Letting You Go (27 page)

Alex quietly pulled in breath. He was right. On all counts. She buried her hands into her back pockets and tried to think of something useful to say. Finn had brought his arms across his chest, the underside of his inside-out plaid shirt in paler shades of red. There was a fleck of paint sitting in the stubble on his cheek where he’d been holding his brushes in his mouth. Alex wanted to reach out and wipe it away for him, or maybe she just wanted the excuse to cross the few feet to him and touch him again. Pretend they were still back up at the gorge. Something inside her clunked into place. She looked at Finn then, this great guy who’d been such a big part of her life, and felt suddenly exhausted. She was tired. Tired of trying to bury the adolescence they’d spent
together, tired of trying to make sense of a terrible twist of fate. She was tired of pretending how she felt about things all the time but mostly, she was tired of being a wimp. This awful, wimpy echo of the girl she was once.

‘Would you like to come out for a drink with me, Finn?’

She saw the surprise dart across his face. It made her feel both ashamed and exhilarated all at once. Norma wriggled to reach his neck better, her head bobbed beneath his chin like a nuzzling fawn.

‘You and me? Out, out? As in, where other people are?’

She was a terrible person. Finn was a good guy, honest, loyal, and since the sun had worked its magic over the ends of his hair, billboard-beautiful, Alex thought, if you liked your men a little rough around the edges, which she probably wouldn’t have done had Finn not fitted so snuggly into that bracket now.

‘How about The Cavern? I’ll buy you a Valhalla burger?’ Something warmed in his expression. Alex smiled with him, she’d seen the Valhalla burgers on Hamish’s menu board on her way through the pub.

Finn’s face sobered. He understood. Alex’s dad would most likely be in The Cavern or, at least, Ted’s friends. Alex hated that it made a difference, that a simple offering to go out and spend an evening together like grownups was some kind of momentous testament to how she felt about him. How she’d always felt. It wasn’t testament enough.

‘Popular place, The Cavern,’ he said.

Alex nodded. ‘It is.’

‘Might we, er … bump into your—’

‘You’re right. We might. How about you come pick me up and we’ll go to The Cavern from there?’

No mights. They were highly likely to bump into her father now.

Finn cocked his head and frowned. ‘From your place?’

It would all end in tears, of course. But then didn’t it always? It was about time people started crying for the gains and not just the losses.

‘My dad’s place,’ Alex confirmed. ‘I mean, if that’s OK with you of course. You don’t have to, I mean—’

‘Your place will be fine, Alex.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll borrow Brünnhilde’s body armour from the high street, but your place will be just fine.’

‘J
em, I need to borrow something to wear.’ Jem was sat in the middle of the lounge floor, a sea of documents and photocopies strewn around her like she were some kind of insect plonked at the centre of a large paper flower. She reached over the papers to the hearth and set her wine glass down. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Alex.

‘Thought I’d go
back to our roots
,’ said Jem, fishing out the box lid and wafting it so Alex could see the family tree set their mum had started. ‘I’ve gotten as far as great-great grandma Alice. That’s her in the hallway, isn’t it? The miserable looking one?’

Alex looked nervously at her wristwatch. He was coming at eight. She still had an hour yet. She’d showered already, had a go at taming her hair into something deliberate, she’d even sneaked into Jem’s room for another rifle through her makeup.

‘You’d look miserable, Jem, if you’d raised a lovechild out of duty because the man you’d married had been at it with the locals.’ Alex felt a twinge of anger at her father again. At least he hadn’t rocked up one day with a baby
Malcolm under his arm and said,
Here you go, Blythe, don’t say I never bring you anything!

‘What?’

Alex snapped away from thoughts of Mayor Sinclair being the poor bugger who’d raised a cuckoo in his nest. Seeing as Jem still had a good relationship with Ted, she didn’t need to find out about all that, Alex had decided.

Alex sighed. She wished she hadn’t got into this either. ‘You remember, Mum told us. Great great granddad William was a bit of a git. Had a soft spot for some blonde, she died in childbirth and he brought the baby back for Alice to take care of.’ Extra marital affairs obviously ran in the Fosters’ bloodline.

Jem rifled through a pile of notes. She held up a pad where she’d been scribbling her own. ‘I remember. So, our great granddad Benjamin, wasn’t actually great-great-grandmother Alice’s son?’

Alex squinted while she did the maths.

‘No,’
she said, half-sure.

‘Benjamin was biologically another woman’s son …’

‘So Mum said.’

‘So we’re probably related to another family from around here?’

Eugh. Whose idea had it been to start trawling through this lot? ‘If William’s mystery blonde was from the Falls, I suppose so.’ Alex shrugged. ‘So, can I borrow a pair of jeans or something? I’ve only got what I came up here with.’ As much as Alex still loved her Jaws t-shirt, it wasn’t really
first-date-in-yonks apparel. Oh God. Did this count as a first date in yonks?

Jem scratched her head with a pencil. ‘There’s a pile of clean washing on my bed. Help yourself. Might need ironing though.’ Jem slipped the pencil into her mouth and tapped at her teeth with it. ‘Your hair looks good down, Al. Really good. Where are you off to?’

Alex lifted a self-conscious hand to her hair and swallowed. It was more of a gulp, which was silly, this was her idea after all. To be up front and open and honest.

‘Alex, are you all right? You’ve gone a funny colour.’

Alex could feel her hands had gone clammy. She blurted out a stream of information for Jem to chew on. ‘Finn’s coming to pick me up. We’re going to The Cavern. I’m going to buy him a burger and we’re going to have a few drinks and catch up.’ And laugh, hopefully, laugh and smile and talk and zone out the rest of the world for a few precious hours. ‘Finn’s coming
here
?’ Jem’s eyes grew rounder. ‘You know Dad’s not going to the hospital tonight, right? I think he’s been at The Cavern this afternoon so he’s probably going to be home soon. There’s only so much backgammon even he can play.’

Alex tried to ignore the dull thrum of agitation beginning to niggle away at her.

She tried to shrug nonchalantly. ‘Why would he have been at The Cavern this afternoon? He always goes in the evenings.’

‘They’re running a bet on the river race tomorrow, he said
he was going for a flutter. But then he also said he was going to meet me for a sandwich at Frobisher’s at lunch time. Anyway, he stood me up. I take it he had to go on a callout first or something. He probably called me but this crappy reception up here.’

Alex shrugged. Well he definitely hadn’t been at the hospital this afternoon. Alex had left Finn’s studio, dropped Norma back at the house and gone straight to Kerring General while Jem had gone to spend some time probably trying to convince this
George
to return to London and come back to meet the family at some other, less fraught, time.

‘So, jeans are in your washing pile?’

Jem nodded.

‘Don’t suppose you have a top in there too?’

Jem swished her pencil in the air like she was conducting an orchestra. ‘Knock yourself out. But you have bigger feet than me, so no stretching out my shoes.’

‘Thanks, Jem.’ The tension was easing between them, finally. All Alex needed now was to check this George chap out and they were good. On the same page again. Sisters playing for the same team.

‘Al? I fixed the record player. We’ll give it a whirl when you’re all glammed up. Then we can take it in for Mum, give her something better to listen to than the drivel they keep putting on the TV for her.”

‘Thanks, Jem. I think she’ll really like that.’

F
ifty minutes later, Maria Callas was soaring through the house, released like a bird from her dusty album sleeve.

‘Why doesn’t Mum listen to her records around the house anymore?’ Alex asked, trying to form her words through a mouth awkwardly held open.

‘Sh, stop talking, you’ll make me smudge.’ Jem had gotten fed up already with the complications of genealogy and children born out of wedlock and was perfecting Alex’s lipstick instead. Alex looked at the concentration in Jem’s cool blue eyes. This is what they’d skipped. While Alex had been off setting up home alone and Jem had been trying to survive school.

Jem met Alex’s eyes and saw the question still there.

‘I don’t know, Alex. Maybe she didn’t think she should.’ But Alex didn’t notice Jem’s odd choice of words.

I do
, Alex thought. Blythe had stopped singing in the choir. Then she’d stopped listening to music altogether. Maybe their mum had changed in more ways than they
saw after Dill died, maybe Ted thought so too and had sought solace in Louisa’s arms for that very reason. ‘There, bloody gorgeous.’ Jem twisted Alex by the hips to look in her dresser mirror. Maria was just climbing to a crescendo when the front door rattled open noisily. Alex checked her watch.

‘Relax, it’s only ten to.’ Jem smiled. ‘It’ll be Dad.’ Because
that
was a relaxing thought, minutes before Finn was due.

Downstairs the door slammed closed. Alex saw the same question flash across Jem’s face too.

‘
Go on
, dog! Don’t bother me.’ Jem frowned at Alex then walked over towards the landing. Alex followed.

‘Ah, there you are. Not out gallivanting then?’ Alex stood beside Jem and looked down the stairs. Ted was slumped up against the wall, Norma studying him from a few feet back. Jem threw Alex a look. He’d been drinking. All afternoon by the looks of him.

‘I didn’t think you’d be back here …’ he slurred. ‘Not when you could be …’ Alex watched her dad wave his hand at the front door behind him, ‘… out there … running around with your little friend.’ Did he know she was going out with Finn? How did he know that already?

‘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 car 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.