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Ire flashed in her father’s eyes as he finally looked at her. She knew it would annoy him, to realise other people had got up in his business; it was why she’d told him. The only way she thought she could get him to go to the thing was if he was goaded into it. “No need for him to get involved,” he said tersely.
“Well, I suppose he was concerned.” She realised she didn’t know how or why Ben had got involved; she made it her business not to know anything about him anymore, although the neighbouring farms, sharing the same lane, had always been friendly over the years, helping each other out the way farmers often did. Ben’s dad had died from cancer about four or five years ago, and Ben had taken over from him; his mother, Diana, as far as Rachel knew, still helped out. She knew all that from Harriet, but not much more.
“No need.” Her father had turned back to the cow he was milking, adjusting the suction cup even though Rachel doubted it needed it. She pulled a milking stool towards her and sat down on it.
“Why don’t you want to go, Dad?” she asked quietly.
“Don’t need to.”
“Are you sure about that? How did the appointment come about, anyway?”
“Harriet made it,” he said gruffly. “Shouldn’t have done. I’m fine.”
“Well, it can’t hurt to check, can it?” Rachel persisted. “Prove everyone just how fine you are.”
“I don’t need to prove a damned thing, missy.” He turned to her, his eyes flashing, his mouth tight.
She took a sip of tea, saying nothing. She’d learned to wait her father out when she needed to. The cow was finished, and her father spent the following few minutes setting up the next one while Rachel watched and waited.
Finally, when the next cow was being milked, he sat back on his stool and said tersely, “It’s just headaches I’ve been having. Everyone gets those.”
You didn’t go to a memory clinic just for headaches, Rachel thought. There had to be something more. “So go and find out if there’s a reason why you’re getting them,” she said with a shrug, like it didn’t matter to her at all, like she hadn’t cut short her holiday inIbizato run up here and chivvy her father along because no one else could manage it.
“Don’t need to know the reason.”
“There might be some treatment they can offer—”
“For headaches?” he scoffed, but Rachel heard a bleakness under those words that made her feel a sudden shaft of sympathy. He was afraid, she realised, and then thought,of course he is. Afraid and proud, a lethal combination. How could she possibly tackle it?
“All right, fine.” She stood up from where she’d been sitting and turned towards the door. “Don’t go. But you know how this place is. Everyone in Mathering will know you didn’t go, and they’ll feel sorry for you, because they’ll think you’re afraid to go to a silly doctor’s appointment.”
Her father snorted. “Don’t try that psychology bollocks on me, my girl. It won’t work.”
She almost smiled then. Sometimes she forgot, in her own hurt about the past, how surprisinglyfunher dad could be, at least when you got used to him and his taciturn ways. “You still know it’s true.”
“They’re already talking,” he said after a moment, his head bent. “The damned nurse in the GP must have told someone, to have all this palaver. I didn’t ask for it.”
“You know how news always gets around here. I remember Ben said the vet knew his dad had cancer before he did.” Why had she mentioned Ben? She didn’t want to think about him. Not now, not ever. And in any case, it was Harriet who had told her that, not Ben himself, which somewhat proved her point.
Her father let out a huff of something that could, if you were being generous, be called laughter. “Maybe so.”
“So you’ll go?” Rachel replied briskly. “I did come all the way from London to take you, after all. You wouldn’t want to disappoint me, would you?”
He turned to give her a glare. “You didn’t have to come.”
Rachel met his glare with a measured look of her own. “I know.”
A long silence, the only sound the hiss and swish of the milking machine. “Fine,” her father said, shrugging in twitchy dismissal. “I’ll go. And then that’ll be the end of it.” Spoken like a warning, as if he could be in control of such a thing.
“All right,” Rachel replied, as if in agreement, although she had a feeling that wouldn’t be the end of it at all. It would just be the beginning.
Chapter Three
Back in thefarmhouse, Rachel realised she was starving—she’d skipped lunch during the drive up and all she’d had for breakfast was a cappuccino and a protein bar. Taking three eggs from the dozen or so Harriet had collected earlier, she cracked them into a pan on the Rayburn.
The kitchen felt surprisingly peaceful. Fred came in at the smell of the eggs frying and plopped himself down right at her feet in front of the Rayburn, so she had to step over him every time she moved. She didn’t mind. She cut a thick slice from the homemade loaf resting on the table, under a dish cloth—Harriet had, she acknowledged, always been a very good baker—and put it in the toaster. As she moved around the kitchen, her gaze took in a few things she didn’t recognise—a bright red mixing bowl, a framed watercolour of the River Derwent. It was a pretty thing, its banks bursting with flowers, the water burbling by.
Upstairs she’d assumed nothing had changed in this house, but it stood to reason that Harriet might have bought a few new things over the years. Her father wouldn’t, Rachel knew. He preferred to spend as little money as he could, wearing out his clothes until they were nothing but holes and worn patches.
