Now and Then Friends Read Online Free Page A

Claire rose from the sofa and paced the elegant confines of the sitting room. She wasn’t sure why she’d come back to Cumbria; she didn’t have too many happy memories of living here. Home had been miserable and school had been a blur. Her parents had moved to London five years ago, and Claire hadn’t been back to Hartley-by-the-Sea since.
    But when it had been a choice between Hartley-by-the-Sea or living with her parents in London . . .
    Cumbria won, hands down.
    And yet she’d been in Hartley-by-the-Sea for only two hours and she was already starting to feel restless and uncertain. What on earth was she going to do here, or anywhere? She had no job, no fiancé, no future. She had no plans whatsoever, and she didn’t know how to go about making them.
    The phone rang, breaking the stillness, and Claire didn’t move. She listened to the answering machine pick up; she could hear her mother’s recorded message, the tone nasal and sharp, although Claire couldn’t make out the words. Then a second’s silence followed by the long
beep
of someone having hung up.
    Then the phone rang again.
    It had to be either her parents or her brother, and none of them was likely to give up calling. With a sigh Claire rose from the sofa and went to answer it.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œClaire?”
    â€œHi, Andrew.” Claire leaned against the kitchen wall and closed her eyes. She was glad it was her brother rather than her parents, although he could be almost as bossy.
    â€œYou got there all right,” he said unnecessarily.
    â€œYes.”
    A little sigh of disappointment, the sound track to her family life. “Mum wanted you in London, Claire.”
    â€œI know.” Her parents had insisted she come to stay with them after she’d been released from the clinic; in an extraordinary and unprecedented act of rebellion, Claire had turned away the limo they’d arranged to collect her and had taken the train up to Cumbria instead. She’d felt like a twenty-eight-year-old runaway, watching the placid coastline stream by as the train clattered towards Hartley-by-the-Sea. She’d turned off her phone and enjoyed the fact that no one actually knew where she was.
    â€œThey’re worried about you,” Andrew said. “We all are.”
    â€œI know. But I can’t stand Mum hovering over me, Andrew. I just can’t.”
    â€œShe means well—”
    â€œI
know
.” As the high-achieving older brother, Andrew had never been subjected to the relentless concern that Marie West lavished on her only daughter. He had no idea what it felt like to be under the microscope of a mother’s love and yet always feel so disappointing to her, so feeble. “I’m fine here,” Claire said.
    â€œYou shouldn’t be alone.”
    She stiffened, because she knew what he meant. He was afraid, as her parents were, that left alone she’d
regress.
She’d fall off the wagon she’d been flung onto four weeks ago, when Hugh had phoned her parents and insisted she had a
problem.
Rehab had been the obvious answer, and blinking and bewildered, Claire had followed their wishes, because when had she ever done anything else?
    But after four weeks of bucolic prison in Hampshire, she was donewith being a dormouse. She wasn’t sure how to change, or even if she could, but she wanted to. Coming to Cumbria had been the first step.
    â€œI’m fine, Andrew,” she began, only to have him cut her off, his voice taking on the schoolteacherish tone she knew well.
    â€œLook, Claire. I know Mum can be a bit much sometimes. But at this vulnerable time, you really shouldn’t be by yourself—”
    â€œI want to be by myself,” Claire interjected. “Trust me, Andrew. I’m not going to go raiding Dad’s liquor cabinet. He’s locked it, anyway, to keep the staff from having a nip.” As a joke it fell abominably flat,