Letting You Go (32 page)

Alex was breathing heavily through her nostrils. A few audible gasps in various pockets of the crowd began rippling into light-hearted sniggers. Jem and George wore similar expressions on their faces, wordless mouths hung open in surprise.

‘What the … THIS IS
HUGO BOSS
!’ Carrie protested over the mic. Alex cupped a hand to her mouth and yelled over the tourists. ‘Sorry, Carrie Logan, of
Wallflower Weddings and crappy Floral Design!
I should’ve got my sister to aim.
I
throw like a
girl!
’ she shouted coldly.

George grinned.

‘Alex? What the hell are you doing?’

‘Humiliating her, hopefully.’ If only a little bit.

The mayor made a joke about no-one liking shameless advertising and a rubbishy quip about egg on his face. Carrie was already slithering off into the crowd. Alex felt strangely exhilarated. Then the next invader made it to the finish line.

Finn was paddling his way over to where the river shelved. He jumped into the last few feet of water and waded to the embankment, spectators and a few frisky WI
members slapping his back while he began untying his banners.

‘You can start a turf war with an egg, but you can’t just go and talk to him, Al?’ Jem looked at her hopefully but Alex could feel the fight evaporating from her bloodstream.

Finn didn’t look like he had any fight left in him either. He looked exhausted. Alex tried not to watch him, stepping through the spectators towards them. Water was streaking down his cheeks, just like it had up at the gorge. If Alex hadn’t known to look at his lip, she might not have noticed the swelling her father had put there. Jem was deliberately silent when he reached them.

‘Well done,’ Alex croaked. ‘For making the whole run.’

‘Thanks.’ Finn smiled self-consciously at George and Jem. A silence began to grow amongst their odd quartet. Norma whined again.

Say something, Alex. Just say something.
She could see the cut in his lip now.

‘I need to go get cleaned up.’ Finn said. He nodded a
bye
and moved past Alex without further comment.

Jem nudged her.

‘Finn, wait!’ Alex called. Finn took a few more steps then turned lethargically. He was worn down. She had worn him down. ‘Do you … want to throw some eggs with us?’ she said clumsily.
Throw some eggs? Do you want to throw some eggs?

Jem bit her lip and looked away. Finn exhaled deeply. ‘No. Alex. I don’t want to throw some eggs with you. But thank you for the grand offer.’

Her face felt tingly and uncomfortable. ‘Finn? Or we could grab something for—’

‘No. Thank you.’ His mouth had tensed, his skin was breaking out in goosebumps while Alex kept him here with her bumbling nonsense. ‘I don’t want to throw eggs, Alex. I don’t want to grab anything to eat. I didn’t want a drink at The Cavern or a Valhalla burger last night if I’m honest with you,
which
by the way I have been at every opportunity.’ Alex felt herself shrink. That tingling in her face was getting hotter. ‘I just wanted to hang out with you, Alex. That’s it. That’s all. Anywhere you wanted, I’d have gone.’

Alex stood numbed to the spot. Finn shook his head like he was annoyed at himself, then turned to walk away. He stopped. Alex watched him turn back again. His tanned face was turning an annoyed pink blush. ‘You know what, Alex? I really hope your mum gets better soon, and then you can hurry back to your little safety zone, and you won’t have to worry about getting your feet wet, or little bees in your hair or anyone embarrassing you by telling your dad how much they feel about you.’

‘You didn’t embarrass me,’ she said. But her voice sounded small and feeble.

‘No? You sure about that? Because when I sat down and thought about it last night, it finally occurred to me that that’s
exactly
what I do to you, Alex. I embarrass you.’

George shifted uncomfortably beside her. One of the spectators listening in made a little sound of disapproval.

‘You don’t embarrass me, Finn.’ How could he think that? How had she let him think that?

Finn shook his head and strode back over the grass towards her, water dripping off his hair in great wet ribbons along his face. ‘So it would be OK then, would it? If I give you my banner? Tied it around you and claimed you as my own, Alex?’ He laughed. There was a hard edge to his voice that made Alex want to look away from him. He stepped towards her, one of the coloured flags from his boat hanging limp from his hand. ‘Can I claim you as my own, or would you be too ashamed to go home and tell your daddy?’

He was being hurtful. Deliberately hurtful. He’d never done that before. Finn’s eyes were burning. Alex felt her bottom lip fighting not to wobble.

‘I’m not ashamed of you, Finn. You could never embarrass me.’ Although he was coming a little bit close to it right now.

Finn smiled. He didn’t say a word. She saw him reach towards her, soaking wet and taut with the things he wanted to get off his chest, and, for a foolish moment, Alex thought he was going to throw her in the Old Girl. His arms moved easily around her waist, the backs of her legs, and he lifted her as effortlessly as he’d lifted her behind the waterfall. The crowd throbbed with a collective cheer, they thought this was all part of the festivities.

Alex felt him scoop her up, the wet from his clothes
seeping into hers, an old lady clapped excitedly from the old people’s home area. Then he threw her over his shoulder to the delight of the watching tourists.

‘Put me down, Finn.’

‘Go on! That’s how you show ‘em,’ one spectator shouted.

‘Get her home in front of that sink!’ cheered another.

‘Did Vikings have sinks?’ a woman nearby asked.

Finn was turning around for the crowd, presenting Alex backside-first for them all to see.

‘Finn, put me down!’ She thought he was about to, he’d moved his hands to another position, but he slipped her back into his arms like he was about to carry her over some invisible threshold.

‘Go on, then, invader! Stop flirting and give her your banners!’

Alex looked up at him and felt her eyes burn as angrily as Finn’s were. And then he leant down and heatedly pressed a kiss to her mouth.

The tourists around them erupted, Alex heard several giggles and claps and camera phones going off and a quiet ‘holy shit’ from Jem. But Finn didn’t stop kissing her until he thought he’d made his point.

Alex tried to keep a hold of her anger, but it wasn’t enough. She could feel herself starting to slip into the abyss, tumbling down to reach feelings that had only ever risen in her for him. For Finn. And then like that, he set her back down again on the grass.

‘That was definitely worth the drive up here,’ someone
said. ‘Do all the invaders do that? When’s the next one coming downriver?’

‘Ooh, wait, he’ll give her his banner now! It’s so romantic!’

Finn was staring at her, oblivious to the crowd he’d drawn. Then he turned and walked away. Alex swallowed. She watched Finn give his banner to one of the delighted old ladies from the nursing home. She rewarded Finn with a peck on the cheek and a quick squeeze of his bicep. Alex wished he’d just thrown her in the river.

‘Alex, are you OK?’ Jem said quietly.

‘Yo, George! Where did you get this t-shirt for me from? Did they have them in any other colours?’ The guy with the bushy hair had walked right into them. ‘Helluva shot, by the way.’ he said turning to Alex. ‘That aim was
mental
!’ He hadn’t seen the second show Alex had put on then. ‘So, George? Where can I get me a few more of these tees, dude?’

Jem came quietly over her shoulder. ‘You said you wanted a sign, Al.’ Jem nodded at the guy with the bushy hair.

Alex felt dazed. She looked at George’s lively friend. He was wearing a piece of merchandise some enterprising local had knocked up with just a simple slogan and a couple of iconic symbols, synonymous with the god of thunder. ‘Simply
Thorgeous
’ his t-shirt read, alongside the image of a mallet, and because thunder was tricky to convey pictorially, a huge golden bolt of lightning.

A
lex found her dad sleeping in the office at the back of Foster’s Autos. Apparently he couldn’t burn the candle at both ends. An all-day bender followed by a dip in the river, a heart-to-heart with his daughter, an omelette challenge and a morning visit to Blythe was ever so slightly too much for a man in his sixties.

Alex leant against the doorframe watching him, a strange calmness in her body.

He was almost completely grey now. His face was softening with age, the hands that had thrown them all as children effortlessly into the air above the water at the plunge pools now worn and gnarled. She would love her father until the end of her days. That had never changed.

Ted’s eyes opened. Love was unconditional, wasn’t it?

‘Hi, Dad. Can we talk?’

Ted pretended not to startle, rubbing at the tiredness in his greying face.

‘Alex, hell, I must’ve dozed off,’ he said, as if it was the first time in his life that he’d caught forty winks back here. ‘What is it? Has the hospital called?’

Alex shook her head. ‘No, Dad. Everything is OK.’

She’d had to tell him once that she’d hit a stone with her tennis racket and somehow it had pinged off and cracked a pane in next door’s greenhouse. Her dad had seen the whole thing but had still waited for Alex to pluck up the courage to tell him. He’d said Alex had looked guilty before the stone had even hit the glass.

‘Alexandra? What is it?’

‘I don’t want to upset you, Dad. I love you.’

Ted shifted in his chair. ‘And I love you. Always the same. Never changes.’

Alex locked her dad’s words into her mind, squirrelling them away in case they were the last ones she was going to get to keep, and then she let it come. ‘But you don’t know who I am, Dad.’

‘You’re my little girl. That’s all I need to know.’

But that wasn’t all he needed to know. Alex didn’t want to be loved because she did a smashing job of hiding how she felt for Finn, any more than Jem wanted to be loved because she’d never told them she was in love with George. That wasn’t love. Love was warts and all.

‘I love him, Dad.’

Ted looked awake now, ice blue eyes giving the only colour to his face.

Alex breathed slow and steady. ‘I’m not asking you to approve of it, Dad. But I am asking you to acknowledge it. I love Finn. I believe that I always will. And when I leave here, I’m going to tell him.’

Not because she was expecting anything from him. She wasn’t. She’d burned that bridge one too many times. ‘I think he deserves to know the way he makes me feel. He deserves to know that I’m not ashamed to say it now, not even to you.’

Ted cleared his throat. He wasn’t going to see it. He couldn’t bring himself to see the man Finn was. ‘I didn’t come here to disappoint you, Dad. Or to let you down in any way. But this is something I should have told you, something I should’ve stood up for, before I first left the Falls. And when Mum’s better and I’ve gone back to work and I don’t see Finn again for another decade or more, at least he’d have heard me say it out loud. Instead of me loving him in secret.’

Ted’s fingers were resting over his moustache. His eyes hadn’t left Alex’s once. She felt her chin tremble and tried to clear her throat the way her dad did. He looked as dumfounded as Alex had been with Finn on the riverbank just now. ‘I’ll leave you to it then, Dad.’ Alex turned and stepped out through the office door into the cool dark of the garage. A voice followed her into the gloom.

‘I almost lost your mother once.’

Alex stood still. Ted’s voice sounded thin and tight behind her. ‘Almost lost the love of my life, because I’d been distracted. Stopped telling her how I felt about her.’

Alex’s heart began to thump gently. This hadn’t been in her plan, she hadn’t wanted to hear any truths in return. He’d been too drunk to remember the things he’d let slip about
her mum’s affair and Jem and Alex were happy for him to still think he’d held on to his secret. Alex looked over her shoulder. He was standing in the doorway behind her.

‘Dad—’

‘Let me finish Alex. Your mother’s not perfect, but she’s a damned sight closer than most. And I’ll never love another woman the way I love Blythe, not if I lived my life a hundred times over. But there was a time I didn’t tell your mother enough just how much I love her. And then I made the same mistake again, and I didn’t tell you enough either.’

Alex was holding her breath, she felt a bit queasy.

‘I love you, Alexandra. And that boy Finn is right to love you too. And if you love him like you say you do, you’d better go tell him.’

A
lex walked out the yard entrance to the growing sounds of panicky folk music and made a left onto the high street in a daze. The boat race must be drawing to end, the road looked clearer of people down towards the Cavern end of town, everyone seemed to be migrating up here towards the terrace where hog-roasts and mountains of root vegetables had been staged for a rustic banquet. Alex read the banner that had been stretched between two of the trees peppering the terrace.
Feast With The Victorious Vikings!

Alex’s mobile vibrated in her shorts pocket. Jem had insisted they all keep their phones on today in case anyone got lost in the crowd. Like they couldn’t just walk back to the house or something. Alex flipped open her message.

Manic Monday! Dishwasher’s kaput! Having a mental breakdown! When are you coming baaaaack?

Alex smiled and tapped out a reply.

Hey buster. Should know more after hosp. this afternoon but Mum on mend, responding well to treatment, thnk gdnss.
Will be back before you know it. Just tying up a few ends. A x’

The loose end in question was just stepping out of his hardware shop. Alex slipped her phone back into her pocket and waited for a chance to cross.

Finn was locking the door when she reached him, a roll of brown paper sandwiched under his arm. She’d been home for a fortnight and not once had she seen the inside of his shop.

Alex waited for him to turn around. He’d changed his clothes, a grey long sleeved t-shirt over cargo pants.

Finn turned. He stood there silently

‘Hi. Do you have a minute?’

Finn’s mouth drew into a hardened line. ‘I have to get back. I have someone coming to collect his commission. I just came back for something to wrap it in,’ he said, nodding at his roll of paper.

‘It won’t take a minute. I just have something I need to say to you, Finn, and then I’ll leave you in peace.’

He still looked serious, his eyes narrow and guarded where they used to be full of frivolous laughter She’d put that look there just as she’d put that cut on his lip.

Finn puffed his cheeks like a teenager. ‘Alex. Let’s just …’

‘I’m sorry, Finn. For not speaking up last night. For never speaking up. You’ve always deserved so much better than people gave you. Better than I ever gave you.’

He looked caught off guard. Unsure. A group of teenage
girls walked past them on the kerb and giggled at Alex’s paltry street performance.

‘Do you want to go somewhere quieter?’ Finn asked. The high street was thick with people, Alex did a sweep and recognised many of the faces she’d grown up with, the Reverend toddling alongside a cavalcade of wheelchairs users from the care home, Hamish shaking his head at a car going too fast, Millie waiting to cross the road with the children.

‘Alex?’ Finn pressed. ‘Do you want to talk in private?’

Alex composed herself. ‘No. What I have to say, I can say here.’ Anywhere, in fact. Alex went to continue but Finn had spotted something over her shoulder. Alex looked back to where Millie and the children were waiting. Had Jem left the dog with them? Norma was trying to wriggle out of her collar.

‘Hang on, Alex. I think Millie’s struggling, the pup’s tangled herself around Millie’s leg, look,’ Finn observed.

Millie was trying to free herself without loosening her hold on either Alfie or Poppy’s hands while Alfie desperately held on to Norma’s lead.

‘Hang on, Millie!’ Alex called over. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’ But she hadn’t thought until it was too late. Norma looked up with Millie, saw Alex standing across the street and determinedly yanked her head from her collar. Alex didn’t hear the vehicle coming down through the bend, and she didn’t see little Alfie Sinclair drop his mother’s hand. She only had time to stare, uselessly as Norma, and then at a little
boy in a danger-red baseball cap, darted out into the traffic.

Ted had only been listening to Hamish reel off the results of the river race for a minute or two before he thought he’d seen a ghost. Ted couldn’t see much of the child under that red cap, but there was something in his profile, the way his mouth was set in concentration. Ted saw Helen Fairbanks’ girl and realised whose child, whose grandchild, he’d been looking at.

‘Here comes another one, flying into town,’ Hamish said behind him, but Ted had already started to break away. He’d seen it unfurling before the child’s mother had spotted the danger. Ted broke into a run just as the dog made a run into the road. He heard a young woman’s voice cry out but the little boy with the familiar face was already stepping off the kerb.

He launched himself across the first lane but Ted had raised enough children to know that kids could be just like puppies, too quick to catch. He hadn’t checked what might’ve been coming behind him. He’d simply run for him, charging out after the late mayor’s grandson, grabbing out clumsily, desperately, until he could feel the boy’s soft little body change trajectory with the force of his own. A flash of burgundy squealed in front of them, something slammed hard into Ted’s side.

Then just the cold stark sounds of metal and glass.