Be My Baby by Fiona Harper

hand gently and removed it from the glove box catch. Heather pulled her hand away and tucked it under the school bag on her lap.
    â€˜Twenty school days until the Easter break.’
    Gaby’s heart went out to her, it really did, but she could see where Heather was going with this, and there was no way she was going to let the girl manipulate her. She was going to school today, and that was that.
    â€˜It won’t be as bad as you think, sweetheart.’
    â€˜How would you know? It was probably at least a hundred years since you were at school! You don’t know anything about it. Nobody does.’
    Heather was giving her what Gaby always referred to as a laser vision stare—thanks to Luke’s apt description. She refused to take the bait, especially now she’d worked out that Heather created conflict when she didn’t get her own way. So she leaned across, pulled the handle and opened the door for her.
    â€˜Come on, miss. Out. One foot in front of the other, walk through the door, sit your bottom on a chair and stay there. It’s not hard. And then, when you come out again, it’ll be nineteen days and counting.’
    Heather flounced from the car, as only a disgruntled pre-teen could, dragging her bag behind her.
    â€˜I’ll see you after netball practice,’ Gaby yelled after her. But Heather was too busy ploughing a path though her schoolmates to hear.
    She pulled the door closed and started the car. Heather was making progress, but there was still a long way to go. She and Luke were enjoying a turbulent truce. They still didn’t know how to resolve their differences when a spat erupted, but at least in the in-between times she could see they were both trying.
    Although she was very fond of Heather, she was determined to keep a professional distance. There were so many reasons why she couldn’t afford to lose her heart to this needy little girl and her silently aching father.
    Distance. That was what they all needed. Luke certainly needed time and space to sort himself out. At least, that was the reason she gave herself for keeping out of his way in the evenings, and always, always leaving the dinner plates on the table for him to clear away.
    Back at the Old Boathouse, she parked her car near the back door and let herself in. Seven and a half hours until she had to pick Heather up. It seemed an awfully long time. But she had a shopping list to write and she might as well check whether Heather had put her school uniform from last week in the laundry basket, rather than stuffing it under her bed.
    By noon her shopping list was written in a small neat hand and every last sock of Heather’s had been accounted for and deposited in the washing machine. The beds were made, a pot of home-made soup sat bubbling on the hob and she had organised the contents of the freezer.
    She sat at the spotlessly clean kitchen table and stared out of the window. It was a typically grey March day. Even so, the colours on the river here were wonderful. Steel greys, mossy greens and slate blues. And the light!
    There was inspiration everywhere you looked, no matter the time of day or the weather. When she was younger, she’d have been out there on the beach, brush in hand, like a shot.
    Gaby sat up a little straighter.
    Why not? What was there to stop her? She’d missed the watercolour classes she’d taken while married to David. Since the divorce she’d had neither the time nor the money to lavish on things like that. But with Heather in school most of the week, she’d have plenty of time to unearth a talent she thought she’d buried for good, and still get all her work done. She jumped up, grabbed her keys and drove into town grinning all the way.
    Down a cobbled street she found a shop selling art supplies. She emerged with a carrier bag full of paint tubes, brushes, paper and her head full of ideas for her first project.
    She wandered through the town without