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Torn between misery and a treacherous excitement, Rachel nodded. “Thanks, Diana. That will be lovely.” Ish.
“Wonderful. See you then.” Diana continued on her way, past Rachel to the lane and home, while she kept going towards the river. She walked more slowly, to give Fred the chance to keep up, but also because memories were seeping into her mind like water into cloth. You could pretend it wasn’t happening for only so long, and then suddenly you were soaking wet.
Ben, at the sixth form disco, the February of their final year, one elbow propped on the bar, sipping his pint of beer, his brown eyes glinting gold over the rim of his glass. Rachel had been clutching a fruity cider—kiwi strawberry or some such, a real girly-girl drink—trying to look worldly-wise even though she was anything but and this was Ben.Ben, who knew her better than just about anyone, who had been her constant companion through childhood, until they’d started secondary school and he’d suddenly become mysterious and remote.
Rachel still remembered the first day of year seven, when they’d waited for the bus at the end of their shared lane, both of them looking nervous and uncomfortable in their stiff new uniforms—black blazers and grey flannel trousers, a skirt for Rachel that had made her legs look like pipe cleaners. The collar of her blouse had cut into her chin and the stiff straps of her backpack had chafed her shoulders. She’d felt self-conscious in the short, narrow skirt and oversized blazer; her mother had bought one two sizes too big so it would last, and she was pretty sure she looked ridiculous in it.
When they’d climbed onto the bus, some part of her had assumed they would sit together, even though they hadn’t really spoken at the stop; the week before they’d biked into Mathering before coming back to Ben’s and eating pick ‘n’ mix in his lounge, while watching telly. They were stillfriends.
But then Ben had slid in next to a boy he played rugby with, from the town club, and Rachel, who had been about to follow him into the seat before realising there was no room, had flushed and stumbled past, while the boy he was sitting with had snickered.
“Hey, Ben, is that yourgirlfriend?”
“What?” Ben had sounded both incredulous and utterly disdainful. “Noway.”
Her cheeks bright red with mortification, Rachel had walked to the back of the bus and slid into an empty seat. She’d clutched her backpack to her chest and tried not to cry.
Ben hadn’t talked to her at school once for the next six years. When they’d seen each other back at the farm, he’d been friendly enough, in a reserved sort of way; occasionally, with Harriet in tow, they got back some of the old camaraderie although it felt a little forced, without the careless ease of childhood.
But otherwise, it had become a mutually agreed and never talked about fact that they simply weren’t friends at school, atall, a fact that stung bitterly although she did her absolute utmost never to show it did. Ben hung out with the rugby lads; Rachel drifted between the geeky group and a few loners who attached themselves to her simply so you could have someone to sit with at lunch, friendships born of expediency and not much else. She hadn’t been able to make friends the way Ben had, and that had made her miss him all the more.
Over the years, school had become something to excel at academically but endure socially; never one to have the confidence to saunter up to a gang of girls, her few friends in primary school had melted away to other groups, and Rachel had struggled sometimes not to feel completely, agonisingly alone. By the time she took her GCSEs at sixteen, her eyes had been on the prize of leaving Mathering for good. Find somewhere else, somewhere where people understood and even liked her. Home had become a place to dread, thanks to her mother’s unhappiness, which hung like a shroud over their house, and university had begun to beckon, a siren song of new opportunities and personal reinvention.
So when Ben had given her that long, lazy look at the sixth form disco—she’d only gone at all because a friend had invited her; she’d thankfully made a couple of genuine ones during A levels, at long last—she hadn’t known what to think. Why wasn’t Ben ignoring her the way he always did at school, his gaze skating over her as if she were actually invisible? It had never, over the course of five years, ceased to hurt.
“Nice dress,” he’d said, without any snickering or snark the way some of the other lads might have, and Rachel had pressed one hand down the form-fitting red dress of some stretchy material that her friend Beth had let her borrow. It was the most revealing thing she’d even worn, and she’d felt self-conscious even though Beth assured her she was a knockout in it. “It’s perfect for your dark hair and eyes, and you’ve got a figure like a supermodel,” she’d said enviously. “I wish I looked that good in it!”
“Nice shirt,” Rachel had blurted to Ben, and he’d looked surprised because he was wearing a plain button-down in light blue, but then he’d smiled and said, “Thanks,” and somehow, they started talking and when he asked her if she wanted to dance, Rachel had felt as if she were floating.
Ben Mackey was finally paying attention to her atschool. She felt seen in a way she never had before, everything in her buzzing and alive. They’d danced twice together, and Ben had kept his hand on the dip of her waist when they headed back to the bar for a drink. Rachel’s head had been spinning from the cider but really mostly from Ben, from the way his hand slipped from her waist to her hip before he dropped it to pick up his pint.
The evening had ended without them dancing again or even talking, and Rachel had tried not to feel utterly flat by the lack of attention or promises. It had just been a dance, she reminded herself, no big deal, and she’d be gone from Mathering in a few months, anyway. She’d already had an offer from Exeter; she’d been counting the days till she could go…until Ben had danced with her.
And she might have abandoned her plans completely, Rachel acknowledged as she stopped, breathing hard, by the River Derwent, where the footpath turned left towards town. The river rushed by her in a cheerfully burbling stream, but in her mind’s eye she was seeing Ben’s broad back, just a few months into their brief relationship, as he’d flung hay into a stall, his knuckles white around the pitchfork, refusing to turn around, even to say anything, while her heart had splintered into a thousand pieces.
After a yawning minute of silence, Rachel had finally turned around and walked slowly out of the barn. She hadn’t spoken to Ben again for six months, when she’d come back after her mum had left, and then only the briefest and tersest of hellos. The next time they’d spoken had been—when? Several years later, at least, maybe after her university graduation, when she’d come home to pack up for her move to London. And then a handful of brief, awkward conversations since then, but really, the number of times she’d spoken to him at all was negligible, indeed.
Really, Rachel thought, the man had ignored her for most of her life. So why did the prospect of seeing him again fill her with that old, fateful mix of longing and hope? Some things, it seemed, never changed.
With a sigh, she called to Fred and headed back down the footpath the way she’d come, towards home.
Chapter Nine
“Come in, comein!”
Diana Mackey was all effusive warmth as she welcomed the Mowbrays into the cosy kitchen of her home. It had been something of an effort to get her sister and father to agree to come; when Rachel had said she’d accepted the invitation, Harriet had harrumphed that she might have had plans.
Exasperated, Rachel had turned to her. “All right, yes, butdoyou?” she’d asked.
“No,” Harriet had admitted a bit grumpily, “but I might have.”
Their dad had even been worse. “Why would I want to go there?” he’d demanded, as irascible as ever.
“Because the Mackeys are our neighbours and friends,” Rachel reminded him as patiently as she could. “And Diana said she’s making your favourite, apple crumble.”
“Hmpph,” her father had said, sounding like Harriet, but they’d both agreed to come, and Rachel had wondered why it was so hard. Wasn’t Harriet friends with Ben, if not more than that? Hadn’t he been helping out on the farm? Why were they so reluctant to see him? Or were they just reluctant to fall in with any of her plans, out of principle, or maybe just out of habit?
Shewas reluctant, Rachel knew, even as her heart raced with something treacherously like excitement as she hugged Diana and then shed her coat, trying not to look around for Ben.
