Letting You Go (29 page)

J
em looked like a fifteen-year-old as she walked up the track to the house. Alex had watched her head bobbing steadily over the hedgerow. Norma pulled again at the corner of Alex’s blanket where it touched the dusty floor of the front porch.

Even their dad’s gentle metronomic snores hadn’t lulled Alex back off to sleep for long. A fresh pot of coffee and an hour on the front porch watching the climb of the sun and Ted still hadn’t moved from his spot through the lounge window.

Jem rounded the gatepost in the same skinny jeans and baggy white tee she’d been wearing last night. Her hair falling messily over her shoulder in a loose chunky braid, her fringe poking into tired eyes.

‘You look like Mum,’ Jem said softly as she crossed the lawn towards Alex.

Alex squinted into the morning sun, her thumb busy over a little sharpness on her mug. ‘So do you.’

Jem slowed as she approached the porch steps. ‘How is he?’ she asked, holding back where their mother’s
flowerbeds ran up to the timber deck. Blythe’s poppies were in full bloom. A bright red warning against a backdrop of mint and sage.

‘Sleeping it off. How are you?’ Alex asked tentatively. Jem had a deep reddish brown on her sleeve. Alex might’ve thought it was paint if she didn’t know better.

‘I’m not the one who’s had to babysit a grown man all night.’ Jem looked over the house as if it had just landed from Kansas. ‘I didn’t mean to leave you with him all night, Alex. I was coming back, but …’

‘Jem? Can we talk?’ Alex blurted. Jem scratched her top lip. Her skin was as raw as ever. ‘We need to talk.’

Alex lifted the cooling coffee pot from her dad’s smoking table and poured the cup she’d had ready for when he woke. Jem stepped lethargically up onto the porch and slumped tired limbs into the other chair.

Alex passed her a cup of lukewarm black coffee and poured one for herself.

‘Where did you stay last night?’

Jem sipped from her mug and grimaced. ‘I stayed at the B&B.’

‘The Longhouse?’ Alex asked. A cynical voice was already trying to whisper to her,
Not with anyone called
George
she didn’t!
, but Alex stamped it down and kicked it from her head before it had a chance.

‘I don’t know any other B&Bs in the Falls.’ Jem was being defensive.

‘You don’t look as though you’ve slept much.’

‘Neither do you.’

No, Jem, I haven’t. And after what I’ve got to tell you, you probably won’t sleep easy ever again.

‘I need to tell you something, Jem. Something you’re not going to want to hear. But you need to know,’ Alex said flatly.

Jem stopped sipping her coffee. Alex started with a deep breath.

‘It’s about Mal …’ Alex ventured, ‘and Dill. And what Mum said when she saw Alfie at the hospital.’ Alex’s heart was already in her throat.

Jem sat back into her chair and looked out across the lawns. ‘It’s all right, Alex. I already know.’

Alex felt herself rigidify. ‘You
do
?’ she was incredulous, relief and surprise all in one hit. ‘But …’

Alex couldn’t find her words. Hang on, they’d been holding hands … Ah, but wait! They were at Dill’s grave when Ted had passed them on the way to the Tea Rooms, they were comforting each other, like Jem said! Maybe because they’d realised that Dill belonged to them
both
!

Alex let out the breath she’d been holding.
Thank you, Universe.
‘But … why didn’t you tell me, Jem?’

‘Why didn’t
you
tell
me
?’ Jem said wide-eyed. ‘Because it
hurts
, Al. Just like you said. I’ve been thinking about it constantly for the last ten days. I can’t get my head around it.’

‘Me neither,’ Alex agreed glumly.

‘I mean,
Mum …
having it off behind Dad’s back with the mayor. How could she do that to Dad?’

Alex felt the coffee catch in the back of her oesophagus. For a split second she thought it would be all right with a steady swallow, but then it scratched and she spluttered it all over her mother’s poppies.

She’d survived the Old Girl, twice, only to drown in coffee on her parents’ front porch.

‘What did you just say?’ she wheezed, her chest trying to suck in air while her lungs were trying to expel everything moist inside them.

Jem’s had gone quite still. ‘You said you knew!’

Alex carried on spluttering. Jem had got it wrong. So wrong. ‘But how … why do you …’

Jem ran her fingers through her hair and held on to a clump at the top of her head. Alex held the last few coughing spasms down in her torso. ‘Mal’s dad … he left Mal a letter. For when he died,’ Jem said, startled.

‘Saying
what
?’ Her
mum
? Her
mum
had the
affair
? Alex saw Jem’s chest rise with an extra big breath as if she was about to go free-diving. ‘Jem? Saying what?’

Jem gave herself a few seconds and then focused on something inside her cup. ‘The mayor didn’t want Mal to hear it from Louisa. He didn’t want Mal to hear it from himself either, the spineless git, so he left Mal a letter in with his will. So the good old Mayor Sinclair wouldn’t have to answer any difficult questions,’ Jem said quietly.

‘Go on,’ Alex said. She was listening carefully now. This had legs, this tale Jem was surely mistaken about, it had supporting evidence …
Paperwork!

‘Do you remember when Mum and Dad were still friendly with the Sinclairs? Before Dill was born?’ Alex felt the hairs stand on her neck.

‘Vaguely. I remember Dad moaning that Louisa had been a stuck up wretch at one of the parties Mum had made them go to.’

‘Do you remember Mum cleaning for them?’

‘Yes.’

‘The mayor wrote in his letter that he missed speaking to Mum when she got more hours working in the family records office and stopped cleaning for them. So he took up an interest in tracing his ancestors. Mum had given Louisa one of those family tree sets or something. So Alfred took it to the Town Hall, for Mum to help him with.’ Jem shrugged and shook her head to herself. ‘That’s where it started.’

‘What started, exactly?’ Alex said soberly. She’d was just getting to grips with her dad’s infidelity, now she had to start the process all over again.

‘It was just the one time, or so it says in Malcolm’s letter,’ Jem said carefully. ‘But once is all it takes.’

Alex felt a jumping in the side of her neck. ‘All
what
takes, Jem?’

Jem didn’t need to say it. Alex had already seen it in all the similarities that still rung true between Malcolm and Dill. Alex had just got her facts in the wrong places. Malcolm wasn’t the child born from an affair. Dillon was. Dillon was Blythe and Mayor Sinclair’s son. A catastrophic
error on Alex’s part, resulting in the same consequence all the same. Alex looked out across the lawns where they’d all played together, growing up. ‘Dill and Mal are half-brothers, aren’t they?’

Jem clenched her teeth. Her eyes were becoming more bloodshot. ‘The mayor seemed to think so.’ Enough to give Dill a very shiny bow and arrow set a couple of weeks before his ninth birthday anyway. Alex’s heart plummeted like a pebble through water. She hadn’t imagined there being anything much worse than her dad fathering another child beyond their family, of
gaining
a son. But she’d been wrong. Ted had never gained a son, he’d lost one. He’d lost Dill. In every way possible.

Alex felt a tremor inside her. For the man snoring on a settee in the lounge, oblivious to the hurtful secrets steadily being unpicked out here on the porch on a glorious bank holiday Monday morning.

‘He loved her, Alex. The mayor was in love with Mum. He told Mal that he’d asked her to leave Dad, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t feel the same way, it had been a terrible mistake. Can you believe he would say that in a
letter
? No wonder he didn’t want Mal hearing it from Louisa. It was hardly going to be a better version from her, was it?’

‘Louisa knows?’ Alex managed. ‘How?’

Jem laughed, a harsh, pitiless sound. ‘Louisa had been snooping through the mayor’s papers once, probably checking how much she was in line for. Bet she wasn’t expecting to find Dill named in the mayor’s will.’ Alex shot a look
at her sister. Jem shrugged softly. ‘The mayor wanted Dill and Mal to share everything he left them, straight down the middle.’

Alex was trying to absorb it all. ‘But when? When did Louisa find out? Why didn’t she confront Mum?’

‘And let the world know that she’d been elbowed over for her old cleaner, Alex? Can you imagine Louisa Sinclair shrugging that one off?’

‘But
when
? When did Louisa read the mayor’s will? How long has everyone know about this?’

‘
Everyone
doesn’t know about this, Al. Mal found out about six months ago, when his dad passed away, I’ve known since Mal and I went out for that drink last week.’

‘And Louisa?’

‘Mal isn’t sure. He thinks it must have been the year Louisa sent him to his grandparents’ and he had to miss the boat race. The same summer Dill died. Mal remembers his mum and dad arguing before he was sent away for the week, and when he came back he was just told … about what had happened at the river … and that his mother didn’t want to talk about it again. I guess the mayor changed his will after that anyway so Louisa didn’t have to worry about her or Mal losing out any more.’

It was starting to seep in. The times they’d all played together, the birthday parties. Blythe keeping busy in the kitchen while their dad got stuck in horsing around with the kids. Her head was throbbing. ‘Does Dad know, Jem?’

‘If he does, he’s gone a very long time pretending not to.
I want to say that I don’t think he knows, but I’m not sure I believe that, Al. Helen Fairbanks had a quiet word with me last week. The groundsman at St Cuthbert’s thought he saw Dad the morning after Mum went into hospital, tearing flowers apart at Dill’s grave. Helen asked me if he was coping alright.’

Alex thought back to the yellow petals fluttering over the ground when she’d gone to visit Dill. Jem looked at the house, checking for signs of life before she continued.

‘The mayor sent flowers for Dill every birthday. I think those were the flowers the groundsman saw Dad destroying.’

‘But … the mayor died … months ago?’ Alex was trying to squeeze pieces together that wouldn’t fit.

‘I know. But he asked Mal to carry on taking flowers for Dill, every birthday, Alex, in the evening when us lot had all finished paying our respects. The mayor didn’t want Dill’s memory lost to the Sinclairs. That’s why Mal was at St Cuthbert’s, when Mum got ill. He was leaving flowers … for his half-brother.
Our
half-brother.’

Tears began sliding down one of Jem’s cheeks. Jem looked even more like their mum when she cried.

Alex leant over the armrests and huddled against her sister.
Mum.
Alex hadn’t even thought about her in the hospital since Jem had started to talk. So Mal had upset Blythe then. Her dad had been right. Because he knew what Mal and Blythe would have been talking about when Mal had turned up with the evening flowers.

‘Dad knows, Jem.’ The flowers had confirmed it. It was all starting to fall into place.
Like a ghost
, Susannah had said. Ted had looked like a ghost, sitting in Frobisher’s Tea Rooms with the mayor’s wife.

Jem wiped at her face. ‘We don’t know for sure though do we, Alex?’

‘No. We don’t. But I think Louisa told him. Dad wasn’t on a callout the day Dill fell in the river, Jem. He with Louisa in Frobisher’s Tea Rooms. Susannah Finn saw them. Deep in conversation. Can you think of anything else they’d have been in deep conversation about?’

Jem shook her head, Alex felt the guilt at having thought her dad had been sleeping with Louisa. For jumping to the same conclusion Susannah had when all along, it had been her dad who’d been betrayed.

Alex let her mind trail off. She closed her eyes and heard her father’s voice through her head.
He was my boy. Mine! Dillon Edward Foster! He was my son!
And then last night, when Ted had been broken hearted as the drink had gotten the best of him.
I should never have been with her that day, listening to her poison. I should’ve been with my boy.

‘Alex?’ Jem called softly. ‘You’re spilling your coffee.’

Alex righted her cup. ‘Louisa told him he’d been raising another man’s son.’

The words twisted in Alex’s throat on their way out but they hung heavy with truth when she heard them. Alex remembered stumbling from the copse of trees across her
dad in the layby, sitting there ghostlike in his cab. Hands braced on the wheel.

‘No wonder he’d thought the worst of me and Finn. If Mum could behave like that …’ Alex trailed off.

‘We can’t tell Dad that we know. It would kill him,’ Alex finally said.

‘What do you mean?’ Jem asked.

‘He’d already lost Dill, Jem. Don’t you see? Before Dill had even fallen into the water, Dad had already lost him. And then Dill died. And even Louisa decided to let it be. That’s what Dad has been afraid of, Jem, seeing you with Malcolm … he didn’t want you to find out. We can’t bring it all up again now, Jem. For Dad’s sake. As soon as this is spoken out loud and people learn the truth, Dad will lose Dill all over again.’

‘But Malcolm has already spoken to Mum about it, Alex!’

‘But Mum doesn’t know that
we
know, does she?’

‘No. I mean,
I
haven’t said anything.’

‘And do you think that Mal would be discreet? If we asked him?’

‘On whose behalf, Alex? Mum’s? The woman who nearly stole his dad away? Who gave birth to his half-brother and never said a word in all the time I was friends with him? Or do you mean on Dad’s behalf, who’s bust Mal’s balls at every opportunity in a bid to scare him off? Mal hasn’t got any loyalties to either of our parents, Alex. We can’t expect him to have.’

Jem put her head in her hands. Alex exhaled slowly. It
occurred to her then, they’d been forgetting someone in all this. ‘What about loyalty to Dill? I don’t love Dill any less for being my half-brother. Do you?’