Now and Then Friends (18 page)

“Her mother?”

“Rachel.”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone in this village?” she asked, and Dan's expression hardened a little.

“I know Robin, the milkman. And Sue, who delivers the meat pies. Lucy Bagshaw. And you.” She saw a glint of challenge in his eyes, and he folded his arms repressively.

“I wasn't meaning to sound rude, but . . .” She shrugged, not sure how to explain how odd it was that Dan was so reclusive. Although she was hardly one to talk. “Where did you live, before here?”

“Leeds.”

“Why did you move to Hartley-by-the-Sea?”

“What is this, an interrogation?” He fiddled with the Lotto card dispenser for a moment before answering. “The village shop was for sale, and I fancied trying my hand at running it.”

“But you don't want to get to know people.”

“No. Do you?”

The blunt question surprised her. “Well, yes, sort of . . .”

“Because you don't want to go to the pub quiz, and when Lucy Bagshaw corners you, asking you for coffee or what have you, you look like a frightened rabbit. Although come to think of it, you always look like a frightened rabbit.”

“I think that's the most I've heard you say in one stretch since I've known you,” Claire said. She was trying to joke, but she felt flayed by Dan's flatly stated assessment. She had no idea he'd noticed so much. “I didn't say it wasn't hard,” she said after a pause. “I've been away a long time, and I've never been good at making friends.”

“Why not?”

“Now you're the one interrogating me.”

“Shoe's on the other foot, is it?”

“I guess it must be, since I only had enough money to buy one shoe.” She smiled, hoping he'd smile back, but he didn't. “I don't know why not. Why do you have trouble making friends?”

He looked affronted. “I never said I did.”

She rolled her eyes. “You didn't have to.”

“I don't want any friends,” Dan said after a moment. “They're more trouble than they're worth.” He nodded towards the milk and cheese she held in her hands. “Now, are you going to pay for that before the milk goes sour?”

Conversation clearly over, Claire paid up and then walked back to Four Gables. She was half amazed by what Dan had shared and more than a little unnerved by how much he'd noticed about her. Were they friends now? Maybe not quite. Maybe not at all.

A couple of hours later she headed up the street towards Rachel's house, holding a foil-covered casserole dish of slightly soupy macaroni and cheese. The only time she'd been to Rachel's house had been yesterday, when they'd picked her and Lily up for the hike. Now she stood on the concrete stoop, uncertain as to whether this was actually a good idea. Rachel might be annoyed that she'd come around, offering what
she might consider pity. Maybe she'd turn up her nose at homemade mac and cheese.

Before she could contemplate beating a silent and cowardly retreat, the door jerked open and a woman stood there, hands planted on her hips. She looked a lot like Rachel, minus the height and the red hair.

“Well, well, well. Claire West.” A catlike smile curved her lips.

“Hi. You must be Rachel's sister.”

“You don't remember me from school?” Meghan raised her eyebrows, her smile widening.

“No, sorry.”

“It's Meghan. I was four years younger than you. But I guess you were too cool to notice me.”

Not the cool-girl thing again. “I'm sure you were too cool for me,” Claire answered lightly. “Is Rachel in?”

“Rachel!” Meghan yelled over her shoulder. “Someone to see you.” She stepped back inside, and Claire followed, feeling faintly ridiculous carrying her foil-covered dish.

“Meghan, Nathan has pooed his pants again. I thought he was potty trained?” Rachel came striding out of the kitchen, looking tired and harassed, only to come up short when she caught sight of Claire. “Oh. You.”

Which was what she'd said the last time Claire had come across her unexpectedly.

“Hey . . .” Claire began, but Rachel was already turning to Meghan.

“He needs to be cleaned up. Now.”

“He's regressing because of all the stress around here,” Meghan muttered. “Oy! Nathan.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and Claire tried not to wrinkle her nose. Now that she was in the house, she realized it reeked.

“Sorry,” Rachel said, and picked up a woolen beanie that had been lying on the floor and hung it on a coat peg. “So, not to be rude, but . . . why are you here?”

“I thought you could use a meal.” Claire nodded towards the dish in her hands. “With everything going on.”

Rachel stared at her for a moment, unspeaking, and Claire smiled back uncertainly. Meghan barreled past them, holding a very smelly little boy aloft.

“Coming through with nuclear waste,” she announced, and headed upstairs.

“Come into the kitchen,” Rachel said, and Claire followed her through to a tiny room, every surface cluttered with dirty dishes and . . . stuff. Crumpled papers, makeup, sweet wrappers. She'd never seen so much rubbish.

“Sorry. I haven't had time to tidy up,” Rachel muttered.

“You're starting to sound like me, saying sorry all the time.”

“Well. It is a tip in here.” Awkwardly Rachel held her hands out, and just as awkwardly Claire put the casserole dish into them. She hadn't expected this to be quite so weird.

“It's macaroni and cheese. I had a taste, to make sure it wasn't revolting. You're not vegan or anything, are you?”

“Vegan?” For a moment Rachel looked amused. “No. Definitely not.”

“Okay, then. Good.” They stood there for a moment, staring at each other, and Claire felt the weight of the years between them, decades of silence she found it hard to break now. “How's your mum?” she asked finally.

“Not very well at the moment.” Rachel opened the fridge and slid the casserole dish inside. “She's going to be in the hospital for a few days while they do some tests.”

“It was a stroke?”

“They think so, yes. She's a smoker, so I suppose it's not really surprising.”

“It must be hard, though. Is your dad . . . ?” Claire trailed off as she saw Rachel stiffen.

“My dad hasn't been around for years, Claire, but I don't know why
I'd expect you to know that. You were in uni then, and we hadn't so much as spoken for seven years. But I thought you might have heard the
crack
through the village grapevine.”

“The
crack 
. . . ?”

“Cumbrian for ‘gossip.' Surely you knew that?” Rachel gave a half smile. “You were born here, after all.”

“I'm afraid I never got the hang of the dialect.”

“No, I don't suppose you would have.”

“If there's anything else I can do . . .” Claire offered. Rachel gazed at her for a moment and then shook her head.

“I really don't think there is.”

“Okay. Well.” Claire took a backwards step towards the hall. “You must have loads to do. I suppose I'll go . . .” Another step, and Rachel just watched her. This whole conversation was becoming more awkward by the second.

“I really mean it,” Claire blurted. “If there's anything I can do . . . anything at all . . .”

Rachel's mouth twisted in a wry smile. She looked exhausted, with violet smudges under her eyes, her hair caught up in a messy ponytail. “Unfortunately,” she answered with a sigh, “I don't think there is. But thank you, Claire.”

Meghan came in as Claire was leaving, tossing Nathan's dirty clothes towards the washer with an alarmingly wet splat.

With a sigh Rachel picked them up and shoved them in. “Couldn't you have put them in the washer?”

“Close enough,” Meghan answered breezily. “What did Claire West want?”

“She made us a meal.”

“A meal?” Meghan raised her eyebrows. “Are we her charity, then?”

“Actually, I think she was just being nice.” Which had felt kind of strange—and nice. Rachel hadn't had much experience of Claire West taking care of or looking out for her. “Come on,” she said to Meghan. “We need to get going. Mum's waiting.”

They drove to the hospital in silence, the four of them crammed into the hatchback, Nathan in his car seat behind Rachel, kicking his legs against the back of her seat. Meghan angled the rearview mirror away from Rachel to do her lipstick.

“Seriously, Meghan? I'm driving.”

“Use your wing mirrors. That's what they're for.”

“When can I get driving lessons?” Lily asked from the back.

Driving lessons cost about two hundred quid. “I'll teach you,” Rachel said, and Meghan guffawed.

“Just like you taught me? You lasted all of two lessons.”

“You were impossible.”

“So were you. You grabbed the wheel from me to do a right turn and we ended up on the curb.”

“You practically stripped the gears changing from second to third.”

“I was
learning
.”

Rachel angled the rearview mirror back towards her. “I'll teach you, Lily,” she said. “Promise.” Lily didn't reply, and no one spoke until they'd reached the hospital.

“Why do hospitals always smell?” Meghan asked as they walked through the sliding-glass doors.

“Because they're hospitals,” Rachel answered tartly. It had taken her twenty minutes to find a parking space, and she'd ended up on a grassy verge. She was worried about what the doctors were going to say about her mother and what the prognosis was. She didn't think she could cope with her mother being even more bedridden and ill. And she was starting to feel bad about not being nicer to Claire this morning.

“I know they do,” Meghan said, “but what is that smell? Cleaning fluid? Medicine? Flesh rotting?”

“All three,” Lily answered, and let out a nervous laugh. Rachel knew they were all tense about their mother, not knowing how to act, what to feel. Last night had been a blur of fear and helplessness; when Lily had come out of the house, her face so pale and shocked, Rachel had run inside, stopping short to see her mother collapsed on the floor of the sitting room, her limbs at weird, awkward angles, her face contorted in a grimace of pain.

Rachel had stood there, frozen for a few seconds, until Andrew came in behind her, calmly took out his phone, and dialed 999.

“I can do that,” Rachel had protested, her voice rising in panic and anger, and Andrew hadn't bothered to reply.

She had crouched by her mother, wiping a few lank strands of gray hair away from her face. “Mum? Mum, can you hear me?”

Janice had blinked up at her and then tried to speak, but only an animal-sounding groan came out. Fear had clutched at Rachel hard, so she couldn't speak either. She couldn't believe this was happening, and just after she'd resigned herself to her mother having thirty or forty years of bedridden existence ahead. She'd been practically wishing her mother dead, and now this. . . .

“An ambulance is coming,” Andrew had said.

Rachel had taken her mother's limp hand in hers. “I don't think we should move her.”

“Probably not. They'll be here soon, and they can put her directly onto a stretcher.” He'd sounded so calm and reasonable, as if he saw grossly overweight women sprawled on floors every day of the week. Rachel noticed that her mother's old nightgown had rucked up to her thighs, showing the pasty, dimpled flesh, and she'd gently pulled it down again.

“Is she going to be all right?” Lily had asked in a whisper. She was standing in the doorway of the sitting room, her face as pale as Janice's, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

“Yes, of course she is,” Rachel had said with far more conviction than she felt. “She'll be fine.” She looked around the room, taking in the dirty dishes on the coffee table, the TV still on, a din of canned laughter and corny music she hadn't even registered. Andrew found the remote control and switched the TV off.

“Where's Meghan? And Nathan?” They should have been there; Rachel had asked Meghan to stay with Janice while they went hiking. They all knew Janice couldn't be left alone. “Lily?” She glanced back at her sister, who hadn't moved from the doorway. “Do you know where Meghan is?”

“No. She wasn't here when I came in.” In the distance they heard the wail of the ambulance's siren.

The paramedics were briskly efficient, unmoved by the sight of Janice Campbell sprawled on the floor in a worn and stained nightgown; four of them were needed to load Janice onto a stretcher and then
into the ambulance. Andrew had offered to drive Rachel and Lily to the hospital, since they weren't allowed in the ambulance, and numbly Rachel had refused.

“I can drive. . . .”

“I don't think you're in a condition to drive,” Andrew had said firmly. “And I don't mind driving you.”

And so she had accepted, because she did feel dazed and weird, and she didn't want to handle this alone. She didn't think she could. They'd gotten back into his Lexus and driven in silence to the hospital.

The next few hours had passed in a terrible blur of doctors and waiting; an hour in Meghan had phoned, panicked, and Rachel had yelled at her.

“Where the bloody hell were you, Meghan? Mum fell. They think she's had a stroke, and you just left her alone—”

Andrew had removed the phone from Rachel's hand, and she stared at him in shock. “We're at West Cumberland,” he said into the phone. “Can you drive here? No, actually, let me come and get you.” He'd disconnected the call and handed the phone back to Rachel; she'd stared at the dark screen in disbelief.

“What was that?”

“Getting angry at your sister serves no purpose,” Andrew had said calmly. “I'll go fetch her. I'm sure she wants to be here.”

Rachel had sat back in her seat, her arms folded, feeling both furious and chastised. Maybe she shouldn't have yelled at Meghan, but it wasn't up to Andrew West to tell her so. And yet with a rush of guilt, she knew he'd done the right thing. It didn't mean she had to be grateful, though.

“Do you think she'll be all right?” Lily asked. She'd asked the same question at least a dozen times since they'd first seen Janice on the sitting room floor, and Rachel still had no answers.

“We'll see, Lil,” she had said tiredly, and put an arm around her sister's shoulders. Lily had pressed her face against Rachel's arm.

Twenty minutes later Andrew had returned with Meghan, who'd looked dazed and pale, Nathan clinging to her, his thumb stuck firmly in his mouth, his eyes huge and unblinking.

“Where were you?” Rachel had asked, her tone level.

“I went out with Nathan for a bit.” Rachel saw her sister's eyes were red, and she realized Meghan had been crying. She'd never seen her sister cry, not when Mum had fallen or Dad had left. Not when Nathan had gotten croup when he was four months old and had had to be hospitalized. Meghan always presented a breezy front. Rachel had come to depend on it, even as it exasperated her. “Just for a little while, to the beach,” she whispered. “He'd been climbing the walls all day, and even Mum was getting fed up.” Meghan's voice was pleading, so unlike her usual stroppy sass.

“It's okay, Meghan.” Rachel had taken a deep breath and gestured to the seat next to her, hard and plastic. Meghan had sniffed and sat down. “I'm sorry I yelled at you.”

Finally a doctor told them their mother was stable; she'd almost certainly had a thrombotic stroke and would have a battery of tests the next day, to determine the extent of damage to her body, her brain. She was sleeping so they couldn't talk to her, and eventually they'd all trooped home, exhausted and overwhelmed.

Andrew had walked her to the door, almost like it was a bizarre, awful date. “I'm sorry,” he said in a low voice. Meghan and Lily had already gone inside.

“You don't need to be sorry. You didn't do anything. Thank you for all your help.” She spoke stiffly, the way she would to a stranger at the supermarket who had fetched something for her from a high shelf. “You've been very kind.”

“Let me know if there's something I can do. I could drive you tomorrow. . . .”

“We have a car,” Rachel said. “Thank you, Andrew, but we don't
need any more help.” She'd gone inside without looking at him, shutting the door with him still standing on the stoop, because she didn't trust herself not to throw herself into his arms and ask him to stay, to help, to take over. For a moment she wanted to be like Claire, letting other people do the heavy lifting. Letting other people do everything.

Now she, Meghan, Nathan, and Lily all sat in the consultant's office and waited to hear Janet's prognosis. They'd seen Janice, who had been dopey with painkillers but had managed a weird rictus of a smile; the consultant had said the left side of her face and body were paralyzed, perhaps temporarily. Perhaps not.

The consultant, Mr. Greaves, looked up from his notes with a conciliatory smile that made Rachel dig her fingernails into her palms. This wasn't going to be good news.

“Your mother's health is very compromised,” he began. “I'm afraid her lack of mobility, along with her smoking, has contributed to her suffering from a thrombotic stroke.” Which was what he'd told them last night.

“What's the outlook?” Rachel asked bluntly. She didn't care about the medical details. She needed to know how things were going to change. How they were all going to cope.

“It will take some time to assess the full damage,” Mr. Greaves said carefully. “She'll be in the hospital for several weeks, undergoing tests and beginning rehabilitation. When we feel she can be released, she'll be able to go home, but she'll have to attend a rehabilitation clinic several times a week.”

And how on earth was that going to happen? Rachel would have to drive her. She took a steadying breath. “Okay.”

Mr. Greaves looked back down at his notes. “I understand your mother's mobility was already limited, due to her back injury.”

“Yes . . .”

“We'll do our best to work within the limitations of her condition.
But . . .” He hesitated, and Rachel felt all four of them go tense as they waited for what felt like a verdict. “You should be prepared for the probability that she will not make a full or even partial recovery.”

“Even partial?” Rachel repeated, her voice hoarse. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, considering your mother's prestroke condition, it seems unlikely she will recover much mobility.”

“She didn't have much mobility in the first place,” Rachel said. “What about her speech and . . . cognitive function?”

“That remains to be determined.”

Half an hour later they were back outside in the car park, all of them dazed and unspeaking. Rachel yanked the parking ticket stuck beneath the windshield. “Seventy pounds for parking on the grass, when there were no bloody parking spaces.” She ripped up the ticket and let the pieces flutter to the ground while Lily and Meghan watched, mouths open.

“Won't you get in trouble for that?” Lily asked.

“I don't care.” She unlocked the car and got in, staring straight ahead as Meghan buckled Nathan into his car seat and Lily got in the back.

“Are you going to start the car?” Meghan asked after a moment. Rachel realized she'd just been sitting there, her hands clenched on the steering wheel, for several minutes.

Wordlessly, she jammed the key into the ignition and reversed off the verge, scraping the muffler with a screeching sound as she came off the curb. Meghan winced. Rachel cursed. And kept driving.