The smell hit her first: a full nappy pail that clearly hadn’t been emptied all day. Then the noise: nearly-two-year-old twins who sounded like they were in a screaming contest.
“Sorry,” Emily Hart called as she came from the kitchen. She had a smear of jam on one cheek and a stain on the front of her jumper that looked alarmingly like sick. “The twins are teething and they’ve just been horrid all day. If I could, I’d post them back to wherever they came from.”
“If you could do that, the Royal Mail would go on strike,” Rachel answered. “Imagine all the kiddies people would be trying to cram into the postbox.” She put her pail by the stairs and headed into the kitchen, the granite surfaces covered in the maternal detritus of half-empty sippy cups and biscuit crumbs. Rachel felt something squish under her foot and retrieveda graying, half-eaten banana from the floor. “Cup of tea?” she called over her shoulder, and Emily slumped against the doorway.
“Yes, please. You’re a saint, Rachel.”
“Saint of the tea bags.” She took the kettle, a modern triangular thing of gleaming chrome, and filled it at the sink. From the sitting room she could hear the toe-tapping theme song of Fireman Sam.
“They seem quiet now,” she remarked to Emily as she opened the cupboard and took out two mugs. Emily was, like the Fairley sisters, one of her clients who needed a bit of looking after; Rachel spent at least twenty minutes of her three hours at the Harts’ house chatting with Emily or making tea. More than once she’d changed Riley or Rogan’s nappy; Emily had looked so pathetically grateful that Rachel hadn’t been able to keep from offering. Between the twins and Nathan at home, she’d changed a lot of nappies for someone who didn’t have kids and professed not to want them.
“I put on the telly,” Emily confessed in a whisper, as if the parenting police were going to jump out of a cupboard and arrest her for giving a two-year-old too much screen time. “Just for half an hour,” she added, a pleading note entering her voice. “I don’t do it all that often, honestly.”
The kettle began to whistle, and Rachel lifted it off the gleaming black hob. “Plug them into the matrix all day long as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “They won’t be watching Fireman Sam when they’re sixteen, I promise you.”
Emily gave a small smile. “No, but you know what they say about too much telly. It suppresses their creative development, leads to childhood obesity....”
“And gives a mother a much-needed break. Trust me, the way Riley and Rogan careen about this place, you don’t need to worry about obesity. I burn calories just watching them.” She pouredthe water into the mugs and dunked the tea bags a couple of times before she flicked them into the sink with a spoon. It would be her job to clean up the mess later.
Sitting at the table, cradling a mug of tea, Emily Hart started to look and no doubt feel human again. “You’re lucky you don’t have any kids,” she said as she took a sip of tea.
Rachel sat down across from her. “Having a kid sister is almost the same. I practically raised Lily.”
Emily eyed her curiously, and Rachel wondered what had made her say that. She didn’t normally confide in her clients, or in anyone. First Juliet, now Emily. Seeing Claire West had shaken her up way too much, made her say things.
“How come you raised her?” Emily asked. “What about your parents?”
“My mum broke her back when I was eleven, just after Lily was born. She’s pretty much been an invalid since then.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. . . .”
This was why she didn’t share details with anyone. Pity was awful; it felt like a kind of well-meaning violence. “Thanks, but it’s fine now. We’re all fine. Lily is eighteen and about to do her A levels. She’s going to go Durham University next year.” If she got three As, which she would. Rachel would make sure of it. And an A star in biology, because her sister really was that clever.
“Still, it must have been difficult,” Emily ventured, and Rachel rose from the table.
“For a little while, yes, of course. But it was a long time ago. Now, clearly the kitchen needs sorting,” she continued as she poured the rest of her tea out in the sink. “And the bathrooms, I’m sure. Anything else at the top of the list?”
Emily cringed guiltily. “The nappy pail . . .”
“First thing,” Rachel agreed. “And maybe I’ll open a few windows while I’m at it.”
Three hours later she’d left the Harts’ house with Riley and Rogan chucking wooden trains around the newly cleaned kitchen and Emily defrosting a pack of chicken breasts for dinner. It had all been oddly domestic and cozy as Rachel had buttoned up her coat and stuffed her supplies back into her pail. Maybe it made a difference that the kitchen was three times the size of her own, with granite counters and top-of-the-line appliances.
For a second she imagined living in this kind of house, pottering around this kind of kitchen. The kids she could take or leave, but the privacy, the space, the freedom...
Those were attractive.
Grimacing, Rachel headed towards her car. The fragile blue sky of that morning had darkened to pewter, and rain was spitting down like an insult. She threw her stuff in the back of the car before getting in and sitting there a moment, her hands on the steering wheel.
“Right,” she said aloud. “Get over it, Rachel. Move on, for heaven’s sake.”
She had to, because Claire was here to stay, at least for a little while, and tomorrow she was cleaning her house.
Chapter six
Claire
It took Claire four days of moping around the house, venturing into Whitehaven by train for supplies, and randomly surfing the Internet for job opportunities, before she worked up the courage to try the village shop again on Tuesday morning.
