It's Raining Men (16 page)

‘Except we never see each other,’ put in Clare. ‘Ridiculous that three people who work on the same street have to travel a couple of hundred miles in order to have a
natter.’

‘Yes, isn’t it,’ said May. ‘It’s so good to be with you both for longer than a snatched coffee. Even if we aren’t staying in the super snobby spa.’

Lara and Clare knew what she meant. As strange as Ren Dullem was, it was preferable to going back with their three empty hearts to three empty houses.

‘That was a nice lunch,’ Clare remarked. After their savouries had been devoured they had been extra indulgent and had a sweet – a delicious home-made ginger
and lemon torte for herself and Lara, while May had chosen a summer-fruit trifle.

Frank and grumpy Daisy had left the café halfway through their desserts. Daisy was clearly unhappy about something because she left her apple pie – and she didn’t look like a
woman who abandoned puddings easily. Lara wondered if it had anything to do with the frequency with which Frank’s eyes wandered over to May, as if his were full of iron filings and
May’s were made of magnetized metal. He clearly found her attractive, something May would have found hard to believe – but not Lara. May was as warm and sunny as the month after which
she was named. She had the biggest, kindest heart of anyone Lara knew, and she hadn’t a clue about how lovely she was, with her long swishy hair and big brown eyes. Lara would have loved to
be as tall and willowy as May. May didn’t have a lot of confidence in how she looked, though. She wore cardigans and coats that were too big for her as if she wanted to hide herself away in
them and often stooped as if she was trying to make herself shorter.

They all had more coffees, enjoying the novelty of not having to stuff a sandwich down whilst on the run between meetings. Time felt as delicious as the desserts. Plus, it was quite fun to see
the gossip machine at work as new people came into the café, spotted the three female strangers and immediately bowed their heads to each other and began whispering.

May bought some good vibes by giving Jenny a large tip. They left the café to a flurry of hushed tittle-tattle, from which the odd coherent word could be picked out:
rain
,
Well Cottage
,
that Hathersage
,
contact lenses
.

‘Your eyeballs have caused quite a stir, it seems,’ May said, nudging Clare when they were out of hearing distance of the café.

‘So I gather. They’re going to come for me at midnight and burn me as a witch.’ Clare laughed, then stopped abruptly. ‘Actually, that’s not really funny. What if
they do?’

‘Just don’t adopt any black cats whilst you’re here,’ said Lara, elbowing her from the other side.

‘Such a shame there’s all that cloud,’ said May as they walked back up the hill to Well Cottage. It felt as if someone had hiked up the gradient a few degrees – she was
knackered by the time they reached the school. ‘Am I going through an early menopause or is it really hot?’

‘It’s hot,’ replied Clare, lifting up her black fringe and wiping her moist forehead. ‘Talking of hot, that bloke at the next table was really staring at you,
wasn’t he, Miss May?’

‘Was he?’ May shrugged.

‘You were looking over at him quite a lot as well.’ Lara winked at Clare.

‘I was looking at him to see what he was looking at,’ said May.

‘He was quite handsome in a farmer sort of way,’ said Clare. She liked men with kind faces. Lud had a lovely kind face and the man in the café carried with him the same air as
her ex, as if he took life’s stresses in his stride. Although if first appearances were anything to go by, Frank Hathersage had drawn the short straw with Daisy. Clare imagined Daisy would
give him quite a few grey hairs over the years.

As if Lara was reading Clare’s thoughts she then said, ‘His girlfriend was a bit of a grump, wasn’t she?’

‘Can’t be any fun being a young woman in a wheelchair,’ replied May. ‘Maybe her accident is very recent.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Clare, shamed into temporary silence. She didn’t like to think of what life would be like without being able to move her legs. She didn’t think it
would be worth much if she couldn’t kick them underneath the water when she was swimming.

Lara cast a scowl at Gene Hathersage’s cottage as it came into view. Robbing bastard. How could he justify renting out a cottage at the same price as a luxury spa? She was going to go into
that holiday agency in person when she got home and give them what-for. They might have been brave on the phone, but when she turned up, all guns blazing, that snotty manageress was in for a verbal
kicking of the highest order. Then she reached into her pocket for her phone because she had forgotten to tell Kristina to pick up the dry-cleaning. Her hand stilled in mid-air, like a gunfighter
poised to take a shot. She couldn’t ring, seeing as her phone was in three million bits on the ground somewhere. But at the same time she did feel duty-bound to hunt out a phone and ring
Kristina anyway.

Are you joking, Lara?
cried an exasperated voice in her head.
Have you actually turned into the doormat that Keely accused you of being?

But I’ve got the dry-cleaning ticket in my purse. They can’t get it back without the serial number,
replied the wimpy side of her brain.

Sod his flaming shirts and suit. If you ring Kristina with that number I’ll kick you with Gene Hathersage’s leg
, roared a much stronger voice.

She felt the wimpy side’s lip wobbling at not being part of the Galsworthy household any more. There was a prick of tears behind her eyes and she was relieved when they turned the corner
and Well Cottage stood in front of them.

‘I might have a nap,’ said May, stretching out her long arms and yawning. She blamed the sea air. ‘Anyone mind?’

‘I’m going to scrub. I’ll mind you sleeping if you mind me cleaning,’ said Clare, reaching for the key.

Lara followed the other two into the cottage. ‘I fancy sitting outside with my book. I never have the time to read more than a page these days.’ Lara loved reading. She
couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d had time to indulge her love of a good gritty crime novel. She’d downloaded the latest John North thriller to her Kindle months ago
and only managed to read the first chapter. She put the kettle on and made herself and Clare a coffee as May disappeared into her bedroom. Then, as Clare pulled on her rubber gloves and dipped into
her cleaning box, Lara took her Kindle outside to sit on the terrace with the view of the sea and the little cottage on the far side of the headland. She had dropped off after a chapter, lulled by
the sound of the seagulls breaking the gentle silence.

Clare hummed softly as she worked so as not to wake May. She thought she heard May sniffling in her room but when she gently called her name there was no reply.

She rubbed down the skirting boards and brushed hard at the fluff at the carpet edges. She loved to clean and cook and make cushions and would dispute that she was borderline OCD because it was
a pleasure for her to do such things, not a chore. Any psychiatrist would only have told her what she already knew: that her actions came from an overwhelming desire to have the cosy home her
hungry heart craved. She had grown up in a large, dark, cold house with an equally cold family. ‘Nesting’ was her way of creating a world where she felt secure and safe, warm and
protected. In her space, she wasn’t constantly compared to her gifted siblings or feeling like the world’s biggest disappointment because she had straight A grades and not A pluses; she
was in control and doing what she enjoyed, not what she felt she had to.

Whoever had cleaned the cottage hadn’t done a bad job really, but not to her exacting standards. She dusted everything that was wooden and sprayed it with polish, rubbing it in until the
surfaces shone. Then she moved into the kitchen area and took all the plates and pans out of the cupboards to give them a good wash. Then she wiped down the insides of the cupboards themselves.

Ludwig would have loved this cottage, she thought. They had been talking about buying themselves a fisherman’s house by the sea one day: somewhere to escape the rat race and live the
simple life for a few weekends a year. Clare scrubbed extra hard at the draining board as if she were trying to rub away another unbidden memory of Lud. He was gone from her life and there was no
point in pulling back the retreating memories of him and polishing them till they shone too. He had a wonderful job in a fabulous place – the sunshine and opulence would drive her from his
thoughts. She had begun to slip from them anyway She would have only prolonged the agony by agreeing to a long-distance relationship. He was affording more and more priority to his work and less
and less to her. And once she was in her fancy new office, with her name on the company letterhead, she would also forget him so much more easily because she wouldn’t have time to think about
him. They’d finally be nothing more to each other than just someone the other used to know. Clare carried on scrubbing hard until her knuckles went white.

After she had cleaned the bathroom she decided to tackle her tiny bedroom. As she was polishing the mirror, she noticed that her left earring was missing: one of a pair of pearl studs which
Ludwig had bought for her last birthday. She had to find it. She shook her T-shirt and the back butterfly fell to the carpet. She picked it up and then got down on her stomach and searched around
for the pearl. It must have only just become detached, she thought, if the butterfly was still on her person.

It wasn’t under the bed or the chest of drawers. She shuffled commando-style over to the weighty oak wardrobe in the corner of the room and saw a flash of white in the pile of the carpet
but she couldn’t reach it. She got back up and looked around for something long to nudge the earring towards her. She tried a wooden spoon and the poker but the earring was too happily lodged
in the thick unworn pile of the carpet to respond to any cajoling by them. Her only option was to slide the wardrobe away from the wall, exposing the corner.

There was no way Clare was going to let a stupid thing like a massive heavy wardrobe beat her. It would have been sensible to wait for May and Lara to wake up and help her but patience was not
among Clare’s best qualities. The wardrobe had short stubby bow legs and she jerked on the front right one, but absolutely nothing happened except that her back gave a warning that if she did
that again she might end up saying, ‘Ouch!’ at a very high volume.

She took a scarf from her drawer and wrapped it around both legs on the right-hand side. If she could just nudge the wardrobe out of its groove in the carpet and manoeuvre it far enough along
she could make some space between it and the wall, and then she would be able to wriggle inside the gap and push with her feet. She pulled as hard as she could, and again, until she felt the
wardrobe shift from the position it had occupied for God knows how long. It took ten minutes of stop–start pulling for there to be enough pushing space at the left-hand side. At last Clare
was able to place her back against the wall and lift her feet against the side of the wardrobe. She was crunched up so much that she barely had room to breathe. When the wardrobe had moved another
six inches, Clare saw the earring beneath her feet. But she kept on pushing because she had seen something behind the wardrobe – a small arched door that had been papered over in a
half-hearted attempt to hide it. After everything that had happened so far, Clare wouldn’t have been at all surprised to open it and find Mr Tumnus there.

Joan took the sandwich that Gladys had grudgingly made for her lunch into the garden. She sat on the bench outside the grand dining room, which was one of the many rooms never
used in Carlton Hall because the cleaning would have been far too much for one person. The furniture had been covered in sheets for years. If she ever became Lady Carlton, she would invite all the
local dignitaries to dinner and make use of that beautiful room with the huge table and mirrored walls. Imagining Gladys running around making seven-course meals for a hundred people, she tittered
to herself.

She had been nothing but pleasant to Gladys, but she knew that her shine had worn off as far as the old woman was concerned. Gladys suspected she was up to something, and she was right, of
course. But Gladys’s days of being alpha-female at Carlton Hall were numbered. Joan had already overheard Edwin telling the interfering old bag to stop bitching about her. All it would take
was for Joan to become terribly upset about ‘Gladys’s attitude’ and the housekeeper would be out on her ear. For the time being, though, Gladys was useful. Joan didn’t want
to end up lumbered with cooking and general skivvying as part of her duties. And Gladys did make a very nice sandwich, she thought, as she bit into the Wensleydale and red-onion marmalade on
home-made granary bread.

There was no real rush. For now, Joan was happy to earn a generous wage for doing very little work. She had plenty of time off to catch the bus into Wellem and occasionally book herself for a
treatment in the very nice spa there, or idle around the shops in Whitby, or sit in one of the wine bars practising her pout. There was no need to hurry; this job needed a slow hand. And every day
she came a step nearer to having her name on Edwin Carlton’s will.

Clare started gently teasing off the torn tissue-like wallpaper then her impatience stepped in and her actions turned to rips until the old door was fully exposed. From the
shape of it, Clare expected that behind the door lay a priest hole or a small chapel. There was a keyhole above an iron hoop for a handle. She pushed and pushed but the door wouldn’t budge.
It was as if it were cemented shut. So that seemed to be that, then. But Clare didn’t want to give up. She tried again, harder, and felt the door give. It was sticky but she was determined
and after ramming it a couple of times with her shoulder it opened, with a Hammer-horror creak, onto stone steps that twirled and plunged into darkness.