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‘I doubt there’s much I can tell you about twelve-hour days that you don’t already know.’
She thought for a moment. ‘That’s fair, I suppose. But, then, you know what drives me. I don’t have much of a personal life and my work is the thing I know I can depend on.’
And now she was asking what drove Gabriel. He’d promised her that this was a story for another night, and now that night was here he couldn’t let go of it. For the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, he didn’t just want a woman’s company, he wanted her to understand him.
‘I guess...losing my brother made me feel that I should live for both of us.’ Gabriel took a sip of his drink, feeling the warmth begin to loosen his tongue.
‘And work towards preventing other families from going through what yours has?’
‘Yes. I don’t have much time left, though. My father’s going to be retiring soon, and when he does I’ll be managing the family’s interest in his company. It won’t leave me as much time to devote to the charity.’
‘And that’s not what you want?’
‘No, it isn’t. I want to continue being a doctor and working with The Watchlight Trust.’
Clara was looking at him gravely. As if there were things that should be said but she wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. Gabriel shrugged.
‘Go on. You can ask.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Why would you do that, Gabriel? Spend the rest of your life doing a job that you don’t want to do, when you already have one that you want to do very much?’
‘My father hasn’t got anyone else to pass the company on to. We have a few personal differences—quite a lot of them actually—but we share the same values. He wants to see the company thrive and he feels that I’m a safe pair of hands.’
‘And you haven’t told him that you don’t want to do this?’
‘If I do, he’ll just keep working. I want him to retire and for my parents to have some time together—they deserve it. And it’s my duty. They lost a son and I can’t ever make it up to them but... I can do this.’
Clara frowned. ‘I’m just wondering why you think you have to make things up to your parents.’
‘I was the reason that Pietro was in the cave. It was a local beauty spot, full of mineral deposits and unusual rock formations, and I wanted to see them. My mother wouldn’t let me go alone, because it’s cut off by the tide every afternoon, and so Pietro said he and his friends would take me. I was only eleven, and they were all seventeen, so I thought I was a pretty cool guy to be tagging along with them.’
‘That doesn’t make it your fault.’
There was more. Things he hadn’t told anyone. But Clara specialised in safe places, and the warmth of her gaze told him that maybe, after all these years, this was a safe place for him to go after all.
‘There were two rock falls. Pietro was walking ahead of me and he escaped the first collapse completely. He came back to dig me out, along with one of his friends who’d been right next to me and was badly hurt. Pietro cleared his mouth and made sure that he was breathing, and managed to stop the bleeding.’
‘That’s pretty good for a seventeen-year-old. The first things I’d check.’
Gabriel smiled. It meant something that Clara had said that, even though he’d thought it many times before.
‘Pietro was really calm, and he was telling us all that things would be all right and that someone would come and get us. He looked at my leg, I’d hurt my ankle when I fell and he put a makeshift splint on it and bound it up with his windcheater. I remember him tying the sleeves into a knot...’
It was the little things that always seemed to hurt the worst. The way that Pietro had drawn a smiley face in the dust. Seeing his mother’s fingers tremble as she’d touched her son’s coffin.
But the story deserved an ending. Clara was sitting quietly, waiting.
‘When the second rock fall came, there was this awful rumbling, groaning sound at first. Pietro picked me up and carried me back into a second cave that was situated behind the first. Then he went back...’ Gabriel heard his voice crack and struggled to regain control. ‘He and his friends were all buried. There was nothing I could do. I tried to dig for them, but the rocks were too big for me to move.’
‘And you were there for three days.’ Gabriel could see tears glistening in her eyes.
‘They had to sink a borehole into the cave, the mouth was completely blocked. The only thing that got me through it was that I wanted to tell everyone that my brother had been a hero.’
‘It’s more than any child should have to go through, Gabriel.’ She looked down at her cup, swirling the dregs of her coffee thoughtfully. ‘You were a hero too.’
‘No.’ The idea was impossible. ‘I was just a scared kid and I couldn’t do anything.’
‘You survived. You grew up and now you’re supporting people who try to help others, the way your brother did.’
