“Where exactly are we going?” she asked before he made the obvious suggestion.
“How about the Harborside?”
It was a swanky bar on the harbor that was another place Rachel had never been to. “Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Sounds good.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the three-mile drive into Whitehaven. Andrew parked the car in the lot by the harbor, and as Rachel stepped out into the damp evening—the rain had stopped, at least—she felt a sudden pinprick of excitement at the prospect of going to a nice place with a fairly attractive man. Even if it was Andrew West.
She glanced at him, his navy blue parka zipped up although she could see the collar of a dark green fleece underneath. He wore dark chinos, ridiculously pressed, and hiking boots. The outdoor version of preppy.
But no matter what his clothes, it was turning into a nice evening, the clouds scudding across a deep violet sky and moonlight glimmering on the placid sea. Rachel stood for a moment, breathing in the fresh, still-damp air, enjoying the simple fact that she wasn’t in her kitchen cutting sausages into Nathan-sized bites.
“Shall we?” Andrew asked, and with his hand on the small of her back, he guided her towards the bar’s entrance.
It was a classy place, a far cry from the crowded pubs on King Street that stank of old beer and sweat with the TV blaring football at all hours of the day, farmers and shift workers lined up at the counter, heads hung lower over their second or third pints.
The Harborside had big velvet armchairs and sofas and low tables of dark, polished wood. The only sound was the murmuring of voices and the occasional clink of crystal, with a background of soft piano music.
“I didn’t know places like this existed in Whitehaven,” Rachel quipped, and then wished she hadn’t. She’d sounded a little too awed.
“It’s nice enough,” Andrew agreed as he shrugged out of his parka. Rachel took off her coat and, unable to hang it on the back of her armchair, she stuffed it underneath.
“What can I get you?”
“A glass of red, please.” She watched as Andrew headed for the bar, utterly at ease while she was sitting on the edge of her enormous chair, her hands folded primly in her lap. She wanted to enjoy this, even if she was with Andrew West, but she felt too tightly wired. Then she remembered she still needed to call in the prescription, and so she did that while Andrew got their drinks, slipping her phone into her bag as he brought back a fishbowl-sized glass of wine for her and a half-pint of lager for himself. No self-respecting male acquaintance of Rachel’s would ever order half a pint, yet Andrew hardly seemed like the type of bloke to go in for a drinking contest.
“Cheers,” she said, and took a sip of the wine that was velvety-smooth and tasted better than any bottle of plonk she’d ever picked up at Tesco.
Andrew sipped his own lager before setting it on the table between them. “I’m sorry for bringing you out here like this. I know you’re busy.”
“It’s not every day I get to drink wine in a classy bar,” Rachel answered. Two sips of wine and she was already starting to feel mellow, but maybe it was the atmosphere. She leaned her head back against the velvet armchair and glanced at Andrew; he was staring at his hands, frowning in thought.
“What do you do, exactly?” she asked. She didn’t want to talk about Claire just yet.
“I’m a civil engineer.”
“Impressive. You go to uni for that?” Of course he had, but she wanted to hear it anyway.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Cambridge.” He looked slightly discomfited, and Rachel smiled.
“I think I’ve heard of it.”
He smiled back, self-consciously, but at least he’d recognized she was joking. She almost wanted to tell him that she’d had a scholarship place at Durham, that she’d gone there for all of two weeks. Thankfully she resisted that temptation.
“And an MA too, I suppose?”
He nodded. “Also at Cambridge.”
“PhD?”
“Same.”
Seven or eight years of advanced education, then. She refused to give in to the petty impulse to feel jealous. “So why are you back in Hartley-by-the-Sea?”
“I have a couple days before my next project starts, down near Manchester. And I wanted to see Claire.”
