Rainy Day Sisters

Book 1: A Hartley-by-the-Sea Novel

by Kate Hewitt

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

When Lucy Bagshaw's life in Boston falls apart thanks to a scathing editorial written by her famous artist mother, she accepts her half sister Juliet's invitation to stay with her in Hartley-by-the-Sea, a charming seaside village in northern England. Lucy is expecting quaint cottages and cream teas but instead finds that her sister is an aloof host, the weather is wet, windy, and cold, and her new boss, Alex Kincaid, is a disapproving widower who only hired her as a favor to Juliet.



Despite the invitation she offered, Juliet is startled by the way Lucy catapults into her orderly life. As Juliet faces her own struggles with both her distant mother and her desire for a child, her sister's irrepressible optimism begins to take hold. With the help of quirky villagers, these hesitant rainy day sisters begin to forge a new understanding and find in each other the love of family that makes all the difference.

Release date: August 4, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 368

Sample

 

1

Lucy

LUCY BAGSHAW’S HALF SISTER, Juliet, had warned her about the weather. “When the sun is shining, it’s lovely, but otherwise it’s wet, windy, and cold,” she’d stated in her stern, matter-of-fact way. “Be warned.”

Lucy had shrugged off the warning because she’d rather live anywhere, even the Antarctic, than stay in Boston for another second. In any case she’d thought she was used to all three. She’d lived in England for the first six years of her life, and it wasn’t as if Boston were the south of France. Except in comparison with the Lake District, it seemed it was.

Rain was atmospheric, she told herself as she hunched over the steering wheel, her eyes narrowed against the driving downpour. How many people listed walks in the rain as one of the most romantic things to do?

Although perhaps not when it was as torrential as this.

Letting out a gusty sigh, Lucy rolled her shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension that had lodged there since she’d turned off the M6. Or really since three weeks ago, when her life had fallen apart in the space of a single day—give or take a few years, perhaps.

This was her new start, or, rather, her temporary reprieve. She was staying in England’s Lake District, in the county of Cumbria, for only four months, long enough to get her act together and figure what she wanted to do next. She hoped. And, of course, Nancy Crawford was going to want her job as school receptionist back in January, when her maternity leave ended.

But four months was a long time. Long enough, surely, to heal, to become strong, even to forget.

Well, maybe not long enough for that. She didn’t think she’d ever forget the blazing headline in the Boston Globe’s editorial section: Why I Will Not Give My Daughter a Free Ride.

She closed her eyes—briefly, because the road was twisty—and forced the memory away. She wasn’t going to think about the editorial piece that had gone viral, or her boss’s apologetic dismissal, or Thomas’s shrugging acceptance of the end of a nearly three-year relationship. She certainly wasn’t going to think about her mother. She was going to think about good things, about her new, if temporary, life here in the beautiful, if wet, Lake District. Four months to both hide and heal, to recover and be restored before returning to her real life—whatever was left, anyway—stronger than ever before.

Lucy drove in silence for half an hour, all her concentration taken up with navigating the A-road that led from Penrith to her destination, Hartley-by-the-Sea, population fifteen hundred. Hedgerows lined either side of the road and the dramatic fells in the distance were barely visible through the fog.

She peered through the window trying to get a better look at the supposedly spectacular scenery, only to brake hard as she came up behind a tractor trundling down the road at the breakneck speed of five miles per hour. Pulling behind her from a side lane was a truck with a trailer holding about a dozen morose and very wet-looking sheep.

She stared in the rearview mirror at the wet sheep, who gazed miserably back, and had a sudden memory of her mother’s piercing voice.

Are you a sheep, Lucinda, or a person who can think and act for herself?

Looking at those miserable creatures now, she decided she was definitely not one of them. She would not be one of them, not here, in this new place, where no one knew her, maybe not even her half sister.

It took another hour of driving through steady rain, behind the trundling tractor the entire way, before she finally arrived at Hartley-by-the-Sea. The turning off the A-road was alarmingly narrow and steep, and the ache between Lucy’s shoulders had become a pulsing pain. But at last she was here. There always was a bright side, or at least a glimmer of one. She had to believe that, had clung to it for her whole life and especially for the last few weeks, when the things she’d thought were solid had fallen away beneath like her so much sinking sand.

The narrow road twisted sharply several times, and then as she came around the final turn, the sun peeked out from behind shreds of cloud and illuminated the village in the valley below.

A huddle of quaint stone houses and terraced cottages clustered along the shore, the sea a streak of gray-blue that met up with the horizon. A stream snaked through the village before meandering into the fields on the far side; dotted with cows and looking, in the moment’s sunshine, perfectly pastoral, the landscape was like a painting by Constable come to life.

For a few seconds Lucy considered how she’d paint such a scene; she’d use diluted watercolors, so the colors blurred into one another as they seemed to do in the valley below, all washed with the golden gray light that filtered from behind the clouds.

She envisioned herself walking in those fields, with a dog, a black Lab perhaps, frisking at her heels. Never mind that she didn’t have a dog and didn’t actually like them all that much. It was all part of the picture, along with buying a newspaper at the local shop—there had to be a lovely little shop down there, with a cozy, grandmotherly type at the counter who would slip her chocolate buttons along with her paper.

A splatter of rain against her windshield startled her from the moment’s reverie. Yet another tractor was coming up behind her, at quite a clip. With a wave of apology for the stony-faced farmer who was driving the thing, she resumed the steep, sharply twisting descent into the village.

She slowed the car to a crawl as she came to the high street, houses lining the narrow road on either side, charming terraced cottages with brightly painted doors and pots of flowers, and, all right, yes, a few more weathered-looking buildings with peeling paint and the odd broken window. Lucy was determined to fall in love with it, to find everything perfect.

Juliet ran a guesthouse in one of the village’s old farmhouses: Tarn House, she’d said, no other address. Lucy hadn’t been to Juliet’s house before, hadn’t actually seen her sister in more than five years. And didn’t really know her all that well.

Juliet was thirty-seven to her twenty-six, and when Lucy was six years old, their mother, Fiona, had gotten a job as an art lecturer at a university in Boston. She’d taken Lucy with her, but Juliet had chosen to stay in England and finish her A levels while boarding with a school friend. She’d gone on to university in England. She’d visited Boston only once and over the years Lucy had always felt a little intimidated by her half sister, so cool and capable and remote.

Yet it had been Juliet she’d called when everything had exploded around her, and Juliet who had said briskly, when Lucy had burst into tears on the phone, that she should come and stay with her for a while.

“You could get a job, make yourself useful,” she’d continued in that same no-nonsense tone that made Lucy feel like a scolded six-year-old. “The local primary needs maternity cover for a receptionist position, and I know the head teacher. I’ll arrange it.”

And Lucy, overwhelmed and grateful that someone could see a way out of the mess, had let her. She’d had a telephone interview with the head teacher, who was, she realized, the principal, the next day, a man who had sounded as stern as Juliet and had finished the conversation with a sigh, saying, “It’s only four months, after all,” so Lucy felt as if he was hiring her only as a favor to her sister.

And now she couldn’t find Tarn House.

She drove the mile and a half down the main street and back again, doing what felt like a seventeen-point turn in the narrow street, sweat prickling between her shoulder blades while three cars, a truck, and two tractors, all driven by grim-faced men with their arms folded, waited for her to manage to turn the car around. She’d never actually driven in England before, and she hit the curb twice before she managed to get going the right way.

She passed a post office shop looking almost as quaint as she’d imagined (peeling paint and lottery advertisements aside), a pub, a church, a sign for the primary school where she’d be working (but no actual school as far as she could see), and no Tarn House.

Finally she parked the car by the train station, admiring the old-fashioned sign above the Victorian station building, which was, on second look, now a restaurant. The driving rain had downgraded into one of those misting drizzles that didn’t seem all that bad when you were looking out at it from the cozy warmth of your kitchen but soaked you utterly after about five seconds.

Hunching her shoulders against the bitter wind—this was August—she searched for someone to ask directions.

The only person in sight was a farmer with a flat cap jammed down on his head, wearing extremely mud-splattered plus fours. Lucy approached him with her most engaging smile.

“Pardon me—are you from around here?”

He squinted at her suspiciously. “Eh?”

She had just asked, she realized, an absolutely idiotic question. “I only wanted to ask,” she tried again, “do you know where Tarn House is?”

“Tarn House?” he repeated, his tone implying that he’d never heard of the place.

“Yes, it’s a bed-and-breakfast here in the village—”

“Eh?” He scratched his head, his bushy eyebrows drawn together rather fiercely. Then he dropped his hand and jerked a thumb towards the road that led steeply up towards the shop and one pub. “Tarn House’s up there, isn’t it, now, across from the Hangman’s Noose.”

“The Hangman’s—” Ah. The pub. Lucy nodded. “Thank you.”

“The white house with black shutters.”

“Thanks so much, I really appreciate it.” And why, Lucy wondered as she turned up the street, had he acted so incredulous when she’d asked him where it was? Was that a Cumbrian thing, or was her American accent stronger than she’d thought?

Tarn House was a neat two-story cottage of whitewashed stone with the promised black shutters, and pots of chrysanthemums on either side of the shiny black door. A discreet hand-painted sign that Lucy hadn’t glimpsed from the road informed her that this was indeed her destination.

She hesitated on the slate step, her hand hovering above the brass knocker, as the rain continued steadily down. She felt keenly then how little she actually knew her sister. Half sister, if she wanted to be accurate; neither of them had known their different fathers. Not that Lucy could really call a sperm donor a dad. And their mother had never spoken about Juliet’s father, whoever he was, at least not to Lucy.

Her hand was still hovering over the brass knocker when the door suddenly opened and Juliet stood there, her sandy hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, her gray eyes narrowed, her hands planted on her hips, as she looked Lucy up and down, her mouth tightening the same way her mother’s did when she looked at her.

Two sleek greyhounds flanked Juliet, cowering slightly as Lucy stepped forward and ducked her head in both greeting and silent, uncertain apology. She could have used a hug, but Juliet didn’t move and Lucy was too hesitant to hug the half sister she barely knew.

“Well,” Juliet said with a brisk nod. “You made it.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Lucy smiled tentatively, and Juliet moved aside.

“You look like a drowned rat. You’d better come in.”

Lucy stepped into the little entryway of Juliet’s house, a surprisingly friendly jumble of umbrellas and Wellington boots cluttering the slate floor along with the dogs. She would have expected her sister to have every boot and brolly in regimental order, but maybe she didn’t know Juliet well enough to know how she kept her house. Or maybe her sister was just having an off day.

“They’re rescue dogs—they’ll jump at a mouse,” Juliet explained, for the two greyhounds were trembling. “They’ll come round eventually. They just have to get used to you.” She snapped her fingers, and the dogs obediently retreated to their baskets.

“Cup of tea,” she said, not a question, and led Lucy into the kitchen. The kitchen was even cozier than the hall, with a large dark green Aga cooking range taking up most of one wall and emitting a lovely warmth, a circular pine table in the center, and a green glass jar of wildflowers on the windowsill. It was all so homely, so comforting, and so not what Lucy had expected from someone as stern and officious as Juliet, although again she was acting on ignorance. How many conversations had she even had with Juliet, before that wretched phone call? Five? Six?

Still the sight of it all, the Aga and the flowers and even the view of muddy sheep fields outside, made her spirits lift. This was a place she could feel at home in. She hoped.

She sank into a chair at the table as Juliet plonked a brass kettle on one of the Aga’s round hot plates.

“So you start next week.”

“Yes—”

“You ought to go up to the school tomorrow, and check in with Alex.”

“Alex?”

Juliet turned around, her straight eyebrows drawn together, her expression not precisely a frown, but definitely not a smile. “Alex Kincaid, the head teacher. You spoke with him on the phone, remember?” There was a faint note of impatience or even irritation in Juliet’s voice, which made Lucy stammer in apology.

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. Mr. Kincaid. Yes. Sorry.” She was not actually all that keen to make Alex Kincaid’s acquaintance. Given how unimpressed by her he’d seemed for the ten excruciating minutes of their phone interview, she thought he was unlikely to revise his opinion upon meeting her.

And she was unlikely to revise hers; she already had a picture of him in her head: He would be tall and angular with short-cut steel gray hair and square spectacles. He’d have one of those mouths that looked thin and unfriendly, and he would narrow his eyes at you as you spoke, as if incredulous of every word that came out of your mouth.

Oh, wait, maybe she was picturing her last boss, Simon Hansen, when he’d told her he was canceling her art exhibition. Sorry, Lucy, but after the bad press we can hardly go ahead with the exhibit. And in any case, your mother’s not coming anyway.

As for Alex Kincaid, now that she remembered that irritated voice on the phone, she decided he’d be balding and have bushy eyebrows. He’d blink too much as he spoke and have a nasal drip.

All right, perhaps that was a little unfair. But he’d definitely sounded as if he’d had his sense of humor surgically removed.

“I’m sure you’re completely knackered now,” Juliet continued, “but tomorrow I’ll give you a proper tour of the village, introduce you.” She nodded, that clearly decided, and Lucy, not knowing what else to do, nodded back.

It was so strange being here with her sister, sitting across from her in this cozy little kitchen, knowing she was actually going to live here and maybe get to know this sibling of hers who had semi-terrified her for most of her life. Intimidated, anyway, but perhaps that was her fault and not Juliet’s.

In any case, when Lucy had needed someone to talk to, someone who understood the maelstrom that was their mother but wasn’t caught up in her currents, she’d turned to Juliet. And Juliet hadn’t let her down. She had to remember that, keep hold of it in moments like these, when Juliet seemed like another disapproving person in her life, mentally rolling her eyes at how Lucy could never seem to get it together.

And she was going to get it together. Here, in rainy, picturesque Hartley-by-the-Sea. She was going to reconnect with her sister, and make loads of friends, and go on picnics and pub crawls and find happiness.

“He’s a good sort,” Juliet said as she whisked the kettle off the Aga before it had shrilled for so much as a millisecond. It took Lucy a moment to remember whom Juliet was talking about. Alex Kincaid, her new boss. “Tough,” Juliet added, “but good.”

Lucy didn’t like the sound of tough, especially Juliet’s version of tough. She wanted her boss to be cuddly and comforting, or maybe a pull-you-up-by-your-bootstraps type, but in a jolly, let’s-get-on-with-it kind of way. She had a feeling Alex Kincaid was going to be neither.

“Here you are.” Juliet put a mug of steaming tea in front of Lucy, and pushed the sugar bowl and the milk jug towards her before taking her own mug. “So,” she said, taking a sip of tea, her face settling into neutral lines. “What did Fiona think of you coming here to stay with me?”

Lucy gave a noncommittal shrug. She supposed she’d eventually have to give Juliet the details of everything that had happened with their mother, but she’d part with them reluctantly and in any case Juliet could find them plastered all over the Internet if she did a search. Maybe she already had. “I don’t know. I just sent her an e-mail, telling her I was coming here. We haven’t actually spoken since . . .”

“That’s understandable,” Juliet answered blandly. “I haven’t spoken with her in five years.”

Lucy didn’t know the source of her sister’s estrangement with their mother, although she supposed she could guess at it. Fiona Bagshaw was, to put it mildly, a personality. A “force” would be how she described herself. She’d made a name for herself in the world of modern art before Lucy was born, creating sculptures of round-hipped and large-breasted women that reminded Lucy of something you might discover in a prehistoric cave. Fertility Goddess, circa 2000 BC. But the figures were immensely popular and now sold for thousands of dollars, along with her latest artistic undertaking, angry-looking phalluses made from handblown glass.

In the last decade Fiona Bagshaw had become as much of a social commentator as an artist. If a newspaper or a television program needed a quote about women’s rights or modern culture or just about anything, they went to Fiona. Lucy had become used to her mother’s constant theorizing, the endless commentary on what anyone wore, ate, said, did. She couldn’t so much as eat a Twinkie without her mother making some remark about it being a phallic representation and a symbol of modern patriarchy.

But Juliet had missed her mother’s fame and its effects on Fiona’s purpose-built family. She’d left before Fiona had become something of a cultural icon, at least in America. She certainly hadn’t lived with it day in and day out the way Lucy had. So why had her sister chosen to alienate herself from their mother? Lucy wasn’t about to ask. One, she didn’t know Juliet well enough to ask such a personal question. Two, she didn’t want to think about her mother for the next four months. And three, she was exhausted.

“I’ll show you your room,” Juliet said, draining her mug of tea. She rose and went to the sink, rinsing the mug out with her usual brisk movements. “You probably want a lie-down, although it’s best not to sleep for more than an hour or two. Otherwise you’ll be completely off schedule.”

And Juliet was someone who seemed to thrive on schedules. Left to her own devices, Lucy would sleep all day. But now she obediently rose from the table and followed Juliet back into the hall. “I’ll just get my bags from the car. What time is dinner?” Juliet gave her a rather narrow look. “I only meant, with your other—umm, your paying guests? Are they . . . ?”

“I haven’t any guests at the moment,” Juliet answered. “They left this morning, and the next lot arrive tomorrow at noon. They’re all walkers, and they’re usually only here for a night before they move on to the next stop on their route. I don’t do dinner for guests, though, so it’ll just be the two of us.”

“Okay.” Lucy jangled her car keys, the sound seeming too loud in the little hall. “I’m happy to pitch in, of course. With cooking and cleaning and all that.”

“I’ll make a rota,” Juliet answered.

“A rota?” Lucy said blankly, and her half sister pursed her lips.

“A schedule,” she explained, and Lucy suspected she’d already made one.

“Great.” In the short silence after this awkward exchange, she jangled her keys again, and then went for her bags, ducking her head in the persistent drizzle, giving Hartley-by-the-Sea’s high street one dubious glance. In the rain it all looked gray and bleak, without a single person to liven up the muted, monochrome landscape of terraced houses. If she were to paint it, she’d use a palette of grays and title it Loneliness. Or maybe Isolation. Not that she was planning on painting anything here, or ever again. Standing there, she couldn’t hear a single sound besides the soft pattering of rain on the hood of her car.

Ten minutes later Juliet had left her alone in a sunshine yellow room at the back of the house, the white duvet cover stitched with daisies and a single window overlooking the sheep fields.

Lucy sank onto the bed, feeling more exhausted than ever and quite suddenly homesick—although for whom or what, she didn’t know. She didn’t miss Boston, particularly, or her job as a barista at a gallery/café in Cambridge. She didn’t miss her mother or even Thomas, to whom she’d given three years of her life. She would have missed his children, if they’d shown her even a modicum of kindness or affection, but as it was, she was relieved to be free of them.

Maybe that was the trouble. She was missing the very fact that she didn’t miss anything, that no one was special to her, that she’d left nothing behind that she still wanted. And nobody would miss her.

All right, perhaps that was being a bit maudlin. Her best friend, Chloe, hadn’t wanted her to go. She had a small circle of friends and acquaintances who would at least read her Facebook updates, if she could be bothered to post them.

Arrived in Hartley-by-the-Sea! Raining steadily and had a cup of tea.

She had friends; she had a sister who she believed loved her even if she wasn’t particularly demonstrative; she had a job. She had her health. Anything else?

Sighing, Lucy kicked off her shoes and turned back the daisy cover. Sleep, she decided. She had the luxury of sleeping for at least four hours, never mind what Juliet had said about one or two. She’d wake up in time to help with dinner, or with whatever job Juliet had written her down for on her precious rota.

2

Juliet

JULIET HAD FINISHED WASHING up the tea mugs, her gaze on the sheep fields that stretched to the horizon, blanketed in a gray drizzle. Upstairs she’d heard the creak of the floorboards as Lucy had moved around, the squeak of the bedsprings. She wondered now what Lucy thought of the room, imagined her taking in the curtains with the daisy chains Juliet had stitched herself, the Edwardian washing pitcher and basin she’d found at the antiques fair in Cockermouth. And then she wondered why she cared.

A mug slipped from her hand and broke in the bottom of the farmhouse sink she’d bought from a reclamation center. She swore softly under her breath and picked up the shattered pieces, swearing again when a jagged shard of pottery cut into her thumb, and a bright red drop of blood welled up. She wrapped the broken pieces in a paper towel and threw them in the bin before putting her thumb in her mouth and sucking at the cut.

Then she reached for a sponge and wiped the table, swiping at the droplets of tea and the sprinkling of sugar granules that Lucy had left. Having her sister stay was going to make a mess in all sorts of ways, and stir up unwanted feelings in herself. And that was something she hadn’t expected.

It had seemed to be both simple and generous, to invite Lucy here when her life had fallen apart in spectacular Lucy style. Lucy, Juliet had long noted from afar, never seemed to do anything by halves, or with any modicum of caution. She jumped into situations, relationships, and even college degrees with far more enthusiasm than sense. Juliet had, with a kind of smug pleasure at her own neatly ordered life, periodically checked Lucy’s enthusiastic Facebook updates: Changed my course from history to art! So excited and Moved to a converted warehouse in South Boston. Love it!!!! Never mind that she’d already done two years of her history degree, and changing to art necessitated a further two semesters of college, or that the converted warehouse hadn’t actually yet been converted into a livable dwelling. Lucy leaped. Juliet looked.

Except, in this instance, Juliet had been the one to leap, by inviting her half sister to stay. And while it had seemed so easy when she’d suggested it on the phone—here she was, the organized, older sister, swooping in to take care of poor Lucy—now it felt . . . unsettling.

She propped her elbows on the sink and gazed out again at the muddy fields. Peter Lanford was coming down the dirt road from Bega Farm in his battered old Land Rover, probably to check on the sheep he kept in the pasture in back of Juliet’s garden. She and Peter had gotten to know each other a little, both through their properties adjoining and being on the village’s parish council together. She might almost call him a friend, and she didn’t really do friendship. Or even relationships in general, outside of ones that were clearly and comfortingly defined. Employer/employee. Patient/doctor. Innkeeper/guest. What category did half sister fall into?

It had been shockingly disconcerting to open the door and see Lucy standing there in the flesh, with the same sandy hair, gray eyes, and freckles that Juliet possessed, and yet looking so different. Her ballet flats, purple tights, and miniskirt decorated with lemons of all things had been ridiculous and inappropriate for the weather; Juliet was, as ever, wearing jeans and a fleece. Lucy’s hair had frizzed about her face, while Juliet kept hers subdued in a sensible ponytail. And yet there could be no denying they were sisters. Half sisters. They even had the same slightly crooked nose. Whoever their respective fathers were, neither of them seemed to have passed on many of his genes.

And as Lucy had stepped into the foyer, seeming suddenly to fill up the space that had always been hers alone, Juliet had had a sudden and overwhelming urge to push her half sister right back out the door and then slam it in her face.

Not exactly the most sisterly of impulses, and not one she’d expected to have. She was being kind and generous to poor, hopeless Lucy. That was what was going on here. That was what she’d signed up for.

A knock sounded on the door, and blowing out a breath, Juliet turned from the sink. A few seconds later Rachel Campbell appeared in the kitchen with her arms full of freshly ironed sheets.

“I thought I’d pop by with the ironing while I had a moment,” she said, and with a murmur of thanks Juliet took them from her. Rachel cleaned the house twice a week and did all the ironing, tasks that Juliet was fully capable of doing herself, but Rachel’s housecleaning business supported a family of five—a mother, two sisters, and a nephew—and Juliet wanted to help her without seeming pitying. Besides, she hated ironing. “Has the half sister arrived?” Rachel asked, her eyebrows raised, and guilt needled Juliet uncomfortably.

When she’d told Rachel last week that Lucy would be coming, Rachel had said in a voice of such disbelief that Juliet hadn’t been able to tell if she was joking, “You have a sister?”

“Half sister,” she’d said, and Rachel had rolled her eyes.

“Oh, well, then,” she’d said, and Juliet hadn’t answered, because she couldn’t, in truth, explain her relationship, or lack of it, with Lucy. Since then she and Rachel had both, in a semijoking way—or maybe not—referred to Lucy as “the half sister.”

“Yes, she’s here,R