Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Rachel
Rachel hadn’t actually left the county of Cumbria in nearly a decade.
She hadn’t gone beyond Keswick in more than a year.
Taking the train to Lancaster from Hartley-by-the-Sea and then switching to the express train to Manchester felt akin to scaling the Alps.
The coffee shop at the train station in Lancaster was an adventure in itself, and she ordered a large mochaccino, feeling dangerously decadent.
Meghan and Lily had both been openmouthed with shock when Rachel had announced she was going to Manchester for the day.
“Manchester?” Meghan had said, as if Rachel had suggested she was going to Antarctica or Greenland. “Why? What will you do there?”
“I’m seeing a photography exhibition with Andrew West,” Rachel answered. She’d been trying to sound airy, but the words came out defiant instead.
Meghan stared at her. “I don’t know which part of that sentence surprises me more.”
“Why shouldn’t I go out?”
“With Andrew West?”
Rachel shrugged. She hadn’t decided how she felt about going on a sort of date with Andrew West. On one hand, his occasionally pompous attitude irritated her.
On the other, he was an attractive, intelligent man, and she could tell he really did care about Claire.
And the thought of spending the day in Manchester had become like a drug, a fix she craved.
A day of freedom, of escaping all the pressures and strains of life.
No Nathan to cajole and change while Meghan disappeared.
No mother to visit, enduring a painful hour of garbled speech and frustration. No Lily to nag or worry about.
It took her a while to let go of all those concerns as the train chugged down the coast, and by the time she reached Lancaster and sipped her mochaccino she was starting to relax. Sort of. Now that she’d left Hartley-by-the-Sea behind, Manchester loomed in front of her, intimidating and unknown.
She’d done an Internet search on the exhibition she and Andrew were going to, and it hadn’t looked too artsy, thank goodness. She wasn’t sure she could talk intelligently about art or anything anymore. Her only intellectual outing these days was the pub quiz.
Then of course there was Andrew. How were they supposed to act around each other? This wasn’t a clear-cut date, and Rachel didn’t know if Andrew wanted it to be. There could be all sorts of awkwardness.
He’d said he’d meet her at the station, and so she disembarked from the train, blinking at the vastness of Piccadilly Station, the crowds of people surging around her as she clutched her handbag and felt like Country Mouse.
“Rachel.”
Andrew stood before her, looking as boring as ever in pressed chinos and a blue button-down shirt. The man had absolutely no fashion sense, and this put Rachel at ease. This was Andrew West, not some gorgeous, urban stranger.
“I made it.”
“So you did. I thought we could go right to the exhibition. It’s about a twenty-minute walk.
Unless you’d prefer to get a coffee first?
I thought we could have lunch afterward.
” While speaking, Andrew had put his hands in his pockets and then taken them out again, jangling his keys; with relief Rachel realized he was as nervous as she was.
“We might as well go straight there,” she said. She had a feeling chatting over coffee would be awkward. At least at the exhibition they would have a focus.
Andrew led her out of the station and Rachel tried not to gape at everything.
It had been so long since she’d been in anything close to an urban environment; the sheer size of the station with the arched glass roof of the train shed was enough to impress her.
Then they hit the city streets, and the noise of the cars and buses and trams made her want to cover her ears.
And there were so many people, women in smart work outfits and high heels, men in skinny suits, everyone with smartphones and earbuds and looks of bland indifference on their faces as they strode purposefully down the street, clearly going somewhere important.
Rachel dodged out of the way of a woman who was walking like a ship in full sail, a huge Prada handbag swinging from one shoulder, nearly hitting Rachel full in the face.
“Good grief.” She pressed up against the side of the station and shook her head. “I feel like such a yokel.”
“Come on,” Andrew said, and took her arm. “We’ll walk through the park. The gallery is on the university campus.”
He slipped her arm through his, and it felt almost natural to walk arm in arm, navigating the crowded streets until after a few minutes they reached a quieter section of the city, the university campus with its vast swath of verdant parkland ahead of them.
Rachel had the urge to slip her arm from Andrew’s, because now that the pavement was empty, it didn’t feel quite so natural to be this cozy.
But he was holding her arm quite firmly, and disengaging it would have required an awkward yank, and so she remained arm in arm with him, walking stiffly through Whitworth Park.
The sky was heavy and gray with the damp feel of rain in the air, and even in the park the air smelled of diesel and coal smoke. Even so Rachel felt exhilarated by how different everything was, how big and alive with possibility.
“I haven’t been in a city in years,” she confessed, and Andrew slid her a sideways, smiling glance.
“I can tell.”
“You travel all over the world, right? So Manchester must seem like nothing to you.”
“Cities can often feel the same to me, except for the infrastructure.”
“The infrastructure?”
“Bridges, dams, motorways. That’s the stuff that interests me.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Weird.”
“Yeah, I know. I had a girlfriend back in America who broke up with me because I kept going on about the highway system. Have you seen Spaghetti Junction in Atlanta?”
“Um, no. I’ve barely been out of Cumbria.”
“I mean in pictures. It’s amazing. An aerial view makes it look like a flower. Five stacks rather than the usual four, and ramps for four side roads. It puts the original Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham to shame.”
“You do realize you’re sounding like a complete geek now?” Rachel asked, and he smiled wryly.
“Yes, I realize.”
“But I admire your passion. Clearly you love what you do.”
“I do,” he agreed, and then gave her a wary glance. “And I realize what a privilege that is.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “I’m not going to bite your head off about being rich. That would be rude, considering you invited me here.”
“Oh. Phew. Disaster averted, then.”
“Just.” Were they flirting? It felt like it.
It also felt weird. Fortunately they’d reached the gallery, a huge redbrick Victorian building, by then, and conversation was taken up with the logistics of stowing bags and getting tickets before Andrew led the way towards the new photography exhibition.
Rachel had spent an embarrassing amount of time on the Internet reading up on photography so she’d have something intelligent to say now.
Yet as she stared at the black-and-white photographs, every erudite observation she’d read fled from her brain.
All she could think was that she’d appreciate a little color.
Andrew was, as she’d suspected he would be, the kind of person who stood in front of a photograph for an inordinate amount of time, lips pursed, one finger tapping his chin, as he studied it carefully.
Rachel stood next to him, shifting her weight, wondering how on earth you could look at a single picture for five minutes. What was there to see?
“What do you think?” he asked after a few minutes, and her mouth dried.
“Um . . .” She stared at the photograph of a ceiling fan taken from above, so its shadow could be seen on the white floor. “It’s very . . .” She searched for a word. “Stark.”
“Yes, I think so too.”
“And very . . . monochrome.” She glanced at him, wondering if he really was this pretentious, only to see with relief that his mouth was quirking in a small smile.
“Yes, I agree. Considering it’s black-and-white photography, that is quite an astute assessment.”
“I thought so.” She laughed then, an uncertain hiccup, and Andrew grinned.
“I’m not actually a huge art fan.”
“Then why did you invite me to an exhibition?”
“Because I figured you’d rather see this than the Worsley Braided Interchange.”
“The what?”
“The motorway outside the city that connects the M61 with the M62. It really is a remarkable feat of engineering.”
She laughed and shook her head. “You’re right. I’d rather see this.”
They breezed through the rest of the photographs, spending no more than a minute on each one, competing with each other for the most inane or over-the-top comment, before they were finished and back out in the lobby. It was half past eleven.
“We did that a bit more quickly than I anticipated,” Andrew said as he glanced at his watch. “I thought we’d stay in the exhibition until one, and then have lunch in the café here until three. Then we were going to walk around the city until five. . . .”
“It’s okay if we don’t keep to your schedule, isn’t it?” Rachel teased. She felt much more relaxed now that they’d gotten the photography out of the way. The realization that Andrew was less pompous and more geeky than she’d thought was a huge relief.
“I suppose,” he said, and took her arm again. This time it didn’t feel quite so awkward.
Rachel suggested a walk in the park until lunchtime, which was a mistake because they’d walked right to the center of it when the rain started bucketing down.
Gallantly, Andrew put his coat over Rachel’s head, leaving him soaked, and they sprinted for the nearest shelter, a public toilet that stank and had a homeless man sleeping off a binge in the doorway.
“The charms of urban life,” Rachel said. “I almost miss Hartley-by-the-Sea.”
Andrew glanced at her seriously. “Do you? There must be something quite nice about living in a place where everyone knows you.”