Rainy Day Sisters (11 page)

She'd served Thomas another Americano on the house (actually it had come out of her wages) and listened to him drone on for half an hour about eighteenth-century politics (most boring subject ever), and then his cell had rung and he'd spoken tersely to someone named Monica, who Thomas had explained after the call was his nasty ex-wife. Actually, Lucy remembered, he didn't call her nasty. He just implied it while insisting that he couldn't speak badly of her because of the boys.

The boys, Lucy had suspected then, had easily understood the subtext. She'd been the only one off in la-la land, feeling sorry for Thomas and his virtually motherless children, and thinking how she could come in and heal everyone and everything.

“Lucy?”

She jerked out of her reverie to see Alex standing in the doorway of the reception area.

“Yes?”

“The photocopier in the staff room needs paper. Would you see to it?”

“Yes, of course.” She stared at him, willing him to say something about Saturday, but he looked as purposeful and indifferent as ever.

She watched him disappear back into his office and wondered just what she'd been expecting. For Alex to perch on the edge of her desk and ruffle her hair as they shared some nonexistent in-joke?

Well, not quite.

Actually, sort of.

With a groan Lucy buried her head in her hands. She was so ridiculous. Her insistent sense of optimism verged on fantasy—about Thomas, thinking that their relationship was actually going somewhere; about Juliet, thinking they could reconcile; and even now about Alex. But she wasn't going to make the same stupid mistake again.

She wasn't going to fool herself into thinking they were flirting or even friends simply because he'd bought her a cup of coffee.

And anyway, she was here for only four months and as she was coming out of a long-term relationship, she had no intention of dating or even flirting with anyone for a long time.

She heaved herself out of the chair and went to find the paper for the photocopier. She'd get that right this time, at least.

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully save for two scrapes at playtime—a tearful Year One followed an hour later by a stoic Year Five who had bloodied both elbows pretty badly but was determined not to cry. It wasn't until Lucy had applied the ice pack and filled out the accident report that she realized it was the boy she'd seen at the top of the village, kicking his soccer ball.

“Hey, you,” she said, and wagged her finger at him. He looked as nonplussed as when she'd said hello.

She stuck her tongue out as a reminder, and after a second's stunned pause he gave her that cocky grin back.

“I can tell you're trouble,” Lucy teased. “What's your name?”

“Oliver.”

“Oliver from Year Five. I'm going to keep my eye on you.” She was only teasing, but she watched as Oliver's grin slid off his face and he gave an indifferent shrug. Then he slipped from the stool, jamming his hands in the pockets of his gray flannel trousers.

“Can I go out again, miss?”

“Yes, just keep those elbows protected.” Lucy watched him go, frowning. Then she swiveled around to her computer and checked the attendance records she'd been logging in every day. Oliver Jones in Year Five had been late every day since school had started.

She stared at the record for a moment, wondering what was going on, and then glanced up as Diana came into the office with her afternoon attendance log.

“Two children out for dentist appointments.” She noticed Lucy's frown with one of her own. “What's wrong?”

“I was just noticing that Oliver Jones has been late every day this term.”

“Ah, Oliver.” With a weary sigh Diana braced her shoulder against the doorway. “Poor little lad.”

“He seems like a cheeky little so-and-so to me,” Lucy answered, and Diana nodded.

“He is, but it's hard on him. His father works on the oil rigs in the North Sea for eight months of the year, and his mother . . .” She hesitated, and Lucy waited. “His mother gets depressed,” Diana finally said. “Sometimes she can barely make it out of bed of a morning.”

“And no one can help?”

“Neighbors help out when they can, but in a place like Hartley-by-the-Sea . . .” She paused, her gaze faraway. “Most people know when to step in and when to butt out.”

But he's nine,
Lucy wanted to say. Instead she just nodded. Her mother hadn't suffered from depression, but Lucy had gotten herself to school most mornings. She knew what it was like not to be able to depend on your mother.

Lucy was still thinking about Oliver an hour later when she took a rather terse phone call from someone at Cumberland Academy for Alex.

She put through the call and leaned forward to see Alex at his desk through the glass, his brows drawn together in a frown, the phone receiver pressed to his ear. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes before hanging up.

Lucy threw herself back into her chair and he came into the reception area a few minutes later.

“Lucy.”

She looked up, smiling brightly. “Yes, Mr. Kincaid?”

“You can call me Alex, you know. I have to leave school for about half an hour. If anyone rings, please take a message.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.” She watched him head out into the school yard, saw something tired and defeated about the set of his shoulders as he walked towards the staff car park, and wondered all over again what that phone call had been about.

Half an hour later Alex returned with a very sulky preteen in tow. The girl slouching into the school behind him was beautiful, although you wouldn't necessarily notice that first off. Her dark, silky hair was covering half her face, and her black school blazer was far too big, with the tie worn loose and the skirt quite short.

She gave Lucy a deliberately bored look, and Lucy saw that the girl's eyes were a lovely, clear hazel. Her Cupid's bow mouth was painted an unfortunate fire-engine red.

“In here, Bella,” Alex said tersely, and pointed to a chair in the reception area. Lucy scooted closer to her computer, as if doing so gave Alex and this girl any kind of privacy. At least it gave them some space.

With a loud, sneering sigh, the girl flung herself into the swivel chair and sat there sprawled, her tights-clad legs flung out in front of her, her bags and coat at her feet. She looked up at Alex with her eyebrows arched, a mocking smile on her face. She reminded Lucy of the mean girls she'd encountered in seventh grade, all acid sweetness and deliberate contempt.

“What, I'm going to sit in here all day?” she asked, spinning around in the chair, and Alex glared at her.

“Yes,” he bit out, “you da—you are.”

“Language, Dad,” Bella mocked, and Alex's eyes snapped with fury, his mouth tightly compressed.

So this was the other daughter he'd mentioned at the café. Lucy would have expected Alex's daughters to be quiet and cowed, but then since he didn't have his dog under control, why should he have his daughter? And Bella Kincaid definitely looked like a handful.

“Just stay here, Bella,” Alex said. “Since you managed to get yourself suspended from school in only the second week of term, you can face the consequences.”

“Which is to be bored out my mind?”

“That's the first one,” Alex snapped, and then turned to Lucy. “Lucy, I'm sorry to inconvenience you, but I trust my daughter will behave herself and not cause you any trouble this afternoon.”

That, Lucy thought as Alex stalked back to his office, was some incredibly wishful thinking on Alex's part.

She slid a sideways glance at the girl, who was still lounging in the chair, studying her chipped black nail polish with such obvious boredom that Lucy almost wanted to advise her not to try
quite
so hard.

She turned back to her computer, the afternoon's register blurring in front of her. She could feel Bella's curious and contemptuous gaze burning into her back. How on earth was she supposed to concentrate with this girl staring at her all afternoon?

She might be able to give a few five-year-olds cuddles and ice packs, but this type of child—this querulous, unpleasant, on-the-cusp-of-adulthood, malevolent
force
—was something else entirely.

The exaggerated sighs, the narrowed looks, the eye rolls, the lip curls . . . she'd had it all before with Thomas's sons. And she'd been trying with them, not that it had ever done much good. If anything, those two boys had put her off children completely.

She turned back to the register and tried to work for ten endless minutes, with Bella heaving gusty sighs and spinning in her chair, before she couldn't take it anymore. She swung around in her chair and gave Bella a sunny smile the girl very obviously ignored.

“So, what you'd get done for?”

Lucy watched Bella hesitate, torn between keeping up her too-bored-to-live act and actually answering the question. She turned so her back was to Lucy.

“Nothing too bad.”

“Oh.” Lucy loaded the single syllable with disappointment. “I thought you might have set fire to the chemistry lab or something.” Not, she realized, that she should be giving the girl ideas. Bella certainly looked capable of a major act of arson. But she'd had quite enough of her too-cool-for-school attitude. She was
so
over that.

“I just bunked off PE,” Bella said after a moment, spinning round in her chair again to face Lucy. “Teachers overreacted as
usual
.”

“Hmm.” A suspension for skipping a single class? Lucy doubted she was hearing the whole story. She turned back to her computer and continued to enter the register numbers into the afternoon attendance spreadsheet. She was getting a lot faster at it, thankfully. “Why PE?” she asked after several minutes had passed. “I mean, math or physics or something like that I could understand. But PE? It's fun.”

“It's stupid,” Bella said with sudden viciousness. She spun again in her chair, faster, so her hair flew out, and Lucy could see her face properly.

Spinning there, legs and hair flying, she looked very small, very young. Her face still held a puppyish roundness. And instead of reminding Lucy of the mean girls she'd encountered in junior high, Bella Kincaid reminded her of someone else.

Herself, at the same age. Vulnerable, lonely, so very unhappy—and hiding it any way she knew how.

“Some of it's stupid,” Lucy agreed, turning once more back to the computer. “I hated swimming, for example. Getting wet in the middle of the day is
so
not fun.”

Bella didn't answer, and Lucy mentally shook her head at herself. Why was she trying so hard? She didn't care why Bella Kincaid had been suspended from school. She didn't care about Bella Kincaid at all.

Except somehow she couldn't keep from caring, at least a little. Surely Bella's difficulties had something to do with her mother's death. The girl still had to be grieving, and that alone, Lucy knew, was enough to soften her already too-squishy heart towards her.

“It was netball,” Bella said in a low voice. Lucy stilled, her hands resting on the computer keyboard; even her heart seemed to have stopped beating for a moment. “Stupid effing netball,” Bella said viciously, and then to Lucy's shock she burst into noisy tears.

Lucy spun around and saw Bella with her arms over her face, her bony shoulders shaking.

“Oh, sweetie . . .” She tried to pull the girl into a hug, but Bella was no six-year-old Eva, grateful for a cuddle.

“Geroff,” she snapped, her voice muffled against her arm as she cringed away from Lucy.

“Sorry,” Lucy muttered. She felt her face flame as she sat there helplessly, not knowing how to make it better but wanting to. “I hate netball,” she finally said, and then added, “Is that like basketball?”

Bella let out a snort that Lucy hoped was a laugh. With her face still buried in her arms she said, “You don't even know what netball is?”

“Well, it
obviously
sucks.”

Bella lifted her tear-streaked face from her arm to peek at Lucy. Her mascara had run and she'd bitten off all her bright lipstick. She looked even younger now, and far too vulnerable. “I don't even
care
about netball,” she said, and wiped at her cheeks. “And my dad doesn't let us say ‘sucks.'”

“Hey, you said ‘effing,'” Lucy answered. “Isn't that worse?” Actually, she wasn't sure if it was a really bad swearword, or if she should have repeated it. Leaving the country at six years old had given her a limited Brit vocabulary, especially when it came to curse words.

Bella shrugged defiantly. “He wasn't here.”

“I won't tell him.”

She gazed at Lucy, the traces of her tears still visible on her face, along with the streaks of mascara. “Why are you sucking up to me?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Are you trying to, like, get in with my dad?”

“Get in with your dad?” Lucy repeated with a nonchalance that sounded awful, almost as bad as one of those fake, hearty laughs stuffy adults gave when talking to kids.

Her mother's friends had laughed like that when she'd been trotted out like some tarnished trophy at her mother's showings.
Heh, heh, heh, Lucy, well, aren't you getting bigger?
Then they'd turn away and her mother would give her a little push, indicating that she should make herself scarce. She'd usually ended up hiding under the refreshment table, her knees tucked to her chest, as she watched all the shoes go by.

“I'm afraid I'm kind of hopeless at this whole receptionist thing,” she told Bella with a shrug. “And frankly, your dad seemed so ticked off at you that being nice to you isn't going to score me any points, is it?” Not that she wanted to score points with Alex. Or score anything.

Bella's gaze remained narrowed, as she seemed to assess the truth of her words.