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“Well.” Rachel found herself smiling back, unable to keep herself from it and not, she realised, even wanting to. “I suppose you saw Ben and me…”
“I certainly did.” Harriet sounded smug, and Rachel let out a little laugh as she shook her head.
“I don’t know what it means, exactly,” she warned her sister as she started to take off her boots. “We’re just…we’re just going to take it day by day.”
“That sounds sensible,” Harriet returned, but her smile had slipped off her face and she was now frowning a little.
“What?” Rachel asked.
Harriet turned back to the pot of porridge, stirring it slowly. “Just don’t break his heart, Rachel,” she said quietly. “Not a second time.”
Rachel stood there, one boot on, one boot held in her hand, as she stared at her sister. “I didn’t break his heart a first time,” she finally objected. “If anything, Harriet, he broke mine.”
“But you’re the one who left.”
It was what Ben had said, and Rachel knew it was true, technically, but…it hadn’t quite been like that. It certainly hadn’t felt like it.
“I doubt his heart was broken,” she tried to scoff. “I mean, Ben was one of the cool kids back in school.”
“Cool?” Harriet glanced back at her. “He had his rugby lad friends, I suppose, but I wouldn’t say he wascool.”
Well, Rachel thought,she’dfound him cool, seriously cool, but maybe that was just because she so obviously hadn’t been—shy, awkward, lonely geek that she’d been back then. But Harriet, in the year below, had had more friends than Rachel had—a whole gang of girls she went around town with, or sprawled in the sitting room, eating crisps and watching telly, while their mother had, as she so often had, retreated upstairs to her bed. Maybe, to her, Ben had never been that cool. He’d just been…Ben.
“Anyway,” Harriet said as she doled the porridge into bowls, “his heartwasbroken. I know because I was here, and you weren’t. He moped around for ages—although I don’t thinkmopeis really the right word. He was as grumpy as a bear, snapping at everyone, that is if he said anything at all.”
Rachel sat down to take off her other boot. “Maybe he was,” she allowed, “but so was I, Harriet. Heartbroken, that is. I didn’t just swan off to Exeter without a care in the world.”
Harriet arched an eyebrow in blatant scepticism. “Sorry, Rachel, but from where we were standing, that’s what it looked like. At least,” she amended, “that’s what itfeltlike.”
She put two bowls on the table, along with a jar of honey and a pot of coffee. “I’m taking this up to Dad,” she said, gesturing to a tray she’d made up, complete with porridge, tea, a plate of toast, and the newspaper rolled up on the side. “We can talk more when I get back down, if you want to.”
Rachel watched her go, wondering what it was that drove Harriet to keep caring for her dad even when she’d clearly felt so unloved for so long. Was it duty, sacrificial love, or a hope that eventually he would appreciate her?
Or was that, Rachel wondered, what droveher? Because no matter what Harriet had said, she hadn’t felt all that close to her dad growing up. Yes, he might have gone to her parent evenings and not Harriet’s, but he’d barely said a word at them and had seemed as if he didn’t want to be there. But, she supposed as she sat down in front of a bowl of porridge, at least he’d gone.
When Harriet returned just a few minutes later, Rachel realised she hadn’t had time to organise her scattered thoughts about Ben Mackey. She hadn’t even processed the three kisses they’d shared, each one spectacular in its own way. Or his agreement to take it day by day, or what that even meant, or would look like.
As for broken hearts…well, if their heartshadboth been broken, they were mended now. Mostly. But in danger, Rachel knew, of splintering again, those hairline fractures never healed properly, after all. At least hers hadn’t.
“So.” Harriet bustled back into the kitchen and sat down opposite Rachel, digging into her porridge with relish. “Tell me about you and Ben.”
“There really isn’t much to tell.”
“No? Because when I ventured into the barn, it was looking pretty hot and heavy to me! I backed out of there right quick, let me tell you.”
“It was just a kiss,” Rachel protested, even as she felt her cheeks warm. “I don’t know, Hats,” she confessed. “I feel like I can’t even think about any kind of future. I know Ben is as much a part of the landscape here as this house is, or the hill behind us, or, I don’t know,anything. And my job—my life—is in London.” She stopped abruptly, because until she said it out loud, she hadn’t realised just how bleak it sounded. They were two very different people, with two very different lives.
“There are solutions to that problem,” Harriet replied, spooning honey onto her porridge, “if you want there to be.”
And what, Rachel wondered, would those solutions be? A long-distance relationship? Her moving back to Mathering? She knew Ben would never move to London—she couldn’t even imagine such a thing—and as for her moving here…well, back she would come, the prodigal daughter. She could see it now, the smug looks and knowing nods as everyone accepted that she’d had to come home, back where she belonged, and how she never should have left in the first place.
She prickled instinctively against such a notion, even as she acknowledged it wouldn’t bequitelike that. But it would be close.
“Look, we’re barely a couple,” she told Harriet. “We kissed this morning and that’s it. I want to see how things go on before I start thinking about the future or any potential solutions.”
“Fair enough,” Harriet replied equably, but Rachel had the niggling sense she’d just disappointed her sister. Maybe she’d even disappointed herself.
“Would you even want me back?” she asked, and Harriet glanced at her, surprised.
