She fell silent, because there wasn’t much she could say to that. And really, why should she argue for him to have a stall at the fair? She didn’t want to get to know people, either. At least, she hadn’t before. But in the two weeks since she’d been in Hartley-by-the-Sea she’d gotten to know people anyway. Lucy and Juliet and Abby, and even prickly Eleanor Carwell and the handful of schoolkids who came in. The boy who had tried to nick the sweets on her first day now smiled at her when he came into the shop. Claire hoped he wasn’t pulling a con and still stealing sweets.
When she thought of the wide array of shallow friends she’d had in Portugal—all of them really Hugh’s friends, with tinkling laughs and hard eyes—she felt as if she’d actually put down some roots here. Thin, little things, perhaps, but still. Roots.
“I could do the Easter Fair.”
Dan stopped counting receipts. “You?”
“Why not?” She lifted her chin in challenge. “It might drum up a little more business.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”
“But why not?” Claire pressed, and Dan’s expression hardened into its familiar, implacable scowl. She hadn’t seen it for a while, but it still possessed the power to make her fall instantly silent.
“Because I said no.”
She didn’t try to reason with him after that.
The next day she and Lucy took the train into Whitehaven. It was early April and almost starting to feel like spring, at leastwhen the wind let up for a moment. Claire had forgotten how green everything became in Cumbria, thanks to the rain. The grass looked almost fluorescent, and the leaves on the trees were bright against the blue sky.
“I remember doing this in school,” Claire said as they watched the sheep-dotted fields stream by for the seven-minute journey into town. “Honestly, I don’t know what we actually did in Whitehaven. Walk around in too-high heels and try on all the lipsticks at Boots, I suppose.”
“That’s right. Abby said you were one of the in girls,” Lucy recalled with a rueful smile. “I have to say, I never knew how that felt.”
“I’m not sure I did, either.”
“What do you mean?”
Claire shrugged, wishing she hadn’t mentioned school. “I just went with the crowd. They chose me, and so I followed.”
Lucy looked at her curiously. “But didn’t it feel good to be chosen?”
“It had nothing to do with me,” Claire said bluntly. “If your parents are rich and put on parties for your class, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be popular.”
“I don’t know about that,” Lucy answered. “My mother was well off and she put on a birthday party for my class when I was six. I still wasn’t popular.”
Claire shook her head. “It didn’t mean anything. I never felt like they were really my friends.”
“So why did you stay with them, then?”
She shrugged. “Because it was easier. Not the best reason, I know, but school was hard for me. I was ill a lot of the time as a child, and I didn’t feel very...” She blew out a breath. “With it.”
“Ill?” Lucy frowned in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”
Claire shrugged again. “It was a long time ago.”
Lucy must have sensed that she didn’t want to talk about it, because she fell silent, but as the sheep pasture gave way to neat rows of Whitehaven’s terraced houses, Claire found herself remembering more than she wanted to. The push and pull of friendships she didn’t really understand. The feeling that she was underwater and everything was happening on dry land. The poor reports from school, the teachers with their pitying smiles, saying in hushed voices to her parents, “Claire’s not really an academic girl, is she?” Her father’s compressed mouth, his hand heavy on her shoulder, her mother’s fluttering movements, and over all of it the sense of always disappointing people that rested on her like a leaden mantle.
Those years in primary school with Rachel had been the one bright light amidst all that oppressive darkness. But she’d turned away from it, for no good reason. Not that Rachel had really minded. They’d both dropped their friendship as if it hadn’t meant anything, and maybe it hadn’t. They’d been little kids, after all.
Whitehaven with Lucy was far more enjoyable than the pointless afternoons and evenings Claire had spent with a gaggle of Wyndham girls, standing by uncertainly while they nicked makeup and tried to get in to the dance clubs with fake IDs. Lucy regaled her with a story of how she’d had to buy a bra for the head teacher’s daughter, which made Claire both laugh and shake her head in amazement at Lucy’s determined meddling and endless good cheer.
“But it all worked out in the end, because we’re dating now,” Lucy finished.
“You’re dating the head teacher?”
“Alex, yes. It’s still somewhat early days, though, so...”
“If you’ve bought his daughter a bra, you have a deeper relationship than I ever did with my fiancé.”
