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Chapter Seven
The next morning,Rachel headed north with a car full of stuff—several suitcases’ worth of clothes, her laptop, two houseplants she’d managed not to kill—yet—and even some cookbooks she’d never cracked open, but thought maybe,maybeshe might up in Yorkshire, for some reason.
Thanks to Danielle’s perspective, Rachel was feeling determinedly optimistic, although admittedly it was taking some effort. This was an opportunity, she’d decided, rather than a duty, although admittedly it was that, too. But she was trying to see the possibilities of living at home for a little while—space to think, to breathe, tobe. Maybe. Working remotely meant she would keep more to the usual nine-to-five hours,andhave time to relax and enjoy herself in a way she hadn’t in…well, in years, really.
That was, if she could relax in her sister and dad’s presence, which was not a guarantee by any means. But maybe this could be a new opportunity there, too. Maybe she and Harriet could finally get to the root of the hostility between them, work it out, even if that prospect sounded more painful than appealing at this point.
A breath escaped her in a weary gust and Rachel narrowed her eyes as she gazed out at the road stretching north. No, there was no guarantee about any of that, but Danielle had made her think about that, as well.And you’re going to wonder what kind of person you might have been, if you’d done things differently.That had, unexpectedly, hit home. Hit hard.
What kind of person would she be now, if she’d come back home more, or even if she’d stayed all along? She couldn’t imagine, had never even considered the possibility…just as Danielle hadn’t.It was an absolute no-brainer.
Leaving Mathering had absolutely been a no-brainer for Rachel, even after her mum had left Harriet alone with their ornery dad. Even when Harriet had begged Rachel to stay.
“You could go to Teesside University,” she’d said desperately, her hands knotted together, tears in her eyes. “Please, Rachel. It’s only half an hour away…”
Rachel had stared at her in sympathy but also horror. She’d only been at uni for a couple of months at that point, had come running home when Harriet had phoned her, tearfully, to tell her that their mum had walked out, just before Christmas.
Leave her course, her new friends, the fun she was having, thelifeshe was finally living, and for what? To coax Harriet along for her very last few months of school, make sure she got her A levels before she got to go away, the way Rachel had?
She could have done it, she knew, if she’d had to; she could have taken a term off, come back in the autumn when Harriet was leaving for uni herself. It wasn’t, perhaps, as big an ask as Rachel had felt, but she’d had a sense, back then, that if she came back to Mathering she’d never, ever leave, and based on Harriet’s experience, she wondered if she’d been right. And so she’d smiled at her sister, and hugged her, and tried to speak with as much gentleness as she could.
“Hats,” she’d said, using her childhood nickname, trying to set her tone somewhere between sympathy and briskness. “You’ve got offers at Lancaster and York. You’ve only got a few more months to put your head down, get your A levels, and then you’re out of here. I’ll be back at Easter, and I can probably manage a few weekends to break things up a bit…” She’d trailed off as her sister’s expression had hardened and she’d turned away. When she’d next spoken, her voice had been bitter.
“You want to go? Fine. Go. Like I care. Don’t bother coming back. Ever, actually.”
Rachel had stared at her sister’s taut back, torn between frustration and pity. It was only a few months, after all, and Harriet was almost eighteen, not a child. Rachel was only fifteen months older than her, a little more than a year, something everyone seemed to forget, because she’d always acted like the big sister—and Harriet had always acted like the younger one. Much younger, sometimes, or so it had seemed to Rachel, as it did in this moment.
“Come on, Hats,” she’d said. Begged. “I’ll come back every other weekend—”
“Actually, you know what?” Harriet had flashed back. “Don’t.” And she’d walked away without a word, and Rachel had let her, because the truth was, she was angry at her sister’s intransigence, her refusal to consider Rachel’s perspective. And so, in that moment, she’d straightened, let Harriet walk away without a word, and then she’d gone herself.
She’d been so angry, and reallyhurt, that she hadn’t come back until Easter, and then only for a few days, maybe a week. Another week at the end of the summer, when Harriet had been monosyllabic and Rachel had wondered if she should stop bothering. Her sister had decided not to go to university, and Rachel had told herself that wasn’t her fault even if it had seemed over the years that Harriet had always,alwaysblamed her for it.
Rachel flexed her hands on the steering wheel and tried to relax her shoulders and her jaw, both of which had tensed up, so she was gritting her teeth and her shoulders were nearly by her ears. Rehashing these old memories wasn’t something she did very often, if at all, but it was hard not to as she drove north, towards home.
*
It was lateafternoon by the time Rachel drove up the lane that led to the farmhouse. The sun was already starting its descent towards the hill behind the house, the horizon a stream of serrated ribbons of colour—lavender, orange, yellow, palest blue. In the distance a sheep bleated, the sound mournful. As Rachel got out of the car and stretched, the smell of home hit her—coal smoke, animal, fresh air. She breathed it in deep, let it saturate her system. She was going to make this work.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be back.”
Rachel squinted through the gathering dusk to see Harriet standing on the front stoop, arms folded, unsmiling.
“I texted my ETA this morning,” she said as mildly as she could, and Harriet shrugged and turned back inside.
Rachel breathed in again. Out.She was going to make this work.Clearly that was going to have to be something of a mantra, at least at the start. She turned back to the car, and Fred came out to sniff around her feet as she started unloading her stuff, with no help from Harriet—not, she reminded herself, that she was going to think that way.
Harriet remained in the kitchen, banging pots around as Rachel took all her stuff upstairs. She’d already moved the boxes that had been stacked in her bedroom into the fourth bedroom, which had always been used as a spare; the very fact that Harriet had used her bedroom rather than the spare for storage felt a little passive-aggressive, but she was determined to let it go. The last thing she wanted to be doing right now was keeping a list of petty slights the way her sister seemed to, but goodness, it was hard not to, sometimes.
Her bedroom, Rachel acknowledged as she unpacked her things, was unreservedly depressing—the same faded, flocked wallpaper as the rest of the house, the curtains dingy, the coverlet worn. Well, there was no reason why she couldn’t brighten it up a bit, was there? Her heart leapt at the thought—why not give not just her room, but the whole house a bit of a facelift? Nothing too drastic, of course, but it wouldn’t cost much to paint a few rooms, get rid of the dreadful wallpaper…maybe she’d suggest it to Harriet over supper. Perhaps it could be a project that brought them together. For a brief moment, Rachel imagined them stripping wallpaper, painting walls, all, inexplicably, to an internal soundtrack of eighties pop music. Well, a girl could dream.
With a determined spring in her step, she finished putting away her clothes, placed the houseplants on the windowsill, and made up the bed with her own linens from her flat in London. It did look a little better, she decided, insistently optimistic. This was going to work, she told herself yet again. She was going to make it work. No matter what.
Tantalising aromas of beef and vegetables were drifting upstairs by the time Rachel headed down to beard the lion in its den—or rather, her sister in the kitchen.
“What have you made?” she asked cheerfully as she came into the room. Her sister was standing at the stove, stirring a pot. “It smells delicious.”
“Just beef stew and dumplings.” Harriet gave her an uncertain, suspicious look. “You’re not vegan or anything, are you?”
