Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Rachel
Rachel stared at Andrew West standing on her doorstep and said the first thing that came into her head. “Oh no. Not you.”
“May I come in?”
She really, really did not want Andrew West in her house.
Not with the burned sausages on the stovetop and Lily’s music blasting and her mother groaning faintly from the downstairs bedroom.
Plus she was pretty sure Meghan’s underthings, including several lacy thongs, were draped over the radiator in the sitting room to dry.
“Okay,” Rachel said after a moment, without any grace. She stepped aside so he could enter.
Andrew ducked his head to avoid the low stone lintel and then stood in the tiny hallway, cluttered with shoes and discarded hats and scarves and a whole lot of Lego.
Rachel picked up a woolly beanie that always seemed to be lying on the floor even though no one ever wore it and hung it on one of the coat hooks. “Come into the kitchen,” she said. “I’m just burning our tea.”
Andrew followed her into the kitchen, which was little bigger than the hall, his quiet gaze taking in everything Rachel never wanted someone like him to see.
The peeling linoleum, the ancient cooker and wheezing fridge, the dripping tap and the burned sausages, their greasy smell hanging in the air and clinging to her skin.
Nathan looked up from his coloring book, his expression turning alert at the sight of a stranger.
“Hello,” Andrew said to Nathan, and then he shoved his hands in the pockets of his parka, clearly ill at ease, which gave Rachel a twist of savage amusement.
Let him be a little uncomfortable in her domain.
Let him see how close and constricting her life was.
Fine. It would be worse for him than for her. Maybe.
“I’m not sure why you’re here.” She banged a pot on the stove and reached for a bag of peas from the freezer. Unfortunately she hadn’t realized it was open and as she jerked it out of the freezer, peas sprayed the kitchen floor like tiny green bullets.
“Oops, Ray-Ray,” Nathan said, looking pleased by the mess.
Rachel sighed and pushed the peas into a pile with her foot. “Never mind, Nathan. I’ll clean them up later.”
“I wanted to talk to you about Claire,” Andrew said. “But if you’re busy . . .”
Rachel arched an eyebrow. “Oh, you think I’m busy?” she said as she poured the rest of the peas into the pan. “Why on earth would you think that?”
Andrew neither apologized nor rose to the bait. “I can come back later.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Nathan’s face crumpled a bit. Clearly he was sensing the hostility. Rachel took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm. She didn’t want Nathan dissolving into tears, and frankly, she shouldn’t care what Andrew West thought of anything. Being so openly aggressive showed him she did.
“Sorry, I’m not actually trying to be rude. But is it important? Because I have a lot going on at the moment. As I told you before.”
“Actually, it is,” Andrew said. “I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. I can tell you have a lot going on, Rachel.”
The quietly spoken words deflated her a bit.
“Right, then.” No doubt he wanted to tell the details of Claire’s sob story.
And a tiny, mean little part of her wanted to hear them.
“We can talk, but not here.” She was fighting the urge to push Andrew out of her house before he saw any more of her sad little life.
She’d thought she could take it, but now she didn’t think she could.
“Let me sort things here and then we can talk outside, okay?”
“It’s bucketing down at the moment,” Andrew pointed out. “How about I buy you a drink at the pub?”
Which would be the closest thing she’d had to a date in more than five years. “Not the pub,” Rachel said. She couldn’t bear everyone’s speculative gazes when she came into the Hangman’s Noose with Andrew, the good-natured but uncomfortably pointed ribbing she’d get. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Raymond’s?” he suggested, which was the classy bistro that had opened in the old train station a handful of years ago. Rachel had never been inside.
“Can you go there just for a drink?”
Andrew gave her a look of polite disbelief. “Of course you can.”
And of course he would know these things. “Fine,” she said. “Just give me a minute.”
She ran upstairs and begged Lily to put Nathan to bed, and then checked on her mother, who had thankfully fallen into a doze.
“Damn, the prescription,” she said aloud, and Andrew, who was waiting in the hall, answered politely,
“Can I help?”
“No. I just . . .” She fished her mobile out of her bag and scrolled through her contacts for the number of the out-of-hours pharmacy. “We’d better make this quick,” she told him. “I have to drive into Whitehaven to pick up my mother’s prescription.”
“Why don’t I drive you? We can just as easily have a drink in Whitehaven as in Hartley-by-the-Sea. Raymond’s is overrated, anyway.”
“Oh, is it?” Her mouth twitched in a sardonic smile. “All right, then. Let’s go into Whitehaven.”
She grabbed her jacket, and they walked in silence to his car, parked down the street by the post office shop. Andrew nodded towards the shuttered windows. “Claire took a job there. Today was her first day.”
“She said she was looking for a job,” Rachel answered as Andrew pressed a button on his key ring to unlock a navy blue Lexus. “Glad she found one.”
“Yes, although I don’t know how long she’ll last. She came home today absolutely knackered. Stacking newspapers isn’t really her thing.”
“Is it anyone’s?” Rachel countered. “Most people have a job to make money.”
“Personal fulfillment is important too.”
“Must be nice for some,” Rachel answered, and then, annoyed she’d reverted to being snippy again, she turned her face towards the window.
“Yes,” Andrew agreed after a moment. He’d started the car and pulled away from the curb, driving up the steep hill that led to the A-road. “Not everyone can afford to work in a job they enjoy, I do realize.”
“Well done.” The words slipped out before she could suppress them.
Andrew didn’t respond for a moment. “You really have a chip on your shoulder, don’t you?” he finally remarked mildly.
Rachel turned to face him. “A chip on my shoulder?”
“About money. Or privilege. Whatever.” He shrugged, the movement so dismissive Rachel wanted to slap him.
“Yes, I suppose I do have a chip on my shoulder,” she said, her voice rising. “A bloody great Grand Canyon. But it’s easy for you, isn’t it?”
“Maybe from where you’re standing,” Andrew answered. “Yes. I can see that things aren’t easy for you. Like you said, you have a lot going on.”
Rachel didn’t answer. She’d wanted him to stay smug and condescending, because then she could feel justified in being angry. Instead she felt petty and mean.
“Do you enjoy your job?” Andrew asked. “Housecleaning?”
With effort she kept herself from a snippy retort. “I enjoy some things. Providing for my family—”
“The money aside, though,” Andrew interjected. “Do you enjoy the work?”
“Cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors? No, can’t say I do.” Rachel paused, thinking of Iris Fairley’s conspiratorial grin when she’d slipped her a custard cream. “I like the people,” she admitted. “Helping them, and I don’t mean just by cleaning their houses.”
“How, then?”
She shrugged. “I give people the odd cup of tea, a chance to talk to someone. It’s like free therapy for some, I suppose.”
Andrew was silent, and too late Rachel realized where he’d so neatly led her—right to helping Claire.
“Where exactly are we going?” she asked before he made the obvious suggestion.
“How about the Harborside?”
It was a swanky bar on the harbor that was another place Rachel had never been to. “Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Sounds good.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the three-mile drive into Whitehaven.
Andrew parked the car in the lot by the harbor, and as Rachel stepped out into the damp evening—the rain had stopped, at least—she felt a sudden pinprick of excitement at the prospect of going to a nice place with a fairly attractive man. Even if it was Andrew West.
She glanced at him, his navy blue parka zipped up although she could see the collar of a dark green fleece underneath. He wore dark chinos, ridiculously pressed, and hiking boots. The outdoor version of preppy.
But no matter what his clothes, it was turning into a nice evening, the clouds scudding across a deep violet sky and moonlight glimmering on the placid sea.
Rachel stood for a moment, breathing in the fresh, still-damp air, enjoying the simple fact that she wasn’t in her kitchen cutting sausages into Nathan-sized bites.
“Shall we?” Andrew asked, and with his hand on the small of her back, he guided her towards the bar’s entrance.
It was a classy place, a far cry from the crowded pubs on King Street that stank of old beer and sweat with the TV blaring football at all hours of the day, farmers and shift workers lined up at the counter, heads hung lower over their second or third pints.
The Harborside had big velvet armchairs and sofas and low tables of dark, polished wood. The only sound was the murmuring of voices and the occasional clink of crystal, with a background of soft piano music.
“I didn’t know places like this existed in Whitehaven,” Rachel quipped, and then wished she hadn’t. She’d sounded a little too awed.
“It’s nice enough,” Andrew agreed as he shrugged out of his parka. Rachel took off her coat and, unable to hang it on the back of her armchair, she stuffed it underneath.
“What can I get you?”