Chapter 7 #2
“She must have done.” Rachel closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat.
“I must have forgotten. I’m sorry.” Why hadn’t she written it on the calendar?
She couldn’t remember Lily telling her about it, but then she often felt as if she were doing four things at once, and none of them well.
Lily might have told her and she hadn’t registered it.
Sighing, she turned on the car and put the heat on high. “Could I make it up? Sometime this week, perhaps?”
“I’m free tomorrow afternoon, if you’d like to come in.”
She cleaned two holiday cottages tomorrow afternoon, but she could do it in half the time if she hustled. “Of course.”
“I’ll see you at four.”
“Thank you, Miss—” Too late Rachel realized she didn’t actually know the woman’s name.
“Taylor,” the woman said, and Rachel heard a note of reproof in the woman’s voice.
What kind of mother didn’t know the name of her daughter’s teacher?
Except Rachel wasn’t Lily’s mother. “I’m Lily’s biology teacher.
The other teachers might want to see you, too, if you want to make the arrangements. ”
When the call ended, Rachel sat there for a moment, the phone cradled in her hand, exhaustion crashing over her.
She saw a movement in the front window of the Wests’ house, and the pale sliver of a face between curtains before it moved away.
Andrew, no doubt, wondering what she was doing sitting in his driveway.
She reversed out of the Wests’ sweeping drive and headed down the beach road.
Four hours later Rachel pulled up outside her house, reversing into a parking space that gave her two inches on either end and hitting her neighbor’s bumper in the process.
With a groan she got out to assess the damage and saw that it was a tiny scratch that could be buffed out with a rag and some polish, but Edgar Lacey would read her the riot act about it anyway.
He was incredibly precious about his old banger, polishing it to a tired shine every Saturday morning while wearing nothing more than a vest and gym shorts.
Not a sight Rachel liked to look at while eating her Shreddies.
She decided to tackle him later and headed inside to the chaos that was the Campbell home.
The noise hit her first: Nathan screaming at the top of his lungs, Lily’s pulsing techno music, and her mother calling for something, a chaotic orchestra of her family life whose tune she usually didn’t mind. Today she found it nearly unbearable.
Rachel dumped her stuff in the cupboard under the stairs and headed first for her mother, poking her head around the doorway.
“Mum?”
“Sorry, love,” Janice wheezed. She was lying flat on her back as she did whenever the pain was really bad, her face pale and gray. “It’s just I’ve run out of pills and my back is aching something fierce.”
“You shouldn’t have run out,” Rachel said with a frown. She retrieved the brown plastic bottle from the bedside table and squinted to read the instructions. “Meghan had this filled only last week, and they’re meant to last a month.”
Her mother smiled in apology. “Poor Meghan spilled some in the toilet of all things, when she went to get me a glass of water. She forgot she had the open bottle in her hand.”
Which sounded a lot like Meghan. Rachel put the bottle back on the table. “I’ll phone the chemist’s emergency number.” Which would cost money they couldn’t afford, as well as a drive into Whitehaven. “Can you manage with ibuprofen till then?”
Her mother winced but then lifted her chin in what looked like a pantomime of bravado. “I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I?”
“Yes, I’m afraid you will.” Her voice came out sharper than she meant for it to. She was starting to feel savage; everything today seemed to be crowding her in, reminding her of how small and suffocating her life was and always would be.
She fetched a bottle of ibuprofen and poured her mother a glass of water. Janice Campbell heaved herself up against the pillows.
“Sorry, love.”
“It’s not your fault.” Bloody Meghan. With an impatient breath, Rachel helped her mother to rest against the pillows and then handed her two tablets.
“Better make it three.”
Wordlessly Rachel shook out a third and handed it over. After her mother had swallowed the pills, she headed upstairs to where Lily’s music and Nathan’s wailing were competing in both volume and aggravation. Rachel decided to tackle Meghan first.
“Meghan, why didn’t you deal with the prescription before I came home?”
“Say again?” Meghan glanced up from the mirror propped on top of her dresser, a lipstick in one hand. Nathan was wrapped around her legs, his head peeking out between her knees. At Rachel’s entrance, he’d stopped crying, at least for a second.
“Ray-Ray!”
“Hey, Nath.” She patted his head before turning back to Meghan. “Mum’s prescriptions. She said you dropped half the pills down the toilet this morning. But you had all day to deal with it, and you didn’t.”
Meghan stared at her for a moment, nonplussed, and then turned back to gaze at her reflection. “Oh. Yeah.” Slowly she leaned forward and outlined her lips in carmine red.
“Meghan. Seriously? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Meghan shrugged, her eyes still on her reflection. “What would you like me to say?”
“Oh, I don’t know? Sorry, maybe?”
“Okay. Sorry.” She smacked her lips together, unrepentant.
“Why didn’t you phone the prescription in, or text me?
I could have picked it up on the way home.
” Meghan didn’t answer, and for the first time since she’d come into the room, Rachel registered her sister’s outfit: tight miniskirt, clingy top, and way too much makeup.
“You’re not working at the pub tonight, are you? ”
“Nope.”
“Then why . . . ?” Nathan started crying again, a halfhearted attempt that told Rachel he was either exhausted or knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere. Probably both.
“I’m going out.” Meghan nudged Nathan with her foot. “Oy. A little quieter.”
“Going out? And I’m babysitting Nathan, I suppose?”
Meghan flicked her gaze from her reflection to Rachel. “I’ll put Nathan to sleep first, if you can’t be arsed.”
“He’s your son,” Rachel snapped, then took a deep breath. This wasn’t Nathan’s fault. “Sorry.”
“You should be.”
Meghan hauled Nathan up onto her hip, and he hooked one hand around the neckline of her top so Rachel could see the strap of a cherry-red bra underneath. It looked new.
“Are you going out on a date?”
“Maybe.”
Meghan had always been tight-lipped about her love life.
No one even knew who Nathan’s father was, only that he wasn’t in the picture and never had been.
One day she’d announced she was pregnant, she was keeping the baby, and no one was to question or even discuss it.
Rachel had been overwhelmed at the thought of coping with a newborn along with their mother and Lily, but she could hardly demand Meghan not have the baby.
And she loved Nathan, even if she felt as if her maternal affection had been spent on Lily.
Since Nathan’s birth Meghan went out on the occasional Saturday night with some girlfriends, but never on a Wednesday and never looking like . . . that. “You’re not dressed like a maybe,” Rachel said, and Meghan smiled smugly.
“Just because you haven’t been able to get it on with Rob Telford doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
“You’re going on a date with Rob Telford?”
“No, but then neither are you.”
Rachel shook her head, exasperated. “So who, then?”
“Never you mind. Come on, Nath.” Meghan yanked a pair of Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas from the top drawer of the bureau she shared with her son. “Time to get ready for bed.”
“I haven’t even started tea yet—”
“Nathan and I had toasties down at the beach café.”
“In this weather?” It was still raining outside, the drops hitting the windows like bullets.
Meghan shrugged. “It gave us something to do, and Nathan likes to play with Noah.” She picked Nathan up and plopped him on the bed, stripping the clothes from his toddler-belly body with practiced speed.
“If you need something to do, how about cleaning the house? Or making tea? Or getting Mum’s prescription refilled?”
For a second Meghan’s eyes flashed with ire. “I took care of my own tea, and you’ll find the sitting room is actually decent.”
“And Mum’s prescription—”
“I forgot. I’m sorry, okay?” Her voice rose, and alarmed, Nathan let out an experimental cry they both ignored. Meghan took a deep breath and flipped her hair over her shoulders. “Look, I told you I’ll put Nathan to bed before I go out. What’s the big deal?”
The big deal was Rachel wanted to go out.
She wanted to escape the confines of her life for an evening, flirt with Rob Telford or anyone, forget for a few minutes.
She stared at Meghan for a few seconds and then sighed.
“There’s no big deal. Come on, Nathan.” She scooped the little boy up into her arms. “How about we do some coloring?”
“He could use some Calpol before bed,” Meghan said as she grabbed her jacket, a red scrap of cotton that looked as skimpy as her top. “He’s still teething.”
“I believe you,” Rachel said, and started for the hallway.
“Rachel?” Meghan called, and for once her voice sounded uncertain. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Rachel set Nathan up with a coloring book and crayons while she tidied the kitchen; the sitting room might have been decent, but the kitchen was not.
Then she put some sausages in the oven for dinner and went back upstairs to confront Lily.
Meghan had already left, banging the front door behind her.
“Lily?” Rachel poked her head into her sister’s bedroom. Lily was lying on her stomach on her bed, music blaring, a sketch pad in front of her.
She looked up warily. “Yeah?”
Rachel leaned against the doorframe, trying to summon the energy for what had the potential to be another difficult conversation. “Hey, your parent-teacher conference was yesterday. Why didn’t you remind me?”
Guilt flashed across her sister’s face. “You seemed tired.”
“I still wanted to go,” Rachel said. She studied Lily’s face; her sister looked as if she was hiding something.
Rachel recognized the downcast gaze, the bit lip, from when Lily had been small.
But this wasn’t a case of sneaking a sweet.
“Did you tell me about the conference in the first place?” she asked carefully.
“No,” Lily said after a second’s pause. “I didn’t want to.”
“Lily.” Rachel tried to keep the hurt from her voice. “Why not?”
“Because I knew what the teachers were going to say. You didn’t need to hear it.”
“Maybe I should be the one to make that decision. And I am going to hear it, because your biology teacher called me this afternoon. I want to be involved, Lily.”
Lily’s face took on a closed, pinched look. “What did she say?”
“Just that I missed the conference. I’m seeing her tomorrow afternoon. And I’ll see the others too, if you give me their details.” Besides biology, Lily took further maths and business studies. She’d dropped Design and Technology after she’d completed her AS level.
Wordlessly, Lily wrote some names down on her sketch pad, tore off the strip of paper, and handed it to Rachel. “Their e-mail addresses are on the school Web site.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said, wishing this wasn’t such a battle. Didn’t Lily realize how lucky she was? How much opportunity she had? She knew Lily wouldn’t appreciate her reminders, and so she said nothing.
The smell of burning sausages brought her back downstairs. She had just taken them out of the oven—blackened on one side, raw on the other—when the front doorbell rang.
With a groan Rachel dumped the tray of sausages onto the stovetop and went to the door.
Her mouth opened in shock and no words came out when she saw Andrew West standing there, his expression as serious as ever.
“Hello, Rachel,” he said. “Can we talk?”