Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Rachel
“Are you dating Andrew West?”
“What?” Rachel glanced back over her shoulder to see Meghan standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her hands planted on her bony hips.
“I think you heard me.”
“Dating?” Rachel repeated, simply to stall for time. “Of course not.”
“He’s been around here an awful lot.”
“Two weekends,” Rachel dismissed. “He’s being kind.”
“It doesn’t seem like pity to me.”
“I didn’t say pity.” She didn’t know what was going on with her and Andrew, but she certainly wasn’t about to talk to Meghan about it.
Things had eased up a bit between them, but they were hardly confidantes.
And she hated how Meghan had found her weak spot so easily and slipped the blade right in, all with a smile on her face. Pity. God, she hoped not.
“What’s going with you and Mystery Man, anyway?” Rachel asked. “You haven’t seen him much this week.”
“You asked me to be around.”
“Since when does what I’ve asked make a difference?”
Meghan sighed. “The truth is he’s married.”
The statement, delivered so flatly, so hopelessly, made Rachel turn around from where she’d been scrubbing a pan in the sink. “Seriously?”
Meghan’s face was sober, all traces of sisterly malice gone. “Seriously.”
“Oh, Meghan.” Rachel sorted through all the responses she instinctively wanted to say—how could you being at the top of the list—and came up with “That sucks.”
Meghan gave a hollow laugh. “Yeah. It does.”
“Why . . . ?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Meghan said. “No one wants to have an affair with a married bloke.”
“So what happened?”
“He came into the pub one night. He wasn’t a regular, I’d never seen him before. He started chatting me up, and then he asked if I wanted to get a proper drink somewhere else, after my shift.”
“And you went? With a stranger?”
“Just down to Raymond’s. I wasn’t going to get in his car or anything like that.
” Meghan drew a shaky breath and pushed a hand through her hair.
“He was nice, Rachel, okay? And interesting. And even better, he was interested in me. Do you know how long it’s been since someone’s seemed interested in me? ”
“Do you know how long it’s been for me?”
“Are we having a competition about how unlovable we are?”
Rachel cracked a small smile. “Maybe.” She turned back to the pan in the sink, its bottom blackened from about a thousand grilled sausages. “Did you know he was married then?”
Meghan was silent for a long moment. “I suspected,” she said at last. “But I pretended I didn’t.”
“Pretended to yourself?” Rachel glanced back at her sister, and Meghan lifted her chin.
“Yeah. I did.”
Could she really criticize? Rachel sighed. “Are you still seeing him?”
“I don’t know.” Meghan folded her arms, lowered her head. “He hasn’t called in a while.”
“You mean he broke it off with you?” Rachel had hoped her sister had had enough self-respect to break it off first.
“It looks that way. I told him about Nathan.” She paused. “He didn’t like that I had a kid.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d start thinking of him as a father for Nathan, I suppose. He wanted a fling, and he was afraid I wanted more. So he scarpered.” She let out a hard laugh. “It’s happened only about a million times before, all over the world.”
Rachel hesitated. “Is that what happened with Nathan’s dad?”
Meghan stilled, her arms wrapped around her middle, her expression turning guarded. “Not exactly. He wasn’t in the picture to begin with.”
“You’ve never talked about him.”
“You’ve never asked.”
“That’s because it was glaringly obvious you didn’t want me to.” Rachel turned off the taps, leaving the blackened pan to soak. She’d had enough of useless scrubbing. “Do you want me to now?”
Meghan didn’t answer for a moment. Rachel waited, not sure how to navigate this fragile peace. “He wasn’t from here,” Meghan said finally. “He was hiking with some friends from uni. I met him down at the beach.”
“And?”
“And? What do you think?” Meghan rolled her eyes. “We had a couple of beers down on the beach and got it on. Nathan was the result. By the time I knew I was up the duff, he was halfway to Robin Hood’s Bay.”
“It only takes ten days to hike to Robin Hood’s Bay.”
“Whatever. He was back home, then, in Southampton or wherever.”
“And you didn’t try to get in touch?”
Meghan was silent for a long moment, her face averted. “I tried. I looked him up on Facebook.” A pause as she twirled a strand of hair around her finger and then tugged hard. “He refused my friend request. Dangers of dating in the cyber age, I suppose.”
Rachel processed that for a few seconds. “You didn’t try to get in touch another way?”
“I sent him a message on Facebook. It’s probably in his ‘other’ folder. Or he just ignored it. What else was I supposed to do?” She sighed impatiently. “He was eighteen, Rachel, about to start university. I don’t think he wanted a kid with the tart he hooked up with while hiking.”
“But you wanted a kid.” Rachel paused, not sure how to ask the next question. Meghan guessed it anyway.
“Why did I keep Nathan?” she asked, her voice low even though he was safely asleep upstairs.
“Because I wanted someone to love me. Someone who has to love me, because that’s what kids do.
” She took a quick, hitched breath. “You’re not the only one who was affected by Dad leaving the way he did.
I know you were his favorite, but I missed him too. ”
They never talked about their father. Never talked about how he walked out one day, never to return or even to look back.
Never to send a single e-mail or text or postcard.
What kind of dad did that? Rachel remembered sitting on his shoulders while they watched the rugby in Whitehaven, flying a kite on the beach, the fierce wind reducing it to tatters.
She remembered sitting with him outside in the garden while he whittled a piece of wood to make her a whistle.
Meghan had memories like that as well; Rachel had simply never considered them before.
“Of course you did.” She felt her throat close up. “I never meant to act as if you didn’t. . . .”
“No? You acted like you were the only one who was hurt by Dad’s leaving. Like he left you and not all of us.” Meghan spoke flatly, without reproach, but Rachel felt skewered.
“Meghan, I didn’t . . .” She trailed off, unable to continue. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I felt I’d lost the most by having to leave Durham.” The admission was both obvious and painful.
“I know. You were escaping.” Meghan sighed, pushing her hair away from her face. “I thought about not calling you.”
“What? How on earth would you have coped?”
“I realized I couldn’t, not with Lily and Mum and school. But I waited.” She paused, her level gaze meeting Rachel’s. “I waited three days before I called you. Because I knew it would be worst for you.”
Rachel blinked, stunned by her sister’s admission. “Meghan, I’m sorry.”
“For Dad leaving? That wasn’t your fault.”
“No, for—for being such a bitch.” Rachel let out a shaky laugh. “For thinking I was doing it all when I really wasn’t.”
“Well.” Meghan smiled and shrugged. “To be fair, you were doing most of it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rachel said quietly.
“Well.” Meghan sniffed and looked away. “That’s why I kept Nathan. Because I wanted someone to love me. Kind of hard for you to understand, I know—”
“It’s not hard for me to understand—”
“You don’t seem to need anyone. I always feel like a completely pathetic loser next to you.”
Meghan spoke without spite, surprising Rachel with her hard honesty. “If I don’t seem to need anyone,” she answered, “it’s because I don’t let myself. I needed Dad, and look where that got me.”
“You could do something else now,” Meghan said after a moment. “You don’t have to take care of us anymore, Rachel.”
Rachel stared at her sister, the proud tilt of her chin, the need visible in her eyes. “I don’t want to abandon you.”
“You won’t. I’ve been thinking about quitting at the pub and starting a childminding business. I know it will be difficult with Mum, but the hours would be better for me and I can work from home, with Nathan there. Abby Rhodes has said she’d love to have Noah here.”
“What?” Rachel shook her head slowly. “I had no idea.”
“I know. And it might be too difficult.” She glanced wryly around the kitchen.
“We’d have to keep the house clean, for starters.
Safeguarding rules and all that.” She smiled uncertainly, and Rachel smiled back.
She felt as if Meghan had just off-loaded a whole lot of information, and she needed time to process it.
“Well,” she finally said. “Plans.”
“You should have plans too. You could do a part-time course or something. . . .”
“Actually, I have looked into it.” She’d written the University of Lancaster for information on part-time degree courses.
The brochure had come last week, and she hadn’t yet dared to open it.
Hope was dangerous. Losing it was hard. “Mum is going to need full-time care, Meghan. We can divide it between us, but—”
“And don’t forget Lily.”
“Lily will be going to university—”
“Maybe,” Meghan said quietly, “you’d better ask her about that.”
Rachel felt a clanging inside her, as if she’d missed the last step in the staircase. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Nothing,” Meghan answered. “Because I think you already know it. But you’re pretending you don’t, just like I did.”
Rachel shook her head. “No . . .”
“She doesn’t like biology, Rachel. She doesn’t want to go to Durham. You can’t foist your dreams onto somebody else.”
“Her exam is in a week.”
Meghan shrugged. “That doesn’t change anything.”