Rainy Day Sisters (15 page)

Lucy

LUCY CAME DOWNSTAIRS THE
next morning buoyed by a determined optimism to enjoy her afternoon outing with Bella. She'd had a good time last night, chatting with Peter and Rachel and Juliet. Rachel had intimidated her at first, with that knowing smile. Plus she was about eight feet tall and had masses of red hair. Lucy had felt like Minnie Mouse standing next to Boudicca.

But Rachel had invited her to the pub quiz, and Juliet had even agreed, and they were actually going to be a team. Plus there was the very interesting Peter, who'd brought Juliet flowers.

“He's just a neighbor,” Juliet had told her dismissively when Lucy had asked who he was, after Peter and Rachel had gone. “A sheep farmer. We're on the parish council together.”

“Parish council?”

“The local governing body for the village,” Juliet explained. “We liaise with the county council, and organize village events, and start campaigns for everyone to clean up their dogs' poo. Stimulating stuff.”

“Important stuff,” Lucy had answered. “I nearly stepped in dog poo this morning, so you'd better do your job.” Juliet hadn't even cracked a smile; since Peter and Rachel had left, she'd seemed rather brittle, and she kept moving the rosebush around the kitchen.

The exchange had been enough for Lucy's optimism to return in full force, and now she headed off to school, determined to rock this afternoon with Bella.

“Bella's here,” Alex announced just after lunchtime.

Lucy glanced up, blinking the world back into focus. He stood in the doorway of the reception area, lines of tension bracketing his mouth as Bella came up the school lane. Somehow one o'clock had crept up on her and now, despite all her cheery optimism, butterflies swarmed in her stomach.

“Super.”

He cleared his throat. “Let me give you some money. . . .”

“No, I'd like to do this for Bella, and a couple of bras don't cost much.”

Color touched Alex's cheekbones, although whether because she'd said she'd pay or used the b-word, Lucy didn't know. “I insist,” he began, but Bella was coming inside the school and so with a nod he left it, at least for now.

Bella studiously ignored her father as Lucy gathered her coat and purse. She'd checked the trains to Whitehaven and seen there was one just a little bit after one o'clock; they could come back on the four o'clock train, which would give them long enough for what they needed to do, she hoped. She'd thought about asking to borrow Juliet's car, but she was terrible at driving stick shift and the afternoon had enough potential obstacles already.

“Ready?” she asked Bella in that same overbright voice she'd used before, and the girl didn't answer. Still, this was going to go well. Lucy would make sure of it.

She kept up a cheerful monologue, saying whatever came into her head, which included a lot of inane facts about reality TV shows and her favorite Disney movies and why Hartley-by-the-Sea's pub was called the Hangman's Noose, all the way to the train station. Bella didn't speak at all. By the time they'd boarded the train, Lucy had lapsed into a weary silence, realizing that three hours with Bella was going to feel long indeed.

Lucy had been to Whitehaven only once before to buy the waterproof and Wellies she'd forgotten to bring, so her only acquaintance with the town was the one pedestrianized street with a variety of shops, including the hiking store where she'd bought her gear. She'd done a search online last night, however, and found a department store on Lowther Street with a lingerie department.

Bella slouched after her, deliberately staying several paces behind as Lucy walked past a florist's and a gourmet coffee shop, a café and a museum about rum smuggling, looking for the shop in question.

“Ah, here we are,” she said brightly, and held open the door for Bella.

“I can't believe we're doing this,” Bella muttered, and Lucy followed her into the shop.

“To be honest, I can't believe we are, either,” she answered as she wove her way through the shoe and accessory departments. The store had a lovably slightly shabby quality to it; clearly it had been around a long time, although the escalator that dominated the center of the space looked shiny and new. She could see the lingerie section in the distance, a lacy sea of white and pale pink with the occasional splotch of crimson or black, and turned to give Bella a reassuring smile. “Shouldn't take long.”

Bella just folded her arms across her chest and stared straight ahead. Poor girl. No matter how nice Lucy tried to be, the whole experience still had to be mortifying.

Lucy inched her way across an aisle of what looked like G-cup satin Wonderbras, looking for the teen section. She really, really, for Bella's sake—and, okay, a little bit of her own—didn't want to have to ask.

“Oh, no,” Bella muttered under her breath, and Lucy turned to see a buxom sales assistant heading towards them like a ship in full sail, a wide smile on her face.

“Hello, my lovelies. Can I help with anything?”

Next to her Lucy felt Bella stiffen. She shook her head firmly. “Just looking,” she said, and the sales assistant retreated a few feet away, watching them expectantly. Lucy moved to the next aisle.

“Thank you,” Bella whispered after a pause, her head lowered, her hair hanging down to hide her face.

“Believe it or not, I remember being your age,” Lucy answered in a low voice. They'd reached the end of the lingerie department and had no luck finding the appropriate bras. “However, I think we might be stuck. I can't find what we're looking for and I might have to ask Miss Double D over there.”

Bella let out a huff of laughter, quickly smothered. “Keep looking,” she muttered, turning away from the sales assistant.
“Please.”

Fortunately they found a “Young Miss” section at the end of a rack of sports bras, kept in boxes and left there almost as an afterthought. Lucy scooped up a couple in different sizes, and then impulsively grabbed a bra in her size to cover the incriminating boxes. “Okay, we're good,” she told Bella. “But you do have to try these on, I'm afraid.”

Bella eyed her with disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”

Lucy glanced down and saw she'd managed to pick up a purple satin push-up bra. She let out a little laugh. “That one's for me, just for cover,” she explained. She gestured to the boxes. “These are yours.”

Bella's face was bright red and she looked away. “Fine.”

Lucy marched to the changing rooms, brandishing the purple bra. “I'd like to try this on,” she told the assistant, who gestured to a row of empty, curtained stalls.

“Just give us a shout if you need a different size,” she said cheerily, and Lucy nodded.

“Will do.”

Alone in the corridor of changing rooms, she turned to a still-mortified Bella. “Okay, I'm going to try on this purple monster, and you try on yours. They should fit well, not too snug, not too loose, okay? The panel in the middle should touch your breastbone, not pull away from it. If it pulls away, you need a larger cup size.”

Clearly that was TMI for Bella, for she wordlessly grabbed the boxes and disappeared into one of the stalls. Lucy glanced down at the purple bra and decided that she might as well try it on.

And actually, she decided a moment later, having never owned a push-up bra before, she could definitely see the appeal. She'd never looked so perky.

“How are you doing in there?” she called to Bella, and received a suffocated “Fine” in response.

A couple of minutes later they met back out in the corridor; Bella's bras had been stuffed back into the boxes.

“Did you find one that fits?” Lucy asked, and she nodded and held out one of the boxes. “Great. I'll go get a few in that size and you can take yourself off to another department if you want. Just in case the sales assistant feels like having a conversation about our purchases.”

With obvious relief Bella hightailed it out of the lingerie department. Lucy found a couple of bras in the same size, in various colors, and brought them to the register. The sales assistant engaged her in a detailed conversation about the escalator, which had been bought from the London Olympics for the impressive sum of four hundred thousand pounds. It was, the woman told her proudly, Whitehaven's only escalator.

“We had a little party when we opened it. Champers, even, and a Tom Cruise look-alike.”

“Wow, that sounds amazing,” Lucy told her, quite sincerely, and then, bag in hand, went to find Bella.

Bella was loitering by the cosmetics counters, reminding Lucy that she'd been wearing quite a lot of war paint yesterday. Somehow she doubted the girl had paid for all of it herself, and Alex didn't seem like the kind of dad who shelled out for eyeliner and crimson lipstick.

“Hey.” Lucy joined her by a display of sparkly eye shadow in every color of the rainbow, the bras safely hidden in an opaque plastic shopping bag. She nodded towards the eye shadow. “What do you think? I'm fond of the purple, myself.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It would match my new bra.”

Bella's mouth quirked in a tiny smile—sort of like the way her dad's did—before she turned away. “Who are you trying to impress?” she asked in a deliberately bored drawl. “My dad?”

Lucy hesitated, then decided for lightness. “Somehow I don't think the eye shadow or the bra would impress your dad, Bella. But if you're worried I'm trying to make a move on him, I promise you, I'm not.”

Bella turned back to her, eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

“What do you mean, why not?”

Bella shrugged. “He's single. He's not that old. You're single, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“He's okay looking, for a dad. So why aren't you interested?” She subjected Lucy to a challenging stare, making her realize she wasn't fooling anyone with her paltry promises.

“Well, I'm only here for four months, first of all,” she said after a moment. “And yes, I'm single now, but I just got out of a long-term relationship and I'm not looking for another one quite so soon. And your dad is okay looking, true, but you might have noticed he can be a little scary? A little intimidating?” She tried to elicit a smile, but Bella just looked away.

“Whatever,” she said in a dismissive tone, making Lucy feel as if she rather than Bella had brought Alex into the conversation. She decided to drop it. She really didn't want to talk about Alex with Bella, and she definitely didn't intend to trip all over herself trying to explain why she wasn't interested. Because she was afraid that wasn't even true.

Sighing, she nodded towards the door. “How about we hit Boots for a mini shopping spree and then have a hot chocolate before we go home?”

Interest lit Bella's eyes even though she still looked wary. “A mini shopping spree?”

“I think you could use a new lipstick,” Lucy said easily. And preferably not one she suspected Bella had shoplifted. “Maybe in a slightly more subtle shade, something your father wouldn't mind you wearing out of the house?”

“He hates everything I wear,” Bella answered with a shrug. “Everything I do.”

Lucy chose to let that one go and they headed back out to Lowther Street.

She bought Bella a lip gloss in a neutral shade and some purple eye shadow, and then they headed over to a café that promised bowl-sized cups of hot chocolate with lashings of whipped cream.

Seated across from Bella as she slurped a spoonful of whipped cream, Lucy wondered what on earth they would talk about now.

Bella surprised her by asking her suddenly, “Why were you bullied in school?”

Lucy licked her spoon clean before stirring her hot chocolate with it. “Well, surprisingly, it also had to do with boobs. Well, boob singular, actually.”

Bella let out a snort of incredulous laughter. “What do you mean?”

“My mother is an artist. Modern stuff, very cutting-edge, or so everyone says. She made a giant sculpture of a boob and it was displayed in a public park in Boston. It was a huge deal, in the newspapers, everything. And on the first day of seventh grade I was nicknamed Boob Girl.”

Bella didn't laugh, much to Lucy's surprise. She'd been speaking lightly, inviting her to share the joke, even though the memory still stung, perhaps because her mother
still
had the power to make her life miserable.

“That sucks,” Bella said after a moment. She slurped a spoonful of whipped cream from her hot chocolate. “Didn't she know how it would affect you?”

“I don't really think she thought about it.”

“Did you tell her?”

“I tried. I asked to change schools actually, because, you know, the damage had already been done. Even if the sculpture had been removed, which it was eventually, I'd still be called Boob Girl.”

Bella nodded wisely. “Yeah, you would have been.”