Letting You Go

‘Did she look upset? Did he think Mum had been crying?’

‘What? No, I don’t think so. Alex, you’re as bad as Dad.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘With the random questions! Dad practically interrogated Mal last night, What have you said to my wife? Are you responsible for this, Sinclair?’ Jem solemnly tucked her hair behind one ear and shook her head. ‘You should’ve heard him. Dad was really horrible to Mal, actually.’

‘Dad thought Malcolm had upset Mum?’

‘Apparently. I tried to tell him. Mal Sinclair couldn’t upset himself. Mal’s just like his dad was.’ Jem had been fond of Mal, once upon a time, and the mayor.

‘Sorry, Jem. I should’ve been here.’ Alex shrank back against the corridor wall.

‘Dad wanted to know what they’d been talking about. Mal said they hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything except the fluttering she was having and …’

‘Fluttering? Again? Jem, why didn’t you say that?’ Alex knew it would be her heart. ‘We need to tell the doctors, before it happens again!’ It was a miracle they hadn’t done her in before now, the fluttery palpitations her mum habitually played down since their sudden onset a decade ago.

One of the nurses at the desk was looking over at them. Jem blew her fringe from her eyes again. ‘I’m going to need coffee if we’re getting into all this, Al. It wasn’t her heart, OK? Will you please listen to me? If the fluttering business had bothered her that much, she’d have seen somebody about it before now.’

‘Do you really believe that, Jem?’

Blythe liked to make light of it. It was like a butterfly trapped in ajar that was all. You didn’t trouble the doctor over a butterfly heart. A stampeding herd of wildebeest in there, fair enough, but not butterflies.

Jem smiled sweetly down the corridor towards the nurses’ station. Alex slumped back against the wall next to her mother’s room. Whatever it was that was in her mother’s heart, wildebeest or butterflies, Alex knew why they were in there. Alex was staring at her shoes again when Jem gently kicked her own foot against Alex’s.

‘It was a stroke, Alex. Nothing anyone could’ve foreseen. Nothing anyone else is responsible for. Let it go.’

The door into Blythe’s room swept open. He might’ve looked older, but Ted was still a mountain of a man, tall and broad and handsome, as fathers should be.

Alex stood a little straighter. Her dad came to stand in front of her and scratched softly at the flop of grey-blond hair over his eyes.

‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you just now, Alex. I’m just a, er, a little …’ Alex watched him try to choose his words.

‘It’s OK, Dad.’

Ted managed a brief smile. Jem’s eyes bounced back and forth as if she were spectating at Wimbledon.

‘I didn’t think you’d wait to drive up here to your mother, you should’ve come to the house,’ he said. ‘I waited for you on the porch.’ He would’ve waited there longer for her too, had he not started thinking the same old thoughts, tying himself in knots until he’d found himself stalking angrily down to St Cuthbert’s.

‘It was early. I didn’t know if you’d be awake …’ But she knew it was a rubbish lie before she told it.

‘You’re my daughter. And it’s never too early in the day to see your child arrive safely home, Alexandra.’

CHAPTER 11

‘Jem? Are you hungry yet? I think we should wait until Dad gets home. Shall one of us call him?’

Alex’s voice bounced up through the house as she sniffed the contents of the heavy casserole dish on the kitchen table. How Helen Fairbanks had managed to hoist all that cast iron and lamb hotpot up to the house and leave it on the porch deck without putting her back out was an enigma, but Mrs Fairbanks was one of those practical can-do women, cut from the same old-school cloth as Blythe and Susannah Finn. ‘Jem?’ Alex yelled again. Jem had regressed back to her early teens since they’d got back to the house. She’d been upstairs on the other side of a closed bedroom door while Alex had skulked around the kitchen in quiet contemplation. Someone had to keep the new puppy from chewing or piddling on anything else and Jem still seemed immune to all things cute and cuddly. Alex meandered back out from the hall. Their parents’ kitchen was still homely and vast as any of the other farmhouse kitchens along the track, it still smelled of the dried lavender Blythe had tied to the beams and the ashes in the Aga, despite the new addition to the household peeing with excitement every time Alex walked into the room.

Alex’s stomach growled. Helen Fairbanks’ mercy meals were legendary. Over by the log basket a bundle of fur the colour of wheat fields heard the noises of Alex’s gastric processes and began wagging herself to death again. The pup waddled excitedly towards Alex, a wet trail in her wake. ‘Agh, not again!’ Alex groaned. ‘You’re like a tap … dog.’ The dog needed a name. Alex seemed to be the object of its unwavering affection and if they were going to have this intimate relationship of ankle-licking and wee-clearing every time the thing set eyes on her, the dog definitely needed a name.

Alex listened to the bump bump bump of Jem finally plodding down the wooden stairs. Jem bobbed lethargically back into the kitchen, her hair tied up now like the renegade ballerina she’d briefly been in her childhood. Alex had only just shook her own out, her scalp was still throbbing from having had its hair follicles pulled back too vigorously, too carelessly in the rush to make the drive up here.

‘You cut your hair,’ Jem observed, reaching for the auburn tendrils sitting against Alex’s shoulders. Alex finished placing a knife and fork aside the last of the three placemats their mum had already set out for Jem’s weekend stay.

‘Yeah. Think I should’ve just hacked the lot off though. I have to keep it tied back all the time at work, so …’ Not to mention the swimming issue. It only took a few strands to break free and start floating around her face to freak her out completely.

‘Looks nice, anyway. You look like Mum did, in that photo she used to have of her and Dad.’ Alex frowned. ‘At the mayor’s annual dinner.’

Alex fished for the memory. ‘Oh, yeah. The one with Mayor Sinclair letting Dad wear his gold BA Baracas chains. I haven’t seen that picture for years.’ She smiled. It was one of her dad’s favourites. He used to tell everyone how he’d fallen in love with their mum all over again that night, she looked so beautiful. Like Grace Kelly. Grandma Ros had insisted that picture be kept in the hallway where visitors would definitely see it, having your photo taken with the mayor and his wife was a badge of honour too shiny to be left in a back room.

Jem moved lethargically over to her chair. Her mood seemed to have been on a steady decline since their debate on who should to call Mal for a proper chat about what had happened last night. Alex was probably just over-scrutinising again. Finn had accused her of that the night he’d showed up at her university digs, of looking for a problem until she found one.

An image of Finn, chest heaving with the rigours of his morning run poked Alex in her mind’s eye again. This morning was a fluke, it didn’t mean they would keep bumping into each other, not necessarily. Even if they did, a simple hello would suffice. Just a nice, polite hello, like old friends. They weren’t kids any more, were they?

‘Neither have I actually.’

‘What?’

‘Seen that photo of Mum and Dad and the Sinclairs. Can’t say I miss not seeing Louisa’s sour face every time I come into the house though,’ Jem said. ‘You know, she called me a thief once. Said I’d stolen one of the ornaments from Sinclair Heights. Like I’d want anything out of the mayoral mansion.’

Mal hadn’t grown up in a mansion, but he’d been the most well kitted-out kid Alex and Jem had ever played with. Ted had said they were the perks of being an only child. Mal had told them over toasted marshmallows one night that his dad really wanted Mal to have a brother but Louisa said no because she detested being fat.

‘Ornaments?’

‘Yeah, that miniature Viking ship, of Dill’s remember? I was showing it to Mal, he had one similar and was trying to tell me how valuable his was because it had these markings on the bottom.’ Jem’s face twisted as she recalled the tale. ‘Then Louisa saw me showing Dill’s ship to Mal and freaked. Said I was trying to steal it, that it belonged to a set of theirs Malcolm’s father keeps in his private study.’ Jem imitated Louisa’s acerbic voice. ‘She told me it was about time I stopped acting like a little thug and how coming from a family with no money was no excuse.’

Alex whistled. ‘That’ll do it.’

‘Oh yeah, she also said I should start behaving like a “lady”.’ Jem held her fingers up to denote inverted commas. ‘Starting with rectifying my boy’s haircut.’

Alex bit at her lip. She felt for Jem, everyone knew Mal’s mum was a tyrant. Alex had been lucky on the ‘boyfriend’s mothers’ score, Susannah Finn had treated Alex like a daughter, virtually.

‘To be fair, you were always a bit thuggish, Jem. But you never looked like a boy … not once your crew cut grew out a bit, anyway.’ Alex smiled, trying for a little light relief at the expense of Jem’s historic rash makeover choices. I just wanted a change, had been Jem’s official line when the head had sent her home. Alex had made a few of her own dodgy fashion statements in her teens but only Jem had ever come home from school with a short back and sides.

Jem wasn’t listening; she was too busy looking blankly at her mobile phone.

‘So who won?’ Alex asked, straightening the place settings. Her mum always laid the table so elegantly, an art form with its own choreography.

‘Won what?’

‘The battle of the Viking ship?’

Jem winked. ‘There was no way she was keeping that little carved ship. It’s in Dill’s room now, go and have a look.’

Alex caught her smile before it dropped. She didn’t go in there. Mum had kept it nice, unchanged. Everything in its place like her finely laid table settings. Alex didn’t even want to risk moving the dust in Dill’s room.

‘I believe you, Jem. How’d you get it back off her?’

Jem grimaced at her phone and slapped it onto the table, slumping into one of the chunky wooden chairs. ‘Louisa? I’d have prised it from her bony fingers if I’d have had to, Al. As it happened, Mal’s dad came home. You should’ve seen Louisa’s face when the mayor told her she’d made a mistake. Nearly killed her handing it back, you’d have thought she was handing me Mal’s inheritance. Anyway …’ Jem wriggled herself more upright in her seat, ‘your room’s all sorted, Mum and I already changed all the bedclothes yesterday.’

‘Thanks, Jem.’

‘No worries.’ Jem lifted her phone again, twisting it in an attempt to find a gobbet of phone signal somewhere over the tablecloth. She huffed and stood up again. ‘I could do with a drink. There must be a bottle of Pinot here somewhere.’

There wasn’t, Ted was teetotal now. Blythe didn’t keep a drop in the house any more, Jem knew that just as well as Alex.

‘Are you OK, Jem? You seem preoccupied?’

‘Hmm? Sorry. It’s just work, being difficult.’ Jem’s phone had been bleeping all afternoon, until they’d driven back into dodgy mobile signal territory and the bleeping had died a death.

‘Is that who you were on the phone to?’ Alex asked. Jem had been up there for over an hour. ‘You haven’t given your work the house number have you, Jem? You’ve said it before, they don’t exactly respect your work–life balance.’

‘Ha! Nope, those lines have definitely been blurred.’

Alex felt a pang of territorialism. Jem was needed here, her swanky jewellery company could sod off.

‘Can’t they cope on their own for a while?’ Dan would never bother Alex here. He’d already insisted she take all the time she needed from the food bank. Jem came back to the table, examining the base of her glass. She poured the water Alex had set out and hovered. ‘George is under a lot of pressure, Alex. We have a huge opportunity coming up. There’s a lot to get through.’

‘Who’s George? Your boss? Or just the bloke tasked with tracking you down to Mum’s bedroom phone?’ Alex felt her eyebrow rise like her dad’s would whenever he used to catch them on his bedroom phone.

Jem looked guilty. She set the water jug back down and braced herself on the back of the chair. ‘George can be … difficult. Thinks everything is always so simple … black and white,’ she muttered, sliding back into her seat.

‘How nice for George.’

Jem obviously didn’t want to get into it. ‘Did you call me before?’

‘I wanted to know if you were ready to eat? Or do you think Dad might leave the hospital soon?’ Alex pulled the lid away from Mrs Fairbanks’ pot and beheld six fat juicy dumplings proudly peeping from a puddle of rich gravy. Saliva rushed into her mouth. She never ate like this any more. Casserole for one? Unlikely.

‘That was Dad on the phone just then.’

‘Still nothing?’ Alex asked. It had only been an hour and a half since they’d left them at Kerring General, Ted still pacing, Blythe still sleeping. Soundly they all hoped.

‘Nope. I told Dad to go and get a paper, have a smoke or something, not that I want to encourage his bad habits. I think the nurses are wearing him down though. They’ve promised to call him if there’s any change, he was just mulling over leaving.’

‘We’ll wait then. He must be starving.’ Alex clamped the lid back onto the pot, her stomach grumbled again in protest.

Jem nodded at Alex’s tee. ‘I don’t think Jaws is willing to wait. Come on, dish up. I’ll put Dad’s in the oven.

Alex was still weighing it up when a ladleful of food fell onto the plate in front of her.

Alex bit into a tender piece of hot lamb and nearly slipped taste bud first into a state of euphoria. ‘Bloody hell, Mal Sinclair got lucky marrying Millie! I wonder if she can cook like her mum.’

Jem smiled disinterestedly. ‘Who knows? Probably. Millie’s probably perfect wife material, she’d have to be to get the green light from Louisa Sinclair just to spend time with her little Malcy, let alone marry him.’

Alex detected a nip in the air. She wasn’t completely convinced it didn’t smell of sour grapes. Nothing drove a wedge like an old boyfriend. Jem had never admitted to it but their mum had seen her and Mal ‘in a tryst’ outside Frobisher’s Tea Rooms in town once. Blythe had called Alex up at university specifically to tap her for inside knowledge.

‘I thought you and Millie used to be good friends?’

‘Years ago, maybe.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you see her much?’ Alex asked with a mouthful. ‘When you’re home? Don’t tell me she’s still gorgeous and slender, not with food like this firing out of her mum’s kitchen?’ Millie Fairbanks had always reminded Alex of Sandra Dee on Grease. Prim and lovely, and only a pair of black satin trousers away from total sex-goddessdom.

‘Not really.’

‘Not really what? Not really gorgeous or not really, you don’t see her much?’

‘I don’t see Millie.’

Jem yanked a slice of bread in two. Alex silently chewed a piece of swede. ‘That’s too bad. I always liked Millie.’

‘A few ballet classes doesn’t make you besties, Alex. Anyway, she was pallier with Carrie in the end.’

Alex took another bite of food. It was probably best not to get into it. She’d eaten four melt-in-the-mouth potato morsels before Jem spoke again. ‘Did you know they have a kid now?’

Alex backtracked her thoughts but couldn’t find where they’d left off. ‘Who?’

‘Mal and Millie.’ Jem laughed under her breath. ‘They even sound like they should be a couple.’

‘Oh, yeah. I think I heard something. A boy?’

‘Alfie. He’s four. Looks just like his dad did at his age, apparently.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I hear he has Millie’s dark eyes, not blue like Mal’s.’

‘I see.’

Jem nodded wistfully. ‘Helen spent nearly the whole time I was at the mayor’s funeral walking me through all of her grandson’s milestones. It was lucky she’d taken her funeral handbag and not her everyday handbag or I’d have been looking through albums of the things, I reckon.’

‘You went to the mayor’s funeral?’

‘Sure. He was always nice to me when I hung out at Mal’s house, unlike his serpentine wife. I really liked him. Didn’t you?’

‘I guess. I never really saw much of him after Mum finished helping him at the library.’

Jem shrugged. ‘I liked him. He always asked me stuff about Dill, as if he thought it was important to keep talking about him or something. Anyway, someone had to go. The Fosters and Sinclairs go way back. Everyone knows …’

‘The Fosters and Sinclairs have the longest bloodlines in these parts,’ they both said in unison. Jem grinned. She had a brilliant grin. Infectious, Alex always caught it.

‘Good old Mum. The genealogical guru of Eilidh Town Hall.’ Everyone wanted to be of Viking descent in Eilidh Falls, the mayor had been no exception. ‘So the mayor wasn’t cast adrift on a burning pyre then?’ Alex teased.

‘No pyre.’ Jem smiled.

‘Why didn’t Mum and Dad go?’ Blythe and Ted had moved in the same social circles as the Sinclairs once, until Helen and Millie Fairbanks’ car had collided with a wagon at the bottom of the bridge on Eilidh high street, just after it had left a service at Foster & Son’s Autos.

‘Not sure, it was weird. They both had this mystery bug they didn’t want to pass on. So I went on my own.’

Jem reached for more water. Something pretty caught Alex’s eye. ‘Jem! Your bracelet! Did your company make that?’

‘Ah, just a little something I knocked up.’ Jem said modestly.

‘It’s beautiful, Jem,’ Alex admired, running a finger over the edge of the bracelet. ‘I bet you’ve sold a few of these.’ Pottery had been Alex’s bag. She’d been all set to become the next Emma Bridgewater.

‘I wish. I’ve only made two, they’re such a bugger to make. I do love them though. They’re my best pieces.’

‘Have you seen Wedding Wars?’

‘Wedding Wars?’

OK, so Alex probably needed to rein in the late night telly watching. ‘Jem, I’m telling you, you should go into the bridal market. You’d make a fortune.’

‘And deal with all those finicky bridezillas or, worse, their mums? No thanks. They’re not all as chilled out as Blythe, you know. Just ask Mal.’ Jem stabbed at a piece of carrot then thought better of eating it. ‘I wonder when her next meal will be.’

Alex had stopped eating too. She pushed a slice of potato around her plate. She’d been hasty, hopeful this morning of her mum waking up and them bringing her home in no time. Then they’d come in to change Blythe’s catheter and Alex realised. Blythe wasn’t just sleeping, she was dependent. For now, at least.

Alex sat perfectly still, listening to the clinking of Jem’s cutlery against her plate and a houseful of silence behind it. ‘She needs to come home, Jem. It’s too quiet.’

‘She will. This place will be jumping again once she’s home.’ But they both knew that it probably wouldn’t. It had been years since either of them had heard the sounds of their childhood. Years since Blythe’s voice had effortlessly chased the rising and falling of dramatic melodies while Madama Butterfly or La Traviata played through the house. When Blythe did eventually come home it would just be more obvious. Dill had taken all the noise with him.

12th September 2004

‘You’re lying.’ Ted’s voice sounded thin against the cheery 20s jazz playing out in Frobisher’s Tea Rooms.

Louisa’s hand was trembling. Her glass lying upended on the table-top. She wiped at the lipstick smeared messily from her lips. Ted saw the tears pooling in her eyes and felt nothing. He might have worried that he’d hurt her, been too rough, if he could think straight.

Louisa’s eyes darted about the tea rooms but the waitresses wouldn’t see them sitting here. Louisa had chosen the booth, tucked away by the little side window.

She swallowed back angry tears. ‘But you know that I’m not, don’t you, Ted? I can see it in your face.’

He should never have come here. Then he wouldn’t have had to listen to her spiteful proposition, wouldn’t have had to push her away. Wouldn’t have made her want to hurt him back so cruelly.

‘Stop talking, Louisa. Just …’

He brought his sleeve over his own mouth, in case any of that red was left on his. His hands were shaking too. Ted rose slowly from his chair. Louisa’s eyes grew wide.

‘Where are you going? You can’t just leave.’

He should never have come. ‘Home, Louisa. To my family. I promised my son we’d play with his new arrows.’ The bow and arrows. Ted pictured Malcolm bringing them over to the house for Dillon. He felt himself hunch over the table for a moment, his fingers grasp the edge of the table-top.

Louisa’s chin wobbled. She held herself rigid and glared up at him. ‘You go back to her then,’ she spat. ‘To that frumpy little wife of yours. But I hope you’re good at pretending, Edward Foster.’

CHAPTER 12

‘Every case is different, Mr Foster. It’s still very early days and there’s no saying how your wife’s symptoms will continue to present. I’m afraid it can be something of a guessing game in the initial weeks.’

Alex could tell her dad was trying to decipher how old this man delivering the fate of their family could possibly be. For a moment she found herself playing along. Dr Okafor was handsome in that way all young, intelligent here-to-help-your-suffering-loved-one people were, with his rectangular-rimmed glasses and candy-pink shirt that was only ever going to be OK on an acute assessment unit because he was educated, and knowledgeable, and because it complemented his flawless black skin perfectly.

Alex glanced at Jem to see if she was evaluating Dr Okafor too. Jem’s hand was resting comfortably through the crook of their dad’s arm. ‘You’re saying she might be in hospital for weeks? Even though she’s woken up and managed to drink and …’

Dr Okafor lifted his hands apologetically. ‘We are very encouraged by your mother’s progress this morning, Miss Foster, but before you go in to see her you must be made aware that recovery can be unpredictable and sometimes erratic. As the swelling on Mrs Foster’s brain reduces, we would hope to see further changes in the rate of her progress but it can be a very … disorientating experience for your mother.’

Alex found her voice. ‘So what are you saying, Doctor?’

He looked softly at Alex, as if delivery was something they spent a whole semester’s study on in med school. ‘It is quite possible that your mother’s symptoms could get worse before she starts to feel better, and that is something we should keep in mind. Did you know that your wife suffers from arrhythmia, Mr Foster?’

Bingo. Dr Okafor had just delivered a body blow. It didn’t matter how much older and wiser Ted was, this guy, this kid, knew stuff. Important stuff that he didn’t. About his Blythe. ‘Arrhythmia?’ Jem ventured.

‘It’s her heart, Jem.’ Alex’s voice snagged, unready to speak when she’d wanted it to.

Dr Okafor smiled and dipped his head. ‘That’s correct. Arrhythmia is essentially irregular beating of the heart, its rhythm. Sometimes this can be the cause of the stroke, sometimes the effect. Has your wife ever complained of problems in this area, Mr Foster? Any discomfort, breathlessness, palpitations … maybe no more than a fluttering sensation?’

Alex felt her neck burning up. I did this to her. She knew it. She’d known it since she put down the phone to Jem in the cubicle at the leisure centre.

Alex heard her dad clear his throat. He wasn’t going to be caught out by a snagging voice, his age and experience at least gave him that much. ‘My wife’s a busy woman, Doctor. It takes a lot to slow her down. If Blythe has had any problems with her heart,’ he cleared his throat again, ‘she hasn’t shared them with me.’ Alex couldn’t read her dad’s expression. Her mum wouldn’t have kept that from him, would she? Her parents didn’t keep anything from each other, they didn’t have secrets, they just weren’t the sort.