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Jem reached for the lift button then stopped suddenly, as if something had just short-circuited in her head. She placed her hand flatly against the wall and held herself there.
‘She has to be OK, Alex,’ Jem said quietly. ‘I’m not ready for her not to be around yet.’
Alex hung back. She swallowed her own thoughts and tried for upbeat, being the big sister. ‘You think Mum’s gonna check out before she’s seen one of us walk down the aisle, Jem? Unlikely.’ Blythe had made endless references to the great altar race over the years. ‘Course she’ll be OK. Like you said, tough as Dad’s old boots.’ But Alex felt as if someone had just kicked her in the neck with one.
A cycle of what ifs began circuiting Alex’s head. What if she’d have come home this weekend, just for once? What if she’d have been with Blythe in the churchyard? What if that could have made the difference?
Alex stopped herself. There was only one what if that could’ve ever made the difference and they all knew it.
What if I hadn’t followed Finn into the bushes?
CHAPTER 10 (#ulink_31af6141-067f-5ea8-b9e5-afaecb3235bc)
The Acute Assessment Unit was quiet. No drama. No urgency. Jem announced herself at the intercom. The doors onto the AAU opened. Alex followed quietly as Jem gave the nurses stationed at the central desk a salutatory smile and headed for the second side room on the left. Their roles were already set – Jem, the daughter who knew her way around, what to do, where to go – and Alex, the bumbling visitor.
Alex rubbed at the back of her neck. It was impossible not to feel anxious at what lay on the other side of the door in front of them. This awful ominous build up smacked of one of the games she’d watched last night on Takeshi’s Castle, the maze game with its skittish contestants where the only difference between salvation and some unknown horror was a couple of inches of plywood. And what’s behind door number two? A scary Japanese monster? An emotionally estranged father? An unrecognisable mother.
Alex eyed the door as Jem reached to push on it and felt an unpleasant lightness in her stomach. She could have taken a running jump, like the nervy lunatics on Takeshi, but Jem was already a confident step ahead, silently slipping through the door.
The smell was subtle as it hit. Alex shuffled quietly across the threshold, the scent as familiar as a favourite winter coat. She readied herself. She always readied herself.
‘Hello, Dad.’
Ted was standing, grey and monolithic, beside the only chair in the room. Alex lunged clumsily at him for their obligatory kiss. Ted turned from where he’d been watching her mum sleeping to receive Alex’s kiss. They bumped jaws awkwardly. His skin felt rough, bristly with the greying beard that wasn’t hanging onto the last of its blond quite as well as the rest of his hair. Alex gave him his personal space back and tried to remember the last time they’d made physical contact for anything other than this awkward hello–goodbye ritual of theirs. The last time she’d hung onto his arm or pecked him on the cheek for no particular reason.
‘I spotted her in the car park. She still snores like you, Dad, mouth wide open and everything,’ Jem chirped, filling the void with warmth before anything cooler could creep in there. Ted rewarded her with a lazy smile. Alex wished she could think of something to say of equal worth. Nothing came. She shuffled back to the bottom of her mum’s bed, away from that distinctly subtle cocktail of her father’s – coffee, morning tobacco, the last engine oil her mother’s flowery detergent could never quite purge from his overalls.
‘You shouldn’t have driven through the night, Alexandra. Folks fall asleep at the wheel all the time,’ he said softly. He gave Alex a few more seconds’ eye contact before his attention returned to her mum. Alex watched his huge gnarly hands move gently over her mum’s hair. It looked redder against the stark white of the pillow. Jem was right. She didn’t look like their mum. Not sick, at least, but older. Different. Fallible.
‘Is she …?’ Alex tried past the lump forming in her throat.
‘Your mother’s just sleeping. She’ll be right as rain once she’s had a good sleep, slowed down for five damned minutes.’ He was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, he did this when something was niggling at him and he couldn’t light a cigarette.
Alex looked at the stranger in the bed. She’d never seen her sleeping like that, straight as an ironing board, sheets neatly tucked beneath her arms. It was all over if anything happened to her. Blythe was the thread holding their patchwork family together. It would all unravel without her.
‘Did she like the sunflowers?’ Alex heard her own voice.
Alex saw her dad’s forefinger begin back and forth against his thumb again only with more intent though now, as if trying to eradicate a sharp little irritant that kept finding its way back under his skin. Alex wished she hadn’t asked.
‘I, er … I know purple is mum’s favourite colour but the yellow …’ But the yellow was for you, Dad. Please don’t clench your jaw. He did it again. Jem saw it too and tried to pretend she hadn’t, which only made it a hundred times worse. ‘The yellow looked nicer against the thistles I thought …’ Alex was already floundering. Ted winced and she knew then that she’d already said something wrong.
‘Please, can we not talk about goddamn flowers? Just for five minutes? What the hell difference do flowers make anyway? Your mother wouldn’t have even been down there if she wasn’t having to cart the bloody things around.’
Alex felt herself recoil. Had her flowers arrived late? Was that why Blythe had gone back to the churchyard? Was it Alex’s fault Blythe had gone back there alone?
‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean …’ She didn’t know what she meant. Stupid girl.
Ted’s hand opened out where he’d been rigidly holding it at his side. Alex wasn’t sure if it was to placate her or to silently implore her to just. Shut. Up. Why didn’t she ever have anything better to offer them?
Jem caught Alex’s eye. ‘We’ll go and get the coffees, Dad. We don’t want to overwhelm Mum when she wakes up, all cooped up in here together.’
Jem waited for the door to swing closed behind them before she spoke.
‘He’s tired, Alex. He didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘It’s fine, really,’
‘Alex,’ Jem’s hand was already on Alex’s forearm, ‘the flowers, that wasn’t a dig at you back in there. It was my fault, I was doing his head in on the ride here, I was going on about these evening flowers mum got so upset about. He’d already had his fill before we got here this morning. Honestly, Al, it was just bad timing, that’s all. Don’t be so quick to take it to heart, OK? He’s tired.’
Alex tried to relax her shoulders, let some of the tension slope away. ‘What evening flowers?’
‘Pass. That was what I was trying to work out with Dad in the car, until he bit my head off. Something Mum was talking about when Mal first got her into A&E. No-one could really understand what she was saying though.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know about that.’ Alex tried not to feel out of the loop. ‘Did Mal know what they are?’
Jem shrugged. ‘I didn’t think to ask Mal about it, actually. The nurse said it was all part of it, Mum being confused.’ Jem rubbed her eyes as if she hadn’t slept much last night either. ‘Flowers that arrived in the evening, I guess.’
Evening flowers. No-one else had flowers delivered, it had to have been Alex’s bouquet that had arrived late. Great. No wonder Ted was so pissed off with her already.
‘What are you thinking?’ Jem was studying her. Big tired blue eyes glancing out through the breaks in her fringe.
‘Nothing.’ Alex smiled, but it didn’t reach her cheeks. She’d used one of the big flashy online department stores that offered astronomically priced ‘botanical giftware’. Never again. What good were flowers that didn’t arrive until the evening?
‘Come on, Al. I need caffeine.’
Jem began to walk off but Alex could feel she was onto something. ‘They were my flowers, weren’t they? That Mum had to go back for.’
Jem looked puzzled. ‘Yours the ones with no card?’
Alex nodded. She never sent a card.
‘Sunflowers and thistles?’ Alex nodded again. ‘Then I’m sorry, sis, but as much as I know you like to be the bad guy and all, you can’t take this one for the team. I signed for your bouquet after breakfast.’ Jem squeezed Alex’s arm. ‘I don’t know why Mum went back down there alone, Al, but whatever her reason was, it wasn’t your flowers.’ Jem turned on her heels. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’
‘I don’t want to go for coffee, Jem.’ Alex called after her, ‘I want to be here on the ward, when she wakes up.’
‘Me too,’ Jem reassured. ‘There’s a family room just through here. We won’t be far.’ Jem began to edge along the corridor again but Alex stayed glued to the spot. She hadn’t come this far to hide out again. If her dad needed to sound off at someone then she could at least provide that for him.
Jem looked at her expectantly. Alex folded her arms and looked at her own feet like a stubborn child who didn’t want to go to school. ‘What did Malcolm Sinclair say, Jem? What happened in the churchyard? Has Mum been ill this weekend? I need to know what you and Dad know, Jem.’ Alex was already picturing it again. Her mum collapsed in the cemetery overcome with the sadness of another birthday denied to Dillon. The utter needlessness of so many years without him, and not even the luxury of someone to hate for it.
Jem retraced her steps back to Alex and let out a long sigh. Jem was being patient. It was gift she rarely shared with anyone else. She leant against the wall beside Alex.
‘Malcolm had to carry her in. He said Mum was agitated. She was mumbling about these bloody flowers,’ Jem shrugged, ‘The evening flowers! The evening flowers! Something like that. She was still pretty worked up when me and Dad got here.’
‘About flowers? Well, who normally sends flowers for Dill?’
‘Nobody, really. Us, Helen Fairbanks always does. Susannah Finn too.’ Finn’s mum had never stopped being kind to them, even Alex. After everything Finn had put up with because of her.
Finn was there in her head again. ‘Anyone else?’ Alex pressed.
‘Alex, hate to break it to you but I don’t actually have all the answers.’ Jem’s patience was starting to wear off. ‘There probably weren’t any evening flowers, Mum was very confused. What does it matter?’
‘It matters if it’s enough to upset Dad like that. I’ve only been here five minutes and I’ve already annoyed him.’
Jem looked at Alex and sighed again. ‘I’ve already told you, Al. He sounded off at me earlier too. I only asked if he thought we should go back to the church today in case anyone had dropped more flowers off for Dill and they needed tidying. He blew at that, too. He’s worried, and probably shattered. I know he didn’t sleep well, he went for a walk at 5.30 this morning for crying out loud. Probably chain-smoking.’
Alex nodded. That would be the next thing. Their dad was going to get lung cancer off the back of all the worrying he’d had to do. Alex was going to wipe them all out eventually while she was bound to live a long and healthy life with bags of time to think about how she’d set this nasty little trail of dominoes up.
A familiar knot tightened in Alex’s stomach. Her mum’s grief must be unbearable. People didn’t get over the loss of their children; it was a universal truth.
The question fell from Alex’s mouth. ‘What if it wasn’t a stroke?’
‘What do you mean?’
Surely it was their mum’s heart that had finally had enough. ‘Are they sure it wasn’t her heart, Jem?’
‘It was a stroke Alex. Not a heart attack.’
‘But what did Mal see?’
Jem shook her head and huffed. ‘Mal was … a bit sketchy actually. He said Mum looked unwell. I think he saw her in the churchyard and just went over to say hello, I guess.’
‘Did she look upset? Did he think Mum had been crying?’
‘What? No, I don’t think so. Alex, you’re as bad as Dad.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘With the random questions! Dad practically interrogated Mal last night, What have you said to my wife? Are you responsible for this, Sinclair?’ Jem solemnly tucked her hair behind one ear and shook her head. ‘You should’ve heard him. Dad was really horrible to Mal, actually.’
‘Dad thought Malcolm had upset Mum?’
‘Apparently. I tried to tell him. Mal Sinclair couldn’t upset himself. Mal’s just like his dad was.’ Jem had been fond of Mal, once upon a time, and the mayor.
‘Sorry, Jem. I should’ve been here.’ Alex shrank back against the corridor wall.
‘Dad wanted to know what they’d been talking about. Mal said they hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything except the fluttering she was having and …’
‘Fluttering? Again? Jem, why didn’t you say that?’ Alex knew it would be her heart. ‘We need to tell the doctors, before it happens again!’ It was a miracle they hadn’t done her in before now, the fluttery palpitations her mum habitually played down since their sudden onset a decade ago.
One of the nurses at the desk was looking over at them. Jem blew her fringe from her eyes again. ‘I’m going to need coffee if we’re getting into all this, Al. It wasn’t her heart, OK? Will you please listen to me? If the fluttering business had bothered her that much, she’d have seen somebody about it before now.’
‘Do you really believe that, Jem?’
Blythe liked to make light of it. It was like a butterfly trapped in ajar that was all. You didn’t trouble the doctor over a butterfly heart. A stampeding herd of wildebeest in there, fair enough, but not butterflies.
Jem smiled sweetly down the corridor towards the nurses’ station. Alex slumped back against the wall next to her mother’s room. Whatever it was that was in her mother’s heart, wildebeest or butterflies, Alex knew why they were in there. Alex was staring at her shoes again when Jem gently kicked her own foot against Alex’s.
‘It was a stroke, Alex. Nothing anyone could’ve foreseen. Nothing anyone else is responsible for. Let it go.’
The door into Blythe’s room swept open. He might’ve looked older, but Ted was still a mountain of a man, tall and broad and handsome, as fathers should be.
Alex stood a little straighter. Her dad came to stand in front of her and scratched softly at the flop of grey-blond hair over his eyes.
‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you just now, Alex. I’m just a, er, a little …’ Alex watched him try to choose his words.
‘It’s OK, Dad.’
Ted managed a brief smile. Jem’s eyes bounced back and forth as if she were spectating at Wimbledon.
‘I didn’t think you’d wait to drive up here to your mother, you should’ve come to the house,’ he said. ‘I waited for you on the porch.’ He would’ve waited there longer for her too, had he not started thinking the same old thoughts, tying himself in knots until he’d found himself stalking angrily down to St Cuthbert’s.
‘It was early. I didn’t know if you’d be awake …’ But she knew it was a rubbish lie before she told it.
‘You’re my daughter. And it’s never too early in the day to see your child arrive safely home, Alexandra.’
CHAPTER 11 (#ulink_1e907f52-32ea-5f50-8942-5f791384cfd5)
‘Jem? Are you hungry yet? I think we should wait until Dad gets home. Shall one of us call him?’
Alex’s voice bounced up through the house as she sniffed the contents of the heavy casserole dish on the kitchen table. How Helen Fairbanks had managed to hoist all that cast iron and lamb hotpot up to the house and leave it on the porch deck without putting her back out was an enigma, but Mrs Fairbanks was one of those practical can-do women, cut from the same old-school cloth as Blythe and Susannah Finn. ‘Jem?’ Alex yelled again. Jem had regressed back to her early teens since they’d got back to the house. She’d been upstairs on the other side of a closed bedroom door while Alex had skulked around the kitchen in quiet contemplation. Someone had to keep the new puppy from chewing or piddling on anything else and Jem still seemed immune to all things cute and cuddly. Alex meandered back out from the hall. Their parents’ kitchen was still homely and vast as any of the other farmhouse kitchens along the track, it still smelled of the dried lavender Blythe had tied to the beams and the ashes in the Aga, despite the new addition to the household peeing with excitement every time Alex walked into the room.
Alex’s stomach growled. Helen Fairbanks’ mercy meals were legendary. Over by the log basket a bundle of fur the colour of wheat fields heard the noises of Alex’s gastric processes and began wagging herself to death again. The pup waddled excitedly towards Alex, a wet trail in her wake. ‘Agh, not again!’ Alex groaned. ‘You’re like a tap … dog.’ The dog needed a name. Alex seemed to be the object of its unwavering affection and if they were going to have this intimate relationship of ankle-licking and wee-clearing every time the thing set eyes on her, the dog definitely needed a name.
Alex listened to the bump bump bump of Jem finally plodding down the wooden stairs. Jem bobbed lethargically back into the kitchen, her hair tied up now like the renegade ballerina she’d briefly been in her childhood. Alex had only just shook her own out, her scalp was still throbbing from having had its hair follicles pulled back too vigorously, too carelessly in the rush to make the drive up here.
‘You cut your hair,’ Jem observed, reaching for the auburn tendrils sitting against Alex’s shoulders. Alex finished placing a knife and fork aside the last of the three placemats their mum had already set out for Jem’s weekend stay.
‘Yeah. Think I should’ve just hacked the lot off though. I have to keep it tied back all the time at work, so …’ Not to mention the swimming issue. It only took a few strands to break free and start floating around her face to freak her out completely.
‘Looks nice, anyway. You look like Mum did, in that photo she used to have of her and Dad.’ Alex frowned. ‘At the mayor’s annual dinner.’
Alex fished for the memory. ‘Oh, yeah. The one with Mayor Sinclair letting Dad wear his gold BA Baracas chains. I haven’t seen that picture for years.’ She smiled. It was one of her dad’s favourites. He used to tell everyone how he’d fallen in love with their mum all over again that night, she looked so beautiful. Like Grace Kelly. Grandma Ros had insisted that picture be kept in the hallway where visitors would definitely see it, having your photo taken with the mayor and his wife was a badge of honour too shiny to be left in a back room.
Jem moved lethargically over to her chair. Her mood seemed to have been on a steady decline since their debate on who should to call Mal for a proper chat about what had happened last night. Alex was probably just over-scrutinising again. Finn had accused her of that the night he’d showed up at her university digs, of looking for a problem until she found one.
An image of Finn, chest heaving with the rigours of his morning run poked Alex in her mind’s eye again. This morning was a fluke, it didn’t mean they would keep bumping into each other, not necessarily. Even if they did, a simple hello would suffice. Just a nice, polite hello, like old friends. They weren’t kids any more, were they?
‘Neither have I actually.’
‘What?’
‘Seen that photo of Mum and Dad and the Sinclairs. Can’t say I miss not seeing Louisa’s sour face every time I come into the house though,’ Jem said. ‘You know, she called me a thief once. Said I’d stolen one of the ornaments from Sinclair Heights. Like I’d want anything out of the mayoral mansion.’
Mal hadn’t grown up in a mansion, but he’d been the most well kitted-out kid Alex and Jem had ever played with. Ted had said they were the perks of being an only child. Mal had told them over toasted marshmallows one night that his dad really wanted Mal to have a brother but Louisa said no because she detested being fat.
‘Ornaments?’
‘Yeah, that miniature Viking ship, of Dill’s remember? I was showing it to Mal, he had one similar and was trying to tell me how valuable his was because it had these markings on the bottom.’ Jem’s face twisted as she recalled the tale. ‘Then Louisa saw me showing Dill’s ship to Mal and freaked. Said I was trying to steal it, that it belonged to a set of theirs Malcolm’s father keeps in his private study.’ Jem imitated Louisa’s acerbic voice. ‘She told me it was about time I stopped acting like a little thug and how coming from a family with no money was no excuse.’
