Now and Then Friends (19 page)

“Are you deaf?”

Claire jerked around from where she'd been stacking milk bottles, wiping her hands, cold and damp from the condensation, on her jeans. “Pardon?”

Dan stared at her from behind the counter, his arms folded. “I said, are you deaf?”

She thought he was being rude, but as he stood there expectantly she realized he meant the question, and he was waiting for her to answer it. “No, not . . . not exactly. Why do you ask?”

“Because I've noticed you have trouble hearing me when there are people around, and you always tilt your head to one side when someone is talking. So I wondered. Are you deaf? Partially, I mean?”

She blinked, discomfited by his perception. “Yes, actually, I am. But you're the first person who has noticed.” She never talked about her hearing problems. Her mother had insisted it didn't matter, people didn't want to know, and Claire shouldn't limit herself by acting as if she had some sort of disability. Claire didn't think her mother was
ashamed
of her, not precisely, but Claire's ear troubles, the endless operations and illnesses, weren't something she bandied about. Even Hugh hadn't known about it; Claire hadn't meant to keep it a secret, but he
hadn't seemed like someone who would be interested in any kind of weaknesses or deficiencies, and disability or not, she knew instinctively that's how it would be viewed.

“I knew some blokes in the army,” Dan said. “Blew out their eardrums when they were too close to an explosion. Went deaf in one ear.”

“Oh. Right.”

“What happened to you?”

“I had loads of ear infections as a child. Eventually one became bad enough that it developed into a cholesteatoma.”

“A what?”

“A tumor sort of thing. Anyway, it dissolved the bones in my ear and made me deaf. In one ear.” Just in case he thought she was
really
deaf.

Dan nodded slowly, his expression unchanging. “That's tough.”

The last thing she expected was Dan's sympathy. “It's not too bad. I'm kind of used to it now. But I suppose when I was younger . . .” She shrugged, not used to going into the details. The endless doctor's appointments and medical procedures she'd had in an attempt to rebuild the bones in her ear and restore her hearing; none had been successful. The bouts of pneumonia and flu, the suffocating concern of her mother. The feeling that she had to be wrapped in cotton wool, and she was still fighting her way out.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Dan asked. “About being deaf?”

“Partially deaf—”

“Even so. It would have been good to know.”

“I don't tell anyone. It doesn't really affect me.” Dan gave her a disbelieving look. “We haven't been sharing confidences, have we?” Claire challenged. “The only things I know about you are that you're from Leeds and that you were in the army.”

“And I have a dog named Bunny.”

“Right.” They stared at each other for a moment; Claire felt as if Dan was weighing her up.

“All right,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“About you?”

He shifted where he stood. “Yes.”

And of course now she couldn't think of a thing. “Who's Daphne?” she finally blurted, recalling his tattoo, and Dan stilled.

“My ex-wife.”

“Oh.” His tone did not encourage further questions. Still, an ex-wife. Claire wouldn't have expected it. She could not imagine Dan Trenton with a wife,
in love.
Of course, there was a reason why the woman was an ex.

“Why do you have the word ‘sapper' tattooed on your arm?” She'd stick to asking about the tattoos.

“Because I was one.”

“A sapper? What is that?”

“A position in the army. I cleared minefields.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “That sounds . . . dangerous.”

“It was.”

She couldn't sound more inane if she tried. “Where did you serve?”

“Afghanistan.” He paused. “That was dangerous too.” And then he smiled, barely the quirking of the corner of his mouth, so tiny she almost missed it. She wasn't even sure it was a smile, and yet . . .

“Do I sound as silly as I think I do?” she asked.

“Sillier,” Dan told her, and now he was definitely smiling. It looked strange, as if he were using muscles that were stiff and atrophied.

“Oh. Okay. Well, good to know.” Dan didn't seem inclined to say anything else, and so Claire turned back to the milk. After about ten minutes he spoke again.

“You can do the stall at the Easter Fair if you want.”

She turned around, suspicion warring with hope. “This isn't some . . . pity gesture, is it?”

“Why would I pity you?”

She hesitated. “Because . . . because of my ear.” Among other things.

“Get over it, rich girl. I knew plenty of soldiers who had it loads worse than you. I just want to increase revenue.”

He turned away, and she realized she was smiling, a big, sloppy grin. “Okay. Great. Well, thank you.”

Dan didn't answer.

A week later Claire was setting up her stall in the playing field outside the school. The sun was shining for once, and Alex Kincaid, the head teacher, had decided the grass was dry enough for the fair to be held outside.

Claire had spent a lot of time, probably too much, deciding how she wanted the stall to look. In the end she'd bought some old-fashioned glass jars and metal scoops online and filled them with a selection of sweets from the post office: jelly beans, humbugs, licorice whips, gummy worms. She'd also bought some red-and-white-striped paper bags and brought her mother's expensive brass kitchen scales to weigh the filled bags, fifty pence for twenty-five grams of candy. She'd even gotten herself a matching red and white striped apron, and had embroidered S
WEETS FROM
THE
V
ILLAGE
S
HOP
on the front. Sewing was one thing she'd always been able to do.

Now that she was here with all of her crazy kit she felt a little ridiculous. No one else had gone to nearly as much effort as she had.

“This all looks absolutely fantastic,” Lucy exclaimed as she came up to Claire's stall. “Like an old-fashioned sweetshop. Amazing.”

“Well, that was the look I was going for.” Claire smiled self-consciously as she glanced around at the various people manning the other stalls. No one had anything remotely like a costume on. “I feel a bit over-the-top though.”

“Nonsense, you can't be OTT for this.” Lucy leaned forward conspiratorially. “I asked Alex to wear an Easter bonnet, complete with ribbons and bows.”

“You did not.” Claire had seen the stern teacher from a distance, and she couldn't imagine him in any such getup, even if he was dating Lucy.

“Well, I asked,” Lucy replied with a grin. “He refused, though.”

Claire looked down at her candy-striped apron. “No one had to ask me.”

“You look great,” Lucy said firmly. “The kids will love it.” Her eyes sparkled with kindly mischief as she added, “I'm pleased Dan came around to the idea.”

“I was surprised he did, to be honest.”

“Maybe he's taken a shine to you.”

Ridiculously, Claire blushed. “Maybe,” she agreed, and Lucy grinned. Claire could imagine what she was thinking; Lucy Bagshaw seemed exactly the kind of person who delighted in playing matchmaker. And the idea of her and Dan together like that was utterly ludicrous. “I'd just like to be his friend, Lucy,” she said. “So don't get any ideas.”

“Me? Get ideas?” Lucy batted her eyelashes in exaggerated innocence. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Oh, I don't know, because I can see the hearts in your eyes?” Claire teased before dropping the banter. “Seriously.” The thought of Dan overhearing any part of this conversation made her inwardly cringe. She did not even want to imagine the kind of scathing smackdown he was capable of in that scenario.

“Okay, okay, I promise,” Lucy said. “But as I said before, he has had a hard time of it. He needs someone who—”

“Trust me, I am not that someone,” Claire cut her off. She was curious about Dan Trenton's past, but she didn't want to hear about it from Lucy Bagshaw. She wanted Dan to tell her himself, and maybe, just maybe, one day he would.

“I'd better go check the face-painting stall,” Lucy said with a glance over her shoulder. The children were coming towards the field from the school, a bobbing sea of checked pinafores and gray flannel. “Apparently they always go there first, although your sweet stall might give face painting a run for its money.” She hurried off, and Claire tugged on her apron and then stood up straighter, trying not to feel intimidated by the several hundred waist-high people surging towards the field.

Within minutes she was besieged by pupils, all who seemed quite taken by the idea of filling the striped bags with a variety of sweets and then thrusting grubby fifty-pence pieces towards her. She saw the boy who had tried to nick sweets from the post office saunter towards her stall, hands held up innocently when she gave him a knowing look. It would be pretty difficult to sneak a sweet from one of the high jars Claire was keeping well out of the children's way.

“It looks like you need help,” a red-haired teacher remarked. “Oy, you lot. Step back.” She came around the table to Claire's side and reached for a metal scoop. “How about I scoop sweets while you take the money?”

“Bless you,” Claire answered with deep gratitude, and within a few minutes they had developed a natural rhythm of working together, and the line of children snaking towards the middle of the field began to shorten.

“I'm Diana Rigby,” the woman said in between scoops. “I teach Year Three.”

“Claire West, and I work in the post office shop.”

“You're new to the village?”

“Sort of.” Claire handed fifty-pence change to a girl with plaits and a pinafore before turning back to Diana. “I grew up here. I went to the village school myself, actually, about twenty years ago.”

“But you've been away,” Diana surmised. “Oy! Jacob Peterson! Keep your hands to yourself!”

Claire glanced back to see a lanky boy in Year Six jam his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Next to him a girl with plaits was looking annoyed as she retied the ribbon on one end.

“Rob Telford used to yank my plaits,” Claire recalled. “Or so he told me when I saw him at the pub. I don't actually remember it.”

“Rob seems the type to get into trouble as a lad, although he's on the straight and narrow now.”

“Is he?”

Diana nodded solemnly. “He bought the pub a few years ago and lives with his mum in the flat above. Works hard, he does. Jacob Peterson, I'm still watching you.”

Jacob slunk off, and the girl with the plaits, clearly not as annoyed as Claire had thought, ran after him.

“You seem to know everyone around here,” Claire remarked.

“Not everyone, but Hartley-by-the-Sea is a small place. Surely you know that, since you grew up here?” Diana gave her a look of smiling curiosity.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” Claire answered. “Although to be honest, I don't think my family got very involved in things.” Diana waited, clearly wanting to hear more, and hesitantly Claire continued. “My brother and I went to secondary school in Keswick, and my father worked in Manchester.”

“Ah,” Diana said, nodding, and Claire felt as if she'd understood more than she'd actually said. “But you're getting involved now, it seems?” She twisted a bag of gummy worms closed and handed it to a sticky-faced Year One.

“Yes,” Claire said slowly. “Yes, I think I am.”

Two hours later she'd sold all her sweets, made seventy pounds, and was aching all over. Diana had left to take her Year Threes back into the school, and the other people were starting to dismantle their stalls. The field was festooned with stray bits of paper, more than a few crumpled, empty sweet bags, and a good deal of pink ribbon from the Easter-bonnet decorating competition.

Although Claire had spent the entire fair behind her stall, she'd enjoyed watching all the activity, including a nail-biting egg-on-a-spoon race and a hair-raising three-legged one, with many of the children collapsing, laughing, onto the grass.

Plenty of people had stopped by her stall, not just for sweets, but to say hello. Abby had come with Noah, and Claire had given him a licorice bootlace that he'd chewed happily. Meghan and Nathan had
also stopped by, somewhat to Claire's surprise. She'd braced herself for Meghan's acerbic remarks, but Rachel's sister had only looked tired.

“How's your mum?” Claire had asked, and Meghan's face tightened a bit.

“Still in hospital. It'll be a while yet, they say, until she can come home.”

“But making progress?”

Meghan shrugged. “She's trying to talk, so that's something, but the left side of her face and body is paralyzed. They don't know how long that will last, or if it will be permanent.” Her voice wobbled a bit at the end, and impulsively Claire leaned over and touched her arm.