Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Claire
Things had changed. Shifted just a little, but Claire noticed. The tension that had existed between her and Dan while they worked had eased. It wasn’t gone completely, and they were hardly palling around, but things felt gentler somehow. Friendlier.
Dan had given her more responsibility at the shop, and now he took Bunny out for a walk every day for an hour or so while Claire manned the till. He’d even suggested he train her to be a postal assistant, so she could work the post office as well as the shop counter.
“I’m just getting the hang of the Lotto cards,” Claire had joked. “Are you really going to trust me with stamps?”
“There’s a lot more to running the post office than stamping a few letters,” Dan had answered shortly. So they definitely weren’t palling around, but it was enough. It was good.
Other parts of her life had started to bloom and grow too; she’d had coffee with Abby down at the beach café a couple of times, and they’d taken to power-walking along the coast several evenings a week, while Mary, Abby’s grandmother, watched Noah.
It had started as simply a way to get some exercise, but Claire thought they both enjoyed the conversation.
Abby had returned to Hartley-by-the-Sea less than a year ago and felt almost as much of an offcomer as Claire did.
“If you leave here, no matter for how long, it’s not the same as staying,” she said as they descended from the coastal path to the beach on the far end of the village.
The tide was out, and the beach was a lovely long stretch of wet sand that glimmered under the evening sunlight, the rocks smoothed to shining darkness.
Claire breathed in the salty, sea-damp air, every part of her reveling in the purity of the moment.
“Why did you leave?” she asked Abby.
“University. I went to Leeds to study medieval literature. Not the most useful of subjects.”
“I studied art history, so I’m not one to talk.”
“No. Well. Coming back has been harder than I expected, especially with Noah.”
“Noah’s dad . . . ?” Claire ventured to ask, and Abby’s expression closed up.
“He died when Noah was a baby. Motorcycle accident.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry—”
“I’m not sure he would have stayed around, if he’d lived,” Abby answered with a shrug. She sounded diffident, but Claire recognized the slump of her shoulders, how sorrow weighed on her like a mantle. “But coming back to a place like Hartley-by-the-Sea with a kid in tow has its challenges.”
“There are a few single mums around though, aren’t there? Rachel’s sister Meghan . . .”
“Yes, I’m not alone there. But it’s still not easy.”
“And will you stay? Keep running the beach café?” Abby had already told her that she’d taken over the café when her grandmother had had a heart attack six months ago.
“Probably,” Abby answered with a rueful laugh. “I’ll probably still be here thirty years from now, slinging toasted sandwiches and trying to make the espresso machine work. Well, it could be worse.”
“You’ve done a lot with the café, from what I’ve heard. Lucy’s art on the walls . . .” Claire had admired a watercolor of a field of buttercups, with a single baleful sheep in the distance.
Abby smiled. “Yes, Lucy’s art is brilliant. And I’d love to do more of that. Add local books, have mini exhibitions . . .” She trailed off with a sigh. “Right now it’s all I can do to keep the place running, never mind make improvements.”
“Maybe when Noah starts school . . .”
“Yes. Maybe.” Abby turned her curious gaze on Claire. “What about you? Are you going to be stacking tins forever?”
“I hope not. Dan’s mentioned training me to be a postal assistant.” She had a rather ridiculous desire to get behind that Plexiglas counter to weigh and stamp letters.
“You know what I mean, though. You’re not going to work in a shop for the rest of your life?”
“Why not?” Claire challenged. “Everyone has this idea that I’m too good or too smart to work in a shop, but plenty of people do, and I actually enjoy it. Why shouldn’t I work there forever?”
Abby laughed and shook her head. “I don’t have an answer for that one.”
Of course eight hours of doing inventory in the tiny, airless storeroom the next day made Claire reconsider her declaration. Dan had been in a particularly surly mood, snapping at her and finding fault with everything she did. It was as if the last few weeks of friendliness hadn’t happened.
“That’s me finished,” she announced as soon as it hit four o’clock. She’d been finding semi-plausible excuses to stay at the shop a little later each day, simply because she enjoyed it. Today, however, she practically ripped off her apron and made for the door.
“See you tomorrow, then,” Dan said. He was restacking packs of cigarettes, his back to her, and he didn’t turn around as he spoke.
Claire hesitated, one hand on the door. “Dan . . . you’re all right, aren’t you?”
His big shoulders stiffened, but he didn’t turn around. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’ve been biting my head off all day?” Claire suggested.
“You were slow,” Dan answered. “And I’m fine.”
Claire stared at his back, as hard and broad as a brick wall, and with a sigh she opened the door. “All right, then. Bye.”
She started down the street towards the beach road and Four Gables, facing the prospect of an evening alone, when she abruptly turned around and headed back up it instead. She might not be able to breach Dan’s black mood, but there was someone else she needed to talk to.
Claire hadn’t seen Rachel since she’d been in her kitchen, and she’d been semi-avoiding her to avoid any more awkwardness. But a week and a half on and she knew she needed to own a few of her mistakes.
She stood in front of Rachel’s house just as she had ten days before, minus the macaroni. And once again she wondered if she was making a mistake, and if Rachel was going to go ballistic on her again.
“Oh. You.” Rachel opened the door to her cautious knock and then stood there, unsmiling.
“Your greetings always make me feel so welcomed,” Claire returned dryly. “Yes, it’s me. I wondered if you fancied going out for a drink.”
“A drink?” Rachel’s gaze narrowed. “It’s a bit early, isn’t it?”
“Nearly dinnertime,” Claire replied. “Besides, it’s Friday and I just got off work.”
“Aren’t you a teetotaler now?”
“In theory. But since I’ve decided I don’t actually have a drinking problem, I think I can have a glass of wine with a friend.” She held her breath, bracing herself for Rachel’s setdown.
A steely glint had come into Rachel’s eyes, and her jaw looked tight.
She looked completely stressed, now that Claire looked at her properly.
Shadows under her eyes, her shoulders practically up by her ears, her features seeming blurred with fatigue.
“All right then,” Rachel said, and yanked her coat from the peg. “If you’re buying.”
“I am.” She stepped outside, closing the door behind her, and Claire couldn’t keep from asking, “Do you need to check in with anyone? Lily? Or Meghan?”
“No, why should I?” Rachel returned. She sounded rebellious and sulky, like a child playing truant. Then she took her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll text Lily.”
They walked in silence down to the Hangman’s Noose; it was a golden afternoon, the sky a pale blue, the air still holding the day’s warmth. A few commuters were trickling from the train station, but otherwise the street was peaceful and quiet.
The Hangman’s Noose was nearly empty at four o’clock in the afternoon; a few farmers were huddled with their pints of bitter by the fireplace, although the grate was swept clean of ashes.
Rob Telford was behind the bar, polishing glasses, and he raised his eyebrows in eloquent surprise as they came into the dim, low-ceilinged room.
“What can I get you two ladies?”
“A bottle of red,” Claire said firmly, and Rachel shot her a bemused look.
“A whole bottle? Really?”
“Why not? It’s cheaper, anyway, than two or three glasses.”
“A bottle it is,” Rob said, and took a bottle down from the rack behind the bar. “Cabernet Sauvignon do you?”
“That’s fine,” Claire said, and took the bottle and paid.
They sat at a small table in the back of the near-empty pub, the opened bottle and two wineglasses between them.
“So let the debauchery begin,” Rachel drawled, and Claire managed a laugh as she poured.
“What shall we toast to?” Rachel asked as she took her glass.
“To . . .” Friendship didn’t seem quite right, and Claire couldn’t think of anything else. “To new beginnings,” she finally said, and Rachel nodded and hefted her glass.
“To new beginnings.”
They both sipped their wine, the mood far more awkward than Claire had hoped. She’d asked Rachel out for a drink because she wanted to make amends, maybe even become friends again, but both possibilities seemed beyond her now.
“Right.” She put her wineglass down with a clunk, and Rachel stopped in mid-sip, eyebrows raised.
“I want to say sorry for what happened with us in Year Six.” Rachel stared at her, her glass suspended halfway to her mouth, and resolutely Claire continued.
“I should have said it before. I know it was my fault, at least initially, that we fell out. I should have spoken to you. I shouldn’t have hidden behind those awful Wyndham girls. ”
Rachel gazed at her for a moment and then shook her head. “I appreciate what you’re doing, Claire, but this really is ancient history.”
“I know it happened a long time ago, but it still matters. And when you spoke to me about it, you seemed upset. . . .”