The Faithless - Martina Cole [52]
Her dad was great but, as always, he had to do what her mother wanted, so Gabby got no support from him. She felt sorry for him, because he seemed so sad a lot of the time, and yet her parents lived in a lovely house and, to an outsider, it would seem they had a nice life. But Gabby knew instinctively that her mother didn’t love her dad, not like he loved her, and that was why he was so sad inside. It was in his eyes, and it was tragic to see. Sometimes she looked at him and felt the urge to cry, he looked so forlorn, so lonely. But how could he be lonely when he had her and James Junior?
Her dad knew that they preferred it at their nana’s house – at least there they could be themselves. He knew that their mother was sometimes inordinately hard on them both, and he tried in his own way to make up for that. He ruined them, according to her mother, gave in too quickly, but she saw her father was sensible enough to appreciate that if you let a child be free, they would come back to you of their own accord. All her mother’s draconian measures seemed to do was make her want to break away, get away, as far away from the source of her unhappiness as possible.
But now she had Vincent to think about, and he was absolutely gorgeous, from his dark hair, his blue eyes, and his muscular physique, to his great big feet. She felt her pulse race as she thought of his body and wondered why she felt suddenly so shy and awkward. She knew she wanted to kiss him, but she would not let her mind imagine any more than that. She did think about him all the time though, alone in her bed at night, and the feelings she had then were exciting and frightening. She knew her mother would have a heart attack if she knew about them! Her biggest problem at the moment was how she could swerve her mother so she could meet him one night. Like her mother, she was very resourceful and very determined. And, like her mother, she would not, under any circumstances, be thwarted.
Unlike her mother, Gabby had a truly kind heart, and an even kinder nature. She was happy in her own way, and enjoying the act of defiance that meant her meeting up with her heart-throb Vincent O’Casey behind her mother’s back. She couldn’t wait.
Chapter Forty-Three
‘The sap’s rising in her, she’s just growing up. She wants to be with her friends and not have us standing over her the whole time.’
‘She’s only thirteen, Dad.’
Celeste sounded upset and Jack Callahan retreated on this occasion. Celeste agreed with everything her sister said, and if Cynthia said that her daughter was not to move across the doorstep then that was that.
Personally, he felt sorry for the child. She was liked a caged lion, and eventually caged animals turned on the person who caged them in the first place. He could see the dislike and the irritation in his granddaughter’s eyes for her mother, and he felt deeply sorry for her. Plus, she was a nice kid and a trustworthy kid at that, which was more than could be said about her mother at the same age.
Cynthia had been round the turf more times than a National winner by the time she was fifteen, although he wasn’t supposed to know about that, of course. That was the problem with daughters, they got into trouble; boys were just the cause of their downfalls. Even in these so-called enlightened times, a girl in trouble was still looked down on where they lived, the doings of a load of braless fucking lesbians and their shouting about equality didn’t cut much ice in the East End of London. Fucking feminism! A load of old cobblers as far as he was concerned. All it meant was that girls were getting like men, and what good would that do in the long run? Bullshit baffles brains all right, but where his granddaughter was concerned he hated to see her locked