Looking for Alex (32 page)

‘I’m at Fitz’s.’

There’s a long pause. ‘Well, I don’t know why I’m surprised. Are you two…?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right…right. So what does that mean?’

‘It means I can’t promise anything. It’s not just about you now.’

‘Yes. I can see that.’ I hear Fitz abruptly scrape the garden chair back then go into the kitchen, and yank the fridge door open. I hear metal against glass and then the clink of a bottle cap as it falls, spinning, onto granite. He thinks it’s Phil. ‘Could I come round?’ Alex says. ‘While you’re there? I don’t think I can do this on my own.’

*

It’s another hour before she gets here, during which time the tension rises as Fitz questions me, asking for clues to what this is about, but I doggedly resist saying anything, only that Alex will tell him what I was going to.

‘Why Alex?’ he keeps asking. ‘What’s Alex got to do with anything?’

When she arrives I say straight away that I’m going for a walk, that she must do this on her own but that I’ll be back. I say I’ll be one hour and leave, with an image of both their faces in my head: Alex, scared and determined, and Fitz — wondering, puzzled.

I walk towards the shops, carefully noting the route I’m taking so I can find my way back. On impulse, two blocks down, I go into a newsagent and buy an ice cream, suddenly craving the creamy taste of chocolate and vanilla. A little further on I discover some gardens, and sit on a bench for a while to eat the ice cream. A woman opposite talks intently into her phone in a language that I can’t place, and three benches down from me a man lies stretched out, dead to the world, his possessions wrapped in a Tesco bag, clutched to his chest. The bag rises and falls as he breathes in and out.

I feel strangely peaceful.

A look at my watch shows that half the time has gone, and that I should head back. Soon I get up and begin to retrace my footsteps exactly. I wonder if Alex will have already left, and whether the stillness in my thoughts is just the calm before the storm.

*

She lets me in. ‘Fitz is out there.’ She nods towards the garden. ‘I’m on my way out.’

Her face is pale. I ask is he all right and she says of course he was shocked, who wouldn’t be? She says, ‘He doesn’t seem to hate me. But maybe that’ll come later.’

‘Have you told Jamie?’ I ask.

‘No, no. I figured this was the right order. That comes next.’ She winces. ‘I am very scared, Beth.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and she puts one hand up.

‘No. Don’t for Christ’s sake take this on as your fault too.’

Suddenly she moves forward and hugs me fiercely, taking me by surprise, so that it’s a moment or two before I can respond enough to tentatively put my arms around her. She is so thin, her shoulder blades protrude under my hands. I think of the last time we hugged, in Jenny’s garden in Wales, and of how far we’ve travelled since then.

‘You need to put some weight on,’ I say, and she sort of laughs, a gasp of breath. She pulls back.

‘Do
you
hate me, Beth?’ No, I say, I couldn’t. ‘But you hate what I’ve done?’

I frown, shake my head. ‘I haven’t got room for all that. I’m just living my own life, and actually it’s nothing to do with yours. Wasn’t,’ I correct myself. ‘Look, Alex, we’ll talk again. Okay?’

She nods, and hooks her bag over her shoulder. She walks to the front door, opens it, then turns.

‘You know, I always hoped that someone would notice.’ I’m puzzled: notice what, exactly? ‘I don’t mean you, Beth, you were just a kid yourself. But when bad things are happening you hope that some adult will notice and say something, and when they don’t you think it must be your fault. And you start to feel guilty and ashamed. You think it must be you that’s bad and this is how you deserve to be treated. It was a long time before I worked out I hadn’t deserved it at all.’

She leaves quickly, before I can reply.

*

Fitz looks up at me, smiles thinly. He’s clutching a glass of whisky; the bottle sits on the table. He looks kind of shell-shocked; when he speaks the whisky has thickened his accent. ‘You planned to tell me?’ I nod. ‘That would have been a brave thing to do.’

‘Brave, or foolish,’ I say, coming to sit opposite him.

‘I didn’t know, Beth. I didn’t have a clue. Alex said you thought we were hiding it from you.’

‘I know. It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’m convinced.’

‘I can’t take it in, you know? It’s unreal. I can’t take it in.’

‘No. I can see that,’ I say.

‘And what do I do now?’ He shrugs. ‘Well, I suppose it’s not up to me. He may not want to know. I mean, he has a dad, doesn’t he?’

There are tears in his eyes and he squeezes them away with the fingers and thumb of one hand.

‘Just take it one step at a time, Fitz. That’s all you can do.’

He reaches for the bottle and tops up the whisky, offers me the glass. ‘Want some?’

I take it, sip it, feel it burn my throat and chest. ‘Fitz, I know we’ve both fucked up before…’ he remembers his own words, and a glimmer of a smile crosses his face ‘…but I don’t care. We’ll make this work.’ I raise the glass. ‘Here’s to us.’

I drink, then hand him the whisky.

He drains it. ‘To us.’