Rainy Day Sisters (36 page)

AC
KNOWLEDGMENTS

SOME SAY IT TAKES A VILLAGE
to write a book, and in the case of
Rainy Day Sisters
, that was literally true. I am grateful to all the people of my village community who have made me feel welcome, helped me and my family, and of course provided unwitting inspiration for my writing. Thanks also go to my husband, who after seventeen years of marriage has come to recognize the faraway look in my eye that means I am thinking about a story. My five children have been long-suffering but also accepting of my distracted half-listening while I'm typing on my laptop, and I owe them my gratitude. Special thanks go to Eleanor, Anne-Sofie, Aurelie, and Aline—four young women who have each in turn become a part of my family and helped to take care of my children. Finally many thanks to my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for taking a chance on my story, and to my editor, Ellen Edwards, whose help has been invaluable.

Kate Hewitt returns to charming Hartley-by-the-Sea and tells a story of childhood friends estranged for many years who are now back in England's Lake District, each in need of what the other has to offer, if only they can realize that. . . .

 

Read on for an excerpt from

NOW AND THEN FRIENDS

Available in print and e-book in August 2016.

THERE WAS A WET
towel on the bathroom floor.

Rachel Campbell stared at it, nonplussed, as other aspects of the room filtered into her consciousness. The condensation on the mirror, the streaks of water on the glassed-in shower, the warm humidity of the air. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist, and she certainly wasn't one, to realize someone had just taken a shower.

Carefully Rachel put down her mop and pail filled with cleaning supplies. She'd been cleaning the Wests' house, high on the hill overlooking the Beach Road in Hartley-by-the-Sea, for nearly five years, ever since the Wests had relocated to London. Their son, Andrew, was doing something related to engineering in America; their daughter, Claire, had been partying her way through Portugal for years. And the Wests themselves always let Rachel know in advance when they were coming back up to Cumbria for a holiday, because they liked everything to be just so before they arrived.

So who had just taken what must have been a very long hot shower?

“Hi, Rachel.”

Rachel spun about, shock slicing through her at the sight of Claire West coming around the corner of the bedroom. Her hair was wrapped in one towel, her body in another, and she was using a third to pat her face dry.

“Claire!” Rachel's voice sounded loud, even jolly, and she gave Claire a too-wide smile that seemed to make her recoil. “The prodigal daughter returns.” Claire flinched a little and Rachel quickly clarified. “I mean . . . I thought you were in Portugal. It's been what . . . four, five years?”

“I'm not sure when I was last here,” Claire answered, a note of uncertainty entering her voice. “It's been a while.”

Rachel nodded, trying to remember the last time she'd seen Claire. From a distance, maybe, six years ago when her parents had thrown her a party for graduating from university, complete with a live band and a fountain of champagne. Rachel had helped out with the catering. But when had she last actually
talked
to Claire? She'd have to go back decades, maybe even to primary school, when they'd been best friends standing shoulder to shoulder—or rather, shoulder to waist since Rachel had always been about a foot taller than Claire—against the world, or at least against the bullies of Year Two.

Rob Telford, who now ran the Hangman's Noose, had once pushed Claire in the schoolyard and Rachel had given him a bloody nose in retaliation. She'd been called into the office of the Head Teacher, who had telephoned her mother, who had clipped her on the ear, but she hadn't cared about the consequences because she'd protected Claire.

It had been a long, long time since she'd stood up for Claire West.

“So how are you?” she asked, trying to pitch her tone somewhere between friendly and polite. “Back from Portugal?” Obviously.

“Yeah . . . for a few months.” Claire tugged the towel a little higher up on her body.

“Well . . . great.” Rachel nodded several times as she put her hands on her hips and then dropped them; suddenly her body had become awkward, as if she had too many limbs. “Huh. Wow.” The last she'd heard, Claire had been engaged to some hotshot property developer, someone with a double-barreled name and a father who was a baronet. Leighton-Hughes or Lanford-Jones or something. Claire's mother—after telling Rachel to clean the bathrooms “just a touch more thoroughly”—had regaled her with the endless wedding plans for her only daughter. An afternoon reception at the fancy hotel overlooking Derwentwater. An evening ball at a hotel in Windermere. And then a whole raft of events down in London.

“Have you come back to plan the wedding?” Rachel asked.

“Um, no.” Claire gave a rather forced smile. “No, I'm not. The engagement's off, unfortunately.”

“Oh.” Rachel squashed the spurt of schadenfreude that surged through her at the realization that at least one thing had not gone well for Claire West. “I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Claire shifted where she stood, and Rachel realized she must still want to use the bathroom. “Sorry. I'll get out of your way,” she said, and then wished she hadn't sounded quite so apologetic. So servile.

“No, don't bother,” Claire said quickly. “You're obviously busy. I'll just . . .” She gestured vaguely to the bedroom, one of six guest rooms although perhaps this one had been Claire's as a child. Rachel wouldn't know; she'd never been invited to Claire's house when they were friends.

“It's fine,” she said, and scooping up her mop and pail, she moved past Claire. “I'll do one of the other bathrooms,” she called over her shoulder. “Just let me know when you're done.”

She opened the door to another one of the en suites, flicking on the switch before she sat down hard on the toilet seat. Distantly she could hear Claire moving around, turning on taps.

Claire. Claire West. For a second Rachel pictured Claire as she'd been the first time she'd seen her. They'd both been seven years old, starting Year Two, taking off their coats in the crowded cloakroom at school. Claire had shrunk back from the noisy press of children and parents, and Rachel had seen from the corner of her eye how shiny her black patent Mary Janes were, her coat a kind no self-respecting seven-year-old would wear, made of red wool with black epaulets and a Peter Pan collar. She had a matching tam o'shanter, red with a black silk bobble on top, and she'd looked like an extra from a Shirley Temple film. Rachel had seen how the other girls in their sparkly jean jackets had kept shooting her incredulous looks. Her dark, silky hair had been neatly braided into two plaits, with red ribbons tied into bows on the ends. One of the boys had leaned forward and yanked one of those shiny red ribbons, and Claire had jerked back as if she'd been slapped.

Rachel had stepped forward, elbowing the boy—had it been Rob Telford or Nathan Bradley?—out of the way and then she'd turned to Claire and asked if she needed help with her buttons. Claire had nodded wordlessly and Rachel had stooped to undo each button of her coat while Claire had remained still and accepting. She'd almost seemed to be expecting someone to unbutton her coat for her. Then Rachel had said kindly, “Maybe you shouldn't wear that coat tomorrow.” Claire had simply looked at her, uncomprehending.

From that day on they'd stayed together. Looking back, Rachel could see how it was more because she'd stayed with Claire rather than the other way round. Claire had naturally drifted, unaffected by the gravitational pull of schoolyard politics; Rachel had anchored her to her side.

Although perhaps that wasn't quite fair; when she'd been away from the crowds, from the giggles and stares, Claire had been a lot of fun in her quiet way. At recess they'd often run off to a rhododendron bush on the side of the schoolyard. They'd wriggle underneath its tangled branches and sit there on their knees, mindless of the dirt or mud, and play imaginary games of house or princesses. Claire had had a surprisingly fertile imagination. A few years later they'd shared secrets and gossiped about other kids. But the overwhelming memory Rachel had of those whispered moments in the rhododendron bush, beyond games or secrets, was the simple fact that for a few moments they had both
escaped
.

She'd known what she was escaping, but she didn't know what Claire had been escaping.

It had all changed in Year Six, when they were eleven years old. Rachel hadn't talked to Claire since; at least they hadn't exchanged more than a few words, a frozen smile, a nod in the street. Sometimes not even that.

Rachel let out a long, low breath and rose from the toilet seat. This bathroom didn't need cleaning, but she spritzed it all the same. Marie West was the kind of woman who sniffed a room upon entering it to make sure it had been cleaned recently. Once, when Rachel had been talking to her about her work schedule, Marie had run her finger along the top of a very tall curio cabinet. When it had come away covered with a film of dust, she'd given Rachel a silent, pointed look.

“Rachel?” Claire's voice floated down the hallway. “I'm done in here, if you . . .”

Rachel stuffed her supplies back in her pail and came out into the hallway. Claire stood by the doorway to her bedroom, dressed in jeans and a fleece, her damp hair tucked behind her ears. Even in such standard-issue clothes, Claire looked expensive and put-together. The jeans were skinny designer ones; the fleece, with its chunky buttons and signature stripe, was from one of the pricey mountain gear shops in Keswick or Windermere. Still, with her feet bare and her hair damp, Claire looked much as she had back in school, fragile and uncertain, and Rachel felt a tug of protectiveness that she resolutely ignored. The days of watching over Claire were long over.

“Great.” Rachel slipped past Claire into the bedroom, and scooped up the three wet towels that Claire had left in a sodden pile on the floor. She tried not to do it as pointedly as Marie West had with her dust-grimed finger, but Claire muttered an apology, so maybe she was obvious after all.

Rachel was starting to feel a tingling sense of annoyance, like a toothache she just couldn't keep from probing with her tongue, as other memories came back in lightning-streak flashes. Claire at sixteen, walking down the high street of Whitehaven on a Saturday night with a gaggle of private school girls in tight skirts and tottering heels. Rachel had been standing outside the fish-and-chips shop, waiting for her father to finish his shift. She'd folded her arms and stared straight ahead as the girls had bent their heads close together and giggled behind their hands. Claire's vacant gaze had skimmed right over Rachel. She hadn't been ignoring her; she simply hadn't registered her at all. Rachel hadn't known which was worse.

Claire at nineteen, coming back from university at Christmas. They'd both attended the Christmas Eve carol service at church, Claire seated near the front with her brother, Andrew, Rachel in back with Mum, who had needed a walker to get her through the door but had insisted on going, wheezing all the way, and left halfway through to have a smoke. Rachel had watched obliquely as Claire had taken off her cashmere coat, flicked her long glossy hair over her shoulders, and whispered something to her brother. Rachel had suppressed a pang of envy so fierce and terrible, it had felt like an ulcer eating away her insides. Her envy didn't arise from Claire's
things
; it had never been about material possessions. So Claire was rich. Lots of people were. No, it had been about the
freedom
. The ease with which Claire sat there smiling and didn't seem to have a single worry in the world. She wasn't even aware of anyone else, and she didn't need to be.

From what Rachel had seen now, she didn't think Claire had changed all that much. But why, then, was she back in Hartley-by-the-Sea, and for a couple of
months
?

PHOTO BY SARA BLACKBURN

KATE HEWITT
is the bestselling author of more than forty novels of romance and women's fiction, including the Emigrants Trilogy, set in Scotland and North America; the Hartley-by-the-Sea series, set in the Lake District; and Tales from Goswell, written as Katharine Swartz. Raised in the United States, she lives in England's Lake District with her American-born husband and their five children.