Andrew shrugged, his gaze on the narrow, winding road. “If we ascend from Wasdale Head it shouldn’t be too taxing, although it would help if you’d brought the right kit.”
“It would help if I owned the right kit,” Rachel returned tartly, and Claire smothered a smile. She rather liked Rachel’s sharp sense of humor when it wasn’t directed at her.
“How about we just have a picnic?” Claire suggested. She wasn’t all that keen on hiking herself. Plus she was also wearing trainers, and they didn’t look as serviceable as Rachel’s.
“Why didn’t you come prepared?” Andrew asked Rachel with a frown. “You could have borrowed some boots from someone, I’m sure.”
“No one I know owns hiking boots. Or any of the other kit you’ve got on.”
Besides his top-of-the-line hiking boots Andrew had brought a waterproof anorak, a varnished walking stick, and a rucksack with a first aid kit and a titanium water bottle. He looked like an advert for Cumbria Life.
“I’ll walk up the fell while you lot lounge at the bottom, then,” he said. “I want to get a view.”
“We’ve got a decent view from the car,” Rachel returned. Andrew just shook his head.
Half an hour later they were parked by the Wasdale Head Inn, where a gate marked the way to the Hollow Stones trail, which was, according to Andrew, the “non-hiking route” up Scafell.
He glanced at Claire’s shoes as they assembled by the gate. “Seriously?”
She looked down at her Mint Velvet plimsolls. “These are all I had.”
He let out a sigh. “I should have checked before we got in the car.”
Which made her feel like a child, and she could tell that Rachel had noticed. She was frowning as she observed the interaction between her and Andrew, a conversation like a thousand others they’d had over the years.
“You wouldn’t have found a pair of hiking boots at home,” Claire said. “We don’t have any. Mum and Dad never did this kind of thing, you know.”
“I know,” he said, and pushed open the gate. “We’ll go as far as we can. The conditions are dry, at least.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes, navigating the rocky trail, the vista stunning and yet barren, with the steep sweep of treeless fells and the blue flash of the still lake. The air was colder than it had been in Hartley-by-the-Sea, and after fifteen minutes both Claire’s legs and lungs started to burn.
“So how come you’re the outdoorsy type?” Rachel asked Andrew. She was walking next to him, keeping up with his brisk pace, her arms swinging by her sides. Lily was behind her, and Claire was behind Lily, walking more slowly than anyone else. She could already tell that her plimsolls were not up for the job.
“I like being outside,” Andrew answered. “But I didn’t get into hiking until I was in uni and had my own car.” He glanced at Rachel. “How come you aren’t the outdoorsy type?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rachel answered. “I didn’t have the holiday time, or my own car, or even the boots. Kind of tricky, without all that.”
Andrew didn’t answer, and Claire couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by Rachel’s comeback or chagrined by his own assumptions. Did he, like Claire, feel like he had to apologize for being rich?
The conversation she’d had with Rachel last Sunday had been picking at her all week. Rachel, confident, brassy, in-your-face Rachel, felt Claire had dumped her. It seemed laughable even as Claire recognized the truth of it. At the time she’d felt as if Rachel had abandoned her to the mercy of the Wyndham girls; she’d wanted Rachel to rescue her. She still remembered the stony look on Rachel’s face when she’d stopped short in the schoolyard and stared straight at Claire, surrounded by the in girls. Then she’d set her jaw, turned on her heel, and walked away. They’d never spoken again.
Claire could still remember glancing covertly at Rachel across the Year Six room during lessons, wondering why she was so stubbornly ignoring her. During a field trip Rachel had picked Oliver Cakewell as her partner even though he picked his nose and wiped it on his trousers. Claire had been partnered with a Wyndham girl—Michaela or Shelly, she couldn’t remember. The gaggle of girls who had been her best friends in secondary school had blurred together into one faceless mask. She hadn’t seen any of them since she’d left Cumbria for university.
She wished she could say something about all that to Rachel, but she suspected it would sound pathetic. The moment for sharing memories about their childhood days had passed, up on the cliffside overlooking the sea.
Andrew asked Lily about school, and they started chatting while Rachel fell back so she and Claire were almost, but not quite, walking together. Claire tried for a smile, something like the one they’d shared in the car, but Rachel looked away.
Claire tried to concentrate on the view. Having Andrew show up last night had given her a weird mixed-up feeling of disappointment and relief; she’d had a good week, but she’d been starting to feel lonely. Three days of enduring Dan Trenton’s silence had been hard, although admittedly he was talking more than he used to. He’d even trusted Claire alone in the shop for an hour while he’d walked his dog, whose name, she’d learned, was Bunny.
“You have a dog named Bunny?” she couldn’t keep from saying, trying not to laugh, and Dan had grimaced.
“She came with the name. She’s a rescue dog.”
Which made her even more curious about him. Why did the unfriendliest man in the village have a rescue dog? It hinted at a depth and sensitivity to him that she realized she’d sensed even as she’d doubted it was there. And Dan certainly didn’t give many opportunities for her to see it. When he’d returned from the walk he’d shouted at her for jamming the Lotto card dispenser, and Claire had cowered almost as much as Bunny did.
He’d given her a terse apology and then comforted the dog before taking her back to his kitchen. For the rest of the day Claire had been on tin-stacking duty.
Even worse than Dan Trenton’s was the silence of Four Gables when she’d returned at night. Room after pristine room, all of them empty, the only sign that anyone lived there the faint indentation of her footprints in the thick cream carpets.
