Chapter 23 #2
“So . . .” Alex raked a hand through his hair, shrugging up at her, and Lucy decided to help him out. Help herself out, and end this misery.
“So maybe we should just leave it?” she finished with as practical a tone as she could muster. “It was fun, but . . . ?”
Now it was his turn to finish. And for a second she thought she saw disappointment flicker in his eyes. No, that was probably more of her deluded optimism.
“Fun, but,” he repeated after a moment. “Yes, I suppose that sums it up.”
Nodding slowly, the heart that had free-fallen like a penny now heavy as a stone, Lucy turned and walked back to reception.
A week dragged by, an awful week where Lucy exchanged cordial hellos with Alex and not much more. Once he’d come into the office and attempted some chitchat, but it had been so painfully awkward for both of them that they’d left it.
Lucy told herself she didn’t mind, insisted she had enough going on in her life to be happy about.
And she did. She was teaching art to the Year Fives as well as the Year Sixes now, and she, Rachel, and Juliet had started a new team for the pub quiz with Abby, the granddaughter of Mary Buxton from the beach café and a single mum to a three-year-old boy.
Abby had been living in Newcastle but was staying in Hartley-by-the-Sea for a little while. “Until Mary gets on her feet,” she’d said, although Juliet had told Lucy privately that Mary wasn’t likely to do that anytime soon.
“So what do you think Abby will do?” Lucy had asked.
“Stay, I suppose. Mary’s the only family’s she got, as far as I know. Abby grew up here, but she left as soon as she’d finished school.”
“Do you think she’s glad to be back?” Although they’d done a pub quiz together, she hadn’t gotten to know Abby very well. She hadn’t spoken except to offer a few tentative answers, and she hadn’t even stayed to hear the results, needing to get back to Noah.
“I don’t know,” Juliet answered slowly. “I never got the sense she hated it here, but more that she wanted to see the world. She’s only twenty-four now.”
Lucy and Juliet had taken to spending their evenings together, chatting over dinner and sometimes watching brainless TV shows. Lucy was trying to convince Juliet the merits of reality TV, and so far she thought she’d had some success.
“It’s such rubbish,” Juliet would exclaim as contestants dumped buckets of mud over each other’s heads on one particularly inane program, but she was smiling.
“You just love to criticize,” Lucy answered, and threw a pillow at her.
Some evenings they spent chatting with whatever guests were staying: retired couples or gap year kids or the occasional bus tour of pensioners or pupils.
Lucy liked hearing all their different stories and accents, learning a little bit about their lives before they moved on.
Juliet, she thought, seemed to like it too, although she never said as much.
So really, Lucy told herself as she swept mascara onto her lashes in preparation for another day at Hartley Primary, she had nothing to complain about. So she wasn’t going to dive headfirst into a relationship. With her history, it was better this way. Really.
It was the last day before half term, the weeklong break at the end of October, and Lucy had nothing planned for the holiday week except helping Juliet out with the steady stream of guests booked into Tarn House.
Poppy had already told her, confidingly, that Alex was taking her and Bella to see his in-laws down in London, so Lucy wouldn’t even have the paltry hope of accidentally on purpose bumping into him on the beach when he walked Charlie.
It was just as well, Lucy decided as she started packing up that afternoon.
The children had left at half past one, shouting and running down the hill, delighted to be off school for an entire week.
And maybe some time away from Hartley Primary would help to get Alex out of her system.
She’d certainly be busy enough helping Juliet.
“So what’s going on with you and our head teacher?”
“What?” Lucy looked up to see Diana standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised expectantly. “Nothing’s going on. Why do you even ask?”
Diana glanced furtively at Alex’s closed door; he was working, right up to the last minute. “Because I have it on good authority that you’ve been to his house twice. Late at night.”
“This is your bridge-playing neighbor.”
“That’s the one.”
“I’m friendly with Bella and Poppy,” Lucy said with what she hoped was a convincing shrug. “It’s no big deal.”
“No? Because two dates in Hartley-by-the-Sea is the same as getting married.”
“They weren’t dates.”
“In Hartley-by-the—”
Lucy held up one hand. “Enough, I get it. Trust me, Diana, nothing is going on. You’ll have to find someone else to gossip about.”
Diana must have finally believed her, because she sighed and said, “Pity. I always thought the two of you would make a good couple. You’d bring him out of his shell and he’d keep you tethered to earth.”
Lucy smiled at that but then shook her head. “It’s not going to happen.”
“I suppose you are leaving soon.”
That was something she most definitely didn’t want to think about. “I still have almost two months left,” she protested, but in her head she was calculating the days and she realized her time in Hartley-by-the-Sea was half-finished. How had that happened?
Two months wasn’t a very long time, she realized as she headed back to Tarn House. The first two had gone by in a flash. She had a feeling the next two months would pass even more quickly.
The next week certainly went fast as she helped Juliet; Rachel was away visiting universities with a reluctant Lily, and so Lucy and Juliet did all the housework as well as the fry-up breakfasts and the afternoon teas.
Lucy had never done so much physical labor before, but she enjoyed herself too, chatting with Juliet as they developed a system for the morning (Lucy handled toast, and Juliet manned the Aga), and spending the evenings with guests or on Thursday at the pub doing the quiz.
By Sunday night Lucy was exhausted, and contemplated returning to school the next morning with less than her usual enthusiasm. She didn’t relish seeing Alex again, although the pain of having him back off had, with time and effort, lessened just a little.
Since they were free of guests, Juliet brought a bottle of wine and two glasses into the sitting room; Lucy lay back on the sofa, propping her feet on the arm, something she suspected would have given Juliet fits a few months ago, but which she now eyed slightly askance, saying nothing. Progress, of a kind.
“So what about this baby thing?” Lucy asked when they were both settled with full glasses of wine. It was progress of another kind that she felt brave enough to ask the question.
Juliet glanced warily at her, and then shrugged. “It was a crazy idea. I must have been mad even to think of it. As for asking Peter . . .” She closed her eyes, cringing. “Definitely mad.”
“Biology is a powerful force.”
“I don’t think it was just that. It was more . . .” She sighed and stared at the ceiling. “A baby is like a blank slate. Someone to love, someone to love you, without any of the emotional baggage.”
Lucy considered this for a second before asking carefully, “Don’t you think we’re both bound to bring our baggage to motherhood, Juliet?”
“Well, yes. I suppose. But a baby is genetically programmed to love its mother. I think that was the idea I was fixated on.” She made a face. “Pathetic, really.”
“No, not pathetic. Or if it is, then I’m in that boat with you.
I stayed with Thomas for so long because I wanted someone to love and need me.
And I’ve been looking at Alex the same way.
” Now she was the one to make a face. “Here is this widower with two motherless daughters in desperate need of someone like me to make them all better.”
“It helps that he’s a hottie,” Juliet pointed out.
“Well, yes. There’s that too. Too bad he didn’t feel the same way.” She’d told Juliet, a while back, about the whole “fun, but” conversation. Juliet had made a rude noise, which had made Lucy feel better.
Now they were both silent for a moment, lying on opposite sofas, staring at the ceiling, drinking their wine. “So here we are,” Juliet finally said, “with no men and no babies.”
“At least we’ve got each other.”
“Girl power,” Juliet replied dryly, and Lucy grinned. She felt happier than she had in a long, long time. Happier, perhaps, than when she’d been with Alex.
“Don’t knock it, sister.”
“Oh, please.” But Juliet was grinning back.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you go back to Boston?
” she asked a few minutes later, and Lucy’s smile faded.
She’d managed not to think about returning to Boston for the whole half term, and she didn’t particularly want to think about it now.
“Not really.” She took a slug of wine. “I have no job, no apartment, no boyfriend. There’s not much to go back to.”
“You must have friends. . . .”
“Yes,” Lucy said, and thought of Chloe. She’d Skyped with her a few times, although not in recent weeks. “Yes, I have friends,” she told Juliet. “But I also have friends here.”
“You could stay,” Juliet said, and Lucy blinked at her, startled.
“What . . .”
“I mean, if you wanted to. Only if you wanted to. You’d be welcome here, of course—”
Of course? A few months or even weeks ago there would have been no of course about it. “That’s very kind of you . . . ,” she began, and Juliet rushed in, stumbling a bit over the words.
“I’d understand if you wanted to get your own digs. But if you’re happy in Hartley-by-the-Sea, if you’ve made a life for yourself . . .”
It was all too tempting. Juliet was right; she was happy here. She had a life. And if she stayed here, maybe Alex would change his mind about starting a relationship. Not like that was her main reason, of course.
“The trouble is,” she said to Juliet, “I don’t have a job after Christmas.”
“You could find one,” Juliet answered. “Make one, even. Start a business offering arts and crafts parties for children. Exhibit your paintings locally. the beach café would put them up.”
The beach café. A far cry from an upscale Boston art gallery, and yet she didn’t really mind.
“If you wanted to stay, you could make it happen. It’s just a question of whether you want to.”
“Do you want me to?” Lucy asked. “Really? I wouldn’t cramp your style, horning in on your territory?”
“Oh, Lucy.” Juliet bit her lip, and then shook her head. “No, I’d love if you stayed. But don’t stay just for me.”
Yet Juliet was perhaps the best and most important reason to stay.