Chapter 6 #2
She showered and changed into yoga pants and a hoodie, gazing out at the shrubs and flower beds below.
The hedges were clipped to military precision and the flower beds looked ruthlessly weeded.
Absently Claire wondered how much her parents spent on gardening, and why, when they came to Hartley-by-the-Sea for a couple of weekends a year. Maybe.
The answer, of course, was obvious. Appearances.
“Claire?” Andrew knocked on the door but didn’t open it. “Fancy a takeaway?”
“From where? You’re not in Manchester, you know.”
“There’s a chippy in Egremont, if I remember correctly. Or an Indian place in Whitehaven. How about a curry?”
For the first time since her brother had arrived Claire felt genuinely glad he was there. Sharing a takeaway sounded so cozy, so normal. And she could use someone to talk to, even stodgy Andrew. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s have a curry.”
An hour later—takeaway in Cumbria was not, by any means, fast food—they were sitting at the kitchen table with Andrew dividing the basmati rice into precise halves.
Claire glanced at the fine china and crystal glasses Andrew had put out as she tore off a strip of naan bread. “Pretty fancy for a takeaway.”
“It’s always worth doing something properly.”
“Of course.” Andrew was definitely their mother’s son.
“I can’t remember the last time we were here together,” Claire remarked. Andrew sat back in his chair, reflecting.
“Your graduation from uni maybe?” He glanced around the kitchen with its top-end appliances. “It hasn’t felt like home for a while.”
“I know. It’s strange to me, in a way, that it ever was home. I thought Mum and Dad would sell it.”
Andrew’s mouth twisted wryly. “I think they like having a second home in the Lake District, even if we’re two hours away from the tony part.”
“Maybe. Funny, though, that they never really got involved here.”
“I don’t know.” Andrew ladled some chicken korma onto both of their plates. “Dad was busy in Leeds, and Mum was busy with you.”
Claire grimaced. “Yes, I know.” She’d been her mother’s full-time job. “So, were you sad to leave Minneapolis?” she asked as they both started eating.
“Not particularly. Were you sad to leave Portugal?”
“Not particularly.” They smiled at each other, strangely conspiratorial, and then being Andrew, he got serious again.
“Have you heard from Hugh?”
“Nope.” Claire swallowed a piece of chicken that seemed poised to stick in her throat. “I think I’ve been officially dumped.”
“Mum seemed to think the two of you might get back together.”
Claire grimaced. “Of course Mum thinks that. She loved Hugh. Probably still loves him.” Hugh ticked all of her mother’s boxes: wealthy, intelligent, good-looking, successful, charming.
Shallow and with a hidden cruel streak too, although those qualities might not have bothered her mother, if she’d ever noticed them.
“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 brother they had a whole wall of framed advance 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.