Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(83)
She'd lifted her bicycle onto the pavement and rolled it to the seawall. She'd leaned it against the barrier and sat for a good quarter of an hour, feeling the sun's heat rise from the concrete like blistering bubbles against her bum. She wasn't ready to go back to the shop and face her mother's probing questions. She couldn't get to Sahlah before the police. So she'd realised that she had to come up with a place to go until the coast was clear, allowing her to bike back to the mustard factory and have a word with her friend.
Which is how she finally ended up where she was at the moment: at the Cliff top Snuggeries. It had been the only place she could think of.
She'd had to retrace her route to get here, bypassing the High Street and Racon Original and Artistic Jewellery by pedalling along the Marine Parade instead. This was a rougher go because she had to wend her way up the steep acclivity of the shoreline's Upper Parade, an activity that was sheer torture in the heat, but she had no real choice in the matter. Trying to get to the Snuggeries via Church Road's gentler slope would have meant pedalling up the High Street, directly in front of Racon Jewellery. One glimpse of Rachel darting by on her bike and Connie would have been out of the shop in a fury, screeching like the victim of a shotgun hold-up.
As a result, Rachel had arrived at the Snuggeries in a virtual lather. She'd dropped her bicycle next to a dusty bed of begonias, and she'd staggered round to the back of the flats. Here there was a garden comprising a strip of sunbrowned lawn, three narrow flower beds planted with drooping cornflowers, tickseed, and daisies, two stone birdbaths, and a wooden bench. Rachel sank onto this. It faced not the sea but the flats themselves, and they looked at her in a silent reproach that she could barely tolerate. They displayed what she'd loved best about them: the balconies above and the terraces below, both of which looked out not only on the garden but on the winding path of Southcliff Promenade, which curved above the sea.
We're lost to you, lost to you, the Clifftop Snuggeries seemed to be saying. Your well-laid plans went awry, Rachel Winfield, and where are you now?
Rachel turned from the sight of them, her throat tight and sore. She rubbed the back of her arm against her forehead and wished for a Twister, imagining how soothing the lemon and lime ice cream would have felt as it slid down her throat. She pivoted on the bench and looked out at the sea. The sun blazed above without a hint of pity, while far out on the horizon, the thin bank of fog lay as it had for days.
Rachel balanced her chin on her fist, her fist on the back of the bench. Her eyes stung as if a fierce salty wind were blowing, and she blinked hard and fast to make the tears disappear. She wished herself anywhere but where she was, facing the lonely place that anger, resentment, and jealousy had taken her.
What did it really mean to pledge yourself to another person? At one time she would have been able to answer the question with ease. Pledging yourself meant extending your hand and holding within it another's heart, the secrets of her soul, and the dearest of her dreams. It meant offering safety, a haven where anything was possible and everything between two kindred souls was perfectly understood. Pledging yourself meant saying “We're equals” and “Whatever trouble comes, we'll face it together.” That's what she'd thought about pledging at one time. How artless her promise of loyalty had been.
But they had begun as equals, she and Sahlah, two schoolgirls who were last chosen for teams, who weren't allowed, invited—or who just didn't dare—to attend their schoolmates’ parties or dances, whose coyly decorated valentine shoeboxes at the back of their classroom in junior school would have gone empty had each of them not remembered the other and what it felt like to be out in the cold. She and Sahlah had indeed begun as equals. It's where they finished that off-balanced the scales.
Rachel swallowed against the tight soreness in her throat. She hadn't meant harm to anyone, really. She'd only meant the truth to come out. It was all for the best when people learned the truth. Wasn't it better than living a lie?
But Rachel knew that the real lie was the one she was telling herself right now. And the evidence of this was right behind her, played out in brick with ruched curtains at the windows and a red FOR SALE sticker pasted across its door.
She didn't want to think of the flat. “Our very last one,” the salesman had called it, twinkling at her meaningfully and doing his best to ignore the freak-show nature of her face. “Just the thing for a starter home. That's what you're looking for, I'll wager, isn't it? Who's the lucky bloke?”
But Rachel hadn't thought of marriage and children when she'd walked through the flat, examining cupboards, looking out at the view, swinging open windows. She'd thought of Sahlah. She'd thought of cooking dinner together, of sitting in front of the grate that held that glowing hopelessly artificial fire, of drinking tea on the minuscule terrace in the spring, of talking and dreaming and being to each other what they'd been for a decade: a very best friend.
She hadn't been looking for a flat when she'd stumbled across Clifftop Snuggeries’ final unit. She'd been bicycling back from Sahlah's. It had been a visit like many other visits they'd had together over the years: talk, laughter, music, and tea but this time interrupted by Yumn's bursting into the room with one of her imperious demands. She wanted Sahlah to give her a pedicure. At once. Now. It had made no difference that Sahlah was entertaining a guest. Yumn had given an order, and she expected it to be obeyed. Rachel had noticed how Sahlah changed when her sister-in-law spoke. The joyous girl she was became a submissive servant: obedient, docile, and once again the frightened child at the junior school who'd been teased and bullied.