Letting You Go (10 page)

D
r Okafor had returned after lunch with a small splodge of something mayonnaise-like on another cheerily coloured shirt. Aside from the mayo stain, Dr Okafor had also returned with an endless stream of miserable information.

Alex and Jem had listened intently, thanking the doctor with all the warmth they could muster in case it could be traded in to buy their mum any more care than she was already receiving. After a brief spell loitering in the AAU corridor, Jem had disappeared to sort some pressing issue out with work leaving Alex to her watch post in Room 2.

A small clock ticked lethargically on the wall opposite. Jem had been gone ages. Probably hadn’t gone to sort out work at all but gone to get her head together. This was always how she’d dealt with her challenges, find a door and disappear behind it. Alex had found Jem in her room this morning, looking out of her bedroom window with a cup of cold coffee held forgotten against her chest. It was like living in a houseful of yoyos; one person’s mood picking up while another’s dipped.

Alex heaved a satisfying sigh and watched the subtle changes in her mum’s face as she slept. Alex had been hopeful yesterday, Ted had seemed to defrost some when she suggested they split the visiting hours between them. He’d even buried his hands into his overall pockets and rocked back on his boot heels, nodding approvingly like he used to do when Alex would rev the engines for him down at the garage.
But then he was like stone again this morning, Mum
, Alex wanted to say.
Tell me what to say to him when we’re alone, Mum. Because I never know.

Her dad had been off when she’d walked into the garage today. There was a strange atmosphere in there when Alex had taken in the baguette she’d managed to salvage from its dousing of sticky milkshake.

Alex shifted squeakily in her seat, the backs of her thighs sticking to the upholstery where the skirt Jem had lent her had come up shorter on Alex’s frame. She’d found herself cemented to the squeaky green vinyl chair for most of the day, trying to make up some of the years she’d been missing in action with a bit of hard time here in Kerring General. Where every second stretched like a slurred word.

Alex looked at her phone, sitting mute on the arm of her chair. She wanted to text Jem, check she was OK, but Jem liked her privacy. If she needed some time to herself, Alex didn’t want to be the one to cramp her. Alex’s thoughts returned to what Dr Okafor had said out in the hall. Concerns
he’d planted in her mind like booby traps she kept stumbling into.

Pneumonia, blood clots, bedsores.

Blythe had been drifting in and out of sleep much of the day.
Day 3.
Alex was supposed to be back to buttering loaves and wiping down plastic tablecloths by now. Day 3 and no packing up of bags to be seen anywhere, only the grim long-haul starting to take shape before them all. Malnutrition, falls.
Heart failure.
Alex began picking at the hem of Jem’s cotton skirt and watched her mum sleeping. Blythe’s recovery was starting to resemble a twisted game of luck.

Alex whispered as quietly as she could and still hear her own voice. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry … for everything.’

She was breaking her own rule. No crying while she was in the Falls. Alex lay her face against her mother’s sleeve and felt the warmth still emanating from the arm they now knew had lost much of its movement. Like Dill’s. Alex felt her facial muscles tense. She let it all come out, her body twitching with silent shudders to the gentle repetition of her mother’s restful breathing.

When she moved her face away again there was a dark stain just beside Blythe’s wrist, a small blackish smear where her mascara had rubbed from her face.

‘Alex?’

Jem had perfected the art of slipping in and out of places unnoticed. Alex jumped up instinctively, Jem didn’t need to know she’d been crying. Alex smiled as jovially as possible
and felt a burn where her legs had peeled too quickly from the seat.

Jem squinted. ‘Come on, big sis, you need a change of scene.’

A
piece of carrot cake the size of a child’s head sat untouched on the bench between them where the sunlight was just about filtering through under the shadow of hospital. Jem had gotten two plastic forks so they could share but Jem had snapped the tines off hers and was now fiddling with four little shards of plastic in her lap. Alex sat counting the apples in the tree across the small leafy courtyard Jem had found in the hospital grounds,
Garden of Reflection
the small brass plaque on the wall read. They couldn’t see it now though, a lady hooked up to a mobile oxygen system was standing in front of it having a cigarette.

Jem stopped watching her. ‘Did Mum ever smoke, do you think? Like, before she had us?’

Alex lost count of the apples. ‘Maybe. Smoking was one of their generational things I guess. Like teenage sweethearts and marrying for life.’

‘I don’t think Mum would’ve ever smoked. She’s too much of a goody-goody,’ Jem decided.

Alex smiled crookedly. ‘Maybe she has a past we don’t
know about.’ Maybe their mother had two lives, maybe everyone did. Maybe Alex would get a second run at it too.

‘Mum? A dark horse?’ Jem grimaced. ‘Nah. What you see is what you get with Mum,’ Jem added wistfully. ‘No nasty surprises.’ Jem looked across the courtyard in bloom and collected her thoughts. ‘Or maybe we all have something to hide. To a certain extent,’ she added absently.

‘Are you trying to tell me you used to smoke or something, Jem?’

Jem gave a tired laugh. ‘I tried it once, round the back of the science block. Carrie Logan dared me to take a drag of one of her mum’s she’d smuggled in. Kind of an initiation thing into her little gang.’

‘Wow. Now who’s the dark horse,’ Alex teased. ‘So did it help you fit in?’

‘Nope. I was never going to fit in there.’

She nearly had. She’d pretended with the makeup and the fashion and the hair faff every morning before school, and it had been worth it for a while, just to belong. Then, like an idiot, she’d confided in Carrie.

The glass doors onto the small courtyard slid open and a pushchair wheeled out in front of a slight woman with long dark straggly hair. The gardens were suddenly alive with sound, inconsolable wails bouncing off the glazing on all sides around them.

‘And that’s why I won’t be first to bring a grandchild home,’ Jem groaned quietly.

‘Grandchild, Jem? One of us has to bring an acceptable bloke home first.’

Alex tried to convey a polite smile to the young mother but the woman’s eyes were darting around the raised flowerbeds, trying to keep up with the little girl who’d shot out from beside her legs to play hopscotch on the paving stones. The child looked like her mother, but with a softer, happier face. Alex watched the little girl run behind a cloud of big pink daisies, a flick of dark hair and she was gone.

Alex spotted two wide brown eyes peeping from over the planter bed opposite. The slice of carrot cake sitting between Alex and Jem had caught her attention. Alex smiled at her through the daisies. The little girl’s eyes briefly looked back at the unwanted dessert before settling on Alex.

‘Poppy! Come have a drink,’ came a voice from the bench behind theirs.

‘That’s her,’ Jem whispered. ‘With the mucky feet the other day. Remember I said? I think her husband is on the ward opposite the AAU. She’s been here every day we have.’

Alex found her eyes briefly gravitating towards the mother’s feet. She was wearing flip-flops that looked like they’d seen more action than Alex’s Converse. She made Alex think of some of the mums she’d seen at the food bank. Women at the mercy of bus timetables and clement weather. The flip-flops of people with cars didn’t usually get the opportunity to become so thinly worn.

Alex watched the mother offer a drink to her daughter with one hand while cradling the baby at her breast with the other.

‘I don’t like water, Mummy.’

The mother swept a few wayward strands from her child’s face. ‘I know, baby.’

‘Can I have some juice instead?’ Alex heard the hope in her voice.

‘No, baby.’

‘But
why
, Mummy? I haven’t drunked any juice for a long time now, Mummy. Please?’

‘I know, I’m sorry, baby. When Daddy’s better—’

‘Now who’s staring?’ Jem murmured, disturbing Alex’s earwigging. She settled back into listening to the breeze rustling the greenery around them. The Viking festival would be busy this year, if it stayed like this. The Falls were beautiful in the summer. Alex finished counting again. Twenty-three. Twenty-three rosy red apples. No, twenty-
four.
Shoot, had she counted that one already?

‘Alex?’ Jem said after a while.

‘Hmm?’

‘Do you remember what Mum used to say to us? About lightning … only striking once and all that.’

‘I remember.’ Had Jem met someone? Was she about to spill all? Alex stole a sideways glance. Jem was staring into space.

‘Do you think she realised that lightning can also burn down what you know and care about too? Or do you think
she thought that none of that matters. That everything else becomes kinda …
secondary
?’

Alex was stunned. Was Jem in love? ‘Jem, have you met someone?’

Jem leant forwards a little onto her knees and looked at her feet. Alex assumed a similar position while she psyched herself up in the swimming pool changing rooms before going in. Jem turned to look at Alex then, glacial eyes like their dad’s.

‘It’s not that straightforward, Alex.’ Jem looked apologetic. For a fleeting second, Alex wondered if it could be Finn.
Don’t be so ridiculous.
Like he was even hers to keep tabs on anyway.

Jem looked suddenly marooned, ashen with some big burden she was keeping all to herself. A married man, then? Her sister was fraternising with another woman’s husband. Alex chastised herself again. No. No way, not Jem. They hadn’t been brought up that way. Marriage was sacred.

‘Wow. Well … I don’t know, Jem. Lightning’s lightning I guess. You’ll have to ask her yourself.’ Blythe was going to be ecstatic. It worried Alex, their mum’s heart didn’t need any more stress, even the good kind. ‘Maybe wait until she’s on her feet though, Jem. You know how excited she gets.’ But Jem seemed anything but.

‘Eugh!’ came a rattled voice. ‘Blast and damnation!’

Alex and Jem turned sharply to look back over the bench towards the hospital doors. The woman with the nose tube had slumped awkwardly out of her wheelchair.

‘Hang on!’ Alex yelped, leaping towards the doors. ‘Oh my goodness, are you all right?’

Jem already had the woman’s other elbow and was helping her back into the chair.

‘Dropped my lighter, didn’t I?’ the woman croaked. Her nose tube had been knocked off centre. ‘Thanks, girls. I should get myself one of those new-fangled vaporiser things you see everyone sucking on. I could stay up on the ward then instead of coming down here and bothering everyone.’

Jem arched her eyebrows.

‘Are you sure you’re OK? Can we take you anywhere? We’re ready to head back in now anyway, aren’t we, Jem?’

‘Home?’ the woman croaked hopefully. ‘Go on, girls. I’m just going to have one last puff. Calm my nerves.’

Jem’s eyes rounded before she turned for the doors. Alex gave a parting smile and followed Jem through the glass.

They walked slowly back towards the lifts. The two of them fell into a natural rhythm, walking the corridor with the same stride, the same heavy silence. They probably looked like twins from behind.

‘Hang on,’ Jem declared. ‘We left our rubbish on the bench.’ Alex watched silently while Jem ducked back out into the Garden of Reflection. A few seconds later and Jem trotted back up the corridor, auburn hair flowing back over her shoulders and an expression on her face that said the world was full of oddities and she was the last surviving normal one.

‘All sorted?’ Alex asked.

‘Well I didn’t get chance to chuck our stuff away, if that’s what you mean? I didn’t want to embarrass her!’

‘Embarrass who?’

‘Grotty Feet! She’s just nicked our cake!’

D
ust like a psychopath. It’s what their mother did. Everyone knew when to give Blythe breathing space. She’d either be gardening ferociously or dusting like an obsessive-compulsive menace. ‘Just like your grandma Ros, your mother,’ Ted used to whisper to Alex before throwing her a look of camaraderie. ‘Work out your frustrations with a feather duster, instead of fists, like your sister,’ he’d teased, because little idiosyncrasies like that ran in families too, it wasn’t just the obvious stuff like receding hairlines and big awkward babies getting stuck like Dill had.

Alex shook out the wrinkles of her mum’s lounge curtains and drenched the windowsill in the Mr Muscle she’d found under the kitchen sink.

You are getting worked up about a ham and chutney sandwich for crying out loud. Get. A. Grip.

He’d forgotten them. So what? She was being pathetic. How was her dad to know she’d gotten up at six to make fresh sandwiches? Had she asked him if he wanted fresh sandwiches for work? No. Had it been his idea to read Blythe’s scrawled recipe notes on the fridge door –
Ted’s
healthier favourites
– and be suddenly inspired with gourmet sodding sandwich ideas? No. Had Alex even reminded him to pick them up on his way out of the house? Honestly? Alex’s heart sank. She hadn’t thought she’d need to.

And then there was yesterday. A
thank you.
That was all she’d been hoping for. Wouldn’t Jem have gotten a
thanks
, a smile maybe, if she’d dropped his lunch in at the garage? Jem would’ve just grabbed him a heart-attack-in-a-bun from Brünnhilde’s Baps on the high street but no, Alex had decided to push the boat out and queue for twenty minutes in a posher-looking deli for a posher-looking baguette instead. Offer him something his arteries, and her mum, might appreciate.

Alex finished buffing the windowsill. His voice had been sharp yesterday. ‘You shouldn’t have wasted your money paying tourist prices for yuppie food, Alexandra.’

The phone rang out in the hallway. ‘Leave it! I’ll get it!’ Jem called down but Alex was already padding from the back lounge out into the hallway where the cordless was stationed.

Alex hovered over the console table. ‘Hello? Alex speaking.’ It was a habit, saying her name when she answered the phone. It was what she and Dan did at the food bank, to put callers at ease.

A couple of seconds’ silence then the caller hung up. Again.

‘Agh. That’s
three
times, you rude bugger!’
Telesales gits.
‘Three bloody times!’ Alex suddenly felt a disproportionate need to track the responsible individual down to their anonymous little booth in their anonymous little call centre, wrap their phone cord snuggly around their ignorant neck and scream,
My mother is sick in hospital, you knob, stop calling and hanging up on me!

The phone rang again. Alex glared impotent fury. She was about to lunge for the receiver but it stopped ringing abruptly. Alex heard Jem shuffling across the landing, the wire dragging across the floorboards, Jem’s bedroom door closing again behind her.

Alex pulled in a deep breath and released it again. Her elbow caught the can of polish she’d set down. It toppled, knocking the phone from its stump.

‘Stop pressuring me, George! You can’t expect me to work to your timeframe on this! This is a BIG deal for me,’ came a distant voice from the earpiece.

Alex felt a flush of treachery and very gently replaced the cordless back on its post before she accidentally earwigged any more. George was starting to sound like a real plank. Not like Dan, he’d texted Alex everyday so far to tell her there was no rush to get back.

Alex returned to dusting the pictures of her family hanging along the hallway walls. She’d made her way through nearly half of the hanged frames before she slowed enough to take a look at the pictures inside them. All the Foster men had the same look about them, even back to her dad’s great
grandfather William Foster who, rumour had it, fathered a child with somebody other than great, great, granny Alice Foster.

‘Alice raised that child after William brought him home. That was what women did for their husbands in those days, Alex,’ her mum had told her and Jem.

Alex studied her father’s great grandfather William and tried not to dislike him too much. He looked a lot like her dad, maybe a bit scrawnier. Alex moved along the wall. The same fair hair and serious eyes recurred again and again, tumbling all the way down the generations of Fosters to Dill, in this picture sitting full-grin on an inflatable dolphin wearing one of Jem’s bikini tops. Alex laughed involuntarily. She re-ran through the last few photographs. Dill seemed to break the run, there was something softer about him than the rest of the Foster lot. It was that dimple. That one, odd little indentation on his left cheek that set him apart from the rest of them. It had given Alex the perfect target to lay slobbery kisses on.

Jem’s feet pattered downstairs with purpose. ‘Jesus, Alex. It’s not even eight-thirty, you’re as bad as Mum. Where’s Dad?’

‘Left already. About half an hour ago.
Without
his lunch.’

Jem astutely read between the lines. ‘Well, maybe he forgot?’ She began wriggling into a pair of sandals, shrugging an arm into her cardigan at the same time.

‘I guess. Where are you going anyway, I thought we were heading into town this morning while Helen and Susannah
see Mum?’ Helen Fairbanks had collected her casserole dish first thing and had given explicit instructions for Alex and Jem to have a break from the hospital and go throw themselves into the Falls’ increasing Viking festivities for a few hours instead.

Jem checked herself in the hallway mirror. ‘Work. I need to avert a freaking disaster and I’d rather do it some place I can yell. Like on my mobile phone, in the car … somewhere there’s some
sodding
signal. I won’t be long.’ Jem pulled a lip-gloss from her bag and began dabbing herself with it. She shook her fingers through her fringe.

‘You look nice … for a phone call,’ Alex said idly.

Jem flashed her a look in the mirror. ‘Well, you never know who you might bump into, right? Take yesterday, how lucky was that? You borrowing my best MAC makeup before running into Finn. And Carrie, the vile creature. Poor you.’

Alex’s stomach did a gentle roll. ‘How do you know I saw Finn? And Carrie?’ Alex added
Carrie
to imply Carrie and Finn were of equal significance, or insignificance, whichever way Jem might read it.

‘How do you think, Al? Dad saw you.’

Alex felt another flip in her stomach. That explained his foul mood since yesterday then. Ted had hardly said a word over dinner last night. No wonder he’d left the sandwiches.

Jem stuck a kiss on Alex’s head. ‘Won’t be long. And you might want to check the back door too, I saw the dog was out by Dad’s workshop when I was upstairs.’ Jem disappeared
over the step calling, ‘And she needs a name! Think of something Mum would like.’ The door rattled shut behind her leaving Alex alone with the family gallery again.

Alex scanned the run of pictures hanging in the hallway. Jem looked so different now to her teenaged self. Alex’s school photos were the worst, she’d happily admit, but
crikey, Jem, that haircut really was horrendous.
Alex studied her sister’s solemn expression. She hadn’t realised Jem’s eczema had been quite so obvious back then, an angry patch of pink skin either side of Jem’s mouth. It was stress-related, her mum had told her. But Alex had never seen for herself, she’d already left for uni by the time Jem had been having trouble at school.

Alex heard footsteps again on the path outside. Jem must’ve found the puppy. Oh, crap, not under her car wheels again. Alex jumped for the door as Ted bustled in through it, greying blond hair like a short thinning mane.

Alex stared vacantly at him. He’d left twenty minutes ago, he must’ve got nearly to the garage before doubling back. He was always forgetting the garage keys and always having to come all the way home for them. It drove Mum mad.

‘Housework?’ he asked. ‘This early? I won’t come in with my boots then.’

Alex felt startled, like she’d just been caught cleaning a neighbour’s flat or something. ‘Oh, OK. Do you need me to reach you something?’ she asked.

‘Please. In the kitchen, on the side. You’ve gone to all that effort and I nearly forgot my sandwiches.’