“I thought so.” She laughed then, an uncertain hiccup, and Andrew grinned.
“I’m not actually a huge art fan.”
“Then why did you invite me to an exhibition?”
“Because I figured you’d rather see this than the Worsley Braided Interchange.”
“The what?”
“The motorway outside the city that connects the M61 with the M62. It really is a remarkable feat of engineering.”
She laughed and shook her head. “You’re right. I’d rather see this.”
They breezed through the rest of the photographs, spending no more than a minute on each one, competing with each other for the most inane or over-the-top comment, before they were finished and back out in the lobby. It was half past eleven.
“We did that a bit more quickly than I anticipated,” Andrew said as he glanced at his watch. “I thought we’d stay in the exhibition until one, and then have lunch in the café here until three. Then we were going to walk around the city until five....”
“It’s okay if we don’t keep to your schedule, isn’t it?” Rachel teased. She felt much more relaxed now that they’d gotten the photography out of the way. The realization that Andrew was less pompous and more geeky than she’d thought was a huge relief.
“I suppose,” he said, and took her arm again. This time it didn’t feel quite so awkward.
Rachel suggested a walk in the park until lunchtime, which was a mistake because they’d walked right to the center of it when the rain started bucketing down. Gallantly, Andrew put his coat over Rachel’s head, leaving him soaked, and they sprinted for the nearest shelter, a public toilet that stank and had a homeless man sleeping off a binge in the doorway.
“The charms of urban life,” Rachel said. “I almost miss Hartley-by-the-Sea.”
Andrew glanced at her seriously. “Do you? There must be something quite nice about living in a place where everyone knows you.”
“You lived there too,” Rachel pointed out.
“But not in the same way. We were never really part of the village, as you remarked yourself.”
“And you think I am?”
“Aren’t you?”
Rachel gazed out at the drizzling rain, turning everything to gray, and shrugged. “I suppose. But there’s a downside to everyone knowing you too. You can’t start over.”
“Have you wanted to?”
Andrew sounded so interested and intent; it made Rachel feel both gratified and embarrassed. “Sometimes. When... when I was growing up, I was the kid whose father was sometimes on the dole and whose mother cleaned half of the class’s houses before she broke her back. No one turned their noses up at me, not exactly. Hartley-by-the-Sea has never really been like that. But they knew, and sometimes that’s enough.”
She’d said way too much. Rachel dug her hands into the pockets of her coat and nodded towards the rainy park. “How about lunch?”
Andrew thankfully had the sensitivity to follow her lead. “I’ll call a taxi, and we can go into the city center to eat.”
Twenty minutes later they were seated at a bistro on Booth Street, menus open in front of them.
“You’re soaked,” Rachel remarked. His button-down shirt didn’t look quite so boring stuck to his chest. Andrew plucked at it ineffectually.
“I’ll dry.”
Rachel was more than a little damp herself, and she could feel her hair starting to frizz. In a few minutes she’d look like a six-foot-tall Orphan Annie.
“You know,” she said after they’d both ordered, “I didn’t think you actually liked me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because of that huge chip on my shoulder you mentioned I have?” She tried to speak lightly, but an edge broke through anyway. “And because I was kind of bitchy to you. And to Claire.”
