Letting You Go (25 page)

‘I know.’ Finn took a step closer. He was breathing heavily, waiting for her to choose the next step. He was giving her the choice. It was always her choice. Alex stepped towards him, as if she could, as if it wouldn’t matter. Her heart ramped up. Finn leant in to her and Alex felt their hands together again, unsure who’d reached for who. ‘Please, Foster. Don’t go back out there. Stay with me.’

J
em’s black coupe was sat alongside their dad’s workshop when Alex walked up the track to the house.

There wasn’t really anything stopping her from going home now, Susannah had said it, Ted wasn’t whiter than white. No whiter than Alex anyway. Who knew, now that they were on a level playing field, maybe they’d finally be able to speak naturally to one another.

Alex felt a pleasant ache through her body; her back still wet where he’d pressed her against the rock shelter. She blinked against the afternoon sun and saw him again, eyes wild and startling, his body solid and gentle and sweetly frenzied. Alex’s heart reacted to the memory, a breath catching in her throat. Finn had offered to drive her back to the Longhouse but the lines had been blurred. She was going to walk back, and then she’d found herself walking in the direction of the farmhouse instead.
Susannah will need the room back for the weekend check-in anyway
, Alex had told herself. She could think about getting her truck later on at some point.

Sheep bleated in the near distance as the crop fields
started to break into green pasturelands. Alex pulled at a piece of field grass and slowed her pace. Blythe used to let them walk down this lane into town to the sweetshop when they were younger. Blythe always knew when Alex had bought too many sweets because she would drag her heels getting home, so she had chance to eat them all before anyone could see. Alex was dragging her heels now. Finn had been her secret indulgence. She could still feel the evidence all over her. Finn was still in her hair, on her skin. She could still taste him on her mouth.

Alex checked her pockets for the keys. She felt the photograph she’d shown Jem last night. Maybe her mum had smashed the photo, maybe she knew that Ted had been sneaking off with Louisa and couldn’t bear to look at Louisa’s husband-stealing face.

Alex suddenly stopped dead on the lane.
Did Mal know?
Jem said that their dad had gone off at Mal at the hospital when he’d taken Blythe there, accused Mal of upsetting her in some way. Did Mal know about the affair? Could he have told their mum in the churchyard? Is that what had made Blythe ill?

Alex’s heart was flittering when she made it to the gatepost of her parents’ farmhouse. She glanced across the lawns.

‘Speak of the devil.’

Mal Sinclair’s police car came into view around the side of the house. Alex carried on walking while the front door opened and Mal stepped out onto the porch. He’d shaved
for the occasion. His beard, all gone. He looked ten years younger for it too. Jem leaned in for a goodbye hug and Alex seethed a little.
Nice touch, Officer. Even in broad daylight.
He was as bad as his mother.

Alex followed the path up to the house. Norma padded out next to Jem’s legs then saw Alex from the porch and shot out across the lawn. Alex felt bad then for having not thought about her, Norma had been the most honest relationship she’d managed have while she was here.

Norma bounded across the grass and scrambled at Alex’s legs. Alex fussed her automatically. ‘Hey, girl.’ Norma wanted to play but there was a storm building in Alex’s heart.

‘Alex.’ Mal smiled politely. ‘I was just checking in on your mum.’

‘I’ll just bet you were, Mal. Maybe go check in on your wife and child instead?’

Mal looked at Jem. Jem’s mouth dropped open. ‘
Alex
?’

Alex noticed a sore patch of pink developing around Jem’s mouth. Blythe had gotten a similar rash once too, when Alex’s father had grown a beard so he looked like Kris Kristofferson in
A Star Is Born.
Aside from a burning anger beginning in the pit of her stomach, Alex was unfazed by Jem’s tone.

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘Work, I suppose. I don’t know, why? I haven’t seen him since you went charging down to The Cavern last night. What did you say to him, Alex? He nearly knocked the door
off when he got in. And why did you stay at the Longhouse all night? And why are you soaking wet?’

‘How do you know I stayed at the Longhouse? If you haven’t seen Dad this morning?’

Jem glanced sheepishly at Mal. ‘Lucky guess.’ Jem was shacked up with the local law enforcement, she probably knew every bugger in the town’s movements now.

Alex turned and faced Jem squarely. She felt her nails biting into her palm. ‘You know when Granny Ros was trying to teach us poker? Do you know how we always used to know when you were bluffing, Jem? Your lip twitched.’ Jem almost reached up to feel the evidence, or maybe it was her rash from Mal’s beard. Alex hoped it bloody hurt.

‘I think I better be going,’ Mal said shiftily.

‘You do that, Mal. And say hi to your family when you see them.’ Alex could taste the words like bile in her mouth. Goddamn Sinclairs.

Alex got a good look at Mal’s new look as he stepped down on the front porch towards her and her blood turned cold. A small dimple appeared on one of Mal’s cheeks when he smiled. She couldn’t see it before he’d shaved. A single indentation, as if the other dimple had gotten lost somewhere.

Alex felt a spur of sudden, dizzying nausea. Dill’s dimple had been the other side. They could’ve had the pair between them, Dill and Mal. The photograph in Alex’s back pocket felt heavy as she remembered the likeness between a younger, blonder Mal and her brother.

Oh God. Oh God. Her dad had been sleeping with Louisa Sinclair.
Had he
… the thought stabbed at her mind …
had their dad fathered Malcolm?
But … that would make Malcolm their half-brother. Alex looked at her sister and saw the puzzlement in Jem’s face.
But
…
but Jem, and Mal … Shit.

Alex rushed up the three timber steps to the door but didn’t even get inside before it erupted all over the seat where Ted liked to take his morning coffee.

‘Alex! What’s wrong?’

‘Is she—’

‘Just go, Mal. I can handle this,’ Jem said firmly.

No you can’t!
Alex thought, the horror of her realisation brought on another violent cramping in her stomach. Alex wretched again.
Oh God, Jem
…
you’ve been sleeping with our half-brother.

‘I
t’s just not acceptable. We understand it’s delicate, but if everyone’s husbands started hiding out at the end of visiting time, we’d be overrun with them. And he really can’t keep lying on the bed with her in those overalls. Oil is a terrible nuisance to get out of the sheets.’ The nurse hadn’t wanted to embarrass Ted so she’d collared Alex as soon as she’d walked onto the ward instead. Alex had gotten one sweaty palm on her mother’s door before she’d been intercepted.

Alex nodded apologetically. The nurse kept tapping her clipboard against her chest. ‘How often has he been doing this?’

Ted had been lying next to Blythe when the nurses thought everyone had gone home. So much for hospital security. So much for the behavioural patterns of a typical philandering husband. Sneaking around so he could lie next to her mother each night? Before slipping away again for a nightcap at The Cavern? Alex wondered if her father’s dedication had been born from love, or guilt.

Alex remembered what she now realised had been Louisa Sinclair’s Aston Martin rolling out of Foster & Son’s the
day she’d thrown milkshake all over Finn. Was it still going on? ‘Dad’s never been very receptive towards Mal,’ Jem had told her.

Alex fixed on the movements of the clipboard. Had he known that Malcolm was his child all along? Was that why Ted hadn’t wanted Mal around Jem? Not because Alex had conditioned him to distrust his daughters’ boyfriends but because he couldn’t face his own illegitimate child? The potential for something unnatural to blossom between them?

Alex put a hand over her stomach. She was still experiencing sporadic bursts of nausea. Some father he’d been to Mal. He’d been distraught for Dill, but his
other
son? Ted had treated him like he treated his other vices, he had a preferred brand of tobacco, preferred brand of whiskey … Mal was just the wrong brand of son.

‘And he wasn’t here last night because we were already on to him. But put it this way, nearly every morning your mother’s bed sheets have had oil on them, and every day they’ve been changed again for her.’

Alex nodded briefly, relieved she’d been too much of a wuss to moan about the grubby sheets. ‘I’ll speak to him.’ It would be a breeze compared to the conversation she needed to have with Jem.
Sorry, Jem! You can’t keep having an affair with Malcolm, I’m afraid. He’s our half-brother. Shall I get you the peanut butter?

The nurse cocked her head and looked warmly at Alex. ‘I don’t want to be a killjoy. It’s actually rather romantic,
really, your dad still needing to cuddle up to your mum at their age. How long have they been married?’

Alex rubbed a circle over her stomach. She felt drained. ‘About thirty years.’

‘My goodness. They must love each other dearly. That’s rare these days. We live in such a throwaway society, don’t you think? Toasters, marriages … nobody makes do and mends any more. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. Go on in, she’s feeling much better now for those antibiotics.’

Alex tried to shake some of the tension from her shoulders. She stepped into her mother’s room. Blythe turned her head slowly from the light streaming through the window. She looked serene, her silken red hair all about her against the pillow as if she were a mermaid suspended underwater.

‘Morning, my dar-ling.’

Alex felt her mood buckle. She could cry for her mother’s voice. Did Ted feel that too when he was here? Did it make him feel better to clamber up next to her? Alex wanted to bundle up onto her mother’s bed and cuddle with her until she felt better too.
Hurry up and get better, Mum!
She wanted to say.
You’re the key! We all need you, you’re the only one who can fix us.

‘Hey, Mum. How are you feeling?’

Blythe managed a smile. She looked tired, but that desperate glassiness in her eyes had gone. She was Blythe again. How could he have betrayed her?

‘I’m good, my darling. Come … sit by me.’ Alex did gratefully. Blythe’s left hand was occupied with an IV but
she pressed it weakly over Alex’s as if she was trying to anchor her there. ‘I love you, Alex,’ she said clumsily.

Alex’s felt a pain in her heart. ‘I know, Mum. I love you too.’

‘I want you to …’ She seemed to lose energy. Like a toy in need of winding up in between sentences.

‘It’s OK, Mum. Take your time. Would you like some water?’

Alex looked around for her mother’s cup but Blythe increased the pressure between her hand and her daughter’s. Alex gave her mum her full attention.

‘I want you … to tell your father … that I love him too.’

‘He knows, Mum. You tell him all the time.’ Alex felt the shame of knowing something hideous her mother might not.

‘Promise me … you’ll remind him.’

‘Of course I will, Mum. You can remind him yourself.’

‘I love you both … so much.’

Alex smiled weakly. ‘We know, Mum.’

‘And Jem … and Dillon.’

Alex looked up at the new bag of chemicals filtering into her mother’s hand. They weren’t working, she was delirious again. ‘I miss him so much … I miss you too … I miss the family we were.’

Alex watched a few escaped tears begin steadily from her mother’s eyes.

‘It’s all right, Mum. Don’t get upset. We’ll all be all right.’ But it was an empty promise; Emma Parsons had probably
made similar empty promises to little Poppy every time that monster had left their house with all their money.

‘Be patient … with your father. He needs you.’

Her mother always knew how to shift the earth with just a few small motions. ‘If I’m ill … another stroke … all I want … from you … is to be close to … your father again.’

She wasn’t delirious. She was asking for the impossible, but not from delirium.

‘Promise me, Alex.’

Alex could see the effort it was taking for her mother just to squeeze Alex’s hand. How the hell was she going to pull that one out of the bag? Blythe increased the pressure slightly.

‘All right, Mum. I promise.’

J
em was frenziedly chopping salad; her shoulder blades rising and falling in uncomfortable jerky movements. Alex took another long drink of the tea Jem had ready for her when she’d got back from the hospital. It was odd, seeing the shoe on the other foot, Jem nervously toiling away while Alex sat here at the kitchen table, Norma on her lap, in a mist of calm understanding.

Alex knew what she had to do now. For the first time since she’d been home her role was clear. She had to stop this. This thing between Jem and Mal. And she had to do whatever was necessary to get along with her father. It was the only thing her mother had asked of her and she was going to damn well do it. Somehow.

Norma flopped back down to the floor and padded off.

‘Will Dad be joining us?’ asked Alex.

Jem glanced over her shoulder. ‘Yep. So can you guys try to get along?
Please?
’

Alex bit resentfully into a breadstick. ‘Don’t worry, Jem. I think I’m done blowing his hair back for a while.’ Alex thought about that statement. Only if her secrets stayed
nicely tucked away beneath the waterfall. She’d left Finn standing behind the wall of water, half dressed, knowing that she’d cemented the pattern between them. She’d flitted back in to Finn’s reach for another taste, and then had hotfooted it out of there again when her nerve had left her. Before any uncomfortable conversations could start.

Jem stopped chopping. She began scraping a carrot Alex had watched her peel already. ‘Well maybe it’s my turn to blow his hair back. There are too many secrets in this family anyway,’ Alex heard her mutter.

‘What do you mean, blow his hair back?’

Jem turned around and leant back against the sink. Veggie scraper in one hand, pencil-thin carrot in the other. ‘I have something I need to talk to you both about.’

The hairs stood up on Alex’s neck. She hadn’t managed to come up with a way of telling Jem about Mal yet. Half-brother.
Half
-brother. Nope. The half didn’t make
any
difference, you couldn’t have a half-incestuous relationship any more than you could be half in love, or half pregnant. Jem was not going to be half horrified now was she?

‘About what?’ Alex asked shakily.

Jem set the carrot down on the side. She flexed her fingers, then picked it up again. Nervous wasn’t Jem’s usual style.

‘I was putting it off, like you said. I wanted to talk to Mum first, but you were right, she’s not up to it but you’re going to find out eventually and I don’t want you hearing it from someone else and people talk and—’

Norma began barking in the back lounge seconds before Alex heard her father’s recovery truck growling up the track. Alex’s heart was beating as quickly as the words were crashing out of Jem’s mouth. Jem was looking towards the hallway and Norma’s warning, the rash around Jem’s lips had gotten worse today, Alex noticed, despite Mal’s de-bearding. Maybe she was allergic to him. Maybe it was Mother Nature’s way of telling oblivious human beings,
Stop! You can’t snog him! Your face will break out first and if that’s not enough I’ll give your offspring gills!
Alex couldn’t stop looking at that rash as Jem was chewing on her lip. Alex shuddered. They must be snogging like teenagers.

‘You need to stay away from Malcolm Sinclair,’ Alex blurted. It had just come out. Exploded from her mouth like a crackerbomb.

Jem stopped chewing at her lip. ‘What?’

Alex’s chest was thudding. Ted’s truck had just rolled past the kitchen window towards his spot next to the workshop and Alex had just loosed a conversational monster for him to walk in on. ‘He’s no good for you, Jem.’

‘What? Mal’s a good friend, Alex. You sound just like Dad, you know that?’

‘Maybe Dad has good reason, Jem.’

Jem straightened. ‘For not liking
Mal
? No, he hasn’t actually, Alex. I know Dad’s going through the mill, but Mal’s a good guy. He hasn’t done anything to make anyone have any reason to take a shot at him. And if anyone’s going
to try and criticise him to me, they’d better have their facts straight.’

Jem tensed her jaw. Alex had expected some resistance but she hadn’t expected a full on defence from the outset. Alex felt a flicker of something angry and unpleasant. Jem wasn’t even
trying
to hide how she felt about him. About Millie’s husband.

‘He’s
married
.’ Alex slapped a hand on the table.

Jem grimaced. ‘And?’

‘Nice, Jem. Really nice work.’

Jem slapped the carrot peeler onto the draining board. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

‘I like Millie. And what about Alfie? Doesn’t it bother you?’ Alex was hoping to appeal to Jem’s sense of honour, get a result before she had to bring out the big guns and be brutally, mortifyingly honest. But Jem wasn’t playing ball.

‘I like Millie too. And Alfie’s a great kid.’

‘You’ve been sneaking around with him, Jem!’

‘What?’ Jem looked busted. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Oh, come on, Jem! I saw you, in Mal’s front room. You were pretty cosy in there, giggling and sipping wine while Millie wasn’t home, and Mal never said a word! Your own sister turns up and he doesn’t even say a word about you being inside the house! I know you’ve been seeing him, Jem. That’s why he never speaks when I answer the phone, isn’t it? Because the two of you have been meeting up in secret and I might recognise his voice!’ That still didn’t explain Millie’s part in covering for Jem but Alex was
already set in motion. She could suss out the loose ends later.

Jem looked stunned. ‘You’re right, Miss Marple. We have. But you’re mental if you think I’ve been seeing
seeing
Mal. Are you nuts?
Mal
?

Jem looked genuinely shocked at the prospect. Well she could look as shocked and stunned as she liked. Alex wasn’t falling for it. She wasn’t falling for anyone’s face value ever again thanks to Susannah Finn’s revelations about their dad’s extra-marital activities.

‘What’s the big news then, Jem? What’s the big deal Mum’s not up to hearing, if not that you’ve been knocking off your old boyfriend?’

Jem laughed. ‘Mal was never my boyfriend!’

‘Mum saw you both! Snogging once outside Frobisher’s!’ There, definitive proof.

OK, so that evidence was a bit shaky but Alex had still knocked her sister off course, she could see that. Jem wasn’t nervously clinging to the carrot any more, she was squinting, trying to piece something together in her head. Boots were coming up the path. Alex glanced towards the hallway.

‘Mal was never my boyfriend, Alex. Believe it or don’t, that’s up to you. But it’s good to know that if you disapproved of my choice in partner, you’d go right on ahead and tell me so.’

‘Stop waving that carrot at me. So you’re saying, you haven’t been holding out for Mal all these years? That he
isn’t your sodding lightning bolt?’ Alex’s skin wanted to crawl off and run away every time she suggested it.

‘I haven’t been holding out for Mal,’ Jem said coldly.

‘So why haven’t you ever brought anyone home to meet Mum and Dad?’

‘Why haven’t
you
, Alex! Oh yes, that’s right, because you’re
not really
crazy about Finn are you Al? And you’re
not really
too much of a wimp to do something about it.’

Norma toddled along the hallway to the front door. Alex heard her dad making sounds of encouragement as he shuffled into the hallway past her. Jem turned back to the sink. Alex rattily lifted her teacup back to her face. They would always break a fight before their dad got a chance to wade in. It was easier for sisters to keep a dispute going if no one tried to moderate it.

Ted moved across the hallway into the kitchen doorway. ‘Evening.’ He gave Alex a glance, the first since she’d flipped out in the middle of his backgammon game, but Alex couldn’t match it without picturing Mal’s mother and him so she looked at the breadsticks instead. ‘I’m just going to go get washed up.’

Jem turned and watched him go up the stairs from the sink. Some of the annoyed colour Alex had put in her cheeks had faded to a pale, sickly pallor. Jem didn’t look so confident all of a sudden, like all the fight had just leaked out of her. She rubbed at the pink skin on her face.

‘You’ll make it worse. You should ask Mum what she used when
she
had beard rash,’ Alex said sourly.

Jem looked at Alex. ‘Beard rash? It’s my eczema, Alex. It always flares up when I get stressed.’

Eczema?
‘So what are you stressed about, Jem?’ Alex asked accusingly.

Jem looked back to the stairs. She pushed both hands through her hair and braced herself against the sink behind her. Jem took in a breath like one of these free-divers Alex couldn’t fathom. ‘It’s not Mal who’s been hanging up on you, Alex. It’s my boss.’

Alex felt herself grimace. ‘Your boss? Why would your boss hang up on me?’

‘Not just you, Dad a few times too. I know, it’s hardly a great start, but … well, I told George not to call the house in case you answered but the phone reception up here is totally shit so—’

‘You’re having an affair, with your
boss
?’ The relief flooded Alex’s veins like one of those lovely warm sedatives they gave you at the dentist.

‘What’s with all the affairs, Alex? Jesus Christ. Not an affair,’ Jem hissed in exasperation. ‘We’re in a
serious
, MONOGAMOUS, relationship, OK?’

‘But not with Mal?’ Alex established with mirthful relief.

‘Yuck, no. I think Mal’s really great, I do. But that would be like … I don’t know, I imagine a lot like going out with my own
brother
.’ Jem grimaced. Alex wanted to jump on her and lock her in a grateful embrace. A whole horizon of damage limitation was opening out before her, Jem might not even have to know about their dad’s and Louisa Sinclair,
Alex could spare her from it, save her the hurt. And then another thought made its return.

‘But, you were over at Mal’s, Jem. I saw you in there. And you’ve been out, nearly every night, Jem.’

Jem came to the table and slipped into the chair beside Alex’s. She clasped her hands together and tapped them to her mouth like they used to when they were supposed to be praying in assembly. ‘Mal and Millie have been letting me and George relax over at their place. George turned up here in the Falls last week. It wasn’t the plan but George wanted to support me while Mum’s so poorly and by the time I knew anything about it …’

‘George is here?’ What an old romantic. ‘So where is he? Where’s he staying?’

Jem breathed steady. ‘Over at the Longhouse.’

Alex ran through all the guests she’d seen there. Someone old enough to head up a big jewellery designer. Someone stylish and attractive, staying at the Longhouse alone. Alex frowned. Boiled egg man? Alex tried to picture Jem eating a boiled egg across the table from the guy who’d tucked his napkin into his shirt. Who even wore a shirt on a weekend away? No matter. Boiled egg man was a stratospheric step up from Malcolm. Even if he did hang up on people.

‘So when do we get to meet the elusive George?’

‘Soon. I hope. Only … did Dad look wiped out to you? Just now? I don’t think tonight’s the night to go into this.’

A diversion was probably what they all needed. ‘Jem? You’re talking yourself out of it. Why?’ Alex heard an
unimpressed voice through her head.
Why did you talk yourself out of staying with Finn yesterday, Alex?

Jem swallowed and rubbed at her raw skin again. Alex felt a sudden pang of guilt. Was Finn a diversion too? Was Alex going to keep him a secret until she broke out in a nervous skin condition?

Jem put her hands in her pockets so she wouldn’t rub her face any more. ‘I’m not sure that George is going to be everyone’s cup of tea.’