Rachel looked fascinated. “And how did you feel when you were doing all that?” she asked.
“Wonderful,” Claire admitted with a surprised laugh. “Absolutely wonderful.”
“Spot on,” Rachel answered, and then filled both their wineglasses to the brim.
A glass of wine was making her feel woozy, and Claire sipped the second one more slowly. She imagined the look of horror on her mother’s face to see her drinking at the pub with Rachel Campbell, and then found herself smiling instead of wincing, a mental nose-thumbing at her mother from three hundred miles away.
“So are you going to see Hugh again?” Rachel asked, and Claire shook her head.
“No. We haven’t spoken since I left Portugal.”
“You should ring him. Make sure you’re the one to end it properly.”
Now that was a novel and surprisingly appealing idea. She liked the thought of shocking Hugh. Again.
“I might do that,” she said, and then took a deep breath, offering Rachel a tentative smile. “So are we friends now?”
Rachel didn’t answer for a moment, and Claire braced herself for the inevitable brush-off. One drink didn’t change ten years of hard history.
“We were always friends,” she finally said, and raised her glass in a toast.
Chapter twenty-one
Rachel
Rachel hadn’t actually left the county of Cumbria in nearly a decade. She hadn’t gone beyond Keswick in more than a year. Taking the train to Lancaster from Hartley-by-the-Sea and then switching to the express train to Manchester felt akin to scaling the Alps. The coffee shop at the train station in Lancaster was an adventure in itself, and she ordered a large mochaccino, feeling dangerously decadent.
Meghan and Lily had both been openmouthed with shock when Rachel had announced she was going to Manchester for the day.
“Manchester?” Meghan had said, as if Rachel had suggested she was going to Antarctica or Greenland. “Why? What will you do there?”
“I’m seeing a photography exhibition with Andrew West,” Rachel answered. She’d been trying to sound airy, but the words came out defiant instead.
Meghan stared at her. “I don’t know which part of that sentence surprises me more.”
“Why shouldn’t I go out?”
“With Andrew West?”
Rachel shrugged. She hadn’t decided how she felt about going on a sort of date with Andrew West. On one hand, his occasionally pompous attitude irritated her. On the other, he was an attractive, intelligent man, and she could tell he really did care about Claire. And the thought of spending the day in Manchester had become like a drug, a fix she craved. A day of freedom, of escaping all the pressures and strains of life. No Nathan to cajole and change while Meghan disappeared. No mother to visit, enduring a painful hour of garbled speech and frustration. No Lily to nag or worry about.
It took her a while to let go of all those concerns as the train chugged down the coast, and by the time she reached Lancaster and sipped her mochaccino she was starting to relax. Sort of. Now that she’d left Hartley-by-the-Sea behind, Manchester loomed in front of her, intimidating and unknown.
She’d done an Internet search on the exhibition she and Andrew were going to, and it hadn’t looked too artsy, thank goodness. She wasn’t sure she could talk intelligently about art or anything anymore. Her only intellectual outing these days was the pub quiz.
Then of course there was Andrew. How were they supposed to act around each other? This wasn’t a clear-cut date, and Rachel didn’t know if Andrew wanted it to be. There could be all sorts of awkwardness.
He’d said he’d meet her at the station, and so she disembarked from the train, blinking at the vastness of Piccadilly Station, the crowds of people surging around her as she clutched her handbag and felt like Country Mouse.
“Rachel.”
Andrew stood before her, looking as boring as ever in pressed chinos and a blue button-down shirt. The man had absolutelyno fashion sense, and this put Rachel at ease. This was Andrew West, not some gorgeous, urban stranger.
“I made it.”
“So you did. I thought we could go right to the exhibition. It’s about a twenty-minute walk. Unless you’d prefer to get a coffee first? I thought we could have lunch afterward.” While speaking, Andrew had put his hands in his pockets and then taken them out again, jangling his keys; with relief Rachel realized he was as nervous as she was.
“We might as well go straight there,” she said. She had a feeling chatting over coffee would be awkward. At least at the exhibition they would have a focus.
