Looking for Alex

by Marian Dillon

  Celia comes downstairs just as we’re serving up. Fitz offers her some food but she shakes her head.

  ‘Saving yourself for a blow-out, Celia?’ Pete says. A look passes between them. I glance at Alex but she’s talking to Fitz and seems oblivious. Then Celia catches me observing it all and raises her eyebrows. I look away.

  The day after that everything kicks off.

  It starts when I rub Alex up the wrong way, out of jealousy, I think. She has a freedom I envy, and even though I see how precarious it is I want what she has, want desperately to be able to stay with Fitz. The night before, I lay awake for hours imagining what it would be like to do what she’d done. To just disappear, to forget all the school stuff, and A-levels and careers. I could get a job — surely there are plenty of jobs to be found in London. I’m seventeen; I have my O-levels; I could work in an office or a shop, or wait at tables. Anything to earn some money, to have enough to live on. I started planning things in my head, calculating how much Fitz and I might earn in a month, fantasising about finding work abroad. Even composing a letter to my parents to tell them what I’d done. At four o’clock in the morning it all seemed beautifully simple.

  Morning light reveals the complications. Apart from the fact that my parents would make my life hell, how could I explain it all without giving away Alex’s part in it? And if I managed to explain it some other way, how would they possibly understand? I can hear my father’s voice now, the sheer disbelief. ‘Throwing everything up for some holiday romance? You’re off your rocker, Beth.’

  Sleep-deprived, I turn my head to look at Fitz. He stirs slightly, perhaps sensing my gaze. I want to wake him, to make love, to make the most of this day, but he turns and settles back into a deep sleep.

  I slip out of bed and go down to make myself some breakfast. I find Alex already there. She seems brighter than usual. We sit down at the big, messy table and have tea and toast, talking together as we did that first week I was here.

  At first the conversation is light and giggly, back in our schoolgirl mode of sharing jokes about boys we fancy, only now it’s men we’re sleeping with. She asks me if Fitz is good in bed and I tell her to mind her own business.

  ‘Ooh, sensitive,’ she says. But we’re both laughing.

  Then she tells me that while I was away she’s been to the family planning clinic and got the pill. She says why don’t I do the same? She’ll take me.

  ‘Not much point, is there?’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I’m going back on Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, Beth!’ she wails. ‘Don’t go! It’s great with you here.’

  I bite back the reply that we haven’t exactly done much together. ‘I can’t not go, can I?’

  She puts her chin in her hands and stares at me, mournfully. She looks like a clown, hair all messed up from bed and mascara rings under her eyes.

  ‘You could, not go.’

  ‘Alex, that doesn’t make sense. Just because you ran away from home doesn’t mean I should. I haven’t actually got anything to run away from.’

  ‘But you and Fitz — you’re perfect together. You can’t leave him. You should have seen him when you weren’t here. He was pining for you.’ She giggles. ‘He kept playing that Leonard Cohen song…“Hey Tha-at’s No Wa-ay to Sa-ay Goodbye-ee-ai-ai…”’

  I have to smile, at her silly voice and doleful face, but behind that is a weird impulse I’m trying to hold back, a strange sort of hostility towards her. That she can joke about this.

  ‘Alex…do you feel like that about Pete?’

  Her face straightens. ‘Why, should I?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying you should, I was just…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was thinking what it would be like for you, if you had to go home.’

  ‘Why were you thinking about that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just did.’

  Alex suddenly looks fierce; her eyes latch onto mine. ‘Beth, you haven’t told anyone, have you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ But I do tell Alex that I saw her mother. I don’t hold back on how ill she looked, hoping that she might feel compelled to write, and take the load of guilt off me. ‘It hasn’t been easy for me, Alex,’ I say. ‘All the lying at home, making up stuff about where I was those two weeks, pretending I’m just the same old Beth who hasn’t fallen in love with someone. And now I’ll have to do it all over again and when anyone asks about you I’ll have to be careful I don’t say anything by accident, like…’ I can’t think of anything I might say by accident ‘…like Alex is alive and well and living in London.’

  I give her a feeble grin, meaning to lighten the impact of everything I’ve said, but Alex frowns.

  ‘Well, how could I know you’d fall like that for Fitz? I thought it would be fun to get you two together. I knew you’d like him.’

  Which is the nearest she’s ever come to acknowledging all the complications and heartache.

  ‘So is that all it is for you?’ I insist. ‘A bit of fun?’

  ‘More or less.’ Her eyes meet mine in a challenge. ‘I’m not madly in love with Pete and I don’t suppose he is with me. So what?’

  We hear a movement at the door and both look up as Celia comes into the room. She has a pile of wet clothes in her arms that drip onto the floor as she crosses the kitchen and throws them into the sink. She reaches behind the check curtain and brings out a red bucket, then peers out of the window at the sky. The sun is just breaking though a smoky layer of cloud.

  ‘Think I might risk it,’ she says.

  We don’t answer, both transfixed by the sight of her matchstick-thin legs. She’s wearing a skirt, unusual for Celia, who prefers to hide as much of her body as she can. She turns from the window to face us.

  ‘Of course you’re not in love with Pete. It’s never about love with Pete.’

  It’s the most direct thing I’ve ever heard her say to anyone and there’s no apology for butting in. Her eyes, great round orbs in a gaunt face, challenge Alex to disagree.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alex asks cautiously.

  ‘Think about it. What does Pete want from you? Not love, it’s too messy. He doesn’t want love, he wants need.’

  She gathers up the sodden clothes, dumps them in the bucket and goes out into the garden, where she begins draping them over bushes to dry. Alex raises her eyebrows at me and circles one finger at her temple. I laugh uneasily, seeing all too well what Celia means. When she comes back in she carries on as if she never said anything, going over to the fridge to retrieve a yoghurt.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Alex demands. ‘That I can’t live without Pete? I’ve managed up to now.’

  Celia straightens up and rips the lid off the yoghurt, licks it clean and throws it into the carrier bag that’s our bin. She wrenches open the cutlery drawer and searches for a spoon. Only when she’s found one does she answer, lolling against the sink to eat her yoghurt, speedily and without much enjoyment, I think.

  ‘Yes, you’ve managed,’ she consents. ‘You haven’t wound up dead, or on the streets. Just don’t get stuck in his little world.’

  ‘Like I need your advice.’

  ‘You should listen to advice that’s well meant.’

  ‘How do I know it’s well meant?’ Alex’s voice rises. ‘How do I know you don’t just want me out the way?’

  Celia’s eyes narrow. ‘Why would I want you out the way?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

  ‘It’s nothing to me whether you’re here or not.’

  ‘But you seem to be saying I should go.’

  Celia shakes her head in what looks like exasperation. ‘I’m not telling you what you should do, I just—’

  She breaks off at the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Pete appears in the doorway, bare from the waist up, jeans thrown hastily on, belt dangling. His hair is lank and stringy.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  He looks from one to the other of us a
nd I see that Alex is reluctant to answer him, even though she must feel he’ll be on her side. His eyes stop at Celia, who’s scraping out the yoghurt.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Celia says.

  ‘Like hell it is,’ Alex fumes then. ‘Celia wants me to go.’

  Celia sighs. ‘That’s your interpretation.’

  ‘No, it’s pretty clear what you meant.’

  Pete takes a step forward. ‘What have you been saying, Celia? Why are you meddling?’

  Her chin comes up and she looks him in the eye. ‘I have a right to an opinion.’

  There are two things I’m aware of at this point: that Pete’s fists are clenched by his side, and that Alex has clocked something about the way he spoke to Celia, something in the way he used her name. Celia. I see her eyes dart between them.

  ‘Your opinion isn’t wanted.’ Pete speaks slowly, heavily. ‘Keep out of it.’

  Celia lobs her empty yoghurt pot into the carrier-bag bin and the spoon into the sink. ‘I thought you were a socialist. Since when was free debate not part of socialism?’

  ‘Bugger free debate. I’m talking about you poking your nose into my affairs. Leave Alex alone.’

  At that Celia and I both look at Alex, to see her staring at Pete, eyes wide open.

  ‘Fine,’ Celia says. I think there’s a smile in her eyes. Job done. ‘Well, if you don’t mind I want to go up to my room.’

  Pete is blocking the doorway. There’s a moment when it looks as though he’s going to carry the argument on, but then he slowly unfurls his hands to hang loosely by his sides and moves from the doorway to let Celia go through. He leaves just enough room, so that she almost brushes against him. He’s watching her closely. As she starts up the stairs he calls after her.

  ‘And that’s something else we need some free debate on. Your room.’

  Celia’s footsteps are so light on the stairs it isn’t clear whether she stops or carries on. In any case, if she has any reply to that it is swallowed by the sudden explosive noise that comes from the front of the house, the unmistakable sound of shattering glass.

  We all jump and Alex shrieks. For an instant we freeze, just our eyes moving, searching each other’s out. My heart thuds wildly against my ribcage. Then for the second time that day footsteps clatter on the stairs as Fitz runs down them. The urgent way he moves has us out of the kitchen and on his heels, Celia as well, into the big room at the front. He comes to a sharp halt and stands in shocked silence. I peer around Pete’s shoulder to see Fitz staring at a jagged gap where a window was, the middle section of the bay. Scattered over floorboards and furniture are the remains, a multitude of shards and splinters of glass. There’s a chair lying on its side in the middle of the room and I look at it stupidly, wondering what knocked it over. Then I realised it wasn’t there before. The chair caused the hole; it must have been plucked off the skip down the road and hurled through the window with huge force. There’s a collective sucking-in of breath as everyone else comes to the same realisation.

  Fitz notices one sharp spike of glass embedded lethally in the edge of the door. He reaches out and carefully removes it, slings it down on top of the rest. I think of The Snow Queen, quite suddenly, one of my childhood books, where the window bursts open in an ice storm and small splinters of ice fly through the air, to lodge in Kay’s eyes and heart.

  ‘Fuck!’ Pete steps forward, shoves the chair with his bare foot. It skitters across the floorboards with a crunching of glass, banging into the skirting. I look around, see Celia disappearing back upstairs without a word. Alex has gone white and I guess I don’t look so good because Fitz puts his arm round my waist and pulls me to him. And Pete — he puts his fist through the panel in the door, which splinters and jags on his hand as he pulls it back out.

  ‘Bastards!’

  *

  23rd May 2013

  The Castle Therapy Centre was based in an unremarkable red-brick building on the corner of a side street, with a Shaker green door, a minimal sign and discreet blinds. I had a twelve-thirty appointment, which was one hour away, and I’d travelled to Norwich to keep it, using up the one free day I’d built into my contract in London. I had planned to visit Tate Modern. Now I didn’t have any plans once I was through that green door. I didn’t even know what I hoped for any more. I swung between wanting this to be my Alex, fired by a growing desire to see her, and then hoping it wouldn’t be in case we couldn’t fix what happened.

  It was three days since my talk with Fitz and two since I’d booked an appointment under the name of Anita Jones. It had seemed like the next logical step. Besides, I hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

  I looked along the street, to where the square bulk of the castle could be seen in the distance. The skies were grey and there was a cool wind blowing. I wished it were twelve-thirty now; the longer I had to wait, the more I’d want to turn round and get on the next train back to London. I hugged my thin cotton jacket closer to me and decided to retrace my steps to a café down the road. I took my coffee to a quiet corner seat; the café was warm and I began to feel better in there.

  It wasn’t unusual for me to spend time on my own in a strange city — I travelled all over with work — but today was different. There was a sense of displacement in me; I felt somehow removed from the world, and I didn’t like that. It reminded me too much of the time after my return from Empire Road, when those few, extraordinary weeks bumped up against reality.

  When Fitz never replied to my letter a part of me had accepted that he’d bowed to the inevitable, but it hadn’t made things any easier. I lay in bed for days and weeks, and as it became harder and harder to summon up his face, or his voice, or the warm, animal smell of his skin, then all that was left was the memory of the weight of him in bed beside me. I was full of rage that he’d deserted me so thoroughly, full of misery for the loss of him, and then finally empty. Nothing could reach me, not even my parents’ belated concern. The only person who might have — Alex — was out of my life too.

  I’d been a boxcar off the rails, my life seriously off-track. So what was I doing now, chasing ghosts?

  Last night Fitz had rung me, soon after I’d finished work. I’d been on Baker Street, walking back to the hotel in a steady drizzle. I’d let him know I was going to Norwich and he’d suggested meeting me off the train at the end of the day.

  ‘We could have a drink, a debrief.’

  ‘Okay,’ I’d said. ‘I just hope there’s something to tell.’

  We’d arranged to see each other at The Meeting Place, St Pancras. A cynical part of me was chipping away at it, whispering in my ear that Fitz needed to check out — supposing it was Alex — whether his story tallied with hers.

  I looked at my watch. Time to go.The young receptionist at the therapy centre checked me in, pointed me to a chair, and went back to her PC. The mouse clicked with monotonous regularity as she peered at the monitor. I was the only one in the waiting room. There was some soft mood music playing and the room smelt sweet, orangey, from the oil diffuser on the mantelpiece. I asked her what the scent was and she said it was their own mix, made up by one of the aromatherapists. ‘You can buy it,’ she said, but I wasn’t sure I liked it. She asked if I’d found the centre okay and I said yes, in a way that I hoped would put her off asking awkward questions about where I lived, and which way I’d come, and was it by bus or did I drive. It might have looked odd, to come all the way from London for counselling.

  I asked to use the toilet and then spent several minutes staring into the mirror, trying to gauge how much I’d changed, wondering how long it would take Alex to recognise me. I’d lost some weight when Tim and I split up and then some more when I began the affair with Phil. The rest — fair hair, what Tim always called my ‘surprised eyes’ — was essentially the same. There were of course several depressing signs of ageing, highlighted by the overhead strip-light: frown lines; dark circles under my eyes and creases in the corners; tiny thread veins in one cheek; the slightly sa
gging jaw line. I pulled a face at myself as I thought fleetingly of Fitz having observed all this.

  And Alex? I tried to recall her gamine features and got a sudden picture of her laughing at me, petite and dark and pretty. How different would she look?

  What if it wasn’t her?

  I went back to Reception. A door opposite opened and a man emerged, showing his client to the desk and leaving her there to pay. He retreated to his room. My mouth had gone dry so I fetched a drink from the water-cooler. As I drained it I heard footsteps on some stairs and a woman with dark hair entered the room, approached me and held out her hand.

  ‘Anita Jones?’

  Automatically I took her hand, automatically I smiled and said hello, but as I did disappointment flooded into me. This wasn’t my Alex; I saw that straight away. How stupid to think it would be! Immediately I wanted to walk out, and had to stop myself saying sorry, I’d changed my mind.

  There were two reasons why I didn’t. One was to do with not having the nerve, the sheer rudeness of it. The other was because as these thoughts butterflied through my mind I saw her smile slip a little, watched it fade into a tiny frown.

  ‘I’m Alex,’ she said, in a soft voice, recovering her composure but immediately turning towards the door. ‘Would you like to come this way?’

  I followed her upstairs and down a corridor, then up another narrow flight of stairs that twisted at the top and led to an attic room. There were two steps down into the room itself — a small space, with a sloping ceiling. The walls were brick red and the dormer window was covered by a cream-coloured blind. She asked me to sit down and reached behind me to adjust the blind, letting in a little more light. She was a slight woman, roughly Alex’s build. Could it possibly be her? Was I getting this wrong?

  But when she sat down opposite and I looked more closely I became sure that I was right. She was about the right age, early fifties I’d say, and there were similarities — olive skin, dark hair and eyes — but in other ways she was not at all like the Alex I knew. My eyes were drawn to her neck, which was beautiful, long and elegant and perfectly framed by a red linen blouse. There was something about that neckline, and the shape of her head. Something that stirred a memory. But it wasn’t of Alex.