“How do you know we didn’t?” Rachel challenged as she unwound the endless cord. “Anyway, do you keep in touch with your primary school friends?”
“So you didn’t,” Andrew stated, and Rachel gritted her teeth. Andrew West could be even more aggravating than his sister.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“About my primary school friends? No, I haven’t kept in touch with any of them. I left this village when I was eighteen and I never came back very much.” A shrug to dismiss the village andall of its residents as unimportant, or at least it felt that way to Rachel. “But you haven’t left.”
“Obviously.”
“So?”
“Claire was the one who left,” Rachel responded. “Anyway, we stopped being friends long before that. She went to Wyndham, same as you did, if I’m remembering correctly?” The elite private school in Keswick that sent a blue and gold bus to the village to pick up its exalted pupils. Wyndham kids stuck to themselves and always had; the kids who went to Cumberland always seemed a bit raggedy and rough in comparison.
“Right. Of course.” Andrew didn’t move, and Rachel decided to ignore him. She plugged in the Hoover and started vacuuming the hessian carpet under the breakfast table.
He waited there until she’d finished and turned the machine off before he spoke again. “I’m only asking because I think Claire could use a friend right now.”
“Oh, could she?” Andrew raised his eyebrows and she turned away, lugging the Hoover across to the hall. “Sorry, but I’m here to clean, and since I get paid by the hour, it’s in your family’s best interest to let me do my job.”
After a second’s pause where he seemed as if he were debating whether to say something, Andrew stepped aside. “I’ll let you get on with it, then,” he murmured as she passed.
Rachel spent the next two hours cleaning at hyper speed, working up a sweat and trying to suppress the stupid guilt she felt at the way she’d smacked Andrew down. It should have felt good to wipe that supercilious look off his face. As if she were going to become pals with Claire again.
When she had needed a friend, where had Claire been for her?
Of course, they’d only been eleven at the time. She wasn’t really going to hold a childhood grudge, was she? That would be pathetic.
Looking around at the Wests’ huge house, a whole parade of photos of Claire through the years marching up the wall along the stairs, Rachel decided that yes, maybe she was going to.
She was just leaving when Andrew appeared again in the hallway. He must have been listening, waiting for her to start packing up.
“I’m sorry if my suggestion was offensive.”
“I’m not offended.” She was tired and grimy and her self-righteous anger had disappeared sometime between cleaning the toilets and stripping the beds. “I’m sure Claire could use a friend. She told me the last time I was here that she’d broken up with her fiancé, so yes, I get that she’s having a tough time. But so am I, as it happens, and I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to look out for her. Not again.”
Then, realizing she’d probably said too much, Rachel grabbed her mop and pail of supplies and left. She was just throwing them into the back when her phone buzzed with an incoming call. With a queasy feeling she saw it was from Cumberland Academy Lily’s school.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Campbell?”
“Yes?” Rachel had long ago stopped correcting the parade of teachers who assumed she was Lily’s mother. It was easier all around if she simply pretended she was.
“I’m ringing about Lily’s parent-teacher conference yesterday—”
“What?” Rachel slammed the lid of the boot and hurried around to the driver’s side and slid in, out of the rain. “I didn’t realize she had a conference last night.”
“Lily didn’t tell you?”
“She must have done.” Rachel closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat. “I must have forgotten. I’m sorry.” Why hadn’t she written it on the calendar? She couldn’tremember Lily telling her about it, but then she often felt as if she were doing four things at once, and none of them well. Lily might have told her and she hadn’t registered it.
Sighing, she turned on the car and put the heat on high. “Could I make it up? Sometime this week, perhaps?”
“I’m free tomorrow afternoon, if you’d like to come in.”
