Now and Then Friends (14 page)

“I think that's fab,” Lucy exclaimed.

“Dan doesn't—”

“Let me work on Dan. He's had a hard time, you know.”

“Has he?” Claire was curious about her boss, but she kept herself from asking for details. “Don't pressure him into doing it,” she said. “He seemed quite . . . final. I think it would annoy him, actually, to know I'd been talking to you about it.”

“He could come around. . . .”

“I'll talk to him again,” Claire said. Even if the thought of it made her toes curl in trepidation.

Sunday Claire spent pottering around the house, tidying up even though Rachel had left everything spotless and then making herself a curry from scratch. She'd bought the ingredients while she'd been in Whitehaven with Lucy, and she enjoyed cooking for herself. When she'd lived with Hugh, they'd always eaten takeaway or in restaurants.

Everything about their life had been glamorous and yet transient; Hugh's flat had come furnished in a lot of black leather and marble and chrome, and Claire hadn't put much of a stamp on it.

When he'd asked her to move in with him, after they'd gotten engaged, she'd put her clothes in the guest bedroom's cupboard because Hugh's perfectly pressed shirts and hand-tailored suits had filled the one in the master bedroom. She'd kept her toiletries in her wash bag and had only put her toothbrush in the glass with Hugh's with trepidation. Her carbon footprint on Hugh's apartment, even on his whole life, had been incredibly light. She suspected it was already gone. And even though it made her feel a little bit ashamed, she didn't mind. Losing Hugh had never hurt; in fact, it had been almost a relief.

He still hadn't rung her, and Claire recognized that she would have to call him at some point. She wondered what he would say, if he would prevaricate or bluster or just plain lie. She decided she didn't want to find out. Not yet, anyway.

After she'd cleaned up her curry, she decided to take a walk along the coastal path that ran along the sea for the whole length of the village. It was spectacular on a sunny spring evening; although the wind off the water was chilly, the sunlight was brilliant, gilding the sea in gold. In the distance Claire could see the violet smudges of the Isle of Man. The cliffs leading down to the beach were yellow with budding gorse; rabbits darted in and out of the tussocks, and the waves crashed onto the shore below. Claire couldn't see a single person anywhere, and she felt herself relax, her breathing evening out, her shoulders losing the tension she felt as if she'd been carrying it forever.

This was so much better than a hot-rock massage at Lansdowne Hills. She sat down on a weathered bench by a lookout point, the tufty gorse-covered cliff jutting out towards the sea. Gulls wheeled above, their cries still audible over the crash of the surf. At that moment Hartley-by-the-Sea seemed like one of the most beautiful places on earth, and she wondered why she'd ever left.

Then Claire saw there was a person sitting right on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling down towards the beach fifty feet below. Alarm jolted through her, because she might feel like an offcomer, but she knew the cliff eroded a few inches or more every year, and if you walked too close to the edge, the clay soil could crumble beneath you.

“Excuse me . . .” she began uncertainly, fearing some ignorant tourist was about to meet an untimely end. When the figure turned to look over her shoulder, the words died on Claire's lips. It was Rachel.

Rachel's shoulders sagged and she let out a sigh that even Claire could hear. “Oh,” she said flatly. “It's you.”

“Yes. Me.” Claire managed a smile. “What are you doing out here?”

“It's a free country.”

“Of course. I know. I'm sorry.” She cut off the pointless apologies. “I meant, sitting out there, right on the edge? It's dangerous—”

“I'm fine.” Rachel turned back to stare at the sea, and Claire sat there for a moment, wondering if she should try to make conversation. Rachel looked small and vulnerable, sitting on the edge of the cliff, the sea spread out before her in an endless, undulating slate gray blanket.

“It's a bit like the rhododendron bush, isn't it?” Claire blurted. She didn't know where the words came from; the memory felt like snatching at a snowflake, slippery and fleeting and yet possessing its own beauty.

Rachel had stiffened at her words. “I didn't think you'd remember that.”

“I do.” Scrambling under the bush, trying not to get her knees dirty. Whispering to each other, gossiping about the other kids, making up stories. Blissful solidarity. Claire swallowed hard, and then, after a moment's hesitation, she rose from the bench and started picking her way through the gorse, the thorns snagging on her jeans. “How did you get through all this?”

Rachel glanced back at her, lips pursed. “Not easily.”

Claire finally made her way through the bushes and stood about a foot away from the edge of the cliff, not sure if she should join Rachel by sitting down, or even if she wanted to. It didn't seem like Rachel wanted her to.

Then Rachel scooted over, and Claire saw she was actually sitting on the thick, twisted roots of the gorse patch. They'd jutted out from the soil and provided a nature-made bench. With seeming reluctance Rachel patted the space next to her, and gingerly Claire sat down. She didn't like the sensation of her legs dangling down, touching nothing, but Rachel didn't seem to mind it.

“So what do you remember about the rhododendron bush?” Rachel asked.

“I remember us sitting under there,” she began. “Talking.”

“Right.” Rachel stared out at the sea. “Do you even remember us being friends, Claire?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“But not much.”

“Do you have a lot of memories of when you were seven?” Claire asked, slightly stung.

“Enough,” Rachel answered flatly, and looked away.

“I do remember.” Claire's voice sounded strong, for her anyway. Rachel glanced at her.

“We were friends for four years. I'd hope you'd remember
something.
”

“I remember lots of things. It's just that it was a long time ago—”

“Trust me, I know that.” Next to her Claire shifted a little, clearly uncomfortable. Rachel wished she hadn't started the conversation. What did she want Claire to say?

“I was just remembering the other day how you always waited for me at the bottom of the school lane,” Claire said. “So we could walk up together.”

Ridiculously, Rachel felt a lump form in her throat. She stared hard out at the sea, her eyes starting to water.

“Do you remember that?” Claire asked.

“Yes.” Rachel took a deep breath. Enough with this little stroll down memory lane. She didn't want to go there, didn't want to revisit those bittersweet memories. They'd both moved on.

“Do you hate me?” Claire asked abruptly, and Rachel turned to her, discomfited by her rare bluntness.

“No . . .”

“Because you seem angry with me—”

“I'm not angry.” It would be pathetic to be angry about a friendship
that had ended nearly twenty years ago. And yet sitting there together, both of them staring out at the sea, Rachel couldn't keep herself from asking abruptly, “Why did you dump me in Year Six?”

Claire stared at her, blinking, her mouth open. “What do you mean . . . ?” Claire looked so blank that Rachel almost laughed. Almost.

“Are you bloody well joking, Claire? Don't you remember?” She sounded far too angry for this conversation. Rachel took a deep, calming breath. “How else do you explain that one day I came to school and you weren't even talking to me? You had your posse of Wyndham wannabes surrounding you like a flock of highlighted crows. You didn't even look at me.”

“I . . .” Claire shook her head. “It wasn't like that.”

“It felt like that to me.”

“But you never . . . You never came over,” Claire burst out, and Rachel knew Claire remembered that moment just as well as she did.

“Why would I come over? You were surrounded by a bunch of snobs who couldn't even bother to sneer at me.” They'd simply ignored her instead, Rachel Campbell with her secondhand uniform and free school dinners.

“I never liked any of them,” Claire said in a low voice.

“You spent enough time with them.” The hurt was audible in Rachel's voice, bubbling over from a deep well of emotion she had never wanted to access again. “This is so stupid,” she said, impatient and furious with herself. “It was years ago. I really don't give a damn about it anymore.”

And yet even now she remembered sitting alone at lunch, watching Claire surrounded by her flock of in girls. She remembered the burning sensation in her chest and the way she refused to show how hurt she was. She remembered her mother breaking her back, her family falling apart, and having absolutely no one to talk to about it. She even remembered crawling under the rhododendron bush by herself one afternoon, clutching her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth, feeling
lonelier than she ever had in her life. But of course Claire didn't have those memories.

“I didn't mean for things to happen that way,” Claire said. Her face was pale and pinched, her eyes huge, making her look even younger. “I never wanted to stop being friends with you.”

“Oh, really? It didn't look that way from where I was, sitting alone at lunch and feeling like Johnny No-Mates.”

“But you never talked to me—”

“Because you never talked to me,” Rachel burst out. “And you were the one with all the friends. It was as if they just appeared one day. . . .” As if the popular girls of Year Six had descended from Mount Olympus and taken Claire over.

Claire bit her lip. “After the school acceptances came through, my mother arranged for all the girls going to Wyndham to have a day together, at a spa in Ambleside.” She grimaced. “Basically they were bribed to be my friends.”

“But you went along with it,” Rachel pointed out. Was she really surprised by that? Claire went along with everything. The girls would have all have gossiped and bonded over manicures. By Monday they had become an impenetrable clique, the in group with shiny nails, impossible to breach. School politics was brutal and ruthless.

The realization made Rachel feel tired. “It doesn't matter anyway,” she dismissed. “We're adults now.”

“But you're still angry—”

“No.” She wouldn't admit to that. “Look, I realize I've been acting like a bitch,” Rachel said. A gust of wind lifted her hair away from her face, and she squinted as she kept her gaze on the sea; the sun was starting to sink towards the horizon, and in about fifteen minutes it was going to be very cold and windy and dark up here.

“I didn't mean to say that . . .” Claire began.

“No, it's true. I am a bitch.” Rachel leaned back, bracing her hands against the ground, only to mutter a curse when a thorn from a gorse
bush burrowed deep into her palm. “I'm a bitch to pretty much everyone these days,” she continued as she plucked out the thorn. “My sisters, you, even your brother.”

“My brother . . . ?”

“We had a drink in Whitehaven.” Rachel decided not to tell Claire about Andrew's request to watch over her. “Anyway, it's my problem. I realize that. My life is stressful and overwhelming and I've got a chip on my shoulder”—she repeated Andrew's indictment with a burning sensation in her chest—“about all the things that didn't happen for me. And I suppose when you swanned back into the village with your expensive clothes and perfect hair, able to relax for however long you liked, with that huge house all to yourself and so much freedom, well, it got to me.” She glanced at Claire, who was staring at her, openmouthed. “So I'm jealous. It's as simple as that.”

“Jealous . . .” Claire sounded wondering.

“Does that really surprise you?” Rachel demanded, exasperated. “You're pretty and rich and if you don't want to lift a finger you don't have to. Meanwhile I'm working ten or twelve hours a day, cleaning toilets, including yours, just so my sister can go to a school she's telling me she doesn't even want to go to. Is it no wonder I'm jealous?”

The words had exploded out of Rachel and seemed to fall on Claire like hammer blows. She blinked, looking as if she'd just been beaten up.

“I never thought of it like that.”

“No? How do you think of it, then?”

“I think how lucky you are to have your own business and be so smart. . . .” Rachel let out an incredulous laugh. “You knew all the answers to the pub quiz.”

“I'll go far in life, then, shall I?” she said, and struggled up from her perch on the gorse roots. She needed to get back home. Nipping out for an hour's walk would come with a price to pay: dirty dinner dishes left out and Lily no doubt wasting time on her doodles without Rachel to nag her. “I know the answers to the questions on the pub quiz,” Rachel
proclaimed, spreading her arms out. “Therefore my life is sorted. Look, Claire, I'm sorry I've taken out my frustrations on you. It isn't about when we were little—at least, it's not just about that.” She took a deep breath. “I'm sorry. Okay?”

“I'm sorry—” Claire began, but Rachel couldn't listen. She didn't want to spend another second thinking about those painful years; it hurt too much.

“It's fine,” she said. “It's all fine.” She began to walk away, suppressing the flicker of guilt she felt for leaving Claire there; if they'd been kids she would have helped her up, even brushed the dirt and gorse bits off her clothes. But they weren't kids anymore, and Claire needed to start taking care of herself for a change.

Back at the house Rachel found Meghan in the hall, doing her lipstick in the tiny mirror above the table littered with unopened bills and the detritus from everyone's pockets.

“You're going out?”

“Just for a little bit.”

“Not another four a.m. return, Meghan, please—”

“What's it to you?” Meghan tossed over her shoulder.

“I had to sleep in your bed with Nathan—”

“Which I do every night.”

“Because he's your
son
.” Rachel lowered her voice, conscious that Nathan was probably upstairs. “Is he asleep?”

“Yes.” Meghan gave her a sudden, fierce look. “All I'm asking is that you listen for him, okay, Rachel? You'd be home anyway.”

“What if I had plans?”

“Then ask Lily! I haven't gone out except to work in years. You know that. Why can't you let me have a little fun?”

Her emotions, already raw from her conversation with Claire, felt even more scraped. “Do you see me having a little fun?” Rachel demanded.

“You go to the pub quiz every week.”

Except this week, because she'd been too overwhelmed. It felt as if
nothing in her life was going well. With a sigh, Rachel waved Meghan towards the door. “Fine. Go out. Enjoy yourself.”

“You said that with so much heartfelt emotion,” Meghan answered, and Rachel rolled her eyes.

“At least I said it.”

The house felt very quiet and empty without Meghan, even though Rachel knew Lily and Nathan were both upstairs and her mother was asleep in the downstairs bedroom. She went into the kitchen, heartened to see that it was actually mostly clean, if she didn't count the grease splatters across the stove top. Both Lily's and Meghan's attempts at tidying were lackadaisical at best. They never could have taken over Mum's housecleaning business.

She switched on the kettle and sat at the little metal table in the dark, her chin propped on her hands. The only sound was the hiss of the kettle and then the creak of the stairs. The moment was almost peaceful, despite the tumult of the day's encounters: Claire, Meghan, even Henry Price's bathroom. Rachel let out a gusty sigh.

“Rachel?”

Rachel glanced up to see Lily standing in the doorway, her slight form illuminated by the hall light. They hadn't really talked since the bust-up about Lily's cartoons, and now Rachel felt her chest expand with a maternal mix of love and guilt. Standing there, Lily still looked little, almost as little as she'd been in primary school, when Rachel had sat next to her and helped her sound out words in her reading book. When she'd stood by the school gate to make sure Lily had a friend to walk into school with, had given the stink eye to a Year Three she'd seen was a bully.

“Hey, Lil.” Rachel managed a tired smile and went to the kettle, which had switched off. “Tea?”

“All right.” Lily took a step into the darkened kitchen, her head ducked low. “Test me on my biology?”

It was, Rachel knew, a peace offering. She nodded, her back to Lily,
and then, emotion getting the better of her, she sniffed. “Of course I will,” she said, her voice a little thick. “Anytime.”

By the middle of the week Rachel felt as if her equilibrium was mostly restored. She wasn't snarling at everyone at least. She'd kept herself from snipping at Meghan when she came in at an almost-respectable one o'clock in the morning, and had even gotten up early to give Nathan his breakfast.

She'd spent three days with her head down cleaning, and as she arrived at Four Gables, she breathed a sigh of relief that Andrew West was gone and Claire was at work. She wasn't ready to face either of them yet, or perhaps ever. She was able to clean the huge house without any interruption, although in actuality there wasn't much to do. Claire did her own dishes and, by the looks of it, the bathroom too. The house looked practically pristine.

By the time she arrived at Emily Hart's on Wednesday afternoon, she was as much in need of a cuppa as the harassed mother.

“Riley and Rogan are up to their usual tricks, I see,” Rachel said cheerfully as she nodded at the streaks of marker on the walls.

“They've discovered felt tips,” Emily said as she sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “No matter where I put the box of them, those two manage to find them.”

“I just found them,” Rachel remarked. She'd been putting away the loaf going stale that Emily had left out on the counter and retrieved the box of markers from the bread bin. “I'll put them up here, shall I?” She slid the box onto the top of the fridge and then switched on the kettle.

“You look tired,” she said as she handed Emily her mug and leaned against the counter with her own. “Are the twins sleeping?” She could hear them chattering to themselves in the next room, over the musical din of the
Chuggington
theme song on the telly.

“They are,” Emily admitted. “I don't really have an excuse—”

“The twins are an excuse in and of themselves. You'll probably be knackered for the next five years.”