Alex felt herself grimace, stupidly. Had Millie just moved Jem’s boots? What? Why would she? Or was it actually finally happening? Alex was losing her mind.
‘Um, yeah … that would be great, Millie, thanks for asking.’ Sure it would. Alex could go for a drink with Millie and Jem could hotfoot it round to see Mal. Perfect.
Alex did a quick one-eighty glance across the neighbourhood, trying to pick out a frantic figure suspiciously leaving the property, but Alex was the only one.
CHAPTER 38
‘You’ve been staring at that box of cornflakes since I’ve been downstairs. Thinking of sending off for a breakfast bowl?’ Ted stood rigidly over the kitchen sink, one oil-blackened hand braced on the worktop, the other holding another cup of coffee to his lips. Alex looked at the cold toast on her plate. She had nothing. ‘I was hoping to talk to you last night about your mother, but you were sleeping,’ Ted went on.
Alex hadn’t been sleeping. She’d been blotting out the world with her duvet. ‘I was tired. Sorry.’
Ted drained his cup and looked back at the farmed landscape rolling away from the house. ‘The nurses think your mother was running a temperature last night. They’re going to be making a few checks today, just to be sure everything’s as it should be.’
Alex heard the doubt in his voice. Ted was trying to reassure himself as much as her. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her today, Dad.’ It was about all Alex could offer. Alex saw the line of her dad’s profile harden. There was a period of time that might’ve meant something unpleasant was coming. A temper frayed. But he wasn’t the same man he had been back then. The last time Alex had heard him lose it was when she’d come home from university, halfway through the first term. To tell them that she was dropping out. Finn should never have followed her to the city, turned up on a winter’s night, shaking her perfectly constructed little bubble of a life like a snow globe. Nothing had settled back in its place after he’d left, after Alex had sent him away. So she’d come home.
‘She can’t just drop out, what is she going to do with herself, Blythe?’ Ted had ranted. Not you. Not, what are you going to do with yourself, because back then he seemed to do anything to avoid talking directly to Alex.
‘I’ll get a job, Dad,’ Alex had assured him ‘I won’t be dependent on you for long.’
Blythe had set her hand on Alex’s. ‘We don’t mind if you are, darling. We just want you to be happy.’
Jem had come in late for dinner. She’d walked straight past them all at the kitchen table and upstairs. Alex remembered thinking that Jem would eventually hold it against her, the heated voices whenever Alex was back home.
‘There are things I can do here, Dad,’ Alex had tried. ‘Maybe I could volunteer for a while at the school, see if they’ll take me on as an assistant. And think of the time I’ll save. It was a three year course, I could be contributing to the house instead of racking up student loans. And the distance, I won’t be too far away that I can’t help Mum out here, or I could help in the office at the garage maybe?’ Alex had blabbered hopefully.
‘Time? And distance? Those are your reasons for giving up a life opportunity, Alexandra? This is what you really want? Rattling around this two-bit town, volunteering?’
‘Ted, dinner’s getting cold.’ her mum had tried. But Ted was finally addressing Alex and she wouldn’t let it go.
‘You used to say this town was built on community spirit, Dad. Mum volunteers at the church. That’s what people in this town do, they follow their parents. The mayor has lots of volunteers at the town hall, Jem could ask Mal—’
‘You’re not volunteering for the goddamned Mayor!’ he’d blazed.
Blythe had stopped fussing over the dinner table then. ‘Edward, let’s just calm down a minute. I don’t want her giving her degree up either. But she just wants … to help.’
Jem had appeared in the kitchen doorway, she’d looked pale and mildly panicked. Alex had wondered if she’d just witnessed a terrible accident. ‘Everyone. I have something important to tell you,’ Jem had blurted. Jem’s face had glistened, like she’d either been sweating or had just splashed cold water over it.
‘Just a second, Jem,’ Blythe had said, but their dad was already too far gone.
‘Help? Help? Not everything can be damned-well helped! Sometimes, all you can hope for is time, and if you’re goddamned lucky … distance! I want her down there, in that university. And that’s final!’ He’d brought his hand down so hard onto the table that the small clay dish Dill had made in preschool had bounced from the table-top and exploded against the floor tiles.
Jem had known not to say another word.
Their mum had left the table trying to pretend she wasn’t crying and had spent the rest of the night trying to hold Dill’s dish back together while the glue took. It was an apt metaphor for their family.
Ted reloaded another cup from the coffee pot and set it down on the table in front of Alex. ‘I didn’t catch your sister last night either. You happen to know if she’s planning on visiting your mother today?’
Alex swallowed. It had been Mal who had dropped Jem off home the day Dill’s dish got smashed at dinner. Had Mal Sinclair been the ‘something important’ she had to tell them? Had they always been fated to be together?
Alex sipped her dad’s coffee. It tasted the way he used to make it for her on cold afternoons at Foster & Son’s. ‘I think she’s coming in with me. Once she’s up.’
Ted scratched a finger against the side of his mouth. Alex heard his bristles give beneath his nail. ‘Good. Your sister’s been spending time with a few old friends while she’s back home.’ Was it a question? Alex sipped again. Only one old friend, as far as Alex knew. An old friend who was married now, with a child … ‘It’s not a good idea,’ Ted stated coolly.
Were they talking, privately? They hadn’t held a private conversation together since, well, in as long as Alex could think back to. ‘What’s not a good idea, Dad?’
‘Jem won’t listen to me, Alexandra. She’s hot-headed, like I am I suppose. But she’ll listen to you.’
No she wouldn’t. ‘About what?’ Alex asked shakily. She felt her heart rate increasing slightly while Ted found his words.
‘I want you to tell her to keep her distance from the mayor’s boy.’
Alex felt a tightening in her stomach. ‘Why?’ she croaked.
Ted’s lips had formed a hard straight line. He looked unsure about what it was he wanted to say. He looked into the bottom of his empty coffee cup. ‘No good will come of it, Alexandra. Some people just bring trouble with them. Even if they don’t mean to, the pain they cause doesn’t hurt any less.’
Her dad’s eyes felt sharp on her then, ice blue and bottomless. Alex shifted uncomfortably, her dad broke off and looked solemnly at his boots instead. ‘I know you girls think that you have friends in this town, but there are some people who are just no good for you. People it would be best not to bring back from the past.’
Who was he even talking about now, Jem or Alex? Alex felt obliged to look straight at her father then. To take a direct hit, hear what it was he finally had to say after years of dodging the topic.
‘I know that people make mistakes, Alexandra. God knows I’ve made enough. It doesn’t make a person bad, necessarily … or maybe it does, I don’t know.’ He hadn’t used to sound unsure on that point.
‘What are you trying to say, Dad?’ Alex was taking shallow quiet breaths.
‘What I’m trying to say is, if the mistakes we made can’t be put right, and all we’ve got is an opportunity to never repeat the things we did wrong … the things that helped cause those mistakes to happen in the first place … then I think that any person, any good person who loves their family, would do things differently the second time around. Wouldn’t they, Alexandra?’
Alex clenched a hand around her mug. ‘That’s the thing about mistakes though, Dad. Nobody ever means to make them.’ She could feel it coming, the first real opportunity to s
ay it to him. That one little word that had always seemed so insubstantial. Tell him, Alex. Just let it out … I’m sorry.
‘But they still happen though don’t they, Alexandra? People still get hurt.’ Alex’s heart was thudding now. ‘All we can do is learn from our mistakes. That’s the responsibility that comes with hindsight. Once the landscape’s changed, it has to be trodden differently. I’m worried you girls don’t understand that.’
Alex swallowed. ‘I understand that, Dad.’ No making the same mistakes. Finn had never been the mistake though.
‘Good. Let’s hope your sister sees it that way too.’
CHAPTER 39
There was a Mexican standoff at the hospital. Alex, Jem and Dill used to play Mexican standoff at the dinner table with the peppercorns their mother had kept in Dill’s clay dish, before it became glued back into the Frankenstein version of its former self. They would each take a single peppercorn, set it on the palm of one hand in front of poised finger and thumb and bide their time, because whoever flicked first might miss and would then be open to a two-pronged attack with no more ammo left to defend themselves. It was stupid really, there were no prizes, just the accolade of not being the first one to get shot with a peppercorn.
Alex ran a finger back and forth along her lips. Jem twisted her silver bracelet around her wrist. The morning had been a cool exchange of one or two and occasionally three-word answers.
‘Drink, Alex?’
‘I’m fine thanks.’
‘How long before the doctor comes?’
‘Soon. Hopefully.’
All just a warm up while Alex had waited for Jem to fire the first big hit. Brutal honesty, Jem had agreed after Alex’s oh-so-informed counsel. Brutal honesty had sounded better before Mal had hidden Jem in his home. Mum, Alex! I have something to share with you. Mal and I are in love, and we can’t help it. Alex had been waiting nervously for Jem to spit it out, but then before Jem had got there, Blythe had suddenly flicked a peppercorn of her own. Blythe had looked at the wall clock and innocently asked in her new unsteady monotone, ‘Has Rodolfo been fed yet?’
Rodolfo? Rodolfo? Rodolfo had lived a long and happy life, but he’d died while Jem was still in high school. Blythe’s shooting skills had just put her firmly in play. One shot, and she had felled both of her daughters. This new heavy silence had been welcome after that.
‘I’m just going to go see if I can find the doctor,’ Alex said, rising from the vinyl chair. Her skin squeaked as her thighs pulled free from the seat. Jem had deftly slipped out of the room earlier as soon as Rodolfo’s name had come up. The staff knew. They were on it, that’s what Jem had whispered when she’d come back. Now Alex wanted to know if Dr Okafor was on it.
Jem nodded and Alex briefly reconsidered if she should leave them alone at all. ‘No undue stress,’ The nurse had said earlier. No revelations about home-wrecking, Jem.
Dr Okafor was scribbling notes when Alex stepped out onto the ward.
‘Ah, Miss Foster. I wanted to talk to your father, is he—’
‘You can talk to me, Doctor. My father won’t be here until this evening and I’d like to know what’s going on inside my mother’s head, if you don’t mind?’ She sounded curt. She hadn’t meant to but, good. Maybe it was about time she found her voice.
Dr Okafor nodded and clicked at his pen. ‘It is not uncommon for there to be some memory loss and—’
‘She hasn’t lost her memory, Dr Okafor. This morning she woke up, had her breakfast, talked about current events in the newspaper and then forgot that our family pet had been dead for nearly eight years.’
‘Miss Foster, I was going to say, memory loss and disorientation can be relatively common. Please, we are keeping a very watchful eye over your mother. As I mentioned when Mrs Foster was first admitted, it can be quite a disorientating experience, not to alarm you but I must reiterate, recovery can take months or years, even after discharge. Your mother is not unduly worrying us just yet, Miss Foster. But we are watching very closely.’
‘Well that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it, Alfie?’ Helen Fairbanks blustered up the ward behind Alex and Dr Okafor, rosy cheeks beneath her spectacles and printed silk scarf hanging lopsided from her neck. ‘Don’t worry, Doctor. My grandson here has 20/20 vision, don’t you, Alfie? He’ll spot anything untoward with my good friend Blythe, won’t you, my little love?’
Alfie nodded obediently at his grandmother as Helen took Alex firmly by the elbow. Alex looked down at Millie’s little boy and felt weighted with betrayal.
‘Aren’t you going to say hello, Alfie? This is Alex, your mummy and daddy both used to play over at Alex’s house when they were all little. Isn’t that funny?’
Alfie leant in to his grandmother. ‘That’s the lady I was telling you about,’ he whispered, ‘the one who was being a weirdy at our house last night.’
Helen’s face brightened at her grandson, then she gave Alex one of those Kids! Aren’t they just the funniest? looks.
Alex smiled sheepishly at him. Damn it, Jem.
Helen bustled Alex back from Dr Okafor, who had already returned to his notes, and steered Alex along the corridor to Blythe’s room.
‘Now then, Alexandra. Millie told me about yesterday, how your mum’s not feeling herself. Well I’m here to help. When the Reverend’s wife had her stroke, the doctor told the Reverend how familiarity can help, friendly faces and whatnot. So I’d like to come down every day, if that’s all right with you and your father? And Jem too, of course?’
‘That’s very kind, Helen. Mum wouldn’t want to put on anyone.’
‘Nonsense. She’d do the same. Now then, I hope you didn’t mind me bringing Alfie with me, it wasn’t my intention—’ Helen held on to the door before they went in ‘—only Millie needed a bit of time with Malcolm, he doesn’t get many mornings off and Millie had booked them an appointment with the, ooh I really shouldn’t say but …’
Marriage counsellor? Divorce lawyer?
Blythe dropped to a whisper. ‘Can you keep a secret, Alex?’
Wrong sister, Helen! Alex could say. Jem’s your gal for that! Or the alternative, No thanks! Don’t want it! ‘Yes, of course, Helen.’
Helen squeezed on Alex’s elbow as her eyes glazed over with delight. ‘Millie’s expecting! I’m going to be a grandmother again!’
Alex felt her automatic smile kick in. Oh. Fuck. ‘That’s wonderful news, Helen.’
Helen winked and tapped her nose. Alex nodded agreeably as her cheeks started to burn.
Helen pushed through the door leaving it for Alex to hold open while Alfie trundled through beneath her arm, spiky blond locks escaping beneath his red cap.
‘Blythe, my darling. You look ravishing.’ Alex hadn’t thought about her mother’s friendship with Helen, whether she could forgive Millie’s being hurt through the Fosters again, albeit emotionally this time. Blythe was trying to smile at Helen. Alex could feel a light sweat starting over her back.
‘Hi, Helen. Hello again, Alfie!’ How could Jem be so relaxed? Poker-faced? Alex watched her move to free up the chair for Helen, not one iota of unease around Millie’s mother and son. ‘I like your hat, Alfie.’ Jem smiled. Alex’s guts twisted.
Alex looked over at her mum. Alfie’s name had been enough to trip her off yesterday, agitated her. Alex watched for any signs of a replay but Blythe was upright, alert.
‘Oh, Alfie darling, take your hat off so Blythe can see your lovely face again. She hasn’t seen you for weeks,’ Helen cooed, straightening Alfie’s shirt over his shorts.
Alfie waited to be tidied up before ruining Helen’s efforts and wriggling onto her lap. Helen swept the baseball cap from his head and ran a mother’s hand through his blond tufts. ‘There, all better. Now then, aren’t you going to say hello to Blythe?’
‘Hello,’ Alfie said with a small shrug.
Alex watched her mum’s expression fill with warmth. Most of Blythe’s face was giving in to a smile that was all for Alfie. And t
hen just as quickly, it drained from her face. Alex saw the desperation washing over her features. Jem saw it too. Blythe opened her mouth.
‘Dillon? My baby boy? Oh, where have you been?’
CHAPTER 40
‘What are you doing?’ Alex had been so invested in emptying the under-stairs cupboard, she hadn’t heard Jem coming.
‘Looking for Mum’s opera records. I’m going to take them into the hospital.’ Alex set another armful of LPs in another dusty pile on the hall floor. Norma had lost interest and was sleeping beside the tower of board games Alex had found in there, along with the unused sewing machine Granny Ros had bought in a last ditch effort to convert one of them into a seamstress, and twenty-four empty jars ready for an orgy of big-batch jam making.
‘You can’t take all those to the hospital,’ said Jem.
‘Yes I can.’ See, Alex was getting the hang of this being straighter to the point lark.
‘OK, so can I ask why? Or are you going to snap at that too?’
‘I’m not snapping,’ Alex snapped.
Jem set a hand on her hip. ‘You’ve hardly spoken to me over the last couple of days, Alex.’
Me hardly spoken to her? ‘I thought it would be nice. For Mum. Maybe if she had something more familiar around her, she wouldn’t get … confused again.’ Alex was clutching at straws and she knew it.
Jem blew her fringe from her eyes. She hadn’t bothered meticulously styling it today. Yesterday had rocked her; it had rocked them all. Alex had left it to Jem to pile the worry on their dad. Alex still hadn’t even asked Jem how she’d approached that particular chestnut. There was no easy way to tell their dad that, thanks to the intricacies of the human brain, Dill had followed Rodolfo all the way down Blythe’s confused memory.
‘What’s this?’ Jem said, turning the uppermost board game so that she could better read the box.’
‘They’re the games that were in here.’
‘No, this isn’t a game. Back To Your Roots. Oh, I remember these,’ Jem said warmly. ‘This is one of those box set thingies they had at the town hall library, when Mum was working there. Remember?’
Letting You Go Page 22