’s done some wonderful work.’
‘Is he here? I was hoping to catch him. I bet he’s done a bunk as usual?’
‘I think he might have. He didn’t think you were coming. I tried to persuade him to have supper with us but he was sloping away somewhere.’
‘Trolloping off, was he?’ Josh grinned, turned to David. ‘Elan hates his own previews. I’ll just go and see if I can find him, he might have got waylaid.’
‘We were just off to eat round the corner, in that little Italian place. Can you join us when you’re done here?’ the man called Mark asked. He had an American accent.
‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ David said. ‘I’m meeting my sister and some friends at Marble Arch – it’s her birthday – but you stay, Josh, we’ll meet up later.’
Josh said quickly, ‘No, let’s stick to our plans. Why don’t we have a quick drink with you, Gabby, when we’ve finished here?’
Suddenly and unaccountably Josh did not want to eat with his mother and a stranger, and the tension was there in the back of his neck again.
‘Fine,’ Gabby smiled at them. ‘See you both later. Elan’s done terribly well; lots of red dots already.’
Later, much later, Josh, David, David’s sister and a group of her friends, erupted from a club and drunkenly got a taxi to David’s sister’s flat to crash. When Josh woke sober and with a dry mouth early the next morning, he lay thinking about that strange meeting with Gabby and the Canadian.
The man had been charming, neither too friendly nor too interested. He was much older than Gabby, older than Charlie, too. Josh had watched him with Gabby. He had no reason to think they were anything but two people who worked together. But something niggled at him. Why wasn’t Gabby going home tomorrow? It was the weekend. Why, apropos of absolutely nothing, did the man, Mark, carefully introduce the topic of his family as if he was afraid of what Josh might be thinking? And, if he had thought Josh might be suspicious, did it make it true?
Josh felt a strange, sharp pain at the memory of his mother looking young and … really great. So great that David had gone on about it.
Your mother was your mother and she had no right to look … attractive to people of your own age.
He was used to having a young mother. He had been proud of it at school, but his eyes had been sharply opened by the fact that Gabby had a life he knew nothing about away from the farm, away from Nell and Charlie; away from him. An entirely separate life.
He knew it was incredibly childish, when he’d left home, had his own life. What did he want? Would he like Gabby to be patiently waiting in familiar surroundings, doing what she had always done, keeping to a routine he knew like the back of his hand? The gentle rhythm of his childhood remaining the same each time he went back home, to be sure somehow that Gabby’s life revolved around his?
The answer was yes, yes he did, and Josh was appalled at himself.