Clara looked at Rachel as the mother came back to the shop and then she saw the flicker of fear that she had seen in her own mother’s eyes before they fled for London.
And that’s when she knew it was the mother who gave the bruise to Rachel.
‘You realise the mother is abusing her?’ she asked Tassie.
‘I do.’
‘Can’t we do something?’ A thousand ideas ran through her head but Tassie shook her head at her.
‘We can’t do anything as Rachel is an adult and Moira is her mother. All we can do is be her friend and try and help when she lets us.’
Clara watched the mother busying about the shop and putting on a show for Clara and Tassie, all airs and graces and being super sweet to Rachel.
Oh yes, Clara knew all of these behaviours and she felt the hairs on her arms rise and her jaw set.
Doing nothing wasn’t in Clara’s nature but she also knew it wasn’t her place to interfere.
She left the old woman and the bakery and drove back to the cottage, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the girl in the bakery. No, this wouldn’t do, Clara simply had to help Rachel; she felt it in her heart that girl would need her one day and that day was coming soon… but first she had to fix the hole in her own roof.
8
Acorn Cottage was Rachel’s dream house when she was a young girl. When she first moved to Merryknowe and was at school in the next village, she would get off the bus at the road that led to the cottage behind the church and walk through the graveyard to the cottage.
Rachel imagined coming home to the house and sweeping the pathway and tying back the roses on either side of the front door.
She would have put in pink flowers in the front garden and had a pie cooling on the kitchen windowsill like they did in old movies and her mother would be nowhere in her life.
Over the years she had visited Acorn Cottage less and less as the bakery and her mother were too demanding, but it remained in her heart, a place of escape and a place to dream. She had always wondered why she loved it so much, why it drew her to it every afternoon growing up. Perhaps she would own it one day, she had thought.
Except now it belonged to Clara Maxwell.
Clara was older than her, probably about thirty or so, and she was so smart-looking with her striped T-shirt and jeans, with a straight dark brown bob and blue eyes with eye makeup. She had curves and wore silver sneakers. Mother never allowed Rachel to have makeup. She said it made her look cheap, but Mother’s dressing table was groaning with shadows and powders and lipsticks. Mother looked cheap. Clara looked wonderful.
And Clara wanted to be her friend. Clara who looked like an angel when she walked into the shop. There was sunlight on her hair and a prism-like rainbow followed her from the concave window. Clara gave Rachel her number. She invited her to the pub. Rachel had never set foot inside the pub because of Mother, who said Rachel was not mature enough to drink – except Mother drank gin and wine and then slurred her words and got angry with Rachel for things she didn’t do.
Rachel tried to imagine going to the pub with Clara and failed. She didn’t know what she would wear or what the inside of the pub even looked like.
That night Rachel did exactly as Mother asked, and didn’t mess anything up. When Mother wasn’t looking, she put an extra sleeping tablet into the warm cocoa she made every night. This was a last resort and she had to be careful as Mother sometimes counted the tablets, but Rachel needed time to think.
When finally Rachel was alone in her room, and Mother was snoring loudly in her own room, she thought about how she could be Clara’s friend. Mother would never allow it but she needed something more than this life.
Maybe she could go and visit Clara tomorrow but how would she do it?
It was impossible. She lay on her bed and stared at the dull, oatmeal-coloured ceiling.
‘Dad?’ she whispered. ‘If you can help me escape Mother, to visit Clara and the cottage, I would be so grateful. I look after Mother the way you would have wanted. I do everything for her. Please help me, Dad.’
She felt her eyes fill with tears.
She missed her father but he was a sad man. A weak man, her mother said, but Rachel understood why he did what he did. Sometimes she thought about doing the same thing but then where would Mother be? She would have no one to help her get in the bath and make a living for them.
Clara made herself a cup of cocoa with extra sugar because Mother wouldn’t allow it usually, and she ate a Hobnob and watched The Graham Norton Show.
It was perfectly lovely and she felt herself relax. Then after Graham Norton had finished, and she had washed her cup, put it away and turned off the lamps, she heard the door to Mother’s bedroom open.
‘What are you doing, you little bitch?’
Rachel felt cold and she rubbed her arms. ‘Nothing, Mother, let me help you back to bed.’
Mother stared at her with a snarl on her face.
‘I’m going to bed soon,’ she said bravely to Mother, to try and show her she was doing what was expected.
‘You will do nothing without me saying so. You’re just like your father.’
Rachel stood still. Sometimes this strategy worked, as Mother’s attention would be drawn to something else that was wrong that she could abuse but tonight Rachel thought it wouldn’t.
‘I have to check the locks downstairs,’ said Rachel. She had already checked them but if Mother was in a mood, it was best she avoided her and took her time in the
