Lucy looked at her with a cringing mixture of compassion and curiosity. “Why do you say that?” Lucy asked, her voice terribly gentle.
“Oh, it just wasn’t that deep a relationship,” Claire said, trying to sound dismissive. “Which makes me sound terribly shallow, I realize. I’m sure Hugh is an interesting and dynamic person, but I never really got to know that part of him.”
She snuck a glance at Lucy, who was now looking both fascinated and appalled. “But why did you agree to marry him, then?”
“Because...” Claire bit her lip. There was nothing she could say that would make her come out looking good in this scenario. “Because I knew my parents wanted me to,” she finished. “And I haven’t had too many real romantic relationships. We got along on the surface, and that seemed enough.”
Lucy nodded slowly. “I spent years trying to impress my mother. Trying to win her love, really. I’ve finally stopped, mostly, but it was hard. I think it’s human instinct to want to gain our parents’ approval and love, especially if they seem reluctant to give it.”
“Maybe,” Claire agreed. She’d never had her parents’ approval, but she thought she’d had their love. Their overwhelming, suffocating, sacrificial love.
She and Lucy spent a happy hour in the art shop, buying supplies for the Easter crafts at the fair, and then over huge cups of coffee at the Costa on King Street Claire worked up the nerve to tell Lucy about her idea of the shop having a stall at the Easter Fair.
“I think that’s fab,” Lucy exclaimed.
“Dan doesn’t—”
“Let me work on Dan. He’s had a hard time, you know.”
“Has he?” Claire was curious about her boss, but she kept herself from asking for details. “Don’t pressure him into doingit,” she said. “He seemed quite... final. I think it would annoy him, actually, to know I’d been talking to you about it.”
“He could come around. . . .”
“I’ll talk to him again,” Claire said. Even if the thought of it made her toes curl in trepidation.
Sunday Claire spent pottering around the house, tidying up even though Rachel had left everything spotless and then making herself a curry from scratch. She’d bought the ingredients while she’d been in Whitehaven with Lucy, and she’d enjoyed cooking for herself. When she’d lived with Hugh, they’d always eaten takeaway or in restaurants.
Everything about their life had been glamorous and yet transient; Hugh’s flat had come furnished in a lot of black leather and marble and chrome, and Claire hadn’t put much of a stamp on it.
When he’d asked her to move in with him, after they’d gotten engaged, she’d put her clothes in the guest bedroom’s cupboard because Hugh’s perfectly pressed shirts and hand-tailored suits had filled the one in the master bedroom. She’d kept her toiletries in her wash bag and had only put her toothbrush in the glass with Hugh’s with trepidation. Her carbon footprint on Hugh’s apartment, even on his whole life, had been incredibly light. She suspected it was already gone. And even though it made her feel a little bit ashamed, she didn’t mind. Losing Hugh had never hurt; in fact, it had been almost a relief.
He still hadn’t rung her, and Claire recognized that she would have to call him at some point. She wondered what he would say, if he would prevaricate or bluster or just plain lie. She decided she didn’t want to find out. Not yet, anyway.
After she’d cleaned up her curry, she decided to take a walk along the coastal path that ran along the sea for the whole length of the village. It was spectacular on a sunny spring evening; although the wind off the water was chilly, the sunlight wasbrilliant, gilding the sea in gold. In the distance Claire could see the violet smudges of the Isle of Man. The cliffs leading down to the beach were yellow with budding gorse; rabbits darted in and out of the tussocks, and the waves crashed onto the shore below. Claire couldn’t see a single person anywhere, and she felt herself relax, her breathing evening out, her shoulders losing the tension she felt as if she’d been carrying forever.
This was so much better than a hot rock massage at Lansdowne Hills. She sat down on a weathered bench by a lookout point, the tufty gorse-covered cliff jutting out towards the sea. Gulls wheeled above, their cries still audible over the crash of the surf. At that moment Hartley-by-the-Sea seemed like one of the most beautiful places on earth, and she wondered why she’d ever left.
Then Claire saw there was a person sitting right on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling down towards the beach fifty feet below. Alarm jolted through her, because she might feel like an offcomer, but she knew the cliff eroded a few inches or more every year, and if you walked too close to the edge, the clay soil could crumble beneath you.
“Excuse me...” she began uncertainly, fearing some ignorant tourist was about to meet an untimely end. When the figure turned to look over her shoulder, the words died on Claire’s lips. It was Rachel.
Rachel’s shoulders sagged and she let out a sigh that even Claire could hear. “Oh,” she said flatly. “It’s you.”
“Yes. Me.” Claire managed a smile. “What are you doing out here?”
“It’s a free country.”
“Of course. I know. I’m sorry.” She cut off the pointless apologies. “I meant, sitting out there, right on the edge? It’s dangerous—”
“I’m fine.” Rachel turned back to stare at the sea, and Claire sat there for a moment, wondering if she should try to make conversation. Rachel looked small and vulnerable sitting on the edge of the cliff, the sea spread out before her in an endless, undulating, slate-gray blanket.
“It’s a bit like the rhododendron bush, isn’t it?” Claire blurted. She didn’t know where the words came from; the memory felt like snatching at a snowflake, slippery and fleeting and yet possessing its own beauty.
Rachel had stiffened at her words. “I didn’t think you’d remembered that.”
“I do.” Scrambling under the bush, trying not to get her knees dirty. Whispering to each other, gossiping about the other kids, making up stories. Blissful solidarity. Claire swallowed hard, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, she rose from the bench and started picking her way through the gorse, the thorns snagging on her jeans. “How did you get through all this?”
Rachel glanced back at her, lips pursed. “Not easily.”
