Letting You Go. Anouska Knight

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ father, and Finn in his mournful silence, as if those few cataclysmic moments had soldered them all together forevermore.

      Finn had tried so hard, but Ted was never going to see it.

      Alex shuddered at the recollection of that Christmas. That first Christmas after. He didn’t know what he was doing, it was the drink, not your father, Blythe had tried to say evenly as she’d gathered up sticky shards of Granny Ros’s Tutbury crystal bowl from the garden path. That was the last time Alex had seen Finn or Susannah anywhere near the house. It was also the last Christmas Alex had seen her dad anywhere near a drink, and the start of all that prickly quiet between them. Thick grey silences wedged between all the safe things they still managed to talk about, like ice forming between rocks, threatening to shatter them both.

      A heavy grogginess was starting to filter in behind Alex’s eyes. She tried to keep them focused on the road ahead. Dad would never say it, that this new catastrophe was most likely a consequence of Blythe having to wish Dill a happy birthday down at St Cuthbert’s, but it would be there, in one of those silences where the rest of Alex’s failings resided.

      A flash of black came up on Alex’s right side. Some sleek four-by-four sped aggressively around her. She let them pass like one of the more able swimmers back at the leisure centre, as if she had any choice. Alex checked her rear view for any more surprises. She was nearly home. Get it together, Alex. Mum needs you on the ball.

      Nope, she would not think about Finn’s return any more. It wasn’t even her place. Mum was all that mattered. She would get there and find out her part to play. She would get her mum’s things together, help her wash and dress if needs be, grocery shop, cook for them, tidy the house. She’d only be back, what, a day or two? There were a hundred ways to pass a couple of days. All she had to do was help Blythe get back on her feet, and keep as best she could out from under her father’s. Simple. Everything was going to be fine, Alex smiled. It wasn’t like her Mum ever even got ill. Give it a week max and Blythe would show them all, this was just a blip in an otherwise blemish-free record of health. A momentary stumble. Wasn’t she due one after all these years? All these birthdays? Alex gripped the steering wheel a little more assuredly. Her mum would soon be back on her feet, and then Jem could get back to London and Dad would be back busting a gut keeping the garage going and Alex could just get back out of everyone’s way and they could all breathe again.

      A particularly plucky yawn suddenly took hold and Alex gave in to it wholeheartedly. She sat up a little higher in her seat and began watching the familiar landscape of her youth tumble past the windows of her battered old Nissan.

       Welcome to Eilidh Falls!

      The sign had changed; for the benefit of the tourists, no doubt. Beneath the salutation, an image carved into the wood of a Viking longship under a hail of arrows fired from the banks of the Old Girl. As soon as Alex rolled past that image, the illusion that any amount of time or distance could ever really make a difference to her dad quickly evaporated.

CHAPTER 5

      It hadn’t been a nightmare exactly, Jem decided. More of a troubled sleep kind of thing, like in her teens. A sort of half-hearted insomnia. But definitely not a nightmare. Nightmares featured monsters and fear and peril, not the constant dull weight of words left unsaid.

      Jem fidgeted in her old bed trying to get comfortable. She never slept well in her parents’ house any more, she realised. Not since those hideous years in high school when the late-night anxieties had first kicked in. It wasn’t easy sleeping on a lie every night, notching up the days she was keeping them all in the dark. Maybe her mum was right, the therapy might’ve helped Jem if she’d stuck with it, but it had seemed so OTT at the time.

      ‘Jem! It’s 3am!’ she remembered her mum rasping from the kitchen doorway, eyes blinking and vacant after catching Jem fixing a peanut butter sandwich for the third night in a row. ‘Is it nightmares, sweetheart? Or is there something else that’s bothering you? You haven’t been yourself lately, Jem. If you’re having nightmares it might help if you talk about them.’

      ‘I’m OK, Mum.’ Jem had reassured. ‘I only have nightmares in the run up to maths tests, honest.’ She hadn’t mentioned those long school trips stuck with Carrie Logan and the other bimbos. Or the eve of Eilidh High’s end of year discos when Jackson Cox was always expecting a slow dance with Jem and, rumour had it, a proper good snog.

      Jem lay awake in bed remembering how she had tried to play it all down to her mother. To allay the worry she had seen in the tiny furrows on Blythe’s faintly freckled forehead.

      ‘It’s not healthy for a fifteen year old girl to be sneaking around in the dark every night.’

      ‘I’m doing peanut butter, Mum, not cocaine,’ Jem had tried, but it didn’t matter. Blythe wouldn’t have it. Alex had buggered off to uni and that had left Jem alone under the spotlight. By the time she’d crawled out of bed the next morning her mum had already made the appointment.

      ‘She says she doesn’t want to see a shrink, Helen, but I’m not taking any chances. You can’t be too careful with … bereavement,’ Jem had overheard her mum confiding in Mrs Fairbanks.

      ‘You can’t be too careful with peanuts, either,’ Helen Fairbanks had replied. Blythe had taken careful to a whole new level after that.

      Jem stared into the nothingness above her childhood bed and inhaled deeply. Her old bedroom still felt like a bolthole – a pocket of refuge in the middle of whatever mess their family was dealing with. She used to spend so much time in here, hiding out. Maybe that was why she’d been so rubbish at sneaking around downstairs back when her mum had kept on busting her in the kitchen – not enough practice.

      Jem rolled over onto her side and looked across her bedroom bathed in twilight. Uh, now she couldn’t stop thinking about peanut butter. Maybe she could she make it down to the kitchen without disturbing Dad across the hall? She was more gentle-footed now. Her legs twitched, ready to give it a shot but then she remembered the new pup down there. The thing got all excited as soon as anyone looked at her, Dad would wake up and it wasn’t fair on him. He’d been awake half the night too, floorboards creaking under his restless pacing.

      Jem’s legs twitched again. She felt a sudden need to get out of the farmhouse and get to Kerring General, just as she had the last time tragedy had hit here. When they’d brought Alex home from the Old Girl, soaking and catatonic. Alex had looked like a little wet ghost, Dill’s bow and arrows clamped in her taut hands. Just one more minute with Dill, it was all Jem had wanted, so she could take it all back, all those awful things she’d said to him that morning and tell him the truth instead. But they all just kept saying the same thing, over and over; it’s too late.

      Jem wriggled down into the bedding and let her thoughts travel back to the hospital. You have to wake up, Mum, she thought anxiously. You have to be OK and you have to wake up. So I can drop my bomb on you.

      Jem squeezed her eyes closed beneath the covers. In the long dark hours of the night, she’d made a vow. No more hiding, no more lies. They had a right to know. She’d tell Mum first, then Alex and Dad. Maybe it would be Dad who would try frogmarching Jem off to Dr Bullock PsychD’s office this time.

      Jem flinched at the recollection of her very brief spell in therapy. Pleading had been a complete waste of breath at the time, obviously. ‘Of course you don’t need to see a shrink, Jem,’ her mum had carefully nudged, ‘but it can’t hurt just to get a few things off your chest, can it? СКАЧАТЬ