They made a few more arrangements before disconnecting the call, and then Rachel sat there in the silence of the sitting room, her phone held in her hand, the smile still on her face.
Chapter twenty
Claire
Things had changed. Shifted just a little, but Claire noticed. The tension that had existed between her and Dan while they worked had eased. It wasn’t gone completely, and they were hardly palling around, but things felt gentler somehow. Friendlier.
Dan had given her more responsibility at the shop, and now he took Bunny out for a walk every day for an hour or so while Claire manned the till. He’d even suggested he train her to be a postal assistant, so she could work the post office as well as the shop counter.
“I’m just getting the hang of the Lotto cards,” Claire had joked. “Are you really going to trust me with stamps?”
“There’s a lot more to running the post office than stamping a few letters,” Dan had answered shortly. So they definitely weren’t palling around, but it was enough. It was good.
Other parts of her life had started to bloom and grow too; she’d had coffee with Abby down at the beach café a couple of times, and they’d taken to power-walking along the coast several evenings a week, while Mary, Abby’s grandmother, watchedNoah. It had started as simply a way to get some exercise, but Claire thought they both enjoyed the conversation. Abby had returned to Hartley-by-the-Sea less than a year ago and felt almost as much of an offcomer as Claire did.
“If you leave here, no matter for how long, it’s not the same as staying,” she said as they descended from the coastal path to the beach on the far end of the village. The tide was out, and the beach was a lovely long stretch of wet sand that glimmered under the evening sunlight, the rocks smoothed to shining darkness. Claire breathed in the salty, sea-damp air, every part of her reveling in the purity of the moment.
“Why did you leave?” she asked Abby.
“University. I went to Leeds to study medieval literature. Not the most useful of subjects.”
“I studied art history, so I’m not one to talk.”
“No. Well. Coming back has been harder than I expected, especially with Noah.”
“Noah’s dad... ?” Claire ventured to ask, and Abby’s expression closed up.
“He died when Noah was a baby. Motorcycle accident.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry—”
“I’m not sure he would have stayed around, if he’d lived,” Abby answered with a shrug. She sounded diffident, but Claire recognized the slump of her shoulders, how sorrow weighed on her like a mantle. “But coming back to a place like Hartley-by-the-Sea with a kid in tow has its challenges.”
“There are a few single mums around though, aren’t there? Rachel’s sister Meghan...”
“Yes, I’m not alone there. But it’s still not easy.”
“And will you stay? Keep running the beach café?” Abby had already told her that she’d taken over the café when her grandmother had had a heart attack six months ago.
“Probably,” Abby answered with a rueful laugh. “I’ll probably still be here thirty years from now, slinging toasted sandwiches and trying to make the espresso machine work. Well, it could be worse.”
“You’ve done a lot with the café, from what I’ve heard. Lucy’s art on the walls...” Claire had admired a watercolor of a field of buttercups, with a single baleful sheep in the distance.
Abby smiled. “Yes, Lucy’s art is brilliant. And I’d love to do more of that. Add local books, have mini exhibitions...” She trailed off with a sigh. “Right now it’s all I can do to keep the place running, never mind make improvements.”
“Maybe when Noah starts school . . .”
“Yes. Maybe.” Abby turned her curious gaze on Claire. “What about you? Are you going to be stacking tins forever?”
“I hope not. Dan’s mentioned training me to be a postal assistant.” She had a rather ridiculous desire to get behind that Plexiglas counter to weigh and stamp letters.
“You know what I mean, though. You’re not going to work in a shop for the rest of your life?”
“Why not?” Claire challenged. “Everyone has this idea that I’m too good or too smart to work in a shop, but plenty of people do, and I actually enjoy it. Why shouldn’t I work there forever?”
Abby laughed and shook her head. “I don’t have an answer for that one.”
Of course eight hours of doing inventory in the tiny, airless storeroom the next day made Claire reconsider her declaration. Dan had been in a particularly surly mood, snapping at her and finding fault with everything she did. It was as if the last few weeks of friendliness hadn’t happened.
