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drove towards Gemma McGuire's house.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    Gemma McGuire sat in her living room, curled up on her favourite armchair with cup of coffee in her hand. On the floor beside her was a pile of papers and binders that she had planned to go through that day. The new semester had just started at Queens University where she worked as a lecturer and she still had to do her lesson plans for the coming week. She had started to do the work shortly after Kaitlin had left with Harry, but after five minutes she found she couldn't concentrate. She ended up abandoning the work, sitting staring at nothing while she drank her fifth cup of coffee of the day.
    As ever when Harry turned up at the house, she found it difficult to concentrate on anything after he left. He turned up in her life again just over a year ago, arriving at her door one day out of the blue. She remembered being shocked to see his massive form standing there at her door after so many years away, that scowling, serious face of his staring back at her.
    "Hello, Gemma," he had said, his voice as gruff as she remembered it. She had shook her head at him and asked what he was doing there. What did he want after all this time? He asked to come in so he could speak to her, but she had refused to let him in. She didn't want him in, despite the fact that somewhere deep inside herself, a part of her still loved Harry. Even when he walked away from their marriage twelve years before, she still couldn't help loving him. But he had made his choice, and he chose to go back to being a soldier rather than be with her. She tried not to hold that against him, as hard as it was. She knew who Harry was before she decided to marry him, but stupidly, she thought she would be enough to keep him away from the soldier's life. That was on her, which was why she didn't hold it against him when he told her one day that he was going to Iraq to work as a private contractor over there. He didn't say he was leaving her at that point. Gemma didn't think he was planning to. But there was no way she was going to sit every night worrying whether or not he was going get himself killed in that war zone like so many others had been. She didn't want to put herself through that, especially since she was also pregnant, though she didn't tell Harry that at the time. She was worried it might make him stay and then he would grow bitter because he felt trapped and unable to do what he wanted to do. So she kept the pregnancy from him and wished him good luck.
    Of course, he eventually found out that he had a daughter. They met again a few years later at his mother's funeral. Gemma remembered the look of shock on Harry's face when he saw her with the then three year old Kaitlin. It nearly killed Gemma when little Kaitlin ran up to Harry in the church. Harry crouched down, his eyes wet with tears, and Kaitlin smiled at him and gently wiped away the tears from his cheek with her little hand. Gemma never introduced Harry to Kaitlin as her father. Instead, she introduced him as her friend, Harry. After the funeral, he came to see Gemma at the house they once bought together off the Ormeau Road. He didn't say much. Gemma knew he only came to hear her say that it was okay that he didn't have to come home just because he had a child. She told him what he wanted to hear, and he left for Iraq again. He sent money every month after that though, without fail. Still did, in fact.
    Now, as she sat alone in an empty house, she couldn't help but think of Harry. Despite remarrying a few years after he left (and divorcing again), the connection she had with Harry never went away. She accepted a long time ago that the feelings she had for him would never go away, but that didn't mean she wanted him back in her life again. That ship had sailed for her, despite the fact that he was apparently home for good, and that he was done with soldering after nearly getting killed