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Harriet shrugged and reached for a blueberry scone, breaking off a large chunk. “It’s not necessarily something I would have expected you to notice, as a child.”
“Yes, but…” She still felt she should have. “What else?” she asked, looking at her sister directly.
Harriet popped the chunk of scone into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “He always asked about your day at teatime, never mine,” she said after she’d swallowed. “And if that sounds petty, like I was keeping count, well, sorry, but that’s how it was. He just wasn’t interested in me, Rachel.” Harriet’s expression briefly turned bleak. “He never has been. I don’t really know why.”
“I didn’t feel he was all that interested inme,” Rachel protested. “He’s spent more time in the barn than the house. He missed a lot of things—sports days and stuff like that.” She shook her head slowly. “I never really felt that he was all that interested in what I was doing or how I felt.”
“Well, he was—is—a Yorkshireman and a farmer. He was never going toemote. But he was certainly more interested in you than he was in me.”
“I never saw it that way. I’m not saying that’s not how it was,” she added quickly, “just that I never saw it.” At all. And yet…memories began to filter through her subconscious, so vague and faint she couldn’t be entirely sure that they were real. Sitting with her dad on the sofa as they watchedPointless. Where had Harriet been? Coming into the barn to fetch her dad for tea, having him smile at her and call her ‘Rachel girl’. Had he had a nickname for Harriet? Him sitting by the side of her bed when she’d been ill with the flu, one large, callused hand resting on her hair.Get better, Rachel girl.Had he done that with Harriet?
“I know you didn’t,” Harriet told her. “And I understand why he was more interested in you than me, really. You’re the oldest, and you’re so much like him.”
Rachel reared back a little. “That’s not exactly a compliment, is it?”
“It’s not an insult, either,” Harriet returned with a small smile. “You’re driven and focused, just like he is. I know it looks different as an investment manager or whatever you are than as a farmer, but you both have the same steely core.”
Rachel took a sip of tea as she tried to organise her clamouring thoughts. “Why did you stay, Harriet,” she finally asked, “if you felt that way? I mean, you certainly didn’t owe him anything.”
Harriet looked down at her lap, her hair falling in front of her face to hide her expression. “Well, like I told you, I didn’t take my A levels. I didn’t really have a lot of options.”
“I know, but…you could have lived with Mum, maybe?”
The tension this suggestion caused a feeling like a tautening of the very air. “She didn’t offer,” Harriet stated flatly.
Something else Rachel hadn’t known, although she supposed she could have guessed easily enough. Their mother had walked out without so much as a forwarding address. Rachel hadn’t spoken to her after she’d left for more than a year, and then it had been a short, stilted, painful conversation. After a while, they’d managed to meet, and they’d found a distant sort of rapport.
“Did youwantto leave?” she asked, realising as the words came out of her mouth that it was a question she’d never actually asked her sister.
“I don’t know.” Harriet raised her head, her expression ironed into something like resignation. “I suppose I didn’t let myself think about it too much. It never really felt like a possibility.” She broke off another chunk of scone, but this time she simply crumbled it between her fingers, onto her plate. “I don’t want to blame Mum and Dad for being screwed up or something like that,” she said slowly. “I’m an adult. I need to take responsibility for my choices, and I chose to stay.”
“And I chose to leave,” Rachel returned quietly. Danielle’s words, full of regret, whispered through her mind.The person she could have become.“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t,” she said, the words surprising her—and yet not.
“Do you really?” Harriet looked and sounded understandably sceptical. Rachel knew she had never indicated as much in any way before; in fact, quite the opposite. “You always seemed like you wanted to bust out of here.”
“Yes, I did.” Rachel knew she couldn’t deny that. “I suppose it’s more in retrospect. What would I have been like, what would we have been like, if…” She couldn’t make herself finish that thought.
“I should never have asked you to stay,” Harriet said abruptly. “When you came back from uni that first time after Mum had left. I know I shouldn’t have. I think I knew it at the time. I just felt…scared, I suppose. And lonely.”
Rachel swallowed hard. All right, it seemed as if theyhadneeded another Big Conversation, after all. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have handled that better. Even if I hadn’t stayed, I could have come back more often. Been more involved. I think I felt guilty and that made me stay away. That’s no excuse, but—”
“It wasn’t like I was a little kid, Rachel,” Harriet returned with a wry smile, “even if I felt like one sometimes. I wasn’t your responsibility. I think I just wanted to be.”
“And since then?” Rachel ventured to ask, since they were having such a massive heart-to-heart. “You’ve seemed pretty angry with me, over the years.”
“I have been,” Harriet admitted baldly. “Being angry feels stronger than being hurt. And the more you stayed away, the…angrierI became.” She sighed. “Not the most mature reaction, I know, but whenever you came back you seemed like you had such a busy, important life in London. Like you didn’t want to be here.”
Rachel grimaced as she nodded her acknowledgement of that unfortunate truth. “And you seemed like you didn’t want me to be here,” she replied gently. “Which unfortunately, I do understand.”
Harriet shrugged. “A vicious cycle, I suppose.”
“Yes. And I know I’m at fault in perpetuating it.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Harriet, for letting you down.”
“I guess I let you down, too,” Harriet replied. “I’m sorry.”
They stared at one another a bit uneasily. Yes, it had been a vicious cycle but one, perhaps, they now could break. Maybe it was already broken. Rachel knew there were still more conversations to have, more steps to take, but she felt as if they’d truly got somewhere, somewhere she hadn’t even realised they needed to be, although she supposed she should have guessed. She’d thought things had been going okay with her sister for the last few weeks, but now she realised just how much had remained unspoken. How much she’d been willing to leave unspoken, because the unfortunate truth was, she’d always preferred avoidance to confrontation, running away to staying put.
But now, for better or worse, shewasstaying put.
