"Hey" she said, almost curtly.
"Hi?" He replied cautiously.
"Sorry" she replied instantly. "You've caught me in a bad mood".
"Hordley?" He asked quickly.
"No. It's nothing, I'm just tired" she said, covering her mood with a small smile.
"Have you not been sleeping?" He asked. She gave him a warning look, asking him not to tread any further. "It'll be okay, Rachel" he said kindly.
"You've repeatedly told me it won't be, but okay" she snapped, then instantly regretted it. "I'm sorry" she reached for the files in his hand and Eddie's hopes of being invited inside quickly disappeared.
"Maybe it won't be okay. But come on, you're stronger than this" he spoke like his observation was obvious. Her expression didn't immediately convey that she disagreed, but there was something else.
Suddenly he saw it, clear as day, a vulnerability that he had never previously associated with her. Something more than the embarrassment and defensiveness she had shown before. A lack of confidence or simply fear. Crippling self-doubt. Weakness. A cavern seemed to open in front of her. Between them. Despite spending months thinking of her daily, thinking of little else, a thousand things he had never noticed flashed before him.
Secrets, he thought fearfully.
Suddenly he didn't quite recognise her. There was something unnerving and uncanny about it, like he had somehow only ever seen her through her reflection in a mirror, and now, seeing her in the daylight, he had a different kind of stark clarity. The woman in front of him hadn't changed at all, yet he felt like a stranger for a moment. What he perceived as their closeness, at least friendship, but perhaps something more, fell away. Quickly replaced by suspicion and intrigue.
He cursed himself, running his mind back over her description of her past. The whole thing had been brief and unpleasant, awkward for both of them. He had found it sordid and, the bottom line was, he could not bear to think of her that way. Maybe that meant he liked this version of her, maybe he had brushed too quickly over Amanda Fenshaw in favor of the woman he knew. From the look in Rachel's eyes, distant and lost, he assumed perhaps she had done something similar. Perhaps she had spent twenty years expending relentless energy doing just that, carving herself savagely into something new and palatable. Perhaps she couldn't do that now, not in front of him, not anymore. Her explanation had been brief and utterly lacking in substance, and he had simply allowed it, trusted his instincts, and in this moment he was coming to regret that decision. He was worried now that he had lost his opportunity to ask. Now they were friends again, she might be offended at him probing further, by telling her that he still didn't understand it. She might refuse to tell him anything at all, might tell him to just get over it. How much energy must she have spent, hiding for so long? Surely her ability to do that came from her ignoring it, pretending it had not happened, ignoring Amanda Fenshaw entirely. She couldn't ignore it now. She was both of them. Whatever it was, Eddie was suddenly sure that she was hiding more than a mere dirty secret. This was something deeper, something that looked a lot like trauma.
His head hurt and his palms were sweating.
"Yes, sorry, I'm just in a mood. Thanks for bringing these" she smiled and everything returned to normal.