Now and Then Friends (8 page)

“And presumably, you loved Hugh,” Andrew remarked.

“Of course I did.” The answer came automatically. How could she say otherwise, when she'd agreed to marry him? “But things went sour. Obviously.”

“Maybe he was just looking out for you, Claire. He had to have been worried. We all were. . . .”

“Maybe,” she allowed, and then wondered why she'd said that. She didn't actually believe Hugh had been looking out for her. He'd been embarrassed by her, humiliated, and suggesting her parents send her to rehab had been her punishment. Claire had suspected that from the beginning, and four weeks in unnecessary rehab had crystallized the notion. He'd stood aside while her parents had made the arrangements; when he'd mailed her things to Lansdowne Hills, he hadn't even included a note.

“Maybe you should reach out to him,” Andrew suggested. His voice was kind, which only made Claire angry. “Perhaps he'd like to hear from you.”

“I don't think so.”

“You were engaged for a year. It stands to reckon—”

“Please drop it, Andrew,” Claire cut him off with uncharacteristic sharpness. “It's not going to happen.” If she called Hugh, she'd probably end up apologizing. He would give a long-suffering sigh and then what? Take her back, on certain conditions? Or tell her it really was over? Either way, it was a conversation Claire didn't want to have.

Andrew didn't answer, just picked at his chicken, and the ensuing silence was stiff with the kind of disapproval Claire hated.

“Actually, I'm not hungry,” she said, and taking her plate to the sink first, she walked out of the kitchen.

Upstairs she had to fight the urge to go downstairs and say sorry. She paced her bedroom for a few minutes before she turned and went back down.

Andrew was still sitting at the table, finishing his dinner, looking completely unruffled, and for some reason that annoyed her.

Here she was, practically panting in agitation, and her brother was calmly cutting his naan bread into squares.

“I'm sorry.”

He glanced at her, clearly surprised by her blurted apology. “It's obviously a sore point. I shouldn't have mentioned it.”

And that, apparently, was that. Claire stood there for a moment, uncertain as ever, because in her life that was never that. But then she didn't usually apologize to Andrew. It was to her mother, her father, Hugh. And they all accepted it with long-suffering sighs, as their due.

“I think I'll go to bed.”

“Okay.”

“I have to get up kind of early. I start work in the morning.”

“So you did get a job?”

“I'm working at the village shop.”

Andrew made a little grimace, and Claire grimaced right back at him. “I'm never going to be a civil engineer, Andrew.”

“I wouldn't want you to be one. But that doesn't mean you have to work in a shop.”

“Maybe I'll like it.”

“You're intelligent, Claire—”

“And intelligent people can't work in shops?” She shook her head, holding up a hand to forestall Andrew's reply. “Never mind. I really should go to bed.” And in any case, she didn't believe what he'd said. He thought she had to be intelligent because everyone else in her family was. Between her parents and her brother they had a whole wall of framed advanced degrees in her father's study: Four MAs, two PhDs, one MD. And meanwhile Claire had barely scraped through uni.

Claire headed upstairs, shivering slightly as the wind rattled the windowpanes and rain sleeted against the glass. The house still felt big and empty, but a little less so with Andrew downstairs. She was still glad he'd arrived, and yet as she climbed into bed, Claire wondered when he was going to leave.

She lay in the dark for a long time, listening to the rain and the wind and then the creak of stairs and the click of a door as Andrew went to his bedroom down the hall. She finally fell asleep, only to awake with a start, her heart pounding as she glanced at the clock and saw it was already ten past eight in the morning.

Four Gables
looked
empty as Rachel drove up on Wednesday. She hoped it was empty, because it would be easier for both women if her former friend made herself scarce while she cleaned. Rachel definitely didn't relish another run-in with Claire, just-showered or otherwise, and she could certainly live without Claire skulking around, caught, as she often seemed to be, between apology and arrogance while she hoovered and dusted.

Rachel tried the handle of the front door, relieved when it was locked because that meant Claire probably was out, and then she sucked in a surprised breath when the lock was turned from the inside and the door swung open to reveal not Claire, but her older brother, Andrew.

Rachel had never liked Andrew all that much. He'd been four years above them in school, always looking a bit bored and indifferent, a little smug.

She'd seen him occasionally over the years, from a distance, but seeing him now, like this, standing in a doorway, brought her back to the moment when she'd been twelve, two months after she and Claire had stopped being friends. She'd rung the doorbell, teary and snot-nosed, only to have Andrew coolly inform her that Claire was busy with her birthday party, the party Rachel hadn't even known about. Then he had, without a qualm, shut the door in her face.

Old memories. Kid stuff. Rachel shouldered her mop and gave him a quick smile. “Hello, Andrew. I didn't know you were back.”

Cue the blank, bored look. “I'm sorry. You are . . . ?” He sounded just like his mother, with that slight, telling sniff of disdain.

“Rachel Campbell. I clean the house.” She raised her eyebrows, willing him to move aside, but he simply stood there. “This mop is heavy, you know,” she said, and Andrew finally moved. Then he followed her into the kitchen and watched as she started to unpack her cleaning supplies.

“How long have you been cleaning the house?”

“About five years. I do a quick whiz round once a week but if you're staying along with Claire, I can do more.”

“No. I'm sure whatever you're doing will be fine. I'm leaving in a few days.”

“Right.” She started spritzing cleaning spray over the vast black granite island, and still Andrew just stood there, watching. Rachel kept an alert, cheerful expression on her face with effort. She felt as if she were performing a role, the chirpy housekeeper on some BBC drama. Next she'd be calling him “love” and boiling him a cup of tea. But, no, Andrew West was no Emily Hart or Iris Fairley.

“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “It's just you look familiar.”

“I grew up here, went to school a few years below you,” Rachel answered as she started wiping down the island. “Same year as Claire.”

“Oh, right. I must have seen you around, then.”

“Must have.”

He stood there for a few more minutes while Rachel went about her business, head down, spraying and swiping. Finally he left.

She let out a breath, glad to relinquish the role she'd been playing—and for whose benefit? Andrew West's? Annoyed, Rachel spritzed the sink and swiped it with vigor. Maybe she should stop coming to Four Gables until the West children were no longer in residence. She could do without the stress they caused her, bringing back memories she'd far rather leave buried deep in her subconscious.

Except those memories were already starting to slither out.

She stopped wiping, her elbows propped on the sink, her gaze on the rain-soaked garden outside even as she remembered another scene entirely. A chilly April evening, a month after her mother's accident, her father walking out. Rachel had watched him go down the high street to the pub. It had only been half five, and Lily, not even a year old, had needed feeding and bathing. Her mother's sheets had to be changed. And Meghan had been hiding upstairs.

Rachel had done it all, and then, when her father had come in at eight, reeking of beer and knowing full well that the hard work had already been done, he'd given Rachel a shamefaced smile and slouched upstairs.

Rachel had stood by the door for a long moment, consumed by a rage that she, at not quite twelve, didn't fully understand. All she'd known was that she'd been doing her father's job, and it wasn't fair.

She'd slunk out of the house and run up to Claire's. She'd never been there before, but she'd known where it was. Everyone in the village did. If you stood on the high street and tilted your head back, you could see it perched on the hill above the beach, a Victorian monstrosity that had looked to Rachel, with its gables and turrets, like some kind of overgrown gargoyle.

She'd knocked on the door, her heart beating hard, her nose running from the cold, and tears already starting in her eyes. All she'd wanted was to talk to Claire, to talk to someone who, even if she didn't understand, might at least listen. Out of desperation she'd put her pride aside; then Andrew had opened the door, told her about the party, and then promptly shut it in her face.

It shouldn't matter now, but it still hurt, especially when she considered that not much had changed in the sixteen years since then. The only thing that was different was her dad wasn't at the pub; he was gone for good. And instead of standing on the stoop, she was cleaning the Wests' house.

“You were friends with Claire, weren't you?”

She turned around; Andrew had come back into the kitchen, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans as he rocked back and forth on his bare feet.

“A long time ago,” she answered. “Back in primary.” A shrug to show she barely remembered. Then she turned her back on him and got out the Hoover.

“How come you didn't keep in touch?”

“How do you know we didn't?” Rachel challenged as she unwound the endless cord. “Anyway, do you keep in touch with your primary school friends?”

“So you didn't,” Andrew stated, and Rachel gritted her teeth. Andrew West could be even more aggravating than his sister.

“No, we didn't.”

“Why not?”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“About my primary school friends? No, I haven't kept in touch with any of them. I left this village when I was eighteen and I didn't come back very much.” A shrug to dismiss the village and all of its residents as unimportant, or at least it felt that way to Rachel. “But you haven't left.”

“Obviously.”

“So?”

“Claire was the one who left,” Rachel responded. “Anyway, we stopped being friends long before that. She went to Wyndham, same as you did, if I'm remembering correctly?” The elite private school in Keswick that sent a blue-and-gold bus to the village to pick up its exalted pupils. Wyndham kids stuck to themselves and always had; the kids who went to Cumberland always seemed a bit raggedy and rough in comparison.

“Right. Of course.” Andrew didn't move, and Rachel decided to ignore him. She plugged in the Hoover and started vacuuming the hessian carpet under the breakfast table.

He waited there until she'd finished and turned the machine off before he spoke again. “I'm only asking because I think Claire could use a friend right now.”

“Oh, could she?” Andrew raised his eyebrows and she turned away, lugging the Hoover across to the hall. “Sorry, but I'm here to clean, and since I get paid by the hour, it's in your family's best interest to let me do my job.”

After a second's pause where he seemed as if he were debating whether to say something, Andrew stepped aside. “I'll let you get on with it, then,” he murmured as she passed.

Rachel spent the next two hours cleaning at hyper speed, working up a sweat and trying to suppress the stupid guilt she felt at the way she'd smacked Andrew down. It should have felt good to wipe that supercilious look off his face. As if she were going to become pals with Claire again.

When she had needed a friend, where had Claire been for her?

Of course, they'd only been eleven at the time. She wasn't really going to hold a childhood grudge, was she? That would be pathetic.

Looking around at the Wests' huge house, with a whole parade of photos of Claire through the years marching up the wall along the stairs, Rachel decided that yes, maybe she was going to.

She was just leaving when Andrew appeared again in the hallway. He must have been listening, waiting for her to start packing up.

“I'm sorry if my suggestion was offensive.”

“I'm not offended.” She was tired and grimy and her self-righteous anger had disappeared sometime between cleaning the toilets and stripping the beds. “I'm sure Claire could use a friend. She told me the last time I was here that she'd broken up with her fiancé, so yes, I get that she's having a tough time. But so am I, as it happens, and I'm afraid I don't have it in me to look out for her. Not again.”

Then, realizing she'd probably said too much, Rachel grabbed her mop and pail of supplies and left. She was just throwing them into the
back when her phone buzzed with an incoming call. With a queasy feeling she saw it was from Cumberland Academy, Lily's school.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Campbell?”

“Yes?” Rachel had long ago stopped correcting the parade of teachers who assumed she was Lily's mother. It was easier all around if she simply pretended she was.

“I'm ringing about Lily's parent-teacher conference yesterday—”

“What?” Rachel slammed the lid of the boot and hurried around to the driver's side and slid in, out of the rain. “I didn't realize she had a conference last night.”

“Lily didn't tell you?”

“She must have done.” Rachel closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat. “I must have forgotten. I'm sorry.” Why hadn't she written it on the calendar? She couldn't remember Lily telling her about it, but then she often felt as if she were doing four things at once, and none of them well. Lily might have told her and she hadn't registered it.

Sighing, she turned on the car and put the heat on high. “Could I make it up? Sometime this week, perhaps?”

“I'm free tomorrow afternoon, if you'd like to come in.”

She cleaned two holiday cottages tomorrow afternoon, but she could do it in half the time if she hustled. “Of course.”

“I'll see you at four.”

“Thank you, Miss—” Too late Rachel realized she didn't actually know the woman's name.

“Taylor,” the woman said, and Rachel heard a note of reproof in the woman's voice. What kind of mother didn't know the name of her daughter's teacher? Except Rachel wasn't Lily's mother. “I'm Lily's biology teacher. The other teachers might want to see you, too, if you want to make the arrangements.”

When the call ended, Rachel sat there for a moment, the phone cradled in her hand, exhaustion crashing over her. She saw a movement in the front window of the Wests' house, and the pale sliver of a face between curtains before it moved away. Andrew, no doubt, wondering what she was doing, sitting in his driveway. She reversed out of the Wests' sweeping drive and headed down the beach road.

Four hours later Rachel pulled up outside her house, reversing into a parking space that gave her two inches on either end and hitting her neighbor's bumper in the process. With a groan she got out to assess the damage and saw that it was a tiny scratch that could be buffed out with a rag and some polish, but Edgar Lacey would read her the riot act about it anyway. He was incredibly precious about his old banger, polishing it to a tired shine every Saturday morning while wearing nothing more than a vest and gym shorts. Not a sight Rachel liked to look at while eating her Shreddies.

She decided to tackle him later and headed inside to the chaos that was the Campbell home. The noise hit her first: Nathan screaming at the top of his lungs, Lily's pulsing techno music, and her mother calling for something, a chaotic orchestra of her family life whose tune she usually didn't mind. Today she found it nearly unbearable.

Rachel dumped her stuff in the cupboard under the stairs and headed first for her mother, poking her head around the doorway.

“Mum?”

“Sorry, love,” Janice wheezed. She was lying flat on her back as she did whenever the pain was really bad, her face pale and gray. “It's just I've run out of pills and my back is aching something fierce.”

“You shouldn't have run out,” Rachel said with a frown. She retrieved the brown plastic bottle from the bedside table and squinted to read the instructions. “Meghan had this filled only last week, and they're meant to last a month.”

Her mother smiled in apology. “Poor Meghan spilled some in the
toilet of all things, when she went to get me a glass of water. She forgot she had the open bottle in her hand.”

Which sounded a lot like Meghan. Rachel put the bottle back on the table. “I'll phone the chemist's emergency number.” Which would cost money they couldn't afford, as well as a drive into Whitehaven. “Can you manage with ibuprofen till then?”