Chapter 12: Confrontation

Rachel liked the idea and the feel of working, but it was not without its occasional problems. Mostly these came in the form of customer service. She got along well with almost everyone who came to the bakery except for one woman: Jane, a young, up in coming lawyer who had graduated a year ahead of Arthur at Oxford.

Jane was in her mid-twenties, a corporate lawyer with one of the biggest, most powerful firms in London, and always had a negative attitude, a bad disposition, and was never satisfied. Rachel would tell herself that this would be the ideal match for Arthur, since they both were so angry and mean in most of their interactions with her.

“Miss. Miss. Miss!” Jane was trying to get Rachel’s attention. Rachel was alone at the bakery during the coffee hour and she had her hands full with customers.

“I’ll be with you in one minute,” Rachel replied. All she needed was another one of Jane’s criticisms while she was doing her best to be baker and cashier, and desperately trying to prove herself in her new role of assistant manager. People like that did not like being told that they had to wait, and believed that they were entitled to special privileges as far as customer service was concerned. Jane was no different.

“What I have to say to you will take less than the one minute you are asking me to wait.”

“Fine.” Rachel wiped her flour dusted hands after she rang up the last person in line and went to see what the young lawyer was upset about this time.

“Listen up, Miss, because I don’t intend to have to repeat myself. Stay away from Arthur or you’ll regret it.”

“What? Ma’am, really, believe me that you have nothing to worry about.”

“We’ve known each other since we were children. You’re not from around here, so I doubt you know our long, personal history. Don’t you dare think I haven’t noticed him dropping you off and picking you up. Don’t think that I don’t know that you share the same roof. Answer me ‘yes, Ma’am’ if you can understand and have no personal intentions or aspirations regarding Arthur other than as house guest. Answer me, d*mn it.”

“Yes. Ma’am.” Rachel had trouble responding to the threat of this young woman, who apparently had been eyeing Arthur for a long time. If Faye had been here, Rachel believed that there was no way Jane would have dared to talk to her like a bully.

“Good. I believe we now understand each other.” With that, she turned her back to Rachel and exited the bakery, red-bottomed pumps punctuating her departure as she moved quickly and with purpose across the wooden floor. Her smile was one of satisfaction, the kind of victory she was used to getting from those professionals or personal rivals who challenged her in any way.

Jane was about 25 years old, tall and slender, yet curvaceous, and had steel gray eyes and long, straight, jet black hair. She was the kind of person who gave lawyers a bad name. One thing that became clearer with each interaction they had, she believed that she had to instill fear to get her way. The main problem was that she wanted her way all the time.

“If she knew who my father was, she would have been the one left tearing up and quaking in her boots,” Rachel said under her breath after the lady slammed the door behind her when she left the shop.

She knew that she wasn’t a threat to Jane’s relationship to Arthur, but thinking about him choosing this rude lawyer over her made her sad. On paper, the two lawyers belonged together. Jane and Arthur were everything together that a match between Rachel and Arthur was not.

They were a power couple in the making. They shared the same profession, education, social background, upbringing, and intellectual class. She was considered to be beneath people like that, a novel experience for her now that she had no access to her father’s multi-national, multi-billion dollar fortune.

Rachel and Jane were in different leagues. Arthur had never given Rachel a second thought the few times they literally bumped in to each other. The lack of consideration of her and the choice of someone like Jane made Rachel wonder why she ever thought she could ever dream or believe that he could ever be interested in someone like her.

Rachel had no claims on him, yet envisioning him with Jane, this lawyer lady, this bully of a b*tch, left her profoundly disappointed and slightly depressed without an acceptable explanation after knowing him a little over a month. Rachel thought if he would choose her the way she was now, that he was not superficial. Considering his choice of Jane instead, forced Rachel reconsider the real possibility that Jane and Arthur had more values in common than Rachel wanted to believe.

Faye and Beatrice walked in the bakery as if on cue.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Yes, you have hurt and pain written all over your face.”

Rachel turned her back to them for a moment to wipe the now flowing, yet silent tears with her apron. In her effort to mask her emotions by wiping her tears away, she had left traces of flour all over her face.

“Come, come. It can’t be all that bad. I left you alone and the bakery didn’t burn down. That’s a bonus,” Faye said with a wink, trying to change Rachel’s tears into laughter.

“Poor, sweet one, why don’t you take your morning break and freshen up? Maybe even go for a walk to the park up the street to clear your head. Dealing with customers all day can be draining. It’ll be alright, I promise.” Beatrice hugged her and Faye nodded her approval of the late morning break.

The first thing she did was take off her apron and throw it dismissively on a chair. Then she walked briskly out and into the rest of her new, small world of Clovelly, feeling defeated and thinking that her new choice of home had betrayed her.