Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Claire
After throwing on her clothes and grabbing a banana, Claire bolted out of the house and sprinted down the lane towards the village shop. She was going to be at least twenty minutes late for her first day of work. She’d probably be fired.
She weaved between the trickle of late commuters heading for the station and squeezed past a farmer coming out of the shop with a loaf of bread under one arm and then stood in front of the till, panting, disheveled, and twenty-five minutes late.
“Sorry.”
Dan Trenton didn’t even look up from the till. “You’re late.”
“I know. I overslept. I didn’t hear the alarm.
” She’d slept on her good ear, which she hardly ever did, but the persistent pattering of the rain last night had bothered her, and if she slept that way, she couldn’t hear anything, including the alarm.
Somehow she didn’t think Dan was interested in her excuses.
“I’m really sorry. It will never happen again. ”
Finally he closed the drawer of the cash register and looked up, his expression as unwelcoming as ever. “You can start on the newspapers.”
“The newspapers?”
He nodded towards the empty rack to the right of the counter.
Several stacks of freshly printed and delivered newspapers were pushed up against the wall, each one bound with plastic cord.
“They need to go on the shelves. The Telegraph at the top, the Times underneath, then the Guardian and the local papers at the bottom. Think you can manage that?”
“Telegraph, Times, Guardian, local. Yes. Right.”
Dan handed her a pair of scissors. “To cut the cords,” he explained when she looked at him blankly.
“Okay. Thanks.” He’d turned away even though no one had entered the shop, and so Claire went to work.
It wasn’t particularly interesting work to cut the cords binding the stacks and then slide the newspapers onto the shelves. She glanced at some of the headlines on the national papers; they were the usual dreck about the royal family, an MP who was accused of corruption, troubles with a large bank.
She glanced back at Dan, who was ringing up a loaf of bread and a tin of cat food for a middle-aged woman Claire vaguely recognized. When the woman had gone, she decided to try a little light conversation.
“Do you carry any tabloids?”
“No.”
“They must sell pretty well, though.”
“So does porn, and I don’t sell that either.”
Startled, Claire tried for light. “A man of morals, then.”
“Principles, maybe.” Finally he glanced over at her. “When you’re finished there, you can unload the milk.”
Claire glanced around the little shop; the refrigerated section that usually held milk, butter, and a few pots of yogurt was nearly empty. “Where’s the milk?”
“It hasn’t arrived yet.”
A jogger decked out in a lot of bright spandex came in for a bottle of Vitaminwater and Claire got back to stacking.
By the time she’d finished, she felt tired and dirty, and it was only a little after nine o’clock in the morning.
Still, she’d accomplished something, and that felt good.
While she’d been working, the milkman had arrived, wearing the Cumbrian farmer’s uniform of flat cap, wool jacket, plus fours, and mud-splattered Wellington boots.
He unloaded the milk in a huge plastic crate, chatted with Dan in a nearly incomprehensible accent, and then disappeared.
With the newspapers finished, she started on the milk, developing a rhythm of lifting, swinging, and putting down. She’d finished about half the crate when Dan’s voice, sharp with irritation, stopped her cold.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
Claire’s mouth dried and her mind spun. She hated confrontation. And Dan Trenton was looking extremely confrontational, with his massive hands planted on his hips, biceps bulging, and his face contorted into the darkest scowl Claire had yet to see him make.
“Stacking the milk?”
“You’ve smeared the newspaper ink all over the bottles,” Dan exclaimed. “Don’t you even look at what you’re doing?”
Claire blinked, and then saw the black ink smeared across the glass of the pint bottles. She looked down at her hands and realized they were covered in ink smudges from the freshly printed newspapers. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Obviously.”
She could feel heat surging into her face. “I’ll wipe it off—”
“Go wash your hands,” Dan ordered. “There’s a sink in the back.” He pointed towards a door in the back of the shop, by the post office counter.
Feeling like a scolded schoolgirl, Claire went. The door opened onto a narrow passage that led to the area behind the post office on one side and on the other to what she realized must be Dan’s living quarters.
She was just stepping through to the kitchen when she heard Dan call, “Mind the dog.”
“Dog . . . ?” She looked around nervously; she really wasn’t a dog person, and Dan Trenton didn’t seem like the type to have one of those cute little keep-in-your-handbag ones.
“She doesn’t bite,” Dan called, which wasn’t all that reassuring. “Just don’t pet her.”
Claire stepped cautiously into the kitchen, but she didn’t see any dog.
She breathed a sigh of relief and then glanced around, taking in the tiny room with its ancient appliances and a big stone farmhouse sink, a window overlooking a small courtyard of cracked concrete.
The kitchen was tidy to the point of barrenness, the only sign that anyone actually lived here a single bowl and spoon drying in the dish drainer.
Claire washed her hands at the sink, her gaze moving around the room.
She was curious, wanting to pry a little into Dan’s life, but there was nothing to see.
As she dried her hands on the tea towel hanging on the railing of the small cooker, she saw a flight of steep, narrow stairs leading to the second floor.
She couldn’t see what was at the top, and she wondered if the rest of Dan Trenton’s little house was as clean and empty as his kitchen.
Deciding she’d spent enough time speculating, she turned to go back into the shop, and that was when she saw the dog cowering under the table.
“Oh . . .” She felt a surprising dart of sympathy for the animal.
It was trembling with what could only be terror.
“Hey,” she said softly to the dog, and it cringed back.
It was white with brown and black patches and looked like some kind of springer.
Maybe. She’d never been good at identifying breeds.
She heeded Dan’s warning about not petting it and hurried back into the shop. An elderly woman was standing by the newspapers, squinting at the cover of the Telegraph.
“Can I help you?” Claire asked, and the woman’s head jerked up.
“I can pick out my own paper, thank you,” she snapped, and tucking the paper under her arm, she reached for a pint of milk.
Dan must have polished the bottles, for there were no traces of smeared ink to be seen on the glass. Claire stood there uncertainly while the woman took her purchases to the counter.
“That will be two pounds twenty,” Dan said. He wasn’t friendly to anyone, it seemed, except maybe the milkman.
The woman retrieved a little coin purse of faded, embroidered silk. “I knew your mother,” she said as she counted out several twenty-pence coins. “We were both in the embroidery club.”
It wasn’t until the woman had pushed the coins across to Dan that Claire realized she’d been speaking to her.
“Oh, did you? I didn’t know Mum embroidered.”
“Every Tuesday for ten years,” the woman said as she collected her paper and milk. “Until she moved down to London.” She glanced at Claire, her eyes small and shrewd in her wrinkled face. “You can tell her Eleanor Carwell says hello.”
“Yes, of course I will, Mrs. Carwell,” Claire answered.
“It’s ‘Miss,’” she said, and left the shop.
Claire sagged a little. She’d been at this job for less than two hours and already she wanted to go home.
She didn’t think she could stand Dan Trenton’s unfriendliness along with a potential parade of villagers who knew her or her family, not to mention the fact that she’d done a rubbish job at the most basic thing Dan had asked of her.
Resolutely she turned to him. She wasn’t going to give up now. “Thank you for wiping off the milk bottles. I would have done it, though.” Dan grunted in reply. “What should I do now?” Claire asked.
For a second she thought she saw something flicker on his face, some semi-positive emotion, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure.
“You can check the expiration dates on all the tins,” Dan said, and pointed to a shelf of baked beans, tomato soup, and other basic items. “Throw out anything that’s expired.
” He reached under the counter and produced a cardboard box. “Think you can manage that?”
“Yes,” Claire answered a bit sharply. She could only take so much sarcasm. “I know I am new to this, but I’m not an idiot.” Dan didn’t reply.
“I didn’t know you had a dog,” she remarked as she started searching for the expiration dates stamped on a variety of unappealing-looking tins.
“Why would you?”
“I don’t know. He never comes into the shop?”
“She, and no. That wouldn’t be hygienic.”
Claire pictured the dog cringing under the table. “But she must get lonely.”
“I take care of her fine. I walk her at lunchtime and at the end of the day.”
“I . . . I didn’t mean . . .” Claire began, and Dan sighed.
“I know you didn’t,” he said, and turned away.