“Thanks, Mum.”
Her mother gave a grimace that Rachel suspected was meant to be a playful smile. “You wearing that for someone special?”
“No. I just wanted to look nice.” Rachel pulled at her sweater and then took a step towards the door. “Sorry, I should go. I don’t want to be late.”
“Of course, love. You have a good time. I know how hard you work.” Janice plucked at the bedcover with plump fingers. “Everything’s all right, isn’t it, Rach?” she asked.
Rachel tensed, one hand on the doorknob. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It’s only that you’ve seemed a bit distracted these last few days.”
“Distracted? Not really.” She managed a smile. “Not more than usual.”
“Okay, then.” Janice smiled, and suppressing the uncomfortable pang of guilt she always felt at leaving her mother stranded in her bed, Rachel left the room.
Outside the sun was just starting to set, and Rachel could feel a gathering chill in the air. She dug her hands into the pockets of her coat and hurried down the street towards the Hangman’s Noose.
As soon as she entered the pub, the warmth and noise fell over her like a comforting blanket. She smiled and nodded to severalpeople already clustered around the small tables and shouldered her way to the long bar of scarred oak, propping her elbows on its surface as she gazed up at Rob Telford.
He was pulling pints with practiced ease, and his gaze flicked to Rachel’s sweater for a millisecond before returning to her face. “What can I get you, Rach?”
“Don’t you know my order yet?” Rachel answered with a flirty smile, and she saw surprise flicker in his eyes. She didn’t usually flirt with Rob, or with anyone, and her question had probably come out a bit aggressively. She was definitely out of practice with this kind of thing. Then Rob gave a slow smile in response. Maybe she could do this, after all. Rob wasn’t a bad-looking bloke, with dark hair and a slightly gap-toothed smile. He’d been a tearaway in school, but he’d settled down since taking over the pub.
“Lucy’s already ordered your table a bottle of red,” he said as he pushed two foaming pints of ale across the bar to a stony-faced sheep farmer in a flat cap and mud-splattered dungarees. “You’re late.”
“Not that late.” Rachel glanced towards the table in the corner that had always belonged to her team. She, Juliet and Lucy Bagshaw, and Abby Rhodes from the beach café had been coming every Thursday for the quiz for nearly six months now. They hadn’t won yet, but they’d come close. And more importantly, they’d all had a laugh.
She could see Lucy’s cloud of frizzy hair above the crowds, and as she caught sight of Rachel, Lucy waved enthusiastically, gesturing to the bottle of wine already on the table.
“Looks like you’ve got an extra at your table tonight,” Rob remarked.
“An extra?”
He nodded towards the table in the corner. “Lucy’s one for picking up strays, isn’t she? Although that was your brief, back in school.”
Rachel stiffened. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Rob pulled another pint. “Claire West,” he said, and feeling as if she’d swallowed a stone, Rachel turned back to look at the table in the corner and saw what she’d missed before: Claire West seated next to Lucy.
Chapter four
Claire
This had been a mistake. Claire realized that as soon as she stepped into the pub and the noise of the place hit her like a smack in the face. She nearly stumbled right back out the door, because she’d never been good with crowds. When Hugh had taken her to parties, she’d spent the whole time either in the ladies’ or craning her head forward, attempting to catch what everyone was saying, trying to keep up, or at least appear as if she were.
Before she could move, Lucy was calling to her from across the entire pub. “Claire! Claire, over here.”
The crowd of people blurred before her into one unfriendly mass; she saw a few farmers hunched over their pints, looking resolutely uninterested, a couple of women dolled up and avidly curious. She lifted her chin and started to move through the crowds.
“You came.” Lucy looked delighted, which seemed a bit weird. Claire barely knew this woman, and she hadn’t done much to recommend herself to Lucy Bagshaw, except for not dropping a tin of beans on her foot.
“I came,” she agreed inanely, and sat down on the stool next to Lucy’s. Lucy was still scanning the pub, so Claire introduced herself to the other woman at the table.
“Abby Rhodes.” The woman, small with long, dark hair, eyed her in a knowing way that made Claire tense. She didn’t recognize the name, but... “We were in school at the same time,” Abby explained. Her voice was soft, and Claire had to lean forward to listen. “I was in Year Two to your Year Six.” She offered a teasing smile. “You were one of the in girls.”
The in girls. Claire shook her head as if to deny it, although she knew she couldn’t. She had been one of those popular girls, even though it had felt like a bewildering joke at the time, something she neither understood nor trusted.
“Well,” she said, because she had nothing else to say, but Abby seemed to want a response.
