“Behind the till now, are you?”
“Yes, just started.” Claire smiled brightly before picking up the paper and scanning it for the price. Considering she’d been staring at the newspapers for the last half hour, she should know where it was, but in her nervousness the lines of print blurred before her.
“It’s a pound forty, dear,” Eleanor said tartly.
“Right.” She looked up. “Seems expensive for a daily newspaper.”
“I quite agree. Perhaps your employer would care to lower the price?”
“Oh, well... It’s a national thing, isn’t it?” Claire rang up the newspaper with a tiny sigh of relief and then glanced at the pint bottle of milk. There was no price sticker on it.
“Eighty pence,” Eleanor said with a slightly martyred air. “Do you not know the price of anything?”
“Not yet. I’ve just started. That’s two pounds twenty, please.”
Eleanor took out her change purse and counted out twelve twenty-pence pieces before sliding them across the counter. “Have you spoken to your mother about me?” she asked.
“Oh. No, I’m sorry. I haven’t spoken to my mother for a few days.” Although she’d seen that her mother had left two more voice mails. She hadn’t listened to them yet. Dealing with MarieWest took a level of fortitude Claire never seemed able to work up to.
“Well, I hope you improve in time,” Eleanor said with a nod towards the cash register, her tone implying she very much doubted it, and Claire sagged against the counter as she left the shop in a cloud of stale Yardley’s lavender water.
The rest of the day passed in silence until lunchtime, when Dan dismissed her for half an hour. “What about your lunch?” Claire asked. “Don’t you want a break?”
“I can’t have you in the shop alone,” he answered. “Not until you’ve learned a bit more, anyway.”
It wasn’t raining for once, so Claire walked down to the beach café. It took longer than she’d expected, so by the time she stepped into the muggy warmth of the café, she realized she had only five minutes to eat if she wanted to make it back on time.
“Claire!” Abby greeted her from behind the counter. “Lucy told me you got the job at the post office shop.”
“Word travels fast here, doesn’t it?”
“You should know that by now,” Abby answered with a smile. “What can I get for you?”
“I only have about five minutes,” Claire said, a note of apology in her voice. “I didn’t realize how long it would take me to get down here. Do you have anything ready-made?”
“Only the kids’ picnic baskets,” Abby said, and pointed to a row of luridly colored cardboard boxes that held, according to the sign above them, a sandwich, a juice box, a packet of raisins, and a biscuit.
“That’s fine. I’ll take one of those,” Claire said, and after paying and thanking Abby, she walked back outside, feeling more than a little ridiculous holding the little box with a picture of Buzz Lightyear on it. She found a park bench overlooking the sea and ate the jam sandwich, tilting her face up to the sun. She’d forgotten how beautiful it could be here when the sun actuallycame out. She’d hardly ever come down to the beach when she was younger; her parents had never been walkers, and when she was a teenager she’d always gone with the Wyndham girls into Whitehaven, to pursue the more alluring pleasures of the town’s dodgy nightclubs. She would have preferred to go to the beach, but she’d never gone against the crowd.
It annoyed her now, how little backbone she’d had. How little she still had, if she was honest with herself. She’d done everything everyone had asked of her, even gone into a clinic to dry out when she was pretty sure she didn’t actually have a drinking problem. The trouble was, after so many years of obeying other people while you doubted yourself, Claire wasn’t sure she knew how to be different. She definitely didn’t think she had the strength.
But coming back to Cumbria had been a strong decision, even if it looked from the outside like merely running home. She just hoped she could keep at it. She knew the pressure from her parents would only get worse. Her mother was too used to managing her to stop now, and Claire was used to being managed. Not having someone arranging her movements, telling her what to do and even what to think, felt like dangling in midair, feet kicking uselessly.
It was only as she took these first few tentative steps that she realized there might actually be a foundation beneath her feet, even if she didn’t know how strong or safe it was.
With a start Claire realized she’d spent ten minutes staring into space, half a jam sandwich dangling from her fingertips. She stuffed the bright box with its kiddie contents into the bin and hurried up the beach road, back to the shop.
She was late. Of course. Dan glowered at her but didn’t say anything, and then pointed to the till. “You can manage that while I do the post office. There’s usually a rush after lunch.”
There hadn’t been yesterday, but obediently Claire went behind the till. She rang up four purchases in three hours, when Dan took over the mad rush of pupils from the primary. This time she managed to tap a bit more firmly on the shoulder of a boisterous-looking lad who had been trying to put a cherry bootlace in the pocket of his trousers, and he grinned sheepishly before putting it back. Progress.
Lucy came in just as she had before, after the children had left, as cheery as ever.
“Oh, Claire, I’m glad I caught you. Rachel’s backed out of the pub quiz tonight, and so we’re desperate for a fourth. You wouldn’t mind coming, would you?”
“Oh... no, I suppose not.” Actually, she would mind. She couldn’t think of anything worse than facing the loud scrum of the pub on quiz night, as well as twenty questions she knew she wouldn’t be able to answer. “Why did Rachel back out?”
“She’s not feeling well. Which means she must really not be feeling well, because Rachel never misses a quiz. But you’ll come?”
