Letting You Go

by Anouska Knight

‘Calm down, Dad,’ Jem said quietly. ‘I haven’t been running around with anyone.’

  Alex looked at her. ‘I don’t think he’s talking to you—’

  ‘I saw you!’ Ted exploded. ‘I stopped at the churchyard today, on the way to the Tea Rooms, to see my daughter. Hand in hand you were, so don’t tell me you haven’t been running around!’

  Alex tried to make sense of the agitation ingrained in the lines around his eyes. He wasn’t looking at Alex. He was looking burning fury at Jem.

  ‘What’s does he mean, Jem?’ It was hanging in the air, a heavy, colourless, tasteless toxic thing, competing with Callas for airspace. Alex could feel it, dread-like in her mouth.

  ‘He’s drunk. He’s misunderstood,’ Jem said in a level voice. ‘Dad, let’s get you a coffee.’

  ‘What does he mean, Jem? What did he see?’ Alex’s neck was pulsing.

  ‘We were comforting each other, Alex,’ Jem said, tears beginning in the corners of her eyes. Alex felt too nauseous to cry.

  ‘Who?’ Alex swallowed. ‘Who were you comforting?’

  Ted bellowed upstairs. ‘I don’t want a goddamn coffee! I want you to stay the hell away from the Sinclair boy!’

  Alex’s heart began to beat too fast. Hand in hand, he’d just said. Jem and Mal … holding hands.

  ‘You said you were seeing your boss. You promised.’ Because a promise was a rock-like thing, immovable, unbreakable. Alex felt the colour drain from her face. There hadn’t been a George staying at the Longhouse.

  Jem wiped her cheek defiantly and stalked downstairs. ‘I am not justifying myself. Dad, you need a coffee. Then we’ll talk.’

  Alex felt dizzy. She had to tell Jem. What Malcolm was to them now. That she couldn’t have a relationship with Malcolm. She couldn’t!

  Ted tried to stand up straighter and staggered into the console table sending the phone tumbling against the floorboards. Jem turned to watch him while Alex scrambled down the stairs.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Jem. I don’t ever want to hear a word of it again.’ Alex watched her dad stop mid-sentence. He seemed to choke on his words for a few seconds. Alex recognised the sound of him clearing his throat, fighting the raw emotion trying to claw its way up into his voice.

  Jem looked like a little girl standing up to him. ‘I know how you feel about the Sinclairs, Dad. But Mal’s different. I’m not a child, Dad. I can see him if I choose, he’s my friend,’ Jem said shakily.

  ‘I don’t want to hear of it!’ Ted snarled. ‘And I don’t want you to have anything more to do with that boy. Goddamn it, why can’t they just stay away from us?’

  Ted was borderline, that knife’s edge between molten anger and soul-crushing desperation. Jem was only just holding it together too, Alex could see it in her face. ‘Dad?’ Alex tried. She set a hand gently on his shoulder blade.

  ‘Who’s been in your mother’s things?’ he said, lifting his ear to the final bars of ‘Casta Diva’ resonating through the air around them. Alex pulled her hand away again as if he’d been hot to the touch. She hadn’t heard Finn’s truck outside. Only Norma fixated at the side window onto the porch had given her any warning.

  ‘I have,’ Alex said calmly. She heard defiance in her voice. Probably not enough to filter past whatever it was he’d been drinking, but it was still there.

  Her dad looked glassy drunken eyes at her. She was lost to him.

  ‘I know, Dad. You don’t want me in Mum’s music. Just like you don’t want me in Dill’s room, touching his things either. Why don’t we just be honest for a change and call it like it is? You don’t want me here full stop. Well I’m sorry, Dad, but I’ve promised Mum that we’d try our best. So I’ll let you decide how that’s going to work out.’ She hadn’t wanted it to, but the hurt was there too, jostling with her new-found bravery. She’d wanted to ride on the back of her anger for his betrayal but the fight had gone right out of her.

  Alex could feel the first warmth of despondent tears coming. Jem’s were already falling. Something inside her ached for Jem then. Alex couldn’t go out and leave her with this. Jem didn’t need to hear it from Ted while he was drunk. That he’d desecrated their family for a fling with Louisa. When Jem realised what that meant for her and Mal, it was going to be horrific enough without hearing it while he was in this state.

  Alex saw the shadow moving across the lawn through the window. She had almost made it. She’d almost gone out with Finn despite her dad, and now she was about to cry off before even reaching the garden gate.

  Alex turned for the door and moved to intercept Finn before he made it up to the house. He knew what a car wreck Alex’s family was, he didn’t need to take the tour again. Alex opened the door and stepped outside, the wooden porch creaking beneath the battered pumps she’d had to team with Jem’s skinny trousers and gypsy vest. She didn’t care how she looked now, and neither would Finn. She just needed to get him off Dodge while the going was good.

  Alex pulled the door closed behind her and stepped down onto the lawn. Finn was halfway up the path when she reached him.

  He’d shaved. He’d done something to his hair, too. Styled, but not. He looked so nice, it pinched just to look at him.

  ‘Hi,’ Alex offered first. She was trying uselessly to take some sort of control.

  ‘Hey.’

  Alex was already looking at her feet. Finn put his hands deep into his jean pockets. When Alex managed to steal another look, he looked eighteen again. Only less unsure. ‘You look beautiful, Alex. I hope you’re hungry because I am star—’

  ‘Finn, I’m really sorry—’

  The door swung open behind her. ‘What the hell are you doing on my land?’

  Ted was stumbling less now. Gravity seemed to help him navigate his way clumsily down the steps to the garden path. Finn looked over Alex’s head and assessed the situation the same way Alex watched him assess a landscape he was about to draw. The way he would size up the angles of a hillside or the turbulence of a river, before deciding how best to confine it to canvas.

  ‘I’m sorry, Finn. Something’s come up,’ she said hurriedly. Finn let his eyes rest back on Alex momentarily, just long enough to try to reassure her before his face seemed to set into something harder, more statuesque. She didn’t know why she did it, to break his concentration from her dad maybe, but Alex reached out a hand and pressed it gently to his chest. ‘Please, Finn. I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll do something. Anything you like.’

  ‘I said, what the hell are you doing on my land?’

  ‘Finn’s just leaving, Dad.’ Finn had already turned his body away slightly, he understood it made no sense to stay.

  ‘You’re damn right he is.’

  Alex had put a hand out behind her, a silly subconscious gesture of protection. For the man at her back standing nearly a foot taller than she did.

  ‘Ted,’ Finn said. And it was like a touch-paper had been lit.

  ‘Your good for nothing old man didn’t need telling twice,’ Ted snarled, ‘what are you waiting for?’

  Alex felt it behind her, that subtle hostility men could do when a switch had been flipped. She looked at Finn. He looked like a statue of himself. Just go, she wanted to say. But something had seized inside her too.

  Jem stepped out from the house. Finn stood firm across the grass. ‘You got something to say to me, son?’ Alex had never heard her father use that one tiny word to such devastating effect. Son was the last thing Ted thought of Finn as. Son was the last word in the world he would sully without good enough reason.

  ‘I do actually, Ted.’

  Alex felt the panic rising. Finn gently moved Alex a few feet towards Jem.

  ‘I love your daughter, Ted. I’m sorry you find that difficult, but it’s the truth. And there’s no getting away from the truth.’ Alex felt giddy. Finn didn’t look relaxed exactly, just certain. Calm in his certainty.

  ‘What did you just say to me?’ Alex pictured Susannah here, telling Finn to go back to the c
ar before the trifle, and his nose, was destroyed.

  ‘I said … I love your daughter.’ Alex moved to stand between Finn and her dad again but Jem caught her arm. Finn didn’t even break his concentration. It might as well just have been him and Ted standing on the lawn while the sun gave up the day. Then it all happened so quickly. Ted, a man the wrong side of a drinking session and the wrong side of sixty, moved with a focused poise. Alex hadn’t even seen his arm draw back before her father’s fist made dull heavy contact with Finn’s mouth.

  ‘Dad! No!’ Alex screamed. But it was too late, he’d already done it. Finn staggered, he doubled over but he didn’t go down. Alex pulled free, she reached Finn and took clumsy hold of his face so she could see what he’d done.

  ‘Oh my God, Finn. Why did you say that!’ A steady flow of crimson was flowing from his lips. Finn pushed Alex back towards Jem and straightened himself. There was something dangerous in his eyes. Alex had seen it before, in Emma Parsons’ garden. For the first time in her life, something told Alex to fear for her dad instead.

  ‘Say it again,’ Ted snarled.

  Finn’s fists balled for a second, ready, and then released. ‘I said, I love your daughter.’

  Ted’s fist thudded back into Finn’s waiting jaw, a sickening thud of knuckles against teeth. Jem gasped. Alex felt herself shut down into some strange suspended state. Like she was watching them all from underwater.

  Jem began crying, soft small whimpers that didn’t belong to her.

  ‘You think you’re good enough for my daughter, Finn? I know men like you. Men who think they can take what they want while better people pay the price for it. Your father, he took what he wanted from us. That poor little girl, mangled in a car that bastard had serviced. Destroying my business so my wife had to go skivvying for more no-good bastards!’ Ted turned viciously to Alex, hunkered like an animal. ‘And you still like this boy, Alexandra?’

  ‘I’m not my father,’ Finn said firmly.

  ‘Apples don’t fall far from the tree.’ Ted looked away absently. He swayed on his feet. ‘If his father hadn’t rushed that car job for Helen … If I could have trusted someone to work for me again … working all those long hours all the time, neglecting Blythe …’

  Finn was holding his sleeve to his bleeding mouth, he was the only one who didn’t look to be trying to make sense of what Ted was saying.

  ‘I should never have been with her that day, listening to her poison. I should’ve been with my boy. MY boy! While you two were fooling around together!’ he snarled. ‘But I let it happen. Let it start, because I wasn’t watching. And then I lost her. I let him get his hooks into her, because I was saving a business your no good father ruined.’

  Ted’s voice had sharpened off again, acrid little words like blades. He stepped towards Finn, rippling with rage.

  ‘Now you tell me again, Finn. ‘

  Finn looked at Alex again then, silently imploring him not to say any more. She wasn’t ashamed for it this time though. She didn’t want Finn to say it. She didn’t want that lovely face of his to be hurt any more. Alex looked at him. Don’t say it, Finn, please.

  Finn smiled, he understood. And then he turned back to face her dad again.

  ‘I love your daughter.’

  Ted made an unearthly guttural sound, the sound of a man who could punch all night long before his fury finally died out. Finn stood ready to let him.

  ‘No!’ Alex darted between them. ‘No more, Dad. Please, no more.’ Her voice was shaking in her chest. There was nothing of her dad left in those fox-like eyes, nothing she recognised. ‘Please, Dad. No more.’

  It took a few moments, and then Ted Foster found his way back, a flicker behind the eyes and then he turned and staggered back to the house. Alex’s lungs were trying to match the rhythm pumped out by her heart. Jem was regaining control, asking Finn in broken monologue if he was all right. From inside the house, ‘Casta Diva’ began playing again from the start, the volume turned up to its highest.

  ‘I think he’s gone mad,’ Jem said shakily.

  Alex was trembling. Did it matter? Did it matter what anyone had done, if this was the destination they’d all arrived at? The home waiting for her mum?

  ‘Jem? Go back with Finn to Susannah’s. Make sure she looks at his mouth. He might need to have it seen to.’

  Finn looked up. ‘Alex? Come back with me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Alex, don’t do this,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Finn. It was never your fault. But we can’t live like this. It’s not fair on anyone. Jem, go with him. I’ll look after Dad. Please.’

  ‘Alex. Please, come back with me.’

  Finn had wiped most of the red away, but his teeth were stained with it, his face already swelling from the latest wounds she’d caused him. She couldn’t keep hurting him like this. She looked away.

  ‘Alex, please.’ Finn looked wounded, desperate. ‘Don’t make me love you in secret, Alex.’

  She was wronging him. Either way, she was wronging him. She should have never come back here, she realised as she turned shakily for the house. Alex swallowed down the shakiness in her voice. ‘I’m sorry, Finn. For everything.’

  CHAPTER 53

  The Old Girl looked calm beneath a summer moon. It hadn’t been a conscious thing, coming down here, Alex’s feet had just led her, through the copse of trees and along the footpath cutting across the meadow. She hadn’t used this route since she and her father had run down here, unaware that they’d already lost the race. Alex re-crossed her legs and felt the cool earth through Jem’s cotton trousers. The fear had gone. How could she be afraid of anything any more when the worst had already happened? Alex watched the moonlight catching on the water and thought back to the moment she’d found her dad sitting in his truck in the layby. The way he’d looked before she’d got to him. Had he been on his way home from high tea with Louisa? She’d suspected but did she really know? For sure? It didn’t matter any more. She couldn’t bring herself to hate him, how could she? He’d still lost his son.

  Alex had wanted to take care of him tonight, she’d turned the opera down from the deafening setting he’d cranked it up to in hopes of soothing him off to sleep, but then he’d found Jem’s bottle of red and had taken into the lounge, throwing Jem’s family tree papers across the room as he went.

  Somewhere over Alex’s head, the evening breeze disturbed the leaves of the alder tree Dill had fallen from. She’d thought Dill was in St Cuthbert’s, but he wasn’t. He was still here. By the Old Girl.

  You’re driving yourself mad, Alex.

  Alex kicked off a shoe. Then the other. The water looked so calm. The Old Girl’s mood wistful, benign. Alex rolled up Jem’s trousers and stood quietly for a few moments in the peacefulness of the night. She took a few steps towards the bank and felt the first bite of nettles at her feet. She stood there for a few seconds, until the stingers had done their worst and the sensations died away to a meaningless nothingness. And then she stepped into the cold embrace of the water.

  The water came up to her calves, accepting her without fuss. She hadn’t rolled her trousers up nearly far enough but no matter. Alex moved out into the cold bite of the water. The Old Girl was calm, still. Almost as if she were sleeping.

  Wake up, you bitch.

  There was no logic behind it, no distant plan, but Alex kept going. The water was rising, tightening that feeling in her lungs as it climbed past her knees, her thighs, her hips. Her breathing became sharp and shallow, and then she gave herself to it, a committal lunge forwards and she was pressing through the cold black water. The Old Girl put up no fight, no currents, no tree roots to snag her feet on. A matter of a few surreal seconds and she was at the opposite side, huddled breathless to the bank.

  Alex’s breathing felt giddied and laboured, she could hear the protestation in her heart, as her body screamed at her, Are you MAD?

  She hadn’t stopped for the sensations of nettles or
cold on her skin. But something had got inside, something that stung and ached and was making her convulse in vicious shivers. And then it all rose up. A swell of hurt and anguish and shame and regret. Alex’s head bowed as it all came tumbling out in a flurry of pathetic sobs. She cried that way, for Dill, for them all, shivering and wet until a broken drunken melody found its way through the darkness.

  Alex scanned the bank opposite. She could see the clearing near the alder tree, where she’d left her pumps. Was her body going into spasm? She tried to hold herself still as the singing, if it could be called that, made its way closer through from the meadows. The moonlight picked out only his face and silvered hair, the rest of him invisible in the camouflage of dark overalls.

  Ted staggered through the darkness, drunk and emotional. He’d never known the words to any of Blythe’s arias, they used to giggle at him when he tried to roar along to them in pidgin Italian.

  Ted stopped singing. Alex heard him groan and then glass breaking somewhere over by the trees.

  ‘God damn you!’ he shouted.

  Alex shivered as she listened over the water lapping gently against her waist.

  ‘God damn you for taking him from me!’ Alex heard his anger break into a free-fall of weeping. ‘You old bitch!’ he tried, but the tears had him in a tighter grip than his anger.

  Ted staggered closer to the water, Alex could see him better now in the clearing. Here the river would only come up to his chest, but Alex still felt a flutter of concern, building and building like a tide. He shouldn’t stand so close after drinking so much, the Old Girl knew how to seize upon a weakness.

  ‘He was my boy. Mine! Dillon Edward Foster! He was my son!’ Alex’s anguish was making a U-turn, and then something caught her dad’s interest. Ted bent down and picked something up. He seemed to sober, instantly.

  ‘Alexandra? Alexandra!’

  Alex twitched at her name. Her shoes fell from his hands and bounced against the earth. Ted started pacing along the riverbank just like Norma paced behind the door before Alex let her out.

  ‘Alexandra! No … not my girl, NOT MY BABY GIRL!’