Letting You Go

Jem had railroaded the conversation beautifully as ever. Jem was an excellent railroader, a seasoned expert at smoothing the awkward away with a nice thick layer of normality, as if they were all just enjoying a regular everyday catch-up with each other. Blythe too, as unwaveringly warm as she was thoughtful, had gushed about the flowers Alex had sent home, lest Alex’s woefully inadequate annual gesture ever go un-championed. ‘Oh, Alex … sunflowers and thistles!’ Blithe had delighted, ‘Such a simple posy but, just so beautiful, darling. Really, the perfect choice. Ted? Come tell Alex how beautiful those sunflowers are,’ her mum had encouraged. ‘Your dad commented on them, darling, and you know how oblivious Foster men are. Did you know, your father wanted sunflowers at our wedding? Your grandma Rosalind said they weren’t a traditional choice though, so that was that.’

Alex did know that. She also knew how fond her dad was of the colour the thistles gave to the hillside behind the farmhouse, but she wouldn’t allow herself to question who it was exactly she always sent the flowers for. Ted hadn’t gotten round to mentioning the sunflowers when he’d finally come on the line anyway. He’d had to dash off on a callout, thinning out their already skinny chat about the price Alex was paying for diesel down south.

Alex felt another pang of guilt. As soon as she’d heard the front door closing after her dad at the other end of the line, that tightness in her chest had begun to release. She was resurfacing.

‘Boring you, am I?’ Jem asked.

‘You’re boring me a little bit, darling,’ Blythe echoed. Alex could tell her mother had her head in the Aga. Blythe was exceptional at keeping her kids and cooking in check at the same time.

‘No … Sorry, Jem.’ Alex smiled.

‘You know what I mean, though, don’t you?’

Alex rallied herself. ‘About what?’

‘The neon!’ Jem asserted.

‘Sure. Neon … for a florist’s.’ Alex agreed. ‘I mean, if Carrie’s making crazy decisions like that, what else is she getting up to in there, huh?’ She was teasing, but Jem missed it, her high-school nemesis was still ram-raiding her thoughts. Alex thought she heard her mother laugh but it was difficult to be sure over the clanking of the table being set.

‘Exactly,’ Jem huffed, ‘that cow is not to be trusted.’

‘Jem!’ Blythe implored. ‘Change the record.’

Dill’s birthday had become sacred, more sacred than Christmas even and Christmas wasn’t a day for crap or bitch or cow either.

‘You can’t tell me off, Mum. I’m twenty-four.’ Jem let out a sudden yelp. ‘And you can’t whack me with a wooden spoon, Mum!’

‘Want to bet, young lady?’

Alex smiled into the phone. It was impossible not to feel steadied by her mother. Throughout everything, Blythe had held the balance.

‘I’m sure there are more riveting topics you and Alex can talk about besides Carrie Logan, Jem, surely? Can’t you gossip about men, or diets or something … like normal sisters?’

It had occurred to Alex years ago that she and Jem were not normal sisters, not if swapping juicy titbits about boyfriends and diets was the standard. Alex still wasn’t wholly sure whether she should feel more or less sad about that. It wasn’t love or affection she and Jem were missing, but years. Those intense teenage years where experiences and emotions were heightened and giddy and sisters confided and shared. Alex had left for uni and overnight it was as if something seismic had shifted leaving Alex on one side of a gaping chasm and Jem on the other. Not just their age gap. Alex could feel something else there stuck between them, something more than five big teenage years. Whatever it was, Alex had never poked at it, in case it turned out she was responsible for that too.

The phone had fallen silent. Something furtive seemed to be going on at the other end. ‘OK, OK,’ Jem whispered. She feigned an over-excited tone. ‘So guess who we saw? At the church?’

Alex ran through the usual suspects. Blythe had already told her how Susannah and Helen had each left flowers for Dill this morning, but other than Blythe’s old choir-buddies and the Reverend no-one else sprang to mind. ‘I give up. Who did you see?’

Jem laughed then. An odd, pre-cursory chortle. ‘Guess.’ But Alex didn’t have time to guess, Jem couldn’t hold it in. ‘Only Finn.’

Alex felt her thoughts slow down, sinking to the bottom of her brain like globules of wax in a lava lamp – heavy, vivid, helpless colour.

Finn. She’d been pressing that name to the back of her mind all day and Jem had just let it loose. Thoughts of Dill nearly always came piggy-backed by thoughts of Finn. Bound together by time and circumstance.

Jem was riding out the pause. All of a sudden, she could wait all day. Alex made a grab for something coherent. ‘Finn? But …’ she managed.

‘I know, right?’

‘Finn’s back in the Falls? But … I thought …’

‘I know. The rover’s returned and, by the looks of things, he’s all done with the intrepid explorer bit.’

Alex could feel a warm uncomfortable sensation brewing over the back of her neck. Jem would test her this way, now and again. She’d poke Alex like a bruise just to gauge if she was still tender, and all Alex could do was do her best not to flinch. It was like being ambushed. Stupid really, that she would be ambushed by this of all news. Eilidh Falls was his home, after all, of course he wasn’t going to stay away forever.

Alex held the phone, waiting to hear the next nuggets of Jem’s reconnaissance back home to filter down the line. Surprise began to twist into resignation. Finn had gone back to settle down, with a wife probably. And a family. Children. Beautiful children, sharing his glorious scruffy hair and playful eyes. He could’ve met a thousand women as he’d backpacked and odd-jobbed his way around the planet, exotic and captivating like the places he’d daubed on his bedroom wall. His ‘Great Adventure List!’ Their list.

Alex waited for news of the impossibly beautiful wife and their impossibly beautiful offspring to sock her one through the earpiece. Blythe had gone quiet in the background. She’d have been pleased for sure to bump into him, Alex knew it. Her mum’s fondness for Finn had never waned. Blythe had never blamed Finn.

‘Mum turned into a bashful teenager when she saw him, didn’t you, Ma? She thinks he’s even more handsome with a bit of colour on him.’

‘I was not bashful, Jem. I just think it’s a shame that boy hasn’t been snapped up. He should be bouncing a small child around on those lovely broad shoulders of his by now. “Too busy for love”? How can anyone ever be too busy for love?’

No wife. No impossibly beautiful children. Something briefly floated inside Alex before she could stop it, like a hot air balloon momentarily lifting a few inches from the earth before bobbing back down again with a thud. Finn was single then. Fab. Just as it was fab whenever George Clooney came back onto the market. Fab and uplifting and irrelevant all at once.

‘I wonder,’ Blythe lilted, ‘perhaps he’s gay now. He has been broadening his horizons for the last two years. I’ll bet he’s tried all sorts of new things. Food and … well, whatnot.’

Alex startled. Gay? Gay? Finn was not gay! No way. You couldn’t be that close to a person and not know something like that, Alex decided with ultimate certainty.

At the other end of the phone Jem was being uncharacteristically quiet, waiting for Alex to bite. Alex shrugged as if her sister could see it. ‘Susannah must be happy. To have him back safe and sound,’ she bumbled.

Finn had spent the last two years somewhere the ogher side of the planet. Had he been walking it all out of his system the way he used to, only instead of rambling around the countryside he’d gone rambling around the globe? Two years as far away as he could …

‘I guess. He was painting the railings on St Cuthbert’s wall, you know. Finn’s the new maintenance guy about town. He’s got the contract for the church. He’s re-opened Torben’s hardware shop too. On the high street.’ Jem’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And in case you were wondering, throwing tools around hasn’t done him any harm either, Al. He’s like … buff now. No more noodle arms,’ Jem chirped.

Alex’s lava lamp brain was heating up. Torben’s? Right across the street from the garage? Alex imagined her father’s mood each time he looked out across the high street. They would be virtually face to face, every single day. Alex swallowed. Her dad would have an ulcer by New Year.

‘He asked after you, Al.’

Blythe had moved back into motion in the background but the clinking of tableware had become more delicate while the conversation played out between her daughters.

Alex’s thoughts were swirling faster and faster now. ‘Erm … That’s nice.’ That’s nice? And the rest. Alex expected Jem to laugh again but Jem was waiting it out instead. Well what did Jem expect her to say? Did he, Jem? DID HE? What did he ask after me, exactly? Did he ask if I’m sorry I cut him loose like a ground rope? Whether I’m sorry for what I said? Did he ask if it still hurts when I think about him?

There was a light thrumming in Alex’s ears and she forgot briefly about what Jem was or was not saying at the other end of the line for a moment, suddenly taken aback by just how many of those statements she could answer with a resounding yes.

‘He asked if you might be around for the Viking Festival. He couldn’t believe the hype now either but he said it would be good to see it all in full swing. He also said it would be good to see you.’

Something cold danced down Alex’s spine. It was always mind-boggling that Finn had ever wanted to set eyes on any of them ever again. Alex closed her eyes and pictured her dad in his Christmas pudding jumper standing over Finn in their front yard, wild and enraged as Finn’s blood had mingled with the whipped cream on his best shirt. The resistance in Finn’s expression, the horror in Susannah’s as she and Blythe had shielded Finn where he sat awkwardly amongst the shattered crystal on the path.

Alex’s heart was gently pattering, just at the recollection. They shouldn’t be having this conversation. Her dad could walk back into the house at any moment and hear them all, chatting away, saying that name in his kitchen.

‘Yes, darling, why don’t you come on up here for the Viking Festival? It’s only the weekend, you wouldn’t need to miss any work.’ Alex took a few extra breaths. They were both in on it, Mum and Jem. Finn was home, get Alex back there too and hey, presto! Lightning might strike. Didn’t they ever learn? ‘It really would be lovely to see you, Alexandra.’ There was a tinge of pleading in her mother’s voice. It hurt just to hear it.

‘I don’t think I can make it, Mum. We’re so short-staffed, weekends are for catch-up,’ she lied, ‘next year, for definite.’ To her mind it was a simple equation. Stay away from the Falls and nothing ugly like that would ever happen again.

Alex heard the front door of her parents’ home rattle open in the background. ‘Forgot my damned phone,’ Ted groaned, his heavy boots trouncing across the hallway into the kitchen. All three Foster women fell silent.

‘You girls still gassing?’ Alex heard her father ask. ‘Who’s the big subject now then?’

The thrumming in Alex’s ears had suddenly elevated to a thud inside her skull. She wanted to reach down the phone line and gather up all the particles of the name they’d all just been so carelessly bandying around between them.

Jem and Blythe both offered an answer to Ted’s question at the same time.

‘Flowers.’

‘Vikings.’

Alex just held her breath.

CHAPTER 3

Free-diving. Now there was a paradox if Alex had ever heard one. How could depriving yourself of vital breathing apparatus ever be pedalled as liberation? There was nothing free about it, Alex decided, cautiously navigating a path through the cool water of the swimming pool, repeating with each tentative stroke the mantra her mother had taught her.

In through the nose, out through the mouth … nice and steady, you’re doing it. This was at least rung number three on her ‘fear ladder’. You had to build a fear ladder to climb, metaphorically, if you wanted to face your fears; she’d seen it on Dr Phil. Lolloping in the Jacuzzis or having a blast in the hydro-spa over by the shallow end would’ve been respectable first steps, Alex really should’ve started with those on that first, ill-fated, visit to the gym pool. Only she hadn’t realised at the time that a person could actually faint underwater. Lucky for Alex an eager teenage lifeguard with the very strong pincer grasp had fished her out and attempted unnecessarily to administer mouth-to-mouth.

‘Oh bless her, she still has her tag in,’ one staff member had astutely observed of Alex’s brand-new-for-the-occasion swimming cozzie.

‘Nice suit though, it’s one of the second-skin range we sell in the in the gym shop,’ Alex had heard another reply.

‘Which colour is that?’

‘Looks like the Torpedo.’

‘She doesn’t swim like a Torpedo. She should’ve bought the Pebble.’

Alex cringed. Just the memory of her foray into the deep end was enough to jellify her legs again. She felt her rhythm beginning to slip and locked eyes on the pool edge ahead of her.

In through the nose, Al … Better. Much better.

She’d get there. Back to that point she was at once upon a time, before she started letting the anxiety win. When she could still enjoy a nice, invigorating dip.

Her breathing was steady. There was definitely something in her mum’s advice. It was far easier controlling her breathing with a rambling inner monologue. Blythe’s mantra wasn’t as jazzy as the Ain’t no thing! version Alex had heard on Oprah’s self-help special, but it was still coming in handy in the wake of Alex’s new found bravery with the wet stuff.

Alex heard a splash too close on her right and tried not to falter again. Her concentration was rubbish tonight. Jem and her mum had taken something from her without realising it earlier this evening. The tension was supposed to ease after calling home, that’s how Dill’s birthday always worked. Only now she felt weighted down by something new, something she hadn’t anticipated. It had been niggling at her since she’d put down the phone to them. Finn setting up shop, right across the street from Foster’s Auto’s.

Why can’t you ever just take the easier route, Finn? It was a thought that had whispered through her head so many times before. And as ever, it came shadowed by another. Why did you always expect him to, Alex?

Yes. Why did she? She was selling him short, again and again and again, slipping straight back into the same old habit as if it were a favourite sweater. Had she forgotten? All sweaters had been returned. Lines had been drawn, ties cut, mix-tapes given back.

Another splash to the right and Alex’s coordination left her.

Don’t panic … don’t panic … but somebody else’s leg brushed against hers under the water then and it was all over. It was too late, she was already rearing up like a woman demented. One of the senior swimmers was blinking curiously at Alex through her goggles.

Brilliant, Alex! That had nearly been two widths in a row. You wimp. You big fat bloody wimp.

Alex made it to the edge of the pool and heard a giggle as she clambered out beside the Monday night couple. They came every week and spent most of the session huddled cosily in the Jacuzzi, although the guy had ventured into the main pool a few times. He’d done his Daniel Craig in Speedos impression past Alex last week. She’d stopped and pretended to fix the locker key strapped to her wrist while he’d thrashed past and Alex had discreetly hyperventilated.

Alex squelched her way beneath the poolside clock and through to the changing rooms. Nearly eight-thirty. Good. Enough was enough for one day. Just a couple more hours and Dill’s birthday could be put to rest for another year and she wouldn’t have to think about awkward exchanges with her dad for a while.

Alex opened her locker and made a grab for her shampoo and towel. She nudged her jeans accidentally and her phone slipped from her pocket. She whipped her hand out, somehow catching it before it hit the floor.

‘Whoops. Butter-fingers. Nearly lost it that time.’ Alex looked along the lockers to one of the old chaps who came swimming every week too. White-haired and friendly-faced, Alex always felt a bit guilty for curtailing their conversations, but the old lad didn’t seem to realise the perils of wearing white swimming trunks and Alex always found herself glancing down like a wide-eyed child to check if they were any less see-through.

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed. ‘Nearly, that time.’

Alex’s eyes dipped without warning. It was like being told not to look at the sun as a kid. Don’t look, don’t look!

‘You should try dropping a cigar in your lap, young lady. I was driving my golf cart last weekend, burned straight through my trousers it did. Just look at the blister it’s left me with,’ he said, pointing to his hairy upper thighs.

Alex glanced sheepishly towards him. ‘Oh yes, would you look at that.’ Penis. That’s all Alex had just seen. Old man penis. Actually it was worse than looking at the sun. Far, far worse. She wanted to take her eyeballs out and wash them in the pool.

Alex’s phone bleeped. She seized her chance at a diversion. ‘Sorry, I really have to take this,’ she fibbed. ‘Would you excuse me?’ Alex flashed him a smile and slipped into one of the changing stalls. Jem’s name blinked demandingly on the caller display, puncturing the stillness of the cubicle. Thank you, sis. She couldn’t chance another look at those trunks, she wouldn’t sleep tonight.

Alex unlocked her phone. She just needed to kill enough time for the old lad to finish in his locker. Twenty-three missed calls, Jem? Tickly tracks of water were streaking down Alex’s back and shoulders where her wet hair clung. She rubbed them away and frowned at the urgency on her phone. That was a lot of calls from Jem. Carrie Logan must have death-stared her or something.

Alex hit the button on her phone and listened to the most recent of Jem’s voicemails. Jem’s words reached up over Alex’s collarbone, conquering the silence of the cubicle, pressing in on her with the same cold claustrophobia as the swimming pool.

Mum’s sick … suspected stroke … need to come home.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze.

Alex held her breath as if she were still in the pool and hit redial. She waited – Mum’s sick … Mum’s sick … with each impatient second.

‘Alex?’

‘Jem! What happened? Is she OK?’

Everything around Alex had faded into oblivion. Jem was talking in whispers. ‘I’m not supposed to have my phone on. We don’t really know yet for sure. Malcolm Sinclair found her. At St Cuthbert’s. In the churchyard. Alex, I … I can’t …’

‘Slow down, Jem! Where is she now? Where’s Dad?’

‘Kerring General. We’re here now.’

Jem wasn’t a crier, even when she was a kid. When Robbie Rushton stuck a drumstick through her spokes and Jem had flown straight over her handlebars she hadn’t cried, she’d pinned Robbie to the ground instead and given him a dead arm. A whole week had gone by before anyone had realised Jem had fractured that wrist, the same one she’d used to punch Robbie with. But Jem’s voice was wavering now. This alone made Alex want to cry immediately. She clamped a hand over her mouth in case.

‘They’re all over her, Alex. They said time was the most critical thing but Malcolm got her here really quickly. We’re so lucky he was in the churchyard, Al.’

Suspected stroke. The words swirled in Alex’s ears like trapped water. Blythe didn’t like a fuss. To be bundled into Malcolm Sinclair’s police car and rushed anywhere would have been beyond mortifying for her. ‘She’s going to be OK, isn’t she, Jem?’

There was a flurry of activity in Jem’s background, Alex strained to make any of it out.

‘You know Mum … tough as Dad’s old boots.’ But Jem had hesitated.

Alex looked at the scant belongings she had with her. The urge was there – keys, coat, get home to Mum – and then the inevitable thought.

Dad.

Alex forced herself not to think about what she would say if she went back up there. She could already hear the first whispers in her head … This was always going to happen, Alex, eventually. You knew that. Because every one of Dill’s birthdays without him had been one too many, and there was only so much quiet heartbreak the human body could take, even her mum’s.

No. She couldn’t go up there. It would be better for everyone if she didn’t. One less thing for them all.

‘Alex, are you still there?’

Alex took in a deep breath, just to remind her lungs that they still could. ‘I’m here.’

Jem sniffed. ‘Alex?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You need to come home.’

2nd November 2006

‘You need to come home.’

Alex inhaled, deep and steady, filling her lungs with as much of his delicious scent as possible.

‘I don’t want to hide behind a phone, Foster. I want to do this properly. Show him how serious we are, about doing things right.’

Anyone would think Finn was going to ask for her hand in marriage. They were a cool billion light years from that. Well, maybe they could just make it out of their teens first, at least.

Alex watched the candlelight dancing over the far wall, laying soft shadows over the edge of Finn’s face. They’d synchronised, his naked torso rising with breath as hers gave its own away. Rise and fall, the movement subtle like a gentle tide, so slight and easy it felt as if she might not need oxygen at all any more. He was enough.

Finn had a look of curious wonder in his eyes, a need finally met. Perhaps it was just the play of the light over his face, but Alex felt that way too, as if she’d made it to where she was always supposed to have been. She thought she’d be embarrassed, but it felt like the most natural thing in the world, to lie here beside him now, skin cool and sticky from their first adventure of each other. She never wanted to move again, her body wasn’t finished nuzzling in the glorious afterglow of what they’d finally just done. What she already needed to do again.

‘I missed you, Foster.’

Alex held back the goofy grin trying to make its way over her face, as if too sudden a moment might make it all disappear again like an illusion. ‘I missed you too, Finn.’

His face was close enough to her that she could see tiny flecks of hazel in the green of his irises, the contours where laughter had left its footprint in the lines beside his eyes. Finn ran his fingertips from Alex’s hip along her naked spine and began trailing delicate circular shapes over her shoulders. Alex felt her goose-pimples rise to greet him. Finn had found her again. He’d come all this way and he’d found her.

Alex reached her fingers to tease a lock of hair behind his ear. She’d been so buried in her coursework she hadn’t noticed the sudden arrival of winter in the city, not until she’d watched it walk in on the ends of his hair. She’d opened the secured door of her student halls and there he was, waiting under a tree, pearls of new snow clinging to the same long layers he’d worn through college. Nearly two hundred miles and he’d been standing there as if the end of the earth wouldn’t be too far.

‘Your mum told me how to find you,’ he’d said. And that was it, the snowflake that tipped the avalanche.

It was a perfect crisp November night and they’d spent it, some of it, talking through the year they’d spent adrift while the Old Girl had carried on flowing and the world had carried on turning. And now here they were, naked and blissfully fatigued in a single bed in a pokey little bedroom in a student house a million miles away from Eilidh Falls. And it was perfect.