Rainy Day Sisters (12 page)

“So if it's not netball you don't like,” Lucy asked, “what's the big deal with PE?”

Bella shrugged, hunching her shoulders and drawing her knees up to her chest. “Nothing,” she muttered, and looked away.

Lucy waited for a few minutes, and then when she'd finally finished logging in the afternoon register, she turned back to Bella, who was still sitting with her knees tucked up. “Why don't you clean up?” she suggested, and Bella regarded her suspiciously.

“What are you talking about?”

Lucy tried for a kindly smile. “Umm . . .” She gestured to her cheek. “Mascara.”

“Oh.” Bella nibbled her lip and then with an attempt at an insouciant shrug unfolded herself from her chair. “Fine.”

“You know where the bathroom is?”

She gave Lucy an utterly scathing look. So much for solidarity over netball. “I used to go to school here?” she said in the “well, duh” tone that seemed to be a universal language for teenagers.

“Right.”

Bella stalked out of the room, her arms wrapped around her body but her chin held high, and Lucy sank back into her chair. Children were hard work, she thought, then amended that to other people's children were hard work.

How much emotional energy, not to mention money and time, had she expended on Will and Garrett? Three years of her life poured into those boys. Reading them bedtime stories. Showing up at their soccer matches. Giving them presents, and not just gift cards or the latest electronic toy, but thoughtful items that had taken effort and time.

For Will's twelfth birthday she'd made him a bird feeder in the shape of the Tardis, which might have been a bit on the bizarre side, but birds and
Doctor Who
were Will's two favorite things. A week later she'd seen it stuffed into the recycling bin. She hadn't known whether to burst into tears or clock him over the head with the thing. She'd done neither, just smiled and pretended she hadn't seen it. Of course.

Lucy turned back to the computer. Time to log in the amount of lunch money paid this week. Time to stop thinking about Bella or Alex or any Kincaid.

Five minutes later Bella slouched back into the room. Her face had been scrubbed clean, which made her look about six. She stood in the center of the reception area for a moment, her expression uncertain, and the pale sunlight streaming through the windows touched her in gold—and shone right through her thin cotton uniform blouse.

The girl wasn't wearing a bra. And preteen or not, she needed one.

Lucy didn't think she'd been staring, but Bella must have sensed her gaze, for she abruptly pulled her blazer closed and threw herself into the chair, angling her body away from Lucy so she was all sharp elbows and knees.

“I left my jumper at school,” she muttered, and Lucy sat back in her own chair, her mind spinning. No bra. No mother to buy her one. Skipping PE, most likely because she had to change for it. It came together in her head with an almighty clang.

Bella Kincaid needed someone to buy her a bra.

Juliet

THERE WAS A SHEEP
in the back garden. Juliet braced her elbows on the sink and leaned closer to the kitchen window; in the settling dusk she could just make out the dirty white shape. The stupid beast was eating her autumn roses.

She turned from the window and reached for her fleece. The Scottish lads had gone out to the pub, and after a tense, silent meal of pasta bake, Lucy had gone upstairs. Juliet still felt a cringing mix of guilt and shame at the argument they'd had. And when Lucy had mentioned paying rent, she'd felt both satisfied and hurt. She was a mess of contradictory emotions, and she was too weary in too many ways to attempt some sort of semireconciliation. This tiptoeing around each other, grim and silent as it was, was easier.

She stepped outside into the chill night air; as soon as the sun went down, the temperature had dropped rapidly, promising a frost that night. She walked around to the back garden where the sheep stood, rose petals protruding from its mouth as it chewed contentedly.

“Stupid animal,” she said. It had to be one of Peter Lanford's, and after the awkward conversation they'd had in the lane, she didn't relish seeing him again. She took a step towards the sheep, who eyed her with beady suspicion before shuffling backwards. Juliet kept walking towards it, slapping her thigh, and the sheep, used to being herded by Jake, began to beat a retreat, back down the dirt track towards Peter's house. She walked behind it, slapping her thigh anytime it stopped, and finally reached the field where the rest of its flock were huddled against a drystone wall.

Juliet opened the five-bar gate and the sheep hurried in; as she was closing it, she saw that the fence on one side had fallen down into a tumble of rocks. She'd have to tell Peter.

Sighing, she turned away from the gate and headed up the track to the Lanford farmhouse. Night had fallen by the time she reached the low, rambling house of whitewashed stone, a drystone wall surrounding its garden; Peter's mud-splattered Land Rover was parked in front.

The place looked small against the dramatic backdrop of the stark fells, the rolling sheep pasture stretching onwards all around it. She could see the sea in the distance, no more than a sweep of black in the darkness, and behind her the lights of the village twinkled comfortingly. She hadn't realized how remote the Lanford farm was; even though it was only a mile from the village, it felt cut off from everything, nestled between the fells and the sea.

A light gleamed in what Juliet supposed was the sitting room, but the rest of the house was dark. She knocked once on the door, and then again, but no one answered. There was no doorbell, and thinking that Peter might not have heard her knock, Juliet pushed the door open and stuck her head inside, taking in the gloom of a very dirty kitchen.

Cups and plates littered most surfaces, and stacks of newspapers and unopened post covered the kitchen table. Curious now, as she'd never been inside before, Juliet stepped into the kitchen and saw the huge, ancient Aga, frying pans with congealed grease on the bottoms left on top. A smell of old cooking hung in the air; she could see a pile of muddy clothes left by the washer.

Peter Lanford's house was a mess.

She heard sounds from the sitting room and guiltily Juliet realized she was snooping. “Peter?” she called out, heard the note of uncertainty in her voice. What if he was entertaining? She had no idea if Peter had a girlfriend, although she suspected he didn't. Surely in a village the size of Hartley-by-the-Sea she'd have heard something, and anyway, Peter had told her he was alone. As alone as she was. “Peter?” she called again, and picked her way through the mess to the doorway that led to the sitting room.

She stopped on the threshold, arrested by the scene in front of her. Peter's father, William, was in an armchair, his head tilted back, his face lathered up, while Peter gave him a shave. A bowl of warm water was by his feet, and Juliet watched, strangely transfixed, as Peter gently ran the old-fashioned straight razor along William's cheeks, dabbing his face with a towel to catch the drips.

“There you are, Dad,” he said, his voice as gentle as his movements. “Nice and still. We'll have you looking right smart, won't we?”

William looked far older and frailer than Juliet had expected; she'd only glimpsed him from a distance, walking through the sheep fields with Jake at his heels. Now she saw his hair was sparse and white, his chest sunken in under the old flannel shirt he wore, and the hands that gripped the arms of the chair were reddened and knobby with arthritis.

Instinctively Juliet took a step backwards, into the kitchen. Watching seemed like an intrusion. She stood there amidst the mess of the darkened room, wondering if she should slip out the door even as she itched to tidy the place up a bit. More contradictory impulses.

In any case, she didn't have time to do either, because before she could move, she heard the clink of the bowl as Peter picked it up and then, murmuring something to his father, he came into the kitchen. He froze as he saw her standing there in the dark, and Juliet froze too; it suddenly seemed almost offensive that she was standing uninvited in the middle of Peter Lanford's kitchen.

“Juliet . . . ?”

She forced her lips into some semblance of a smile. “Hello, Peter.”

“What—”

“Your sheep got into my garden,” she hurried to explain, her voice, in her nervousness, coming out more tersely than she meant it to. “I got it back into the field, but I noticed you have a hole in your fence, and I thought I'd tell you.” She gestured to the door. “You didn't hear my knock.” Peter still just stood there, the bowl of soapy water in his hands, and Juliet muttered a final, “Sorry.” She took a step towards the door.

“No, don't go, now that you're here.” Peter walked over to the sink and dumped the water down the drain. “Let me just get Dad settled first.”

“Okay,” Juliet said, but she took another step towards the door. She couldn't fathom why Peter would like her to stay, and she couldn't decide whether she wanted to or not.

He went back into the sitting room, and Juliet tried to simultaneously listen and not listen to him talking to his father. After a few minutes she heard the creak of both the chair and old joints, and then the shuffling step of slippered feet up the stairs. Still she stayed by the door; when Peter returned a few minutes later, she had one hand on the knob.

He glanced at her, his steady gaze seeming to take everything in, or at least more than Juliet would like. She dropped her hand from the door and just stood there, smiling awkwardly. At least she hoped she was smiling.

“Whiskey?” Peter asked, and took a bottle of Glenfiddich from the cupboard above the sink.

“Oh . . . all right, then.” Juliet couldn't remember the last time she'd had a whiskey; maybe a few Christmases ago, when she'd had a retired couple booked in for the holidays. They'd invited her to sit with them in front of the fire, and Juliet had cradled a glass of whiskey between her hands, feeling strangely like a guest and more at home in her own house than she had in a long while.

Peter poured them both healthy measures and handed her a glass. He glanced ruefully around the kitchen before turning back to her. “Sorry, I'm not much in the housekeeping department.”

“You're busy.” He nodded and Juliet felt compelled to mention his father, although she wasn't sure why. “Your dad . . .”

“He's not very well.” Peter took a long swallow of whiskey. “Dementia,” he clarified quietly. “It's got a bit worse in the last few months. He can't do much by himself these days, but he likes a good shave, same as any other man.”

“Oh, Peter.” Juliet shook her head helplessly. “I'm sorry.”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It happens.”

“Yes.” His stoic acceptance of what life had to offer matched her own, although since Lucy's arrival, Juliet realized, she'd been feeling a lot more bitterness. A lot more everything. She took another sip of whiskey.

“So how are things with your sister?” Peter asked. “Lucy, isn't it?”

“Yes.” Juliet's hand tightened on her glass. She shouldn't have come here. She should have known Peter would make small talk, although the man had been virtually monosyllabic before; Juliet had no idea why he was so chatty now. Not that a single question actually constituted chatty. “Things are . . .” She was about to say “good,” but her throat closed around the word. Things with Lucy weren't good. They weren't remotely good. “It's kind of hard, actually,” she shocked herself by saying. “Having her here.” She drained her glass then, and Peter nodded, seeming unsurprised.

“Bound to be. Family's hard.”

“Is it? I thought family was meant to be easy because it's, you know, family.”

Peter let out a rusty laugh. “I don't know what your family's like, but mine hasn't been like that.”

“No?” She nodded towards the sitting room. “You get along with your dad, though.”

“Aye.” Peter's face closed up a bit at that, and Juliet decided not to press.

“Do you have sisters or brothers?” she asked, thinking this was something she should have known.

“A brother, David. He lives up Carlisle way. Runs one of those hobby farms.” He spoke without inflection, but Juliet still sensed hurt behind the words.

“Hobby farm?”

“You know, one of those places where you feed the animals and ride toy tractors and that. He does well with it.”

“I suppose loads of farmers have to do the same, just to keep the farm going,” Juliet said. She tried to picture toy tractors and a petting zoo at Bega Farm and failed. As if Peter sensed her thoughts, he offered a crooked smile.

“Not going to happen here, though.”

“No.”

He finished his whiskey in one long swallow. “So what is it that's hard?” he asked, and Juliet realized he was talking about Lucy.

“Everything,” she said bleakly. “Absolutely everything.”

“Were you not close, as barneys?” he asked, and she smiled a bit at the Cumbrian word for children. Peter's genealogy stretched back to the Vikings, she suspected, who had come to the Cumbrian coast a thousand years ago. There were some who said the old Cumbrian dialect was closer to Icelandic than to English.

“No, we weren't. I'm eleven years older than Lucy, and we have different fathers.”

He nodded slowly, and for a moment Juliet didn't think he'd say anything more. And maybe that was better. Did she really want to talk about how much she resented Lucy? It would only make her seem petty and childish.

“But you invited her here, all the same,” he finally stated.

“Yes, but I didn't expect it to make me feel so . . .” She stopped then, not wanting to put it into words.

“That's what family does, though, don't they? Make a hocker-up of everything.”

“A hocker-up . . .”

“A bloody mess,” Peter said with an unexpected grin. “You've been here near
dick
years, Juliet, and you don't know the Cumbrian yet?”

She laughed, surprised and strangely gratified to be teased. “
Dick
years. Sounds a bit dirty. Would that be ten years?”

He nodded. “Surely you've learned the counting.”

“Only
yan
,
tan
,
tethera
.” She knew many sheep farmers, and even some schoolchildren in the playground, used the ancient number system for counting sheep.

“Methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick,”
Peter finished.

“Definitely sounds a bit dirty,” Juliet said, and wondered if she was actually
bantering
with Peter Lanford. She felt unbalanced by the conversation, or maybe just the whiskey. “Anyway, I'm still an offcomer, aren't I?”

“Only in your mind, maybe.”

And just like that, the teasing tone dropped and she felt exposed, revealed by his words and his perception, and she had nowhere to look, nowhere to hide. She stared at him helplessly, unable to come up with a response. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Peter Lanford didn't seem to need one.

“Well, it's bound to get easier with time, if you let it.” He took her glass. “And I'll see to that wall on the morrow. Can't have my ewes moidering you and eating all your rosebushes.”

“They're not moidering me,” Juliet protested, the Cumbrian word for “bothering” sounding as awkward coming from her as it did easy coming from Peter. “And I didn't say they were eating my rosebushes.”

Peter gazed at her, a smile lurking in his eyes. “You didn't have to.” Juliet stared back, discomfited, sensing a depth behind Peter's silent stillness that she'd had no idea was there. It felt akin to jumping in the sea and finding out it was far deeper than you'd imagined, and instead of resting your feet on solid, sandy ground, you kicked uselessly through the water, in over your head.