“You have no heart.”
“I let you sleep in my bed. I think a thank-you is in order.”
Meghan let out an enormous yawn and then reached up to snuggle Nathan, who wrapped his arms around her neck. “I’m completely shattered.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Out.”
“Obviously, but where—”
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.” Meghan rolled over onto her side, bringing Nathan with her as she tickled his tummy. “Thanks for giving him breakfast. I assume that’s what you did, since there’s Weetabix all down his front?”
And now in her bed. “I need to get ready for work,” Rachel said. “Could you please move?”
Half an hour later she was heading out to clean Henry Price’s two-up two-down terraced house at the top of the village. A single man in his forties, he had her clean only once a fortnight, and Rachel didn’t think he so much as rinsed a dish in the interval. She wiped two weeks’ worth of shaving bristle from the sink in the bathroom and stripped sheets that felt grimy and smelled stale.
After Henry’s place she had two holiday cottages and then her meeting with Lily’s teacher. A knot of tension had taken upresidence in Rachel’s stomach, although she couldn’t precisely identify its source. Maybe it was everything: her mother’s lost pills, Meghan’s insouciance about being away most of the night, Lily’s unnerving silences. Andrew West asking her to watch over Claire and telling her she had a bloody chip on her shoulder. He had no idea.
By the time she arrived at Lily’s school, having cleaned three houses in a handful of hours, Rachel was tired and sweaty and felt nearly as grimy as Henry Price’s sheets. She took a moment in the car to brush her hair, apply some lip gloss and deodorant, and then change her work T-shirt for a button-down blouse she hardly ever wore. Too late she noticed the three boys sneaking a smoke behind the rubbish bins at the back of the school. They’d goggled at her speedy striptease, and now one leered as she left the car.
“Shut it,” she barked, and headed inside the school.
Miss Taylor’s classroom was quiet and empty of students, and for a second Rachel stood in the doorway, relishing a moment of relative peace. Then the woman looked up from her marking, and Rachel stepped forward.
“Hi, I’m Rachel Campbell, Lily’s . . .”
“Mother, yes—”
“Actually, I’m her sister.” Rachel put her bag on the floor and sat in the chair the teacher had already pulled her up to her desk. “Our mother is bedridden, so I get to do the honors.”
“Right, of course.” Miss Taylor rifled through some papers before drawing out Lily’s exercise book.
“Lily does excellent work, as you know,” she said, and Rachel nodded, her hands knotted in her lap. “She is a very intelligent young woman, very capable. I rang you yesterday because, unfortunately, she hasn’t handed in her last three assignments.”
“Lily hasn’t?” Rachel clarified stupidly. As if the teacher would be talking about some other kid.
“No, Lily hasn’t. And she’s offered no reason when I’ve asked her for them.”
“But...” Rachel shook her head slowly. Lily had been a straight-A student since reception, had received ten A stars on her GCSEs, had never missed or forgotten anything. All right, maybe she’d been a little quiet lately, a little morose even, but forgetting assignments in Upper Sixth, when you’d been accepted to Durham University? “I don’t understand.”
Miss Taylor folded her hands on top of her desk and gave Rachel a look that felt too compassionate. “The truth is, Miss...”
“Rachel.”
“Rachel, I don’t think Lily actually likes biology.”
“But she’s so good at it.” The protest came instinctively. “And she’s never said she doesn’t like it.”
“I think the missing assignments might speak for themselves.”
“Maybe she just forgot.”
“She didn’t say she forgot,” the teacher said gently. “And she didn’t take up my offer to hand them in late. She just said sorry and pushed past me.”
“That doesn’t sound like Lily.”
“I know.”
