Letting You Go

by Anouska Knight

  Alex lost count of the apples. ‘Maybe. Smoking was one of their generational things I guess. Like teenage sweethearts and marrying for life.’

  ‘I don’t think Mum would’ve ever smoked. She’s too much of a goody-goody,’ Jem decided.

  Alex smiled crookedly. ‘Maybe she has a past we don’t know about.’ Maybe their mother had two lives, maybe everyone did. Maybe Alex would get a second run at it too.

  ‘Mum? A dark horse?’ Jem grimaced. ‘Nah. What you see is what you get with Mum,’ Jem added wistfully. ‘No nasty surprises.’ Jem looked across the courtyard in bloom and collected her thoughts. ‘Or maybe we all have something to hide. To a certain extent,’ she added absently.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me you used to smoke or something, Jem?’

  Jem gave a tired laugh. ‘I tried it once, round the back of the science block. Carrie Logan dared me to take a drag of one of her mum’s she’d smuggled in. Kind of an initiation thing into her little gang.’

  ‘Wow. Now who’s the dark horse,’ Alex teased. ‘So did it help you fit in?’

  ‘Nope. I was never going to fit in there.’

  She nearly had. She’d pretended with the makeup and the fashion and the hair faff every morning before school, and it had been worth it for a while, just to belong. Then, like an idiot, she’d confided in Carrie.

  The glass doors onto the small courtyard slid open and a pushchair wheeled out in front of a slight woman with long dark straggly hair. The gardens were suddenly alive with sound, inconsolable wails bouncing off the glazing on all sides around them.

  ‘And that’s why I won’t be first to bring a grandchild home,’ Jem groaned quietly.

  ‘Grandchild, Jem? One of us has to bring an acceptable bloke home first.’

  Alex tried to convey a polite smile to the young mother but the woman’s eyes were darting around the raised flowerbeds, trying to keep up with the little girl who’d shot out from beside her legs to play hopscotch on the paving stones. The child looked like her mother, but with a softer, happier face. Alex watched the little girl run behind a cloud of big pink daisies, a flick of dark hair and she was gone.

  Alex spotted two wide brown eyes peeping from over the planter bed opposite. The slice of carrot cake sitting between Alex and Jem had caught her attention. Alex smiled at her through the daisies. The little girl’s eyes briefly looked back at the unwanted dessert before settling on Alex.

  ‘Poppy! Come have a drink,’ came a voice from the bench behind theirs.

  ‘That’s her,’ Jem whispered. ‘With the mucky feet the other day. Remember I said? I think her husband is on the ward opposite the AAU. She’s been here every day we have.’

  Alex found her eyes briefly gravitating towards the mother’s feet. She was wearing flip-flops that looked like they’d seen more action than Alex’s Converse. She made Alex think of some of the mums she’d seen at the food bank. Women at the mercy of bus timetables and clement weather. The flip-flops of people with cars didn’t usually get the opportunity to become so thinly worn.

  Alex watched the mother offer a drink to her daughter with one hand while cradling the baby at her breast with the other.

  ‘I don’t like water, Mummy.’

  The mother swept a few wayward strands from her child’s face. ‘I know, baby.’

  ‘Can I have some juice instead?’ Alex heard the hope in her voice.

  ‘No, baby.’

  ‘But why, Mummy? I haven’t drunked any juice for a long time now, Mummy. Please?’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry, baby. When Daddy’s better—’

  ‘Now who’s staring?’ Jem murmured, disturbing Alex’s earwigging. She settled back into listening to the breeze rustling the greenery around them. The Viking festival would be busy this year, if it stayed like this. The Falls were beautiful in the summer. Alex finished counting again. Twenty-three. Twenty-three rosy red apples. No, twenty-four. Shoot, had she counted that one already?

  ‘Alex?’ Jem said after a while.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Do you remember what Mum used to say to us? About lightning … only striking once and all that.’

  ‘I remember.’ Had Jem met someone? Was she about to spill all? Alex stole a sideways glance. Jem was staring into space.

  ‘Do you think she realised that lightning can also burn down what you know and care about too? Or do you think she thought that none of that matters. That everything else becomes kinda … secondary?’

  Alex was stunned. Was Jem in love? ‘Jem, have you met someone?’

  Jem leant forwards a little onto her knees and looked at her feet. Alex assumed a similar position while she psyched herself up in the swimming pool changing rooms before going in. Jem turned to look at Alex then, glacial eyes like their dad’s.

  ‘It’s not that straightforward, Alex.’ Jem looked apologetic. For a fleeting second, Alex wondered if it could be Finn. Don’t be so ridiculous. Like he was even hers to keep tabs on anyway.

  Jem looked suddenly marooned, ashen with some big burden she was keeping all to herself. A married man, then? Her sister was fraternising with another woman’s husband. Alex chastised herself again. No. No way, not Jem. They hadn’t been brought up that way. Marriage was sacred.

  ‘Wow. Well … I don’t know, Jem. Lightning’s lightning I guess. You’ll have to ask her yourself.’ Blythe was going to be ecstatic. It worried Alex, their mum’s heart didn’t need any more stress, even the good kind. ‘Maybe wait until she’s on her feet though, Jem. You know how excited she gets.’ But Jem seemed anything but.

  ‘Eugh!’ came a rattled voice. ‘Blast and damnation!’

  Alex and Jem turned sharply to look back over the bench towards the hospital doors. The woman with the nose tube had slumped awkwardly out of her wheelchair.

  ‘Hang on!’ Alex yelped, leaping towards the doors. ‘Oh my goodness, are you all right?’

  Jem already had the woman’s other elbow and was helping her back into the chair.

  ‘Dropped my lighter, didn’t I?’ the woman croaked. Her nose tube had been knocked off centre. ‘Thanks, girls. I should get myself one of those new-fangled vaporiser things you see everyone sucking on. I could stay up on the ward then instead of coming down here and bothering everyone.’

  Jem arched her eyebrows.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK? Can we take you anywhere? We’re ready to head back in now anyway, aren’t we, Jem?’

  ‘Home?’ the woman croaked hopefully. ‘Go on, girls. I’m just going to have one last puff. Calm my nerves.’

  Jem’s eyes rounded before she turned for the doors. Alex gave a parting smile and followed Jem through the glass.

  They walked slowly back towards the lifts. The two of them fell into a natural rhythm, walking the corridor with the same stride, the same heavy silence. They probably looked like twins from behind.

  ‘Hang on,’ Jem declared. ‘We left our rubbish on the bench.’ Alex watched silently while Jem ducked back out into the Garden of Reflection. A few seconds later and Jem trotted back up the corridor, auburn hair flowing back over her shoulders and an expression on her face that said the world was full of oddities and she was the last surviving normal one.

  ‘All sorted?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Well I didn’t get chance to chuck our stuff away, if that’s what you mean? I didn’t want to embarrass her!’

  ‘Embarrass who?’

  ‘Grotty Feet! She’s just nicked our cake!’

  CHAPTER 18

  Dust like a psychopath. It’s what their mother did. Everyone knew when to give Blythe breathing space. She’d either be gardening ferociously or dusting like an obsessive-compulsive menace. ‘Just like your grandma Ros, your mother,’ Ted used to whisper to Alex before throwing her a look of camaraderie. ‘Work out your frustrations with a feather duster, instead of fists, like your sister,’ he’d teased, because little idiosyncrasies like that ran in families too, it wasn’t just the obvious stuff like receding hairlines and big
awkward babies getting stuck like Dill had.

  Alex shook out the wrinkles of her mum’s lounge curtains and drenched the windowsill in the Mr Muscle she’d found under the kitchen sink.

  You are getting worked up about a ham and chutney sandwich for crying out loud. Get. A. Grip.

  He’d forgotten them. So what? She was being pathetic. How was her dad to know she’d gotten up at six to make fresh sandwiches? Had she asked him if he wanted fresh sandwiches for work? No. Had it been his idea to read Blythe’s scrawled recipe notes on the fridge door – Ted’s healthier favourites – and be suddenly inspired with gourmet sodding sandwich ideas? No. Had Alex even reminded him to pick them up on his way out of the house? Honestly? Alex’s heart sank. She hadn’t thought she’d need to.

  And then there was yesterday. A thank you. That was all she’d been hoping for. Wouldn’t Jem have gotten a thanks, a smile maybe, if she’d dropped his lunch in at the garage? Jem would’ve just grabbed him a heart-attack-in-a-bun from Brünnhilde’s Baps on the high street but no, Alex had decided to push the boat out and queue for twenty minutes in a posher-looking deli for a posher-looking baguette instead. Offer him something his arteries, and her mum, might appreciate.

  Alex finished buffing the windowsill. His voice had been sharp yesterday. ‘You shouldn’t have wasted your money paying tourist prices for yuppie food, Alexandra.’

  The phone rang out in the hallway. ‘Leave it! I’ll get it!’ Jem called down but Alex was already padding from the back lounge out into the hallway where the cordless was stationed.

  Alex hovered over the console table. ‘Hello? Alex speaking.’ It was a habit, saying her name when she answered the phone. It was what she and Dan did at the food bank, to put callers at ease.

  A couple of seconds’ silence then the caller hung up. Again.

  ‘Agh. That’s three times, you rude bugger!’ Telesales gits. ‘Three bloody times!’ Alex suddenly felt a disproportionate need to track the responsible individual down to their anonymous little booth in their anonymous little call centre, wrap their phone cord snuggly around their ignorant neck and scream, My mother is sick in hospital, you knob, stop calling and hanging up on me!

  The phone rang again. Alex glared impotent fury. She was about to lunge for the receiver but it stopped ringing abruptly. Alex heard Jem shuffling across the landing, the wire dragging across the floorboards, Jem’s bedroom door closing again behind her.

  Alex pulled in a deep breath and released it again. Her elbow caught the can of polish she’d set down. It toppled, knocking the phone from its stump.

  ‘Stop pressuring me, George! You can’t expect me to work to your timeframe on this! This is a BIG deal for me,’ came a distant voice from the earpiece.

  Alex felt a flush of treachery and very gently replaced the cordless back on its post before she accidentally earwigged any more. George was starting to sound like a real plank. Not like Dan, he’d texted Alex everyday so far to tell her there was no rush to get back.

  Alex returned to dusting the pictures of her family hanging along the hallway walls. She’d made her way through nearly half of the hanged frames before she slowed enough to take a look at the pictures inside them. All the Foster men had the same look about them, even back to her dad’s great grandfather William Foster who, rumour had it, fathered a child with somebody other than great, great, granny Alice Foster.

  ‘Alice raised that child after William brought him home. That was what women did for their husbands in those days, Alex,’ her mum had told her and Jem.

  Alex studied her father’s great grandfather William and tried not to dislike him too much. He looked a lot like her dad, maybe a bit scrawnier. Alex moved along the wall. The same fair hair and serious eyes recurred again and again, tumbling all the way down the generations of Fosters to Dill, in this picture sitting full-grin on an inflatable dolphin wearing one of Jem’s bikini tops. Alex laughed involuntarily. She re-ran through the last few photographs. Dill seemed to break the run, there was something softer about him than the rest of the Foster lot. It was that dimple. That one, odd little indentation on his left cheek that set him apart from the rest of them. It had given Alex the perfect target to lay slobbery kisses on.

  Jem’s feet pattered downstairs with purpose. ‘Jesus, Alex. It’s not even eight-thirty, you’re as bad as Mum. Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Left already. About half an hour ago. Without his lunch.’

  Jem astutely read between the lines. ‘Well, maybe he forgot?’ She began wriggling into a pair of sandals, shrugging an arm into her cardigan at the same time.

  ‘I guess. Where are you going anyway, I thought we were heading into town this morning while Helen and Susannah see Mum?’ Helen Fairbanks had collected her casserole dish first thing and had given explicit instructions for Alex and Jem to have a break from the hospital and go throw themselves into the Falls’ increasing Viking festivities for a few hours instead.

  Jem checked herself in the hallway mirror. ‘Work. I need to avert a freaking disaster and I’d rather do it some place I can yell. Like on my mobile phone, in the car … somewhere there’s some sodding signal. I won’t be long.’ Jem pulled a lip-gloss from her bag and began dabbing herself with it. She shook her fingers through her fringe.

  ‘You look nice … for a phone call,’ Alex said idly.

  Jem flashed her a look in the mirror. ‘Well, you never know who you might bump into, right? Take yesterday, how lucky was that? You borrowing my best MAC makeup before running into Finn. And Carrie, the vile creature. Poor you.’

  Alex’s stomach did a gentle roll. ‘How do you know I saw Finn? And Carrie?’ Alex added Carrie to imply Carrie and Finn were of equal significance, or insignificance, whichever way Jem might read it.

  ‘How do you think, Al? Dad saw you.’

  Alex felt another flip in her stomach. That explained his foul mood since yesterday then. Ted had hardly said a word over dinner last night. No wonder he’d left the sandwiches.

  Jem stuck a kiss on Alex’s head. ‘Won’t be long. And you might want to check the back door too, I saw the dog was out by Dad’s workshop when I was upstairs.’ Jem disappeared over the step calling, ‘And she needs a name! Think of something Mum would like.’ The door rattled shut behind her leaving Alex alone with the family gallery again.

  Alex scanned the run of pictures hanging in the hallway. Jem looked so different now to her teenaged self. Alex’s school photos were the worst, she’d happily admit, but crikey, Jem, that haircut really was horrendous. Alex studied her sister’s solemn expression. She hadn’t realised Jem’s eczema had been quite so obvious back then, an angry patch of pink skin either side of Jem’s mouth. It was stress-related, her mum had told her. But Alex had never seen for herself, she’d already left for uni by the time Jem had been having trouble at school.

  Alex heard footsteps again on the path outside. Jem must’ve found the puppy. Oh, crap, not under her car wheels again. Alex jumped for the door as Ted bustled in through it, greying blond hair like a short thinning mane.

  Alex stared vacantly at him. He’d left twenty minutes ago, he must’ve got nearly to the garage before doubling back. He was always forgetting the garage keys and always having to come all the way home for them. It drove Mum mad.

  ‘Housework?’ he asked. ‘This early? I won’t come in with my boots then.’

  Alex felt startled, like she’d just been caught cleaning a neighbour’s flat or something. ‘Oh, OK. Do you need me to reach you something?’ she asked.

  ‘Please. In the kitchen, on the side. You’ve gone to all that effort and I nearly forgot my sandwiches.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Alex could feel a little spring in her step, dampened only by Jem’s conspicuous quietness. The distance between her and her dad seemed to have shortened. All right, just by the length of a ham and chutney sandwich but it was a start. A very promising start. The pup was prancing on her lead in front, Helen and Susannah had called to say they were staying
on at the hospital with Blythe and that they’d even had lunch together in her room. The day was looking up. For a change, it was only Jem letting the side down.

  ‘How did the call to work go? Yell much?’ Alex didn’t really want to ask, Jem didn’t share anything until she was good and ready anyway but Alex felt bound by the rules of big sisterhood. She had some time to make up to Jem in that arena.

  ‘Do you ever feel backed into a corner, Alex?’

  Alex remembered how Jem’s voice had sounded while she’d sat in the changing room cubicle. Alex, you need to come home. ‘Sometimes. Everything all right? Hey, stop pulling, dog … Crikey, she’s strong.’

  The pup seemed to know her way along the road into the top end of town, yanking at the makeshift lead Alex had fashioned from a length of rope she’d found in Ted’s workshop back at the farmhouse.

  Alex looked down on the view opening out before them. The townsfolk had erected more flagpoles along the route into town, so much fluttering red and gold in fact that the entire high street looked as if it was in motion.

  Jem sighed. ‘There’s this situation, and … I don’t know how to handle it.’

  Really? Jem knew how to handle every situation. Jem was cool under fire. Jem was efficient and to the point. ‘Sounds important, Jem,’ said Alex. Jem was not a ditherer.

  ‘It is. There’s like this important … unveiling thing I suppose you could call it and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I don’t want to rush what I’m doing, but there’s kind of a timing issue.’

  Jem wasn’t known for being cryptic. Jem was bubbly or impassioned, or she was fiercely quiet, or standing up to little shits like Robbie Rushton. Those were Jem’s gears. Alex wasn’t used to hearing her ruffled.

  ‘So, like a deadline?’ asked Alex.

  Jem pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. Well, no, I don’t know there is definitely a … deadline, but … there might be. You see, there’s this really important group of people who need to know … well, what I’m all about, I guess. But there’s a possibility now that one of them might be … moving on. Sooner than I’d thought.’ Jem’s voice sounded strained. ‘And if she does move on, before I’m ready to …’ Jem was nodding her head slowly, as if hoping she could tip the right words out of herself.