Chapter 1 #3
Rachel loaded her cleaning supplies into the back of the hatchback she used to get to her various jobs; Campbell Cleaners was painted on the side, along with her mobile phone number.
Her sister Meghan had protested the advertisement, since the car was the only one they had, but Rachel had ignored her.
“When you’re making as much money as I am,” she’d stated, “then you can buy your own car, or at least contribute more to the family finances.”
Meghan had rolled her eyes, caught as ever between laughing it off and being annoyed. Lily had looked guilty, and her mother had pretended not to hear the whole exchange.
Now Rachel slid into the driver’s seat of her car and headed down the steep, winding lane from the Wests’ house to the beach road.
The wind had started up again, blowing off the sea, and the clumps of daffodils that lined the road huddled against its onslaught.
She had ten minutes to get to her cleaning job for the Browns, a busy family with two working parents and three school-aged children, and then she’d drop the ironing she’d done for Juliet Bagshaw at Tarn House Bed-and-Breakfast before heading back home to see to dinner, tidy up, and make sure Lily, who was only two months away from doing her A levels, put in at least three hours of study.
She was predicted for three As, maybe even an A star in biology, and if she got the marks, she would be going to University of Durham in the autumn.
Rachel was determined to see that happen.
Three hours later Rachel pulled up to the terraced house on the upper end of Hartley-by-the-Sea’s high street that had been her home since she was a baby.
The gutters were crooked, the paint on the front door was peeling, and the once-white net curtains framing the front window were the color of weak tea.
Her house was definitely not an advertisement for her cleaning services, but then, she didn’t have time to clean her own house.
Rachel hauled her cleaning supplies from the back of the car and headed inside.
The first thing she heard was three-year-old Nathan’s shrieking.
She walked into the kitchen, tossing the mop and pail into a corner, and glanced at her sister Meghan.
Nathan was clinging to Meghan’s legs while she sat at the table, flicking through a magazine.
Rachel glanced at the lurid titles on the cover: My Child’s Past Lives and My Fur Stole’s Haunted by the Fox!
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Meghan?”
Her sister looked up from the magazine. “What?”
“You’re reading rubbish while Nathan is screaming his head off.” At that moment Nathan chose to go silent, staring at Rachel with wide eyes.
“He’s been screaming all day. He’s getting teeth.”
“He’s three. He has all his teeth.”
“His molars or something. Trust me, I know.” She dropped her magazine onto the table and leaned forward. “Nath, open your mouth.”
Solemnly Nathan opened his mouth wide, and Meghan peered inside. “See? Molars,” she said triumphantly, and Rachel spared a sympathetic glance for her nephew’s reddened, swollen gums before she shrugged off her coat.
“He should have some Calpol.” She fished in the cupboard for a bottle of children’s medicine, the lid sticky with residue, and handed it and a spoon to Meghan, who took it with a sigh, dropping her magazine on the table.
Rachel turned to Lily, who was standing in front of the stove, her red hair, the same color as Rachel’s, caught in a messy knot as she hummed tunelessly and stirred the sauce.
“Lily, you should be studying.”
“I did some homework at school—,” Lily began.
“That’s great, but you could get a little more in—”
“Oh, give it a rest, Rach,” Meghan cut in. “You’re always on her case.”
Rachel stiffened. “I don’t mean to nag, but this is a very important year—”
“And so was last year, and the year before that. Lily’s fine.”
“Of course you would say that,” Rachel answered with a sigh. Meghan had left school at sixteen with only a handful of barely passing marks. “Seriously, Lily,” she said, and she gently elbowed her sister out of the way. “Let me do this. You can get a half hour of revision in before tea.”
Lily hesitated. “I don’t actually have that much to do. . . .”
“Lily, your exams begin in—” Rachel glanced at the calendar above the sink. “Seven weeks. You need to keep at it. You know that. It’s hard, I know, but it’s so worthwhile.”
“She can have a twenty-minute break, can’t she?” Meghan interjected, and tossed the Fate she only did three nights a week at the Hangman’s Noose.
“I’d better get on, then.” She stood up, settling Nathan onto her hip.
“Time for the tub, Nath. Aunt Rachel won’t want to bathe you. She’s too grumpy.”
“I’ll read you a story after tea tonight,” Rachel promised Nathan, who smiled hopefully in response.
Meghan headed upstairs with Nathan, and Rachel listened, wincing, as the taps went on and the pipes screeched.
She imagined the headline on the cover of Fate it was as much of a mess as the kitchen, with half-drunk cups of tea making damp rings on the coffee table, along with a towering Play-Doh creation of Nathan’s and two Lottery scratch cards, a vice of her mother’s that Meghan happily enabled even though Rachel had forbidden it.
They couldn’t afford to play the Lottery, and it was a waste of money.
She’d tried to explain the ridiculous odds of winning to Meghan, and her sister had rolled her eyes.
“You don’t get it, do you, Rachel?” she’d said, to which Rachel had replied tartly, “I was just about to say the same to you.”
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.