Now and Then Friends (2 page)

“Great, thanks.” Rachel slipped past Claire into the bedroom and scooped up the wet towels 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 had.

She 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 evening 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 parents and 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. Her father had been gone for three months by then, three bitter months when every day had been nothing but something to struggle through. Three months of seeing the life she'd hoped to have, a place at university,
dreams
, trickle away to nothing.

Sitting in the back of the church, Rachel had watched 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. The family that surrounded her, protective, loving,
there
. Claire didn't know how lucky she was.

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

“I'll just take these downstairs,” she murmured to Claire, nodding towards the towels, and after an awkward pause Claire stepped out of the way.

Rachel was switching on the washing machine when she realized Claire had followed her down to the utility room off the kitchen. She'd put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and rocked back and forth on her heels. “So, Rachel.” She cleared her throat. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks.” Rachel needlessly rearranged a few of the bottles and rags in her bucket of cleaning supplies, her head bent so her hair fell in front of her face and hid her expression, which she knew she couldn't trust at that moment. “Never better.”

“How's your mum?” Claire asked, and Rachel stiffened. Claire had never talked about her mother; they'd stopped being friends right before Janice Campbell had had her accident.

“Fine. I mean, the same.” When Rachel was eleven, Janice Campbell had fallen down the stairs of one of the houses she'd been cleaning and broken her back. She'd been virtually bedridden since.

“And . . . your sister?” Claire asked hesitantly, and Rachel knew she was feeling her way through the dark, trying to be polite.

“Sisters,” she corrected. “They're both fine. Thank you for asking.” She forced a bright smile. “How are you? Broken engagement aside, I mean.”

Claire let out a soft, hesitant laugh. “Truthfully? I don't know.”

It didn't really surprise Rachel that Claire didn't know how she was feeling; she'd always been like that, waffling over everything, even whom she was friends with. And now Rachel no longer cared.

“Well, then.” She hoisted her mop and pail. “I'd better get back upstairs.”

“Right.” Claire moved out of the way again, and Rachel brushed past her before heading upstairs. She cleaned the bathroom Claire had used, spritzing the mirrors and sink, opening the window to let out the steam, half listening to Claire move around downstairs.

When she was finished, she came back down and found Claire in the center of the sitting room, standing there as if she were lost in her own house.

“So I'll be back next week,” Rachel announced, “unless you'd like me to come sooner than that? Since you're staying? Normally I just do a quick tidy because there's no one here.” She didn't relish the thought of cleaning up after Claire, but she could use the money. She could always use the money.

“Oh, once a week is fine. I'm not . . . I mean . . .” She shrugged, and Rachel remembered how Claire hadn't always finished her sentences.

“Okay, then. See you next week.”

Rachel loaded her cleaning supplies into the back of the hatchback she used to get to her various jobs; C
AMPBELL
C
LEANERS
was painted on the side, along with her mobile phone number. Her sister Meghan had protested the advertisement, since the car was the only one they had, but Rachel had ignored her.

“When you're making as much money as I am,” she'd stated, “then you can buy your own car, or at least contribute more to the family finances.”

Meghan had rolled her eyes, caught as ever between laughing it off and being annoyed. Lily had looked guilty, and her mother had pretended not to hear the whole exchange.

Now Rachel slid into the driver's seat of her car and headed down
the steep, winding lane from the Wests' house to the beach road. The wind had started up again, blowing off the sea, and the clumps of daffodils that lined the road huddled against its onslaught. She had ten minutes to get to her cleaning job for the Browns, a busy family with two working parents and three school-age children, and then she'd drop the ironing she'd done for Juliet Bagshaw at Tarn House Bed-and-Breakfast before heading back home to see to dinner, tidy up, and make sure Lily, who was only two months away from doing her A levels, put in at least three hours of study. She was predicted for three As, maybe even an A star in biology, and if she got the marks, she would be going to the University of Durham in the autumn. Rachel was determined to see that happen.

Three hours later Rachel pulled up to the terraced house on the upper end of Hartley-by-the-Sea's high street that had been her home since she was a baby. The gutters were crooked, the paint on the front door was peeling, and the once-white net curtains framing the front window were the color of weak tea. Her house was definitely not an advertisement for her cleaning services, but then, she didn't have time to clean her own house. Rachel hauled her cleaning supplies from the back of the car and headed inside.

The first thing she heard was three-year-old Nathan's shrieking. She walked into the kitchen, tossing the mop and pail into a corner, and glanced at her sister Meghan. Nathan was clinging to Meghan's legs while she sat at the table, flicking through a magazine. Rachel glanced at the lurid titles on the cover:
My Child's Past Lives
and
My Fur Stole's Haunted by the Fox!

She rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Meghan?”

Her sister looked up from the magazine. “What?”

“You're reading rubbish while Nathan is screaming his head off.” At that moment Nathan chose to go silent, staring at Rachel with wide eyes.

“He's been screaming all day. He's getting teeth.”

“He's three. He has all his teeth.”

“His molars or something. Trust me, I know.” She dropped her magazine onto the table and leaned forward. “Nath, open your mouth.”

Solemnly Nathan opened his mouth wide, and Meghan peered inside. “See? Molars,” she said triumphantly, picking up her magazine once more, and Rachel spared a sympathetic glance for her nephew's reddened, swollen gums before she shrugged off her coat.

“He should have some Calpol.” She fished in the cupboard for a bottle of children's medicine, the lid sticky with residue, and handed it and a spoon to Meghan, who took it with a sigh, dropping her magazine on the table.

Rachel turned to Lily, who was standing in front of the stove, her red hair, the same color as Rachel's, caught in a messy knot as she hummed tunelessly and stirred the sauce.

“Lily, you should be studying.”

“I did some homework at school—,” Lily began.

“That's great, but you could get a little more in—”

“Oh, give it a rest, Rach,” Meghan cut in. “You're always on her case.”

Rachel stiffened. “I don't mean to nag, but this is a very important year—”

“And so was last year, and the year before that. Lily's fine.”

“Of course you would say that,” Rachel answered with a sigh. Meghan had left school at sixteen with only a handful of barely passing marks. “Seriously, Lily,” she said, and she gently elbowed her sister out of the way. “Let me do this. You can get a half hour of revision in before tea.”

Lily hesitated. “I don't actually have that much to do. . . .”

“Lily, your exams begin in—” Rachel glanced at the calendar above the sink. “Seven weeks. You need to keep at it. You know that. It's hard, I know, but it's so worthwhile.”

“She can have a twenty-minute break, can't she?” Meghan interjected, and tossed the
Fate & Fortune
magazine to Lily. “Here you go.”

“Meghan—”

“There's biology in it,” Meghan answered, wide-eyed. “Animals and stuff.”

“The fox haunting someone's fur stole?” Rachel said, rolling her eyes, but Lily had already hurried upstairs, the magazine clutched to her chest. Rachel turned back to the spaghetti Bolognese that was bubbling away on the stove, two tins of chopped tomatoes and half a kilo of beef mince mushed together, the beef only half cooked. Sighing, she reached for the oregano.

“So what's got you in such a crap mood?” Meghan asked. Nathan had scrambled onto her lap and was now sucking his thumb, the other hand wrapped around a tendril of Meghan's hair, which he tugged rhythmically.

“Who says I'm in a crap mood?”

“I do, but now that I think about it, it's no more crap than usual. You just usually hide it better.”

“I'm fine. And you should watch your language,” Rachel said with a meaningful nod towards Nathan.

“Oh, Nath knows what ‘crap' means,” Meghan answered, and ruffled her son's hair. “So? What's bothering you?”

“You mean, besides coming home to the house an utter tip and dinner not made even though it's gone half six?” Rachel answered, keeping her tone flippant. She and Meghan always bickered, but they tried not to draw blood.

“Is that really that unusual?” Meghan countered. “Anyway, the house isn't that much of a tip. I actually hoovered, you know.”

“Mummy spilled her crisps,” Nathan volunteered, and she tapped his nose.

“That was meant to be our little secret, Nath.”

“So, what have you been doing today, Meghan?” Rachel asked conversationally. “Besides eating crisps and watching rubbish telly?”

“
Real Housewives of Cheshire
is
not
rubbish.”

Rachel shook her head, too tired to press her sister. As usual, she
couldn't tell if Meghan was being thoughtless or just taking the mick. Her sister walked a fine line between the two. “How's Mum been getting on today?”

“Brilliantly. She loves
Real Housewives of Cheshire
.”

“Well, that's a relief.” Rachel prodded the sauce without enthusiasm. “But she's been all right?”

“As all right as she ever is.”

Rachel nodded, her mind already elsewhere. From upstairs she could hear Lily moving around, and then the tinny sound of techno music. Her sister was definitely not studying.

“Did you know Claire West is back in the village?” she asked abruptly.

“Claire West?” Meghan wrinkled her nose, uninterested. “Wasn't she in Spain or something?”

“Portugal. The Algarve.”

“Some people have all the luck,” Meghan answered with a shrug. “What's she doing back here?”

“Her engagement's off, apparently.”

“You saw her?”

“I clean the Wests' house every other Wednesday.”

“Right.” Meghan yawned. “I so do not feel like working tonight,” she said, stretching, and Nathan nearly fell off her lap. Rachel managed to keep herself from saying her sister never felt like working; she only did three nights a week at the Hangman's Noose. “I'd better get on, then.” She stood up, settling Nathan onto her hip. “Time for the tub, Nath. Aunt Rachel won't want to bathe you. She's too grumpy.”

“I'll read you a story after tea tonight,” Rachel promised Nathan, who smiled hopefully in response. Meghan headed upstairs with Nathan, and Rachel listened, wincing, as the taps went on and the pipes screeched. She imagined the headline on the cover of
Fate & Fortune: Help, There's a Banshee in My Water Pipes!

She turned the sauce on to simmer and went into the sitting room; it was as much of a mess as the kitchen, with half-drunk cups of tea
making damp rings on the coffee table, along with a towering Play-Doh creation of Nathan's and two Lottery scratch cards, a vice of her mother's that Meghan happily enabled even though Rachel had forbidden it. They couldn't afford to play the Lottery, and it was a waste of money. She'd tried to explain the ridiculous odds of winning to Meghan, and her sister had rolled her eyes.

“You don't get it, do you, Rachel?” she'd said, to which Rachel had replied tartly, “I was just about to say the same to you.”