Letting You Go

CHAPTER 9

The song on the radio. The birds outside. The sun warm through her windscreen. The tinny sound of the truck speakers. She was distantly aware of it all melting away, the tiredness pulling her under.

‘Alex? Can we put an apple on Rodolfo’s head? I can hit it, I promise!’

Alex turned her face towards Dill’s voice. The sun felt warm on her skin. She wanted to hear it again, a voice she’d accidentally forgotten. Like the taste of flavour left behind in childhood.

‘I’m a good shot, Al, honest.’

She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Finn’s smile mirroring her own. Dill was beating a path to the riverbank, swishing at the grasses with his new bow. Mum had tried to confiscate it like his cracker-bombs, this unexpected early birthday present from the mayor, no less.

Finn reached out and ruffled Dill’s scruffy straw-coloured hair. ‘Let’s check your aim first, Dill Pickle.’

Alex watched the dimple at Dill’s cheek pucker and disappear as his mouth moved with each concentrated swish of his bow. His features were changing, maybe he would become more like their dad after all, the soft rounded edges of his little-boyhood just beginning their surrender to the harder lines of adolescence.

Dill looked at the dog then threw Alex an angelic look, eyes squinting over cheeks risen with mischief.

‘Don’t try that butter wouldn’t melt thing on me, Dill,’ Alex laughed, ‘I saw you in action earlier. I’d stay out of Jem’s way for a while if I were you.’

Finn laughed. ‘What have you done at your sister now, buddy?’ Finn had paint spatters all over his shirt. Or was that mud? No matter, he’d turned it inside out anyway. Rodolfo woofed and very sensibly fell back to trot beside Finn’s legs, before Dill could do a William Tell on him.

‘Nothin’.’ Dill grinned.

‘You big fibber, Dill Pickle,’ Alex said. ‘Y’know how I can always tell when you’re fibbing?’

‘His lips move?’ Finn teased.

‘No.’ Alex bumped Finn with her shoulder. She looked back to Dill. ‘Your dimple gives you away, little brother.’

Dill gave in immediately. ‘I caught Jem snogging the bathroom mirror! The actual mirror!’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Ew, she’s so gross, she looked like the fish me and Dad caught when we went fishing in the plunge pools.’ Dill made a face, presumably of a fish gasping its last. ‘I think she needs more practice. Yeeuck.’

‘Jem is spending a lot of time in the bathroom, come to think of it.’ Alex bit at the smile on her lips. Finn let his own smile run a merry riot all over his face. Something floated inside Alex when she saw him do that.

‘Know much about snogging do you, bud? What are you, nine?’

Dill stopped swishing and jabbed his bow towards Alex. ‘I know you like to snog my sister,’ he grinned, ‘and if my dad catches you guys on the porch again, he told Mum he’s going to see how much you really like her, Finn, and tell you all the gross stuff Alex—’

Alex lunged. ‘Dill! God, shut up!’

Dill bolted. Alex was going to throttle him. No wonder Mum had asked her to take Dill out while Jem cooled off. Jem had been set to murder him back at the house.

Alex made a grab for him. Incapacitating Dillon with relentless armpit-tickling was probably one of her favourite things to do, second only to snogging Finn’s face off on the front porch.

‘One sister trying to kill you not enough, huh, Dill?’

Dill squealed in that way smaller children do when they’re being chased and The Fear has gotten a hold of them. She’d nearly got to him, but they were both giggling too much to effectively chase or flee from the other. Alex made a final lunge when something cumbersome, a black and tan furred lump of warmth scuttled beneath her knees sending her reeling into the grasses with a clumsy thud. Rodolfo whimpered. Dill looked on for about half a second before erupting into the same breathless laughter he was holding onto from his toddlerhood.

Rodolfo whimpered again. Alex whimpered too. ‘Bad dog, Rodolfo.’ She lifted an arm up to examine it and grimaced.

‘Hold on, don’t move!’ Finn was beating back the thicket of nettles with Dill’s bow. He looked kinda clumsy about it, Alex thought, but it felt sort of romantic. Totally worth the stings.

‘Don’t, Finn, you’ll get stung too!’ Like she meant that.

Finn slipped an arm beneath her back. Alex let him. Finn lifted her out of the nettle patch. Alex breathed in a hit of his warm skin and the body spray she didn’t think suited him but said she liked just the same because he was Finn, marvellously gorgeous, artistic, Finn.

‘You’re not going to snog now, are you?’ Dill drew one of his arrows from their sheath and held it out to them feathers first. ‘Cos if you are, can one of you please shoot me first? Don’t bother with the apple.’

Alex jolted awake to a short, sharp, unpleasant sound at her truck window. Dill disappeared from her mind leaving behind him only a dull echo of the stinging sensation Alex had felt creeping through her legs. More tapping at the passenger window pushed away those last wisps of Finn too.

Alex blinked. Kerring General loomed in the near distance. She pieced it together, remembered her mum, Jem’s call, the journey home. Alex rubbed the tiredness from her head. Finn. On the roadside. That bit hadn’t been a trippy dream. Alex shifted a little and felt an uncomfortable fuzziness sear through one of her calf muscles. Her legs were locked together awkwardly in the foot well, a tingling sensation raging all the way down into her feet.

Pins and needles, loony. Not nettle-rash. She tried to flex against it.

‘I knew you wouldn’t wait until morning.’ The voice was dampened by glass. Alex checked for drool at the corner of her lips and tried to see around the hand softly rapping fingers adorned with pretty rings against her passenger window. Jem had been a sandy blonde last Christmas, sporting a victory roll if memory served. The girl standing the other side of the glass was all long layers and choppy fringe in a shade much closer to the deep red Blythe had passed on to both of them. Dill had taken more of their dad’s features, their mum had said. More angular and fair. But mostly he hadn’t reminded Alex of either of their parents in particular.

Alex smiled through the glass. It regularly caught her off-guard how attractive Jem had become since emerging from her tomboy chrysalis. Without Dill, Alex’s theory couldn’t be properly measured, but she’d long suspected theirs was one of those families where the children had become progressively more beautiful as they’d come along. This morning though, Jem looked even more the butterfly than usual, striking and fragile all at once.

Alex reached across the passenger seat and pulled on the door handle. ‘Hey, stranger. What time is it?’ The car park had filled up since Alex had pulled into one of the far bays and dozed off.

Jem crouched down in the truck doorway. ‘Time you stopped sleeping with your mouth open? It’s eight-thirty, how long have you been here? Or shouldn’t I ask?’ She reached lithely over the passenger seat and pulled Alex’s head in for a kiss. The question was on Jem’s face before she could ask it. ‘Alex, have you been swimming?’

‘Not exactly.’ She wouldn’t call it swimming. Alex gave in to another yawn. ‘I haven’t been here that long, I don’t think. Couple of hours?’

‘Hope not, Al. They’re hot on the parking charges here, the thieving toads. Like anyone wants to be stuck at a hospital.’ Alex pulled her pumps back and grabbed her rucksack from the passenger foot well while Jem slammed the passenger door shut. Alex skipped to keep pace with her, glancing across the hospital car park as they walked. There was no sign of him. Jem pulled an expensive looking phone from the breast pocket of her denim jacket and checked the screen. ‘He went in already. I hung back to make a call, I didn’t spot you until after he’d gone inside,’ she said reassuringly. Jem returned her phone to her pocket, slipping her free arm around Alex’s waist. ‘Honest, Al, don’t go off on one … he didn’t know you were here or he’d have waited to say hi.’

‘OK.’ Alex smiled, trying not to leave such a tiny word hanging in the air all by itself. What had she been expecting anyway, a greeting party?

Something mildly panicky was rising through Alex’s body the closer they got to the main hospital entrance. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t have the words, for her mum or her dad. How did you apologise for finally putting your own mother in hospital? For being the root cause of her broken heart?

Jem nudged Alex with her hip. ‘So what’s this? The beach bum look?’

Alex glanced down at the denim cut-offs and faded Jaws t-shirt she’d yanked on in the middle of the night as the espressos took effect. ‘It wasn’t exactly a deliberate outfit.’

‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water?’ Jem read. ‘Keeping the fear alive, are we?’

Alex let out one of those breathy laughs that wasn’t worth the effort seeing as it wasn’t going to fool anyone. That fear was well and truly alive and kicking, like a great white killer shark, if great white killer sharks had legs. ‘Feels like ages since I last saw you, Al.’ Jem’s voice fell lower. ‘How are you doing?’ It wasn’t a good sign when Jem was quiet. It was like her defence mechanism. As if not talking about a thing could make it disappear.

‘I’m good.’ Alex smiled. It wasn’t Jem’s job to check on her, Alex was the eldest. She missed her role. ‘How are you doing, Jem?’ she countered, pulling Jem in to her a little as they walked past A&E. It was always a strange sensation Alex felt when they got together, as if it was possible to miss a person even more when they were within reach.

‘I’m OK. I’m just glad I was already up here and not still in London when Mal called. It was a bit of a shock, Alex. She didn’t look great last night. She didn’t look … like Mum.’ Alex’s throat narrowed as they crossed the hospital lobby. She should’ve done more to stop this from happening, somehow, instead of hiding from them all.

Jem reached for the lift button then stopped suddenly, as if something had just short-circuited in her head. She placed her hand flatly against the wall and held herself there.

‘She has to be OK, Alex,’ Jem said quietly. ‘I’m not ready for her not to be around yet.’

Alex hung back. She swallowed her own thoughts and tried for upbeat, being the big sister. ‘You think Mum’s gonna check out before she’s seen one of us walk down the aisle, Jem? Unlikely.’ Blythe had made endless references to the great altar race over the years. ‘Course she’ll be OK. Like you said, tough as Dad’s old boots.’ But Alex felt as if someone had just kicked her in the neck with one.

A cycle of what ifs began circuiting Alex’s head. What if she’d have come home this weekend, just for once? What if she’d have been with Blythe in the churchyard? What if that could have made the difference?

Alex stopped herself. There was only one what if that could’ve ever made the difference and they all knew it.

What if I hadn’t followed Finn into the bushes?

CHAPTER 10

The Acute Assessment Unit was quiet. No drama. No urgency. Jem announced herself at the intercom. The doors onto the AAU opened. Alex followed quietly as Jem gave the nurses stationed at the central desk a salutatory smile and headed for the second side room on the left. Their roles were already set – Jem, the daughter who knew her way around, what to do, where to go – and Alex, the bumbling visitor.

Alex rubbed at the back of her neck. It was impossible not to feel anxious at what lay on the other side of the door in front of them. This awful ominous build up smacked of one of the games she’d watched last night on Takeshi’s Castle, the maze game with its skittish contestants where the only difference between salvation and some unknown horror was a couple of inches of plywood. And what’s behind door number two? A scary Japanese monster? An emotionally estranged father? An unrecognisable mother.

Alex eyed the door as Jem reached to push on it and felt an unpleasant lightness in her stomach. She could have taken a running jump, like the nervy lunatics on Takeshi, but Jem was already a confident step ahead, silently slipping through the door.

The smell was subtle as it hit. Alex shuffled quietly across the threshold, the scent as familiar as a favourite winter coat. She readied herself. She always readied herself.

‘Hello, Dad.’

Ted was standing, grey and monolithic, beside the only chair in the room. Alex lunged clumsily at him for their obligatory kiss. Ted turned from where he’d been watching her mum sleeping to receive Alex’s kiss. They bumped jaws awkwardly. His skin felt rough, bristly with the greying beard that wasn’t hanging onto the last of its blond quite as well as the rest of his hair. Alex gave him his personal space back and tried to remember the last time they’d made physical contact for anything other than this awkward hello–goodbye ritual of theirs. The last time she’d hung onto his arm or pecked him on the cheek for no particular reason.

‘I spotted her in the car park. She still snores like you, Dad, mouth wide open and everything,’ Jem chirped, filling the void with warmth before anything cooler could creep in there. Ted rewarded her with a lazy smile. Alex wished she could think of something to say of equal worth. Nothing came. She shuffled back to the bottom of her mum’s bed, away from that distinctly subtle cocktail of her father’s – coffee, morning tobacco, the last engine oil her mother’s flowery detergent could never quite purge from his overalls.

‘You shouldn’t have driven through the night, Alexandra. Folks fall asleep at the wheel all the time,’ he said softly. He gave Alex a few more seconds’ eye contact before his attention returned to her mum. Alex watched his huge gnarly hands move gently over her mum’s hair. It looked redder against the stark white of the pillow. Jem was right. She didn’t look like their mum. Not sick, at least, but older. Different. Fallible.

‘Is she …?’ Alex tried past the lump forming in her throat.

‘Your mother’s just sleeping. She’ll be right as rain once she’s had a good sleep, slowed down for five damned minutes.’ He was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, he did this when something was niggling at him and he couldn’t light a cigarette.

Alex looked at the stranger in the bed. She’d never seen her sleeping like that, straight as an ironing board, sheets neatly tucked beneath her arms. It was all over if anything happened to her. Blythe was the thread holding their patchwork family together. It would all unravel without her.

‘Did she like the sunflowers?’ Alex heard her own voice.

Alex saw her dad’s forefinger begin back and forth against his thumb again only with more intent though now, as if trying to eradicate a sharp little irritant that kept finding its way back under his skin. Alex wished she hadn’t asked.

‘I, er … I know purple is mum’s favourite colour but the yellow …’ But the yellow was for you, Dad. Please don’t clench your jaw. He did it again. Jem saw it too and tried to pretend she hadn’t, which only made it a hundred times worse. ‘The yellow looked nicer against the thistles I thought …’ Alex was already floundering. Ted winced and she knew then that she’d already said something wrong.

‘Please, can we not talk about goddamn flowers? Just for five minutes? What the hell difference do flowers make anyway? Your mother wouldn’t have even been down there if she wasn’t having to cart the bloody things around.’

Alex felt herself recoil. Had her flowers arrived late? Was that why Blythe had gone back to the churchyard? Was it Alex’s fault Blythe had gone back there alone?

‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean …’ She didn’t know what she meant. Stupid girl.

Ted’s hand opened out where he’d been rigidly holding it at his side. Alex wasn’t sure if it was to placate her or to silently implore her to just. Shut. Up. Why didn’t she ever have anything better to offer them?

Jem caught Alex’s eye. ‘We’ll go and get the coffees, Dad. We don’t want to overwhelm Mum when she wakes up, all cooped up in here together.’

Jem waited for the door to swing closed behind them before she spoke.

‘He’s tired, Alex. He didn’t get much sleep last night.’

‘It’s fine, really,’

‘Alex,’ Jem’s hand was already on Alex’s forearm, ‘the flowers, that wasn’t a dig at you back in there. It was my fault, I was doing his head in on the ride here, I was going on about these evening flowers mum got so upset about. He’d already had his fill before we got here this morning. Honestly, Al, it was just bad timing, that’s all. Don’t be so quick to take it to heart, OK? He’s tired.’

Alex tried to relax her shoulders, let some of the tension slope away. ‘What evening flowers?’

‘Pass. That was what I was trying to work out with Dad in the car, until he bit my head off. Something Mum was talking about when Mal first got her into A&E. No-one could really understand what she was saying though.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know about that.’ Alex tried not to feel out of the loop. ‘Did Mal know what they are?’

Jem shrugged. ‘I didn’t think to ask Mal about it, actually. The nurse said it was all part of it, Mum being confused.’ Jem rubbed her eyes as if she hadn’t slept much last night either. ‘Flowers that arrived in the evening, I guess.’

Evening flowers. No-one else had flowers delivered, it had to have been Alex’s bouquet that had arrived late. Great. No wonder Ted was so pissed off with her already.

‘What are you thinking?’ Jem was studying her. Big tired blue eyes glancing out through the breaks in her fringe.

‘Nothing.’ Alex smiled, but it didn’t reach her cheeks. She’d used one of the big flashy online department stores that offered astronomically priced ‘botanical giftware’. Never again. What good were flowers that didn’t arrive until the evening?

‘Come on, Al. I need caffeine.’

Jem began to walk off but Alex could feel she was onto something. ‘They were my flowers, weren’t they? That Mum had to go back for.’

Jem looked puzzled. ‘Yours the ones with no card?’

Alex nodded. She never sent a card.

‘Sunflowers and thistles?’ Alex nodded again. ‘Then I’m sorry, sis, but as much as I know you like to be the bad guy and all, you can’t take this one for the team. I signed for your bouquet after breakfast.’ Jem squeezed Alex’s arm. ‘I don’t know why Mum went back down there alone, Al, but whatever her reason was, it wasn’t your flowers.’ Jem turned on her heels. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’

‘I don’t want to go for coffee, Jem.’ Alex called after her, ‘I want to be here on the ward, when she wakes up.’

‘Me too,’ Jem reassured. ‘There’s a family room just through here. We won’t be far.’ Jem began to edge along the corridor again but Alex stayed glued to the spot. She hadn’t come this far to hide out again. If her dad needed to sound off at someone then she could at least provide that for him.

Jem looked at her expectantly. Alex folded her arms and looked at her own feet like a stubborn child who didn’t want to go to school. ‘What did Malcolm Sinclair say, Jem? What happened in the churchyard? Has Mum been ill this weekend? I need to know what you and Dad know, Jem.’ Alex was already picturing it again. Her mum collapsed in the cemetery overcome with the sadness of another birthday denied to Dillon. The utter needlessness of so many years without him, and not even the luxury of someone to hate for it.

Jem retraced her steps back to Alex and let out a long sigh. Jem was being patient. It was gift she rarely shared with anyone else. She leant against the wall beside Alex.

‘Malcolm had to carry her in. He said Mum was agitated. She was mumbling about these bloody flowers,’ Jem shrugged, ‘The evening flowers! The evening flowers! Something like that. She was still pretty worked up when me and Dad got here.’

‘About flowers? Well, who normally sends flowers for Dill?’

‘Nobody, really. Us, Helen Fairbanks always does. Susannah Finn too.’ Finn’s mum had never stopped being kind to them, even Alex. After everything Finn had put up with because of her.

Finn was there in her head again. ‘Anyone else?’ Alex pressed.

‘Alex, hate to break it to you but I don’t actually have all the answers.’ Jem’s patience was starting to wear off. ‘There probably weren’t any evening flowers, Mum was very confused. What does it matter?’

‘It matters if it’s enough to upset Dad like that. I’ve only been here five minutes and I’ve already annoyed him.’

Jem looked at Alex and sighed again. ‘I’ve already told you, Al. He sounded off at me earlier too. I only asked if he thought we should go back to the church today in case anyone had dropped more flowers off for Dill and they needed tidying. He blew at that, too. He’s worried, and probably shattered. I know he didn’t sleep well, he went for a walk at 5.30 this morning for crying out loud. Probably chain-smoking.’

Alex nodded. That would be the next thing. Their dad was going to get lung cancer off the back of all the worrying he’d had to do. Alex was going to wipe them all out eventually while she was bound to live a long and healthy life with bags of time to think about how she’d set this nasty little trail of dominoes up.

A familiar knot tightened in Alex’s stomach. Her mum’s grief must be unbearable. People didn’t get over the loss of their children; it was a universal truth.

The question fell from Alex’s mouth. ‘What if it wasn’t a stroke?’

‘What do you mean?’

Surely it was their mum’s heart that had finally had enough. ‘Are they sure it wasn’t her heart, Jem?’

‘It was a stroke Alex. Not a heart attack.’

‘But what did Mal see?’

Jem shook her head and huffed. ‘Mal was … a bit sketchy actually. He said Mum looked unwell. I think he saw her in the churchyard and just went over to say hello, I guess.’