Now and Then Friends (3 page)

Now, as she collected the mugs and worthless cards, Rachel wondered what Claire West was doing up at Four Gables. She pictured her in that endless gourmet kitchen with its Sub-Zero fridge and pristine Aga, cooking an elegant meal for one. If Claire was staying for months, she must have left her job in Portugal showing rich retirees newly built villas in the Algarve. What would she do in poky Hartley-by-the-Sea? Rachel was surprised she'd come here at all, instead of going to London to stay with her parents.

Not that she cared what Claire did, or why. Rachel straightened, gazing around the little sitting room with its saggy sofa and warped coffee table, bits of hardened Play-Doh littering the carpet, despite Meghan's hoovering. Upstairs Lily's music blared with a relentless, pulsing beat, and from the dining room–turned-bedroom she heard the squeak of bedsprings as her mother shifted her weight. No, she had far too many people in her life to manage to waste a single brain cell wondering or worrying about Claire West.

Claire listened to the door click shut behind Rachel, leaving the house empty and silent. She stood for a moment in the center of the sitting room, the cream carpet stretching out in every direction in a pristine sea, the still air smelling faintly of lemon polish and lavender potpourri. Home, even if it didn't feel like it.

After a moment she went to one of the huge overstuffed sofas and sat down gingerly, because even though her mother was three hundred miles away in London, Claire could imagine her hovering, clucking her tongue and plumping the pillows.

She tucked her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on top. Her mother would screech in alarm to see her bare feet on the silk sofa cushions, and sitting like this felt like a tiny but important act of defiance.

She savored the silence for a few minutes, because after four weeks at Lansdowne Hills, where the noise had been soft but persistent, the company constant, she was glad of a little solitary time. No one chirpily telling her it was time for the discussion group or counseling session or a massage. No supposedly soothing sound of water trickling over rocks playing incessantly in the background. Lansdowne Hills had been elegant and expensive, but it had still been a prison.

Now that she'd escaped, she wasn't entirely sure what to do with
herself. She had no intention of going back to Portugal; Hugh hadn't called her in the four weeks she'd been at Lansdowne Hills, and she didn't particularly want him to call her now, although she supposed she'd have to have a conversation with him at some point. They were, technically at least, still engaged. The ostentatious diamond Hugh had bought her was in her toiletry bag; she'd taken it off on the plane from Portugal, after Hugh had staged his intervention.

Grimacing, Claire rose from the sofa and paced the elegant confines of the sitting room. She wasn't sure why she'd come back to Cumbria; she didn't have too many happy memories of living here. Home had been miserable and school had been a blur. Her parents had moved to London five years ago, and Claire hadn't been back to Hartley-by-the-Sea since.

But when it had been a choice between Hartley-by-the-Sea or living with her parents in London . . .

Cumbria won, hands down.

And yet she'd been in Hartley-by-the-Sea for only two hours and she was already starting to feel restless and uncertain. What on earth was she going to do here, or anywhere? She had no job, no fiancé, no future. She had no plans whatsoever, and she didn't know how to go about making them.

The phone rang, breaking the stillness, and Claire didn't move. She listened to the answering machine pick up; she could hear her mother's recorded message, the tone nasal and sharp, although Claire couldn't make out the words. Then a second's silence followed by the long
beep
of someone having hung up.

Then the phone rang again.

It had to be either her parents or her brother, and none of them was likely to give up calling. With a sigh Claire rose from the sofa and went to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Claire?”

“Hi, Andrew.” Claire leaned against the kitchen wall and closed her eyes. She was glad it was her brother rather than her parents, although he could be almost as bossy.

“You got there all right,” he said unnecessarily.

“Yes.”

A little sigh of disappointment, the sound track to her family life. “Mum wanted you in London, Claire.”

“I know.” Her parents had insisted she come to stay with them after she'd been released from the clinic; in an extraordinary and unprecedented act of rebellion, Claire had turned away the limo they'd arranged to collect her and had taken the train up to Cumbria instead. She'd felt like a twenty-eight-year-old runaway, watching the placid coastline stream by as the train clattered towards Hartley-by-the-Sea. She'd turned off her phone and enjoyed the fact that no one actually knew where she was.

“They're worried about you,” Andrew said. “We all are.”

“I know. But I can't stand Mum hovering over me, Andrew. I just can't.”

“She means well—”

“I
know
.” As the high-achieving older brother, Andrew had never been subjected to the relentless concern that Marie West lavished on her only daughter. He had no idea what it felt like to be under the microscope of a mother's love and yet always feel so disappointing to her, so feeble. “I'm fine here,” Claire said.

“You shouldn't be alone.”

She stiffened, because she knew what he meant. He was afraid, as her parents were, that left alone she'd
regress.
She'd fall off the wagon she'd been flung onto four weeks ago, when Hugh had phoned her parents and insisted she had a
problem.
Rehab had been the obvious answer, and blinking and bewildered, Claire had followed their wishes, because when had she ever done anything else?

But after four weeks of bucolic prison in Hampshire, she was done
with being a dormouse. She wasn't sure how to change, or even if she could, but she wanted to. Coming to Cumbria had been the first step.

“I'm fine, Andrew,” she began, only to have him cut her off, his voice taking on the schoolteacherish tone she knew well.

“Look, Claire. I know Mum can be a bit much sometimes. But at this vulnerable time, you really shouldn't be by yourself—”

“I want to be by myself,” Claire interjected. “Trust me, Andrew. I'm not going to go raiding Dad's liquor cabinet. He's locked it, anyway, to keep the staff from having a nip.” As a joke it fell abominably flat, and it made Claire think of Rachel.

For a second she pictured Rachel as she'd been in primary school, six inches taller than the tallest boy, with her flaming hair and freckles and reckless, brassy confidence. Why Rachel had chosen to take Claire, an overdressed shadow, as her best friend, Claire had no idea. But she'd been grateful. She'd been overwhelmingly grateful.

“I'm going to call you every day,” Andrew said, and Claire made a murmuring noise of agreement. “And I want you to answer your phone. Your mobile's turned off, you know.”

“I'm aware.” With a sigh of resignation she slid her phone out of the deep pocket of her fleece and powered it up.

“What are you going to do up there, Claire?” Andrew asked. “Hartley-by-the-Sea is . . .”

“Home.”

“It hasn't been home for years. And it's in the middle of nowhere.”

“The edge of nowhere, maybe,” Claire answered. “Considering it's on the sea.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do, but I told you already I don't want to go to London, and I don't have anywhere else to go.”

“You could come here, to Minneapolis—”

“No, thanks.” Andrew worked as a civil engineer, traveling around the world, building bridges and canals and dams, living in corporate
flats and eating takeaway. Claire had no intention of being on the periphery of his transient life.

“But what are you going to
do,
Claire?”

“Maybe I'll get a job,” Claire answered before she'd really thought such a possibility through. Hartley-by-the-Sea didn't have many jobs, and she was qualified for basically nothing. A third in art history, a couple of positions where she'd been meant to look decorative and not much else. But it would be nice to feel useful. Productive.

“A job? Doing what? Checkout at Tesco?”

“Why not?” Claire returned. “It's a decent job.”

“You're better than that.”

“You sound like a snob.”

“Fine,” Andrew conceded. “But I'm ringing tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

“And turn your mobile on, for goodness' sake.”

“I already did,” Claire told him, and hung up. She had five voice mails from her mother. Resolutely, she deleted them all. She didn't need to hear Marie West's histrionics about how she should have come to London, and she couldn't face an actual conversation with her mother yet. Hugh, unsurprisingly, hadn't called. Claire wondered if he ever would.

She gazed around the huge kitchen and wondered when any of her family had last been there. She opened the fridge, and the gleaming, empty expanse seemed to mock her.

She needed food, and since she didn't have a car, she'd have to get it at the poky village shop.

At least it would get her out of the house and the silent accusation every spotless carpet and plumped-up pillow was making.

She went upstairs for her socks and shoes and then grabbed her coat and keys before heading out into a brisk March day. After three years in Portugal, she'd forgotten how chilly Cumbria was. Her parents' house was at the end of a long private drive at the top of the
village, with a view of the winding high street and its cluster of terraced houses, the beach a wide expanse of smooth beige sand in the distance, the sea glinting on the horizon, gray-blue and ruffled with white. If she turned she could see the sloping fields, dotted with sheep, that led to the dark, jagged gray-green humps of the distant fells.

It was a stunning sight in every direction, and for a few moments Claire simply stood there, taking it all in. She'd never looked back on her years in Hartley-by-the-Sea with anything close to affection, but in that moment she was glad to be there. She was grateful to be free.

She started walking down the lane that led to the beach road, the wind buffeting her hard as soon as she stepped out into the open street. A few sheep glanced up balefully as she passed, the ewes' stomachs swollen with the lambs that would come in April.

No one was about, and for that Claire was glad. She didn't think she could handle any more awkward reunions; seeing Rachel Campbell had been hard enough. Had she been imagining that slight note of hostility from Rachel? After she'd been away for so many years, it felt a little surprising, but then she and Rachel hadn't been friends for a long time.

The beach road joined up with the high street at the train station; a woman wearing a waterproof parka and Wellingtons despite the sunshine was walking a small dog. She gave her a smile, and Claire smiled back, glad it was a stranger. How many people were still living in Hartley-by-the-Sea that she'd know, or who would remember her? A few acquaintances from primary school at most, probably. The realization was a relief.

She turned right up the high street, digging her hands deep into her pockets and lowering her head against the wind. She'd forgotten how relentless the wind in Hartley-by-the-Sea was. When she'd walked to school as a little girl, she'd felt as if it had been pushing her forward, like a strong hand at her back. She'd needed the push; she'd often dreaded school, the teachers whose questions she never managed to hear and the children who thought she was ridiculous. Rachel had
been the only one who had had time for her, at least until Year Six. But collecting a gaggle of gossipy girls as pseudo-friends hadn't been nearly as fun as it had first appeared.

Claire slowed as she came to the little stucco-fronted post office shop with its windows full of advertisements and dusty tinned goods. She glanced at the notices taped to the inside: cleaning services, a lost cat, help wanted.

She thought of Andrew's remark about Tesco and wondered what he would think if she told him she was working at the village shop. Not that she wanted to work right in the middle of the village. She craved a bit of anonymity, and standing behind the till, ringing up her neighbors' newspapers and milk, surely wasn't the way to get it.

And yet, a job. One small way to sort her life.

She opened the door and stepped inside, blinking for a few seconds to get used to the gloom of the little room. The shop looked like it hadn't changed much in the five or more years since she'd last been in it: a few shelves with basic food items, a tiny refrigerated section, a rack of sweets, another of magazines. There was a post office counter tucked away in the back and a counter of old, scarred wood with an ancient-looking cash register at the front.

And behind the cash register scowling at her was a giant of a man with tattoos down both folded forearms.

“Hi,” Claire ventured hesitantly, and the man's black eyebrows snapped together.

“Are you coming in, then?” he asked, and Claire realized she hadn't closed the door behind her. She did so now, a sudden gust of wind causing it to slam with enough force to rattle the glass. She winced, and then braced herself to turn around and face the man.

His scowl had deepened, his arms still ominously folded, biceps bulging. With a quick, apologetic smile, Claire started to wander the shop's three aisles, conscious the whole time of the man's hostility. It
emanated from him like a bad smell or a malevolent force. No wonder he needed staff. He probably couldn't keep anyone working for him for more than two minutes.

She stared blindly at a tin of baked beans in tomato sauce and then grabbed it as well as a loaf of white bread. Beans on toast she could manage, and at this point she wanted to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. First Rachel, now this guy. No one, it seemed, was happy for her to be back in Hartley-by-the-Sea, which wasn't too surprising, considering she wasn't sure if she was.