Authors: Anouska Knight
‘S
o it’s my guess that Mrs Parsons has been walking herself and those little girls ragged, every day, just so she they wouldn’t be at the house if the doorstep lender turned up.’ Mal had managed to talk nearly the whole time he’d been at their house without making eye contact with Alex.
Doorstep lender.
Calling a loan shark a doorstep lender was like calling a vandalised car a freebie customisation job.
‘Poor woman. I don’t know how she’s been coping.’ Alex chewed a little at the inside of her lip. Emma had been so distressed, after Finn had levelled the guy. Finn; the violence-doesn’t-solve-anything turner of cheeks. Alex let him loop around her mind a few more times. Finn had travelled halfway around the world and had returned home an efficient bad guy-busting machine. He hadn’t even hesitated. It hadn’t helped Emma Parsons much though. She was petrified now about the next time the unsavoury Mr Mason visited, which would be soon, he’d promised, as he’d scurried off back to his four-by-four. He was going to add the cost of his suit to Emma’s tally, the interest
rate for which was currently running somewhere around the 65,000% APR mark, Mal said.
‘How can they do it? To a woman with two little girls?’ Alex went on.
‘Alex, they actively target women with very young children, you know that’s how it works. They intimidate them, threaten them, some of the bastards offer to run them out of the area so they can
work
it off if they need to. I’ve heard of these animals meeting kids outside schools and walking them home, just to let their mum’s know that they have access to their children. They’re scum.’
Access to their kids? Over loans started at £100 or so? What, in case warnings that included breaking people’s sternums weren’t explicit enough?
‘What about her husband?’
‘She won’t say whether our friend Mr Mason was involved in Graham’s accident or not. Why would she? She’s alone with two little girls. It’s not like these people work alone, is it?’
‘Well, hopefully she’ll get some sleep now that she’s staying at the Longhouse.’ Finn had insisted on taking Emma and her girls back to his mum’s place. Susannah had swung into action like a triage nurse in the field. Alex had done her best to blend into the background while Susannah had shown Emma to one of the guest rooms and Finn had gotten Poppy a bowl of ice cream and sprinkles. Alex had tried to shuffle off home with minimal fuss, but then Finn had given her a book on ancient Minoan ceramics as she was leaving.
‘I saw this in a galleria in Crete. I knew you’d appreciate it, Foster. I had a feeling I might get a chance to give it to you one day.’ Crete had been one of Finn’s stops on his way
out
of Europe. He must have carried it halfway around the word for her. ‘That book has more air miles under its belt than a coconut,’ Finn’s mum had told her.
‘It’s not a long-term solution though is it? Mrs Parsons needs to do something about that debt, and Susannah’s not going to be able to keep her free of charge next week when her paying guests arrive for Viking Fest.’
‘I suppose not,’ Alex said, remembering what that vile man had done to Poppy’s doll’s house.
Bastard.
‘Are you sure I can’t get you a cup of tea or something, Mal? Must be a long day for you.’
‘No, thanks, Alex. I’ve got to get back, Millie’s cooked and er … Alfie’s lost a tooth and won’t go to sleep until I’ve seen how clean it is for the tooth fairy,’ Mal said, rubbing a hand over the bottom of his new beard.
Despite the funky beard, Mal still had the same soft way about him he had when they’d played together on the rope swing as children. He couldn’t have upset Jem the other night, could he? They’d already agreed that point, Mal Sinclair couldn’t upset himself.
‘Your mother-in-law’s been showing off her photos of Alfie to my mum.’ Alex smiled.
Mal laughed under his breath and nodded to himself. ‘Helen’s pretty enthusiastic.’
‘She’s been great with my mum,’ said Alex. ‘Thanks
again for what you did for her, Mal. We really appreciate you helping her like you did.’ Mal smiled wearily. As if being thanked tired him in some way.
‘I’d better get motoring. Actually, Alex, I was wondering … is Jem home? I just wanted to have a quick word if she’s around.’ Mal was garbling anxiously again. It made Alex feel a little anxious too.
Alex still had to face the Jem bullet. Something was going on with her and after the unpleasant events of the evening Alex hadn’t had a chance to talk to her yet. Alex had a feeling she might be about to discover all the ways in which she’d failed Jem as a sister.
‘Sure, Mal. I’ll just call her down.’
The puppy immediately scrambled to her feet to follow Alex out into the hallway.
‘Jem?’ A few footsteps then a door opened somewhere up on the landing. Jem appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Mal’s leaving now. He wanted to speak to you for a second first.’
Jem came quietly halfway down the stairs. ‘Where is he?’
‘Lounge. You want a cup of tea?’
Jem nodded, it was the first flicker of something with soft edges since yesterday. Alex walked into the kitchen quickly shadowed by the puppy. She filled the kettle over her mother’s large butler’s sink and set it to boil. The front door rattled and Alex watched Mal and Jem wander down the side path.
‘Looks like we’re out of tea bags, dog,’ Alex mused.
Ah
no, hang on …
her mother always kept a stash in the pantry. Alex crossed the kitchen and opened the doors into her mother’s walk-in. There was a window in here letting a stream of dusty evening light flood into her mother’s food store. The window was small, looking out onto the east side of the house where Mal had parked his police car. It used to give an excellent vantage point during games of hide and seek, or when they’d tormented Jem with Dill’s water guns.
Alex picked a handful of tea bags and glanced out of the tiny window.
‘For old friends, they look miserable hey, dog?’
Jem was looking at her feet a lot. Mal was sitting back against his police car with an intense expression. Mal had just said something Jem didn’t like.
‘What do you reckon they’re talking about, dog?’ The dog was more interested in Blythe’s dried herbs. Alex was going to look away, toddle off to make tea, but Jem had just pushed a hand through her fringe and was resting it now on the back of her neck. Maybe she had another migraine.
Jem started shaking her head, pointing towards the house. No, walking towards the house.
Did Mal just try to stop her?
Alex felt her heart speed up. Was she witnessing something she shouldn’t?
Through the back end of the house, Alex heard their dad’s pickup rumbling up the track. She grabbed at the tea bags and stumbled back out of the pantry. The puppy yipped and skittered out from beneath Alex’s feet.
Alex busied herself arranging teacups and spoons and
listened to Mal’s car pull off down the track. The front door opened.
‘You don’t have to be so frosty with him, Dad. He’s a nice guy.’
‘What’s he hanging around here for? Didn’t the two of you see enough of each other the other night?’
There was a long pause. Alex focused on the box of teabags as if her life depended on it.
‘Why don’t you worry about yourself, Dad? And I’ll worry about me.’ This was new. The yelling had always been around Alex, not Jem.
‘What were you talking about out there? Why’s he sniffing around?’
‘Ask Alex! Mal was here to see her, not me!’ Jem trounced off into the back lounge.
Alex listened to her dad follow Jem down the hallway. ‘So how come I didn’t see him talking to Alex then?’
‘I’m not a child, Dad. I don’t need you to sanction my conversations! I can talk to who I please.’
‘He’s married! Do you think his wife would appreciate the two of you being seen out together, gallivanting all over town? Drawing their own conclusions?’ He wasn’t exactly shouting. Not exactly. But even from in the kitchen Alex could hear a hint of something she didn’t like, rising to the surface. A dormant volcano, rumbling.
Jem must’ve heard it too and seemed to switch tack then. She became light, jovial, flippant, when her mood over the last two days had been anything but. ‘Dad, Mal was only
asking me something
about
Millie. He wanted my opinion on a piece of jewellery he’s thinking on for her, OK? That’s all!’
Jem used to do that when she was little. ‘Mum, I was
only
giving my dinner to Rodolfo because he’s been looking a bit skinny lately, that’s all,’ … ‘Alex, I was
only
in your room to check Dill wasn’t in here, that’s all.’ A little bit of truth to sail a cargo of fibs. Alex hovered with the kettle over the cups. Whatever Jem and Mal were just taking about outside, it wasn’t jewellery.
Alex strained to listen through the house. Their dad changed tack then too. ‘It’s not you I’m worried about, Jem. I know you wouldn’t …’
What? What did he know she wouldn’t do? Alex set the kettle back down and waited for her dad’s muffled voice. ‘I just don’t want the wrong people hanging around you girls. No good will come of it.’
A
lex sat in her truck and listened to the last dying ticks and hums of her engine. The late afternoon sun was filtering its way through the boughs of the old birch tree where their old rope swing still hung, illuminating pockets of the garden like stage lights. Something metallic, tinfoil, was catching the light where it fell on the front porch.
I guess that means I’m not cooking tonight then
, thought Alex. Just what she needed, more time to kill by herself. A pattern had begun to emerge over the last three days. Alex went to the hospital. Ted went to work. Alex went home. Ted went to the hospital. Alex offered to cook for Jem and Ted. Jem confined herself to her bedroom with a headache. Ted ate at The Cavern. Alex ate alone. All these years Alex had thought she needed to excommunicate from the Falls, when actually she could’ve stayed right here and kept her distance from everyone just swell.
Alex left her truck, ignored the stone path and cut straight across the lawn to the front porch. She peeled back
the foil. ‘Quiche. And still warm.’ Her stomach growled. It was a step up from the jar of Jem’s peanut butter she’d planned to attack later. There was a note with the food.
Alex
,
I don’t have anything else to thank you with, but thank you.
Emma.
‘You didn’t need to do that, Emma.’ Alex imagined Emma sitting with the girls at the long table Susannah’s paying guests had breakfast at, hopefully eating piles of delicious warm quiche right at that very moment while Susannah clucked around them shovelling more food onto their plates.
Alex picked up the quiche and let herself into the house, the puppy ready to accost her before she’d even got through the door. ‘Hey, puppy dog. You’re fast becoming my best friend around here.’
Alex should have dished a few thank-yous out today too. She’d gotten as far as looping the high street twice looking for a parking spot. She’d been just about to jump out and quickly pop into the hardware shop but then her dad had driven into the garage yard and Alex had decided that actually, she was a bit pushed for time and it probably wasn’t fair taking up that parking space for just a few minutes when someone might need it for the day.
So she hadn’t managed to get to speak to Finn after all.
Alex wandered into the kitchen and cut herself a sliver of Emma’s quiche. She leant over the sink and ate it.
Good quiche, Emma … bloody hell, that’s good.
She cut another slice and ate that too. The puppy watched every morsel as it went. Alex broke off a clump of pastry and dropped it for her.
‘If it wasn’t just us here all the time, we could put it to a vote, pick a name for you.’ That’s how it used to be done, when they were little. Blythe came up with a shortlist, and the vote swung it. If Alex knew where her mother’s opera records were kept nowadays, she could have a quick look through for inspiration. They couldn’t be far. When they were kids a weekend hadn’t gone by where Maria Callas hadn’t resonated through the floorboards into Alex’s bedroom. Dill would wander in to Alex’s room, groggy-faced and floppy-bodied, complaining ‘the woman with the supersonic singing voice spoiled my lie in,
again
’
.
Norma
had been her mum’s favourite.
The puppy begged for more food. Alex broke another piece of quiche for her.
‘
Norma
?’ Alex said it aloud to see how it fitted. ‘I like it.’ It was an obvious choice, really. Blythe had tried to explain the gist of the opera to them several times. Some low down dirty chap was supposed to love Norma, the mother of his children, but then decided he preferred her friend
instead. Betrayal, heartbreak, children caught up in the fallout.
‘It’s culture, girls,’ Blythe had said.
‘Sounds more like
Jerry Springer
to me,’ Jem had replied. ‘The same’s probably happening in most households in the Falls, Mum.’
Alex wrapped the quiche up before she ate any more and took this morning’s laundry upstairs, Norma following her up. In the far corner of her parents’ room, a pile of her dad’s overalls sat abandoned where he’d come home tired from work and hospital visits and not eating properly. Alex was trying to ignore her growing paranoia, but everyone seemed to be avoiding her, except Norma.
Alex set the laundry down on her mum’s bed. Norma looked up at the doorway just before Alex heard the front door open downstairs.
‘Jem?’ Alex called across the landing.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’ Jem had managed to avoid being alone with Alex since their near-phone conversation yesterday, before Alex’s battery had cut out. ‘Where have you been all day? I thought you might’ve come down to the hospital.’ Alex tried for upbeat but she’d heard an accusation in her own voice.
Jem trudged up the stairs and appeared in their parents’ bedroom doorway.
‘Nowhere. Around. I think I have a swollen glands or
something, didn’t want Mum to catch it.’ Alex felt a tiny squeeze of suspicion in her chest.
‘I think maybe Mum’s got bigger concerns than a swollen gland, Jem. I’m sure she’d prefer that to not seeing you right now.’ Alex felt something tighten in her stomach. They hadn’t been tetchy around each other since they were children.
Jem set a hand against the doorframe and shook her fringe from her eyes. ‘Don’t lecture me, Alex, OK?’
She wasn’t lecturing her. Jem was being unfair. Alex folded her arms around her dad’s mucky blue overalls. ‘I’m not lecturing you, Jem. If I was lecturing you, I might say something like,
Do you realise, Jem, that Mum’s in hospital and you haven’t bothered to see her for three days now.’
Blythe hadn’t even asked where Jem was today. It was as if she expected her to stay away.
‘You’re right, Alex. What a crap daughter. I mean,
thank God
Mum’s got you to visit every,’ Jem put a scornful finger to her mouth and tapped her lip, ‘sorry,
how
many years do you leave between visits?’
Alex tensed. It didn’t even constitute a fight, Jem had just wiped the floor with her on her first swing. Knockout punch.
Jem looked suddenly lost. As if she didn’t really know how she’d landed such an effective blow either. Alex swallowed. Jem lay her head back against her doorframe. ‘I’m sorry, Al. I’m just … working a few things out.’
Alex had seen that already. Through the pantry window.
‘Like what, Jem. What’s going on?’
Jem looked at the floor. ‘Stuff. Just … stuff.’
The room fell silent for a few moments. That was Jem and their mum then now, going through
stuff
after spending time with Mal Sinclair.
Just ask, Alex. Ask what’s going on with Mal.
Alex took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak.
‘How’s Mum, Alex? I know I should have shown my face but …’
Jem was getting dark circles beneath her eyes. Was she sick? Alex’s questions about Mal disintegrated. ‘I’m not sure, Jem.’
‘What do you mean?’
Alex didn’t know what she meant exactly.
‘Nothing, really. I don’t know, yesterday she just seemed … really good, but today she was just kind of quiet. Disinterested. She just needs to take it easy I guess, like Dad said.’
‘Dad needs to take it easy. He has too much on his shoulders. Where is he, at the hospital I suppose?’ There was something defensive in Jem’s tone again.
‘Think so.’
Jem tapped one heel against the toe of her other foot.
‘So you’ve made up then. You and Dad.’
‘What do you mean? We never fell out.’ No, Ted had just grilled her on Mal’s reasons for hanging around the farmhouse. Jem clicked. ‘He’s entitled to ask why there’s a policeman in our house, Alex. Give him a break, would
you? Dad’s not the bad guy everyone makes him out to be, Alex.’
‘I don’t think he’s the bad guy, Jem.’ How could she? Fathers had disowned daughters for far less than Alex had put him through.
‘I just don’t think you know where he’s coming from sometimes. I guess I didn’t either. But I think we should cut him a bit of slack at the moment. I know he comes across hard, but he’s only looking out for us, Alex. And for Mum.’ Jem’s voice wobbled. ‘He’d be lost without her.’
Jem’s shoulders began to bob up and down. She pinched her nose to hold the sounds in.
‘Hey, Jem. Don’t get upset.’ Alex moved around the bed but Jem had straightened up, the same way she had after Robbie Rushton knocked her off her bike. She didn’t need consoling. Alex stopped a few feet from her.
‘They’d be lost without each other, Jem. But Mum’s not going anywhere,’ Alex said firmly.
Jem took a deep breath. ‘There are different ways to lose a person though, Alex.’
Jem turned and disappeared through the doorway. Alex followed her onto the landing.
Lose her mum? How else was their dad going to lose Blythe? ‘Mum’s not losing her mind, Jem, if that’s what you’re worrying about?’
‘Look, I’m just talking nonsense. I have a headache. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Jem’s door was closing before Alex said anything else.
Alex walked back into her parents’ bedroom. She shook out her dad’s overalls and checked the pockets before putting them into the laundry basket. There was nothing worse than picking spun-dry tissues out of piles of damp washing. Alex dug into the zipped pocket from the front breast. She pulled what looked like a business card out and held it up in front of her. There was a picture of a potted tree on there.
The Bay Tree Floral Studio, Kerring.
Alex turned the florist’s card over in her hand.
Blythe
,
What a stroke of bad luck.
I do hope Ted’s taking good care of you
,
like a good husband should.
Louisa