It's Raining Men (21 page)

‘I’ll make us something to eat,’ said Lara, taking Clare’s shopping basket from her. ‘Seeing as you two are too busy wetting yourselves at my expense.’

They had cheese and bacon toasties with home-made minted pea soup. There was a plastic container full of the soup in the ‘luxury hamper’ and though Lara would never
have admitted this to Gene Hathersage, even under extreme torture, it tasted like manna from heaven.

‘So where did you get to this morning?’ asked Lara, spooning out the last of the soup and wishing there were more.

‘Just wandering around,’ said May. She didn’t mention meeting Frank Hathersage. She was trying her best to forget him and the electric effect he had had on her –
literally.

‘Clare?’

‘I had the most gorgeous swim downstairs. You’ll have to come with me and try it out,’ raved Clare. ‘As I was swimming the old lady who lived in the cottage on the
headland waved at me and invited me up.’

‘You didn’t go, did you?’ asked May.

‘Yeah, I did,’ replied Clare. ‘Sweet old thing. I think she thought I was someone else, though. The villagers have obviously been talking about us. And you’ll never guess
what: she has the same eyes as me.’

‘Poor beggar.’ Lara nudged her.

‘Oi. Oh, and you know what else I discovered? The third Hathersage – Val – isn’t a Valerie, it’s a Valentino.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Lara. ‘Not another brother.’

‘And there’s us thinking that they were three sweet little old ladies crocheting in rocking chairs.’ May smiled, also wishing there were more of that soup.

‘Whereas, in reality, one is an unsociable git, one is saddled with the world’s rudest girlfriend . . . and do tell what
Valentino
is like. Did you meet him? And are you
leaving that?’ Lara swiped Clare’s abandoned burned crust from her plate.

‘Definitely got the family looks, but lighter-coloured hair, green eyes. Leaner and shorter. He’s friendly enough. I’d say he’s slightly younger than us, by a year or so.
Very handsome and knows it.’ Clare kept it to herself that she had arranged to meet him. He was her secret for now.

‘Who do you reckon is the eldest?’ said Lara. ‘Nice Frank or horrible Gene?’

‘Frank, I reckon,’ May said and Clare nodded her agreement. ‘I’d put him at about thirty-six, thirty-seven, Gene a couple of years younger.’

‘I’d put Gene at about twelve,’ Lara said sniffily. ‘No wonder he lives with a dog, a load of wooden tree trunks and no Mrs Hathersage.’

Clare gathered up the plates. ‘What shall we do this afternoon, then?’

‘Shall we have a drive around the area?’ suggested Lara.

‘If you don’t mind,’ said May.

‘Don’t mind at all,’ said Lara. Physical distance between herself and the landlord from hell would be very welcome.

They decided to torture themselves by going to look at the spa in Wellem – and wished they hadn’t. The manor house was absolutely stunning; it was like a smaller
version of Downton Abbey. The female staff in their pristine, white, Chinese-style tunics were more than slightly snooty. ‘No, you can’t go that way,’ shouted one from behind the
reception desk when they tried to have a nosey at the Greek Pool area.

‘Can’t we just pop our heads round and see what it looks like?’ asked May.

‘It’s not an open day,’ twittered the woman, before immediately metamorphosing into a sycophantic pool of drool as a large woman wrapped in a cloud-like robe emerged from the
door marked ‘Salon’. ‘Oh, good afternoon, Mrs Palmerly. And how are we today? How was the chocolate wrap?’

Lara felt like saying that it was a shame the woman had dismissed her so easily because she was the Sultan of Brunei’s niece and thinking of booking herself and her entourage of two
hundred people in for a month, but in the end she couldn’t be bothered. She’d do battle with them for their lack of customer-service skills when she got home. It would give her
something to keep her mind off everything else that would be waiting for her back in Surrey.

They couldn’t get to see the log cabin they should have been staying in because it was behind gates closed to the general public. Lara felt slightly sick and very, very guilty again.

‘I’m not just saying this,’ said Clare, linking her arm on the way back to the car, ‘but I couldn’t be happier than having that lagoon at my disposal.’ She
didn’t add that part of her enthusiasm for staying was her rendezvous with Val Hathersage in the woods tomorrow. No – she wouldn’t have swapped the swirl of excitement he was
causing in her gut for a fleecy dressing gown and a low-calorie salad. She couldn’t get their little interchange out of her head. She thought of his soft lips and knew he would be the most
amazing kisser.

‘I’m happy enough too,’ added May with a gentle smile. ‘I feel as if I’m relaxing for the first time in ages.’ And she didn’t want to be at the spa,
where Michael might contact her. The greater the distance between them, the bigger the deception seemed. Unbidden, snatches of conversation kept coming to her, lies she had no reason to doubt were
truths at the time: highly detailed updates on Susan’s condition and his apology for smelling of perfume when he arrived at her house. She’d imagined him dabbing it on Susan’s
neck and wrists in a tender attempt to make her feel like an able sentient woman or in a vain hope that the scent might drift to a part of her brain and awaken it. Thinking about it now in the cold
light of realization, he had probably come straight from Kim’s house and it was her that he smelt of.

‘Okay,’ said Lara. She didn’t really believe them, but she knew that if the shoe were on another foot, she would have said the same.

They walked around Wellem, which was a much more commercialized seaside town than Ren Dullem. It was spread out and hilly, and it even had roads that two cars could fit on, side by side. There
were tacky souvenirs in the many shops and at least three fish-and-chip shops claiming to be the best in North Yorkshire. May wasn’t sure about that as she watched a delivery of fish fillets
coming out of a van emblazoned with a sign that read: Dock & Tanner Fisheries, Leeds.
They had their fish shipped in from Leeds?

But at least Wellem didn’t have those weird clouds floating above it. The day was bright and warm and the beach was crowded with deckchairs and sunloungers. Children were making
sandcastles and racing into the sea, only to retreat quickly, screaming that the water was freezing, then laughing and charging back yet again to fling themselves into the waves.

Clare bought two wind-up torches – buy one get one free – in a hardware shop so she could have some reliable light in the cavern. Then the three of them sat on a bench eating
mediocre ice creams, staring out to sea. There were big chips of ice in Lara’s chocolate one – she was less than impressed and abandoned it after a few licks. That ice cream seemed to
sum up the whole town: full of promise but not delivering at all. There were the usual amusements supervised by bored-looking individuals and a funfair that looked about as much of a thrill as
having cystitis. There was no energy about the place at all despite being full of holidaymakers. Wellem was as tired as a blown flower, whereas Dullem was an unopened bud. It was a far prettier
place with much more potential. Lara wished a letter would drop out of the sky inviting her to sort the place out.

They found a restaurant before heading back but it was far more welcoming outside than it was within, where it was borderline grubby. At least the locals carried on drinking when they walked in
and didn’t down tools to stare at the newcomers. The menu looked okay so they ordered food but May found a hair in her chilli and that put her and the others totally off their food. Lara
complained and got a refund, but that didn’t stop May throwing up in the grimy toilet.

May wanted to get home and into bed. Her head was pounding. Clare helped her into the car and Lara drove to Well Cottage as quickly as she could on the ridiculously winding roads.

‘Poor May,’ said Clare, stroking her sleeping friend’s forehead. ‘She’s so hot. I hope she’s not coming down with anything.’

The way this holiday was going, Lara wouldn’t have been surprised.

Back in Well Cottage they helped May to bed with a bucket at her side and a cold cloth on her head. She hadn’t thrown up since the restaurant, thank goodness. Lara could be sick herself if
she thought about those hairs in the meal.

‘Nightcap?’ asked Clare, closing the door softly on the sleeping May. ‘I have a bottle of wine in my suitcase.’

‘I’d love one. I’ll get the glasses,’ replied Lara, making a halfhearted attempt to rise from the fat comfy sofa.

‘Stay there, I’ll get them.’

As Lara waited, she glanced around her at the room. It wasn’t exactly equipped with the newest of items: the TV was old, with a small screen and an enormous depth to the back, and the
coffee table and bookcase had seen better days. But it was homely and not once since she arrived had Lara wished she had brought her laptop. She’d thought doing nothing would drive her up the
wall after a few hours – she couldn’t remember the last time she had
done nothing
and not felt that it was a complete waste of time. But, sitting there, she thought she could
pick up her Kindle, snuggle back into the plump cushions and read into the small hours of the night, ignoring the dictates of the clock that she should go to bed/get up/eat lunch.

‘Here you go,’ said Clare, proffering a full glass of red wine.

‘Thanks, love.’

‘Don’t get excited, it’s not exactly a Château Petrus.’

‘I couldn’t care less if it was Château Um Bongo, just let me at it,’ said Lara, as her hands closed greedily around it.

Clare plonked herself in the big armchair, which seemed to mould to her shape.

‘God, this is nice. Wish May were okay and having a glass with us.’

‘I’m expecting us all to fall down with some dreaded lurgy. That’s what usually happens when people stop working and relax. Allegedly.’ Lara, of course, wouldn’t
know about that at first hand, because she never took the time to stop working and relax.

‘Don’t say that, Lars.’ Though Clare knew it was true. Still, being full of bugs in bed would be miles better than being behind her desk at Blackwoods and Margoyles. It
wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy what she did – and she was more than honoured to be asked to join the partners – but she would have even less time for other things she
really
enjoyed doing. She barely had space in her diary to see her friends or a man, if she ever found another one. She wished she could split herself in two and one half of her could do
justice to her promotion, make her parents proud, be at the office number-crunching twenty-four-seven. And the other half could stay at home, buy a cat, a dog and a house rabbit, cook, write a
recipe book, make cushions, have babies. Tomorrow’s secret adventure would do her good and take away from all the turmoil that was going on in her head.

‘Have you managed to find a signal to ring Ludwig to say you’re having a disastrous time?’

‘I’m not having a disastrous time and, yes, of course I have,’ said Clare, lying about the phone call. ‘If you want to borrow my phone to ring James . . .’

‘Oh, it’s fine.’ Lara flapped her hand. ‘He’s abroad on business until Tuesday and so I said I wouldn’t get in touch with him before then.’ Then she
took a long sip of wine to douse any tail fumes of the untruth that might be still lingering in her throat.

‘Has he gone anywhere fabulous?’

‘Spain.’ Uncomfortable with lying to her friend, Lara changed the subject. ‘So, going for another swim in your cave tomorrow now you’ve bought a torch?’

Clare smiled back. ‘I most certainly am. If you and May don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind at all. This is a holiday to unwind. I never thought we’d be glued to each other all day every day. It’s just great to be near you, if that doesn’t
sound too soppy.’ And it was true. She was certainly glad she hadn’t cancelled this holiday to stay with James.

‘I don’t know where all my friends have disappeared to over the years,’ sighed Clare. ‘I remember being best buddies with Beth Lofthouse and Fi Ballatyne at school and
knowing
that we’d always be in each other’s lives. Then they met men. Fi had a baby and moved to Canada and Beth went all weird and converted to tree worshipping. I
haven’t heard from either of them in ten years and yet once we were as close as sisters. We went to Ibiza together when we were twenty-one and had the maddest time.’

Lara nodded. ‘Carol Brady and Hannah Craddock were my bezzies. Carol started messing about at school, got dropped from the top set and ended up palling about with the girls in her new
class who hung around with bad lads and smoked. She dropped me like a hot brick – I was gutted. She ended up getting pregnant at fifteen. I saw her a couple of years ago and she walked past
me in the street, even though I knew that she knew who I was. I was quite upset about it actually. She looked old and rough and a bit scruffy.’

‘And your friend Hannah?’ Clare prompted.

‘I was her bridesmaid ten years ago. She was a solicitor but jacked in her job as soon as she got married, had three babies in quick succession and ended up with a new set of friends who
had time to go to coffee mornings and push prams around the park. We just drifted apart. Our friendship obviously wasn’t as strong as we thought; it couldn’t survive all the
changes.’

Clare took a long sip of wine. ‘I miss having lots of female company, you know, just sitting with a glass of wine, like this; not rushing, just talking is lovely. I miss taking time to
smell the roses, don’t you, Lars? I’ve forgotten what it’s like to
stop.
’

‘Yep, I know what you mean exactly.’

‘And on that note, Lars, I’m off to bed.’ Clare stood up to go.

‘Well, I’m going to sit here and read,’ said Lara. ‘You’re not throwing that half glass away, are you? G’is it here.’

Clare laughed. ‘Your Barnsley accent’s come right back.’ She put her glass down next to Lara’s on the coffee table. ‘Fill yer boots, lass. Nighty night.’

‘Night, Salty,’ said Lara, taking the throw from the back of the chair and wrapping it around her so she was extra snug. She settled down to read and took a long glug of the wine. A
little bubble of bliss pinged in her head. She could get too used to this if she weren’t careful.