Looking for Alex (14 page)

‘Your shirt smells of the house,’ I say, burying my nose in it.

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘It’s good. I like it.’ I laugh, giddy with seeing him again. ‘Never thought I’d say that!’

We walk along to the tube, me glorying in having him by my side and in the new delight of being taken care of, the heavier of my bags swinging in his free hand. When we reach the platform he puts his arm round my waist and kisses my neck.

‘I like having you back.’

‘I’ve got a whole week,’ I say. ‘But, Fitz, I’ve told so many lies. They just kept coming out of my mouth.’

‘How did you manage this?’ he wants to know, as we sit side by side on the tube, rattling through darkness.

‘More lies,’ I say. ‘That and the amazing coincidence that the friends I lied about going camping with actually asked me if I wanted to go on holiday with them. They’re going to Butlins, the one at Minehead. My parents are really busy at work and my dad said, well, you came back from camping in one piece, so why not? So this morning I got on a coach with Hilary and Rachel. That’s it!’

Fitz looks round at me, pauses for a beat. ‘So how come you’re here and not in Minehead?’

‘Because—’ I grin ‘—we had to change at Victoria. And I told them I wasn’t getting on the other bus. I was staying in London.’

‘Wow. Devious,’ Fitz says, admiringly. “But dangerous. What did your friends say?’

‘Well…they were just a tiny bit annoyed with me.’ I can still see the outrage on both their faces. ‘I had to give them a story about meeting someone while I was camping with my parents. I said my parents didn’t like him but I really wanted to see him again and that his family had asked me to stay.’ I squeeze Fitz’s hand. ‘Mostly true.’

‘And you trust them?’ Fitz is looking worried. ‘They won’t say anything?’

‘Sure. Why would they? They wouldn’t want to get me into trouble. And they hardly know my parents.’

I look away, picturing Rachel’s incredulous expression as I talked her and Hilary into covering for me.

‘You’re not coming back?’ she asked, and I said, ‘Yes of course I’m coming back, but maybe not quite the same time as you.’ ‘What will you tell your parents?’ she wanted to know and I said I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

But now, as I contemplate the web of lies I’ve been spinning a wave of cold panic pours over me.

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’

‘Too late for that. And I’m as guilty as you now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your parents would say I’ve encouraged you.’

‘Well, I’d tell them you didn’t.’ He’s staring fixedly at the tube map. I reach up and pull his face round towards me. ‘Do you wish I hadn’t come back?’

He squeezes my hand. ‘Of course not.’

I look away. ‘I felt so bad at home. All those lies.’

This remark doesn’t go anywhere near describing the complete sense of dislocation I experienced, sitting in the bedroom I’d decorated that spring — all orange and brown, with large flowers on one wall, posters on a huge pin-board, and a new Anglepoise lamp on my desk — imagining Fitz in his with its crumbling plaster, splintered floorboards and candle-light. I tried hard to pretend everything was normal, but the things I knew and the things I’d seen just wouldn’t stay stuffed down inside me. And I missed Fitz so very much, missed the sex so much, I was aching to see him. All of this made me either bad-tempered or silent. My mother kept casting around for reasons: late nights while I was away; missing Alex; a boy I’d met on holiday. There was truth in all of them and then there were other truths that I couldn’t reveal. My mother sensed me holding back, and, as her experience of me was that I told her most things, she appeared hurt.

Coming out of the tube at Camden we buy two cans of 7 Up and walk round to Surrey Gardens, a little patch of green surrounded by houses and fenced in by iron railings. There’s a lock on the gate but Fitz sussed out ages ago that it was broken. We’ve been there before. On one side of it are a few vegetable plots, where today a man is bent over a row of something or other, weeding. He doesn’t seem to hear us come in, just works on stoically. On the other side a couple of mums watch over their toddlers in a sandpit. They look up idly but no one questions us, or tells us to go. We sit on a bench under an overhanging beech tree, out of view.

‘I bumped into Alex’s mum,’ I tell Fitz. ‘Outside the post office. I’d gone to post you those books.’

He turns to me. ‘Go on.’

‘She looked bad, really bad,’ I say. ‘I took one look at her and thought, you are going through hell. She was so thin and pale, and her eyes were…you know how someone’s eyes look when they have a really bad headache, like a migraine, sort of far back in your head? That’s how she looked.’

‘Do you think she knows?’

‘Well, she can’t do or she’d have quizzed me or something.’

‘No, I meant about Alex’s dad — stepdad. About him hitting her.’

I swirl my can around, hear the liquid fizzing inside. ‘I don’t know. But the things she did know were bad enough.’ I think of Alex’s summing-up — ‘
He was a complete bastard to me and she did nothing.
’ ‘She asked me how I was and I said, “Fine,” and, “How are you?” out of politeness. She shrugged and said, “Well, you know.” Then she gave me a strange look and after a long pause I realised she was waiting for me to ask about Alex. That’s what you’d do if you didn’t know anything, isn’t it? So I said, had she heard anything?’

‘Which she hadn’t. Which made you feel bad.’

‘Right… I just stood there thinking, I could put her out of her misery right now. One word from me and she’d at least know Alex was alive and well. And then I thought of that day when Pete got beaten up — you know, when he left Alex like a hostage in that flat? I was thinking, what’s worse, to be dragged home to an abusive stepfather or to be used like that?’

‘Does it have to be either or?’

I screw my nose up. ‘What other option is there?’

‘If her mother knew where she was she might be able to fix up somewhere else to live, so she didn’t have to depend on Pete.’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ I’m doubtful that Alex would contemplate that. I wonder why Fitz is suggesting this now. ‘Has something happened?’

‘No. I just thought it was worth saying.’

A leaf twirls down from the tree and falls onto my lap. I brush it off. ‘But, Fitz, I haven’t told you. I was about to say goodbye and Alex’s mum fixed me with a stare and said, “Do you miss her, Beth?”’

‘Shit.’

‘I know. I said, yes, of course, but she just smiled a strange smile and said goodbye and moved on. I think she must have thought I didn’t want to talk about her, which I didn’t, of course, I was so worried about saying something incriminating. And she found that odd.’

Fitz chews his lip as he thinks about that.

‘But that doesn’t mean she’d think you were hiding something. She’s probably just thinking what a crap friend you are.’

‘Great. Thanks.’

He crushes his can up and lobs it onto the top of an overflowing bin where it teeters, then slides slowly down the side of a greasy fish and chip newspaper and lands on top of a dog turd. We both laugh and Fitz kisses me, properly now. All thoughts of Alex’s mother fade away.

But later, as we leave the gardens, Fitz asks, ‘So what will you do?’

‘What do you mean?’

He shrugs. ‘Do you think you need to tell Alex’s mother?

‘No way,’ I say. ‘I promised. And me and Alex, we don’t go back on promises.’

Fitz wants to call at the newsagent, for some Rizlas and baccy, so we take a detour. As we round the corner to the little parade of shops we spot Alex and Pete at the other end, their backs turned to us, talking to a man. It only takes a second to realise that he’s having a go at Pete, shouting into his face. Pete’s saying nothing. Fitz and I stand quite still, hand in hand, watching the scene unfold. Neither of us speaks, neither of us moves, although I sense a coiled tension in Fitz, a readiness to move if he needs to. The man pushes his face further and further into Pete’s but he doesn’t touch him, until Pete grabs Alex’s arm and makes to walk past, away from him. Then the man pushes his shoulder, shoves him hard, and Pete swings round, fists coming up at the ready. He hits the man squarely on the cheek. And again, as he reels, hard in the stomach. Before any passers-by can intervene Pete has taken Alex by the elbow and hustled her away down a side street, leaving the man doubled up. People stand around, staring curiously, waiting to see if they’ll be needed but hesitating to get involved. Eventually a woman goes over, speaks to theman, helps him up and sees him on his way. He crosses the road and walks away from where we stand, one hand up to his face, the other folded across his stomach.

‘Ow!’

I suddenly realise that this is not Fitz’s response to imagined pain but that I’m digging my nails into the back of his hand.

‘Sorry, sorry.’ I draw my hand away and then reach for his again and hold it up to inspect it, see little red crescents embedded there and smooth them over with my thumb. ‘Shit, who the hell was that? Do you think it’s the guy from the other night?’

He’s taken his shades off to see better; now he puts them back on, and rubs the back of his neck, thinking. ‘Maybe. Could be someone else he’s pissed off, though.’ He nods affirmatively. ‘He does have a way of making enemies.’

I round on him. ‘You said you thought Alex was safe here. You never said then Pete has a way of making enemies.’

He shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. ‘Relatively safe, relatively, I said. What I meant then was that if Alex wasn’t here she’d be somewhere else. And that, possibly, wherever she was wouldn’t be very safe. I’m not a bleeding oracle, Beth.’

I look down at my feet. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Come here, you — don’t look so miserable. Pete always gets himself out of it. Nothing ever happens.’

But something just did, I think as we carry on to the shops, and get the baccy, Rizlas and a bottle of milk. We’ve both gone quiet and stay like that all the way back to Empire Road, until just as we reach the back gate I hear Fitz mutter, half to himself,

‘Helluva punch.’

Chapter Five

20
^th
August 1977

It’s different now in the house; there are subtle changes in the atmosphere.

Alex is subdued, and although she seems pleased to have me back there’s a look in her eyes that makes her appear separate, vulnerable. I don’t tell her we saw her at the shops; I don’t know why — maybe I don’t want her to think we spied on them.

Pete has the air of a man who’s deeply pissed off, preoccupied. He hardly speaks to me, which suits me fine. We keep out of each other’s way.

Only Fitz remains the same, despite the fact he’s got the sack and hasn’t yet found another job. He doesn’t seem to mind, says he’s living for the moment, but I feel guilty about our chickenpox scam.

‘Sure,’ he says as we lie in bed the day I get back, ‘and you had to tie me to the bed to stop me going to work?’

‘Watch it,’ I say, ruffling his hair, ‘or I might.’

‘Mmm, promises.’

We laugh and kiss, and I tell him I have loads of money from my work at Woolworths and that he can be a kept man.

That evening we make a meal for everyone. Dan’s there too, he turned up unannounced, and while Fitz is cooking Dan and I play noughts and crosses and battleships. We make paper aeroplanes, tearing pages out of an old newspaper. We fly them around the kitchen and one lands in the big pan of chilli and has to be fished out. Fitz keeps grinning over at me, crazily pleased that I’m back, and plays his music so loud that the floorboards hum beneath our feet.

Celia comes downstairs just as we’re serving up. Fitz offers her some food but she shakes her head.

‘Saving yourself for a blow-out, Celia?’ Pete says. A look passes between them. I glance at Alex but she’s talking to Fitz and seems oblivious. Then Celia catches me observing it all and raises her eyebrows. I look away.

The day after that everything kicks off.

It starts when I rub Alex up the wrong way, out of jealousy, I think. She has a freedom I envy, and even though I see how precarious it is I want what she has, want desperately to be able to stay with Fitz. The night before, I lay awake for hours imagining what it would be like to do what she’d done. To just disappear, to forget all the school stuff, and A-levels and careers. I could get a job — surely there are plenty of jobs to be found in London. I’m seventeen; I have my O-levels; I could work in an office or a shop, or wait at tables. Anything to earn some money, to have enough to live on. I started planning things in my head, calculating how much Fitz and I might earn in a month, fantasising about finding work abroad. Even composing a letter to my parents to tell them what I’d done. At four o’clock in the morning it all seemed beautifully simple.

Morning light reveals the complications. Apart from the fact that my parents would make my life hell, how could I explain it all without giving away Alex’s part in it? And if I managed to explain it some other way, how would they possibly understand? I can hear my father’s voice now, the sheer disbelief. ‘Throwing everything up for some holiday romance? You’re off your rocker, Beth.’

Sleep-deprived, I turn my head to look at Fitz. He stirs slightly, perhaps sensing my gaze. I want to wake him, to make love, to make the most of this day, but he turns and settles back into a deep sleep.

I slip out of bed and go down to make myself some breakfast. I find Alex already there. She seems brighter than usual. We sit down at the big, messy table and have tea and toast, talking together as we did that first week I was here.

At first the conversation is light and giggly, back in our schoolgirl mode of sharing jokes about boys we fancy, only now it’s men we’re sleeping with. She asks me if Fitz is good in bed and I tell her to mind her own business.

‘Ooh, sensitive,’ she says. But we’re both laughing.

Then she tells me that while I was away she’s been to the family planning clinic and got the pill. She says why don’t I do the same? She’ll take me.

‘Not much point, is there?’ I say.

‘Why not?’