Looking for Alex (19 page)

‘Alex said they’d be back by the end of the week.’

‘Well, I’d say that’s unlikely. He’ll lie low for a while.’

I stared numbly at the filthy floor. Was she right? Had Pete and Alex done a runner, and Alex had said they’d be back just to pacify me? I started picking things up, carefully placing anything unbroken on the table and chucking broken stuff in the empty rubbish bag. I stood chairs up the right way then got the brush and pan that I’d bought for the house when I first came down and began sweeping the floor. Gradually the other two pitched in. Celia ran some hot water and mopped up the spilt food. Fitz went off into the other downstairs rooms and I heard him moving about, picking things up, righting furniture, exclaiming now and then over something. I didn’t want to look. I knew that if I saw all the damage at once I wouldn’t have the will to clear it up. Then all of a sudden I heard him shout.

‘Fuck! My records!’

He bolted upstairs. I heard Celia suck in her breath and when I looked at her face I knew what he’d find, what she’d already seen. His anguished roar was followed by a stream of cursing.

They were everywhere, thrown down and scattered around the room as one hiding place after another had been searched and discounted. Some had been trodden on, with great creases on the covers, and when Fitz picked them up we heard the broken pieces slide against each other.

‘Bastards,’ Fitz said, softly now, picking each record up and gently shaking it. I knelt down beside him to help and together, wordlessly, we began to sort his records into broken and unbroken, damaged and undamaged. It wasn’t as bad as it had first looked; the majority were intact. Most of the ones that weren’t could be replaced, but there were one or two bootlegs he’d picked up on the market, things that would be hard to find again. Fitz had gone deeply quiet, right into himself, his face closed.

‘I’ll kill him,’ he growled, standing the last record back in its place. I knew who he meant.

It took us another hour to get the place straight and then I made Fitz sit down, in the kitchen, with a cup of tea and the breakfast we’d never had. Celia sat with us, unusually, although she didn’t eat anything. There seemed to be some camaraderie built up between us; I sensed that she was actually enjoying our company. Fitz was still quiet, brooding on the records he’d lost, but I was feeling better with food inside me. I’d made scrambled egg on toast, with the eggs that had broken when I’d run down the alley. Eating it reminded me of home because it’s something my father likes, and set me off thinking how frantic he and my mother would be if they knew any of this, if they found out I wasn’t having fun at Butlins but living in a trashed squat in Camden.

‘They won’t come back, will they?’

Fitz shrugged. ‘They’ve found nothing, so why would they?’

I nodded. It made sense.

‘Still, I’ve been thinking,’ he went on. ‘Why don’t we go away for a few days?’

‘What?’

‘I fancy going to stay with Michael and Jenny. On the farm in Wales, you remember? I’ve got their phone number written down somewhere. They’d be all right about it. We could stay a few days and then come back when you…when things have calmed down.’

I stared at him, halfway through a mouthful of toast. He’d been going to say ‘when you have to go home’.

The unreality of this whole situation hung like a fog around my head. Not least that soon I was due to start back at school, and generally behave as though my life hadn’t just been turned upside down.

‘It’s not just about today,’ Fitz was saying. ‘I need to get out of this house. It’s making me claustrophobic.’

I weighed it all up. ‘What about your records? I mean, if they did come back… And Celia would be on her own.’

‘Don’t worry about me.’ Celia gave us a thin smile. ‘I can look after myself.’ It was what she’d said when I first met her and I was more inclined to believe her now. ‘You can bring your records up to my room. I’ve got this little cupboard — the door’s covered in wallpaper — they didn’t see it. It has my books in it. There’s room for your records.’

‘Genious!’ Fitz beamed. ‘I’ll fix the padlock, Celia, and if you keep the bolts drawn it’s like a bloody fortress. What do you think, Beth? Just until Saturday. We’ll get up at dawn and hitch back in time for your bus. What do you think?’

‘You’ll like Michael and Jenny,’ Celia said, weighing in for Fitz. ‘Jenny’s an old friend of Pete’s — her brother was at school with him. She’s all right.’

‘Go on.’ Fitz squeezed my hand. ‘Say yes.’

‘Okay.’ I smiled at him, wiping a crumb of buttery toast off his chin. ‘Yes.’

Fitz made a phone-call to Michael and Jenny, then went to the hardware store and bought a stronger padlock, which he fixed on the back door. Meanwhile Celia and I lugged his stereo and records upstairs, where Celia said to leave them on the little landing outside her door, and that she’d put them in the cupboard when she’d made space inside. She didn’t want me in her room, that much was obvious, despite the thawing out. Finally we shoved a few clothes in a bag and left. It was two o’clock.

*

It’s nine in the evening when we turn onto a narrow, rutted track, jolting through mud and finally pulling up outside a scattering of farm buildings. Lights glow from the house at their centre, which is small and square with two sash windows top and bottom. A woman comes out from a porch on the side and as Fitz walks towards her she squeals and puts her arms out, hugs him tight.

‘Fitz — it’s really you! I couldn’t believe it when Michael said you’d rung!’ She looks over at me as they pull apart. ‘Hi! You must be Beth. Come in, come on in. You look exhausted.’

Once inside we take stock of each other, Jenny and I. I see now that Felicity Kendal was way off the mark; Jenny’s a big woman, and looks as if she could swing an axe or wring a chicken’s neck, no problem. She wouldn’t stand around fluttering her eyelashes, waiting for a man to do it. My father would have called her a handsome woman; her hair is wavy and cut in a short bob that frames a sweet, round face. She wears an Arran sweater and a pair of faded Levi’s. I watch her taking me in, and something in the narrowing of her eyes makes me wonder what she’s thinking. It isn’t done unkindly, though, and soon she has me sitting down and is offering tea, coffee or something stronger.

‘I’ll go for the red wine, if you don’t mind,’ I say as a bottle is waved in front of me.

‘Sounds like you need it,’ she says, and I don’t disagree. ‘I hear there’s been a bit of trouble. And then to come all this way to strangers. Brave girl.’

I like the way she goes straight to the point. She gives me the wine and goes back to stirring something on the little range in the corner of the kitchen. This has obviously just been knocked through to the room behind; builders’ tools litter the bare floorboards at the back of where we sit.

‘This is a nice house. I mean, it looks like it will be, when you’ve done it up.’

‘Thanks,’ she laughs. ‘We’ve got a lot to do.’

‘How long did you live in the squat for?’ I ask, when really what I want to know is how long she’s known Fitz. That hug has got me curious.

‘About a year. I was glad to get out. How about you?’

‘Well, it’s complicated.’ She waits. ‘I don’t exactly live there.’ I glance at Fitz but Michael’s showing him all the work they’ve done. ‘I’ve been there on and off for a few weeks through the summer.’

‘Right.’ There’s a pause. I hear rain on the window; it sounds like seeds being scattered on a wooden floor. ‘Sounds like there’s a story there.’

‘Yes.’ I smile at her. ‘You could say that.’

Jenny looks at the men, who are absorbed in their talk. She winks at me then turns back to the cooking. The kitchen is warm and comforting. I lean back in the chair, drink some wine and close my eyes. The story will come out, soon enough.

*

25
^th
May 2013

On account of his friends being my neighbours, Phil had only ever come to my house after dark. Now, this Saturday morning, I supposed he thought it didn’t matter. When he arrived we embraced, and for a long time he leant against me, not speaking. The weight of him crushed all the breath out of me but I didn’t pull away.

‘I haven’t got long,’ he said, releasing me. ‘I promised Emma I’d pick her up from her dance class.’

We went into my kitchen. I put the kettle on and then turned to tell him straight away, before I lost my nerve, that I’d decided I couldn’t go to Ireland. His face was already crumpled with distress; now I watched as it sagged a little more. He sat on a kitchen stool, his big hands hanging loosely between his knees, staring blankly at the floor as he absorbed what I’d said. I leant against the sink, feeling wretched.

‘It’s what’s been keeping me going,’ he said finally. ‘I just wanted us to be together.’

‘I can’t leave everything, Phil. It’s too much of an unknown, on all fronts.’

He looked up at me. ‘Is this a final decision?’

‘You’re definitely going?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ve burnt my bridges, resigned. I want that job. I need that job. I won’t walk into anything else that easily, will I?’ He drummed his fingers on his knees. ‘Look, Beth, is it really about Sean and your mother or is it you and me?’

I frowned. ‘Phil, we don’t know what you and me is yet. We don’t know what we’d be like together. If you were sticking around here then we’d take things slowly, gradually. It’s the thought of uprooting myself and us relying on each other. It’s—’

‘Risky.’

‘Yes.’

He folded his arms. ‘So we’re going to settle for some sort of long-distance relationship?’

‘For now. At least it will be out in the open.’ The kettle boiled noisily and switched off. ‘How are things, you know, at home?’

‘How do you think?’ He stood up and wandered round the kitchen, picking things up and putting them down. ‘Sue’s gone apeshit.’ He started ticking things off on his fingers. ‘I’ve gone back on my word, I’m selfish, I’m crazy, I’m unrealistic — you name it, I’m it. And the girls are either in tears or ignoring me.’ He shook his head. ‘To be fair, Sue did back me up, about things between us. But I’m still the baddie.’

‘Well, they’re bound to see it like that at first. They’ll come round.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘Phil, have you looked for any other work? If you weren’t going so far away it would be a lot easier for everyone.’

He sighed deeply. ‘You know what it’s like when you’ve only done one thing — no one will consider me for anything else. Not that pays what I’m going to need. Joe’s thrown me a lifeline. I can’t turn him down. The fact that it’s in Ireland is a complication I’ll have to get over, we’ll all have to get over.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, spooning coffee into mugs. I was thinking I’d rather have a gin, but it was only ten in the morning. ‘It’s a mess.’

‘Of course it’s a mess. It was never going to be anything else. And Sue, I don’t know what she expected — did she really think I could carry on pretending for another five years?’

‘But you said she seemed unhappy. You thought she’d welcome some sort of decision.’

He shrugged, sat back down. ‘I must have got that wrong.’

Pouring water and milk, I thought, You wouldn’t get something so wrong. What exactly was Sue unhappy about? I took the coffee over and sat on the stool next to him while he went over everything that had happened, everything that had been said in the last few days; it was all as predictably painful as I’d imagined. When he’d finished speaking there was a question burning a hole in my brain.

‘Would you have still gone?’

‘Huh?’

‘Would you have still gone to Ireland? If you hadn’t met me. Would you have left Sue now, if it wasn’t for me?’

He rubbed one hand over his face and stared at me. ‘How can I answer that? I can’t answer that. Joe may never have offered me the job if I hadn’t sounded desperate last time I talked to him. But if it hadn’t been you, who knows? It might have been someone else.’ He blinked. ‘Sorry, that was a bit brutal.’

He drained his coffee and stood to put the mug in the sink, then stared out of the window for a while. His back looked rigid; I watched him ease his shoulders up and down, rolling his head from one side to another. He turned to face me. ‘How was last week in London?’

For a moment I was tempted to tell him all about Alex, and Celia, but it was too much and too complicated for the short time we had left. I’d have had to make a decision too, whether or not to mention Fitz; I wouldn’t want Phil to think that meeting Fitz had anything to do with my decision about Ireland. But then if I said nothing it would carry the resonance of a guilty secret. I told myself I’d go over it all some other time.

‘Fine, no problems,’ I told him.

‘Only me.’

‘Yeah, but I can live with that.’ I got a smile.

He came over, nuzzled his lips into my neck. ‘Pity we haven’t got longer,’ he muttered, looking over my shoulder at his watch. ‘It’s time I wasn’t here.’

At the door he hung back and then all in a rush said that Sue had asked him to leave the house, told him it didn’t feel right any more if he was with someone else. ‘I’ve got to find somewhere to live until I go to Ireland.’

He was looking at me hopefully, one of his big puppy-dog looks.

‘Phil, I can’t. Sean’s home for the holidays soon. He doesn’t know anything — it would be a bit of a leap to make, from nothing to you living here. And my mother too—’

‘So I’m to be hidden away?’

‘No, of course not. I want them to meet you but just…one step at a time, you know?’

He frowned. ‘You sure?’

‘What about a friend?’

‘No. It’s okay. I can go to my parents. I suppose that’s better — Lauren and Emma can come round there. I just thought…’

‘Go,’ I said gently, reaching past him to turn the latch. ‘Don’t be late for Emma.’

After he’d gone I sat on the bottom step of the stairs and gazed vacantly at the door, until eventually, as if to underline the reasons I gave for not going to Ireland, I decided it was time to give my family some attention. First I phoned Sean, who’d been partying hard since exams finished.

‘You’re still alive, then,’ I said. ‘Not pickled in alcohol yet?’