Looking for Alex

by Marian Dillon

  Dan took a drink. He set it down, glanced at me and said, ‘Is that, no way, or just, there wasn’t any way?’

  I wiped moisture slowly off the side of the glass.

  ‘I was in Sheffield, he was in London — or so I thought. And my father would have killed him.’

  ‘Right. I see your point.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Fitz’s love-life was always complicated. Either that or non-existent. Like now. I mean, he couldn’t just meet someone from the next borough. He has to choose a woman who lives in Cornwall.’

  Before I could ask any more he got a text, opened it and replied in a matter of seconds, then raked his hands through straw-coloured hair and smiled. I saw his mouth was like Fitz’s, how it curved up more at one side. Our glasses were nearly empty and I knew if I had another I’d feel very slightly drunk, but we’d hardly started on the past. Quickly I calculated that tomorrow would be an easier day for me as I’d be joined by Linda, who would do most of the delivery. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to turn up with a hangover. Then again, why go back to an empty hotel room when I could talk nostalgia with Dan?

  ‘Another drink?’ I asked. Dan looked at his watch. ‘Do you have to go?’

  ‘No. My partner’s out tonight. He’s got some work thing on.’ He saw me digest this new piece of information about him. ‘Not that we live in each other’s pockets. So…yes, to another drink. And then, if you want to eat I know a good Italian near here.’

  ‘Done,’ I said, and headed for the bar. At the entrance I glanced over to where Dan sat, his back turned, and a thrill coiled through me, a tingling current of energy that ended somewhere in my shoulders as a tight, cold shiver.

  Dan, and Fitz, here in London, all this time.

  *

  11th July 1977

  ‘You see, Beth, my problem is I’m finding it hard to see this as anything unusual. A little protest is my guess.’ Burton fixes his bleary eyes on mine as my fifth-form tutor used to when he thought I’d got something to hide. I swallow, blink. ‘Do you know what I mean, Beth?’

  I look over at my headteacher. Mr Cue is leaning against the window, his bum perched on the sill, hands in pockets. He raises his eyebrows until they form a question mark.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I answer, grudgingly. ‘I suppose you mean girls run away from home all the time.’

  ‘Exactly, exactly, Beth.’

  My instinctive dislike of the policeman deepens. ‘Does that mean you don’t have to try and find them? What if someone’s got Alex? What if she’s being hurt?’

  The DS gets up from his blue plastic chair that sits facing mine and begins pacing about Mr Cue’s study. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in there on my own — that is without a friend beside me. I notice now how bare it is. Apart from Mr Cue’s heavy wooden desk and chair there’s a set of glass-fronted shelves, full of books and folders, some low cupboards, a small table, and two plastic chairs for parents. We pupils are not usually invited to sit.

  DS Burton stops and turns to look at me. ‘The way I’m looking at it, Beth, is like this. Your friend Alex, so I gather, is rather difficult.’ He makes the word difficult sound like an offence. ‘She misses lessons and when she is here she dresses in a way that will get her noticed in the wrong way — all that punk stuff.’

  His eyes travel over me, from head to toe. I fold my arms, suddenly self-conscious of my fledgling punk look: black skin-tight jeans under a Stranglers T-shirt, and oversized Doc Martens that sprout, bulbous, from my legs. The T-shirt is cinched with a wide black belt, accentuating my suddenly blossoming breasts; I notice how DS Burton’s eyes linger. With red cropped hair and thick black eyeliner I’m teetering on the edge of what the school consider acceptable. I glance at Mr Cue, who is now looking at me through narrowed eyes. There’s no uniform in the sixth form but there is a limit past which we are not expected to go, and I’m pretty close to that limit. Alex always strays over it provocatively. She wears tiny, tight skirts and fishnet stockings, clingy tops, extreme shoes and multiple earrings that run like a train track up each ear.

  ‘She’s got a bit of a lip on her, yes?’ Burton looks over at Mr Cue, who confirms this with a nod. ‘Her parents tell me she’s become more and more of a handful at home and the other day you told me she’s taken to hanging out at The Wellington Arms late at night. On her own. Bit of a dive, isn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said she told me she went there once. She’d had a row at home.’

  DS Burton looks at me intently. There’s silence in the room, broken only by the sound of balls on racquets from the tennis courts. The air is warm, liquid.

  ‘Well, all my information tells me that Alex is a bit of a rebel. Are you getting me? It’s almost like, why wouldn’t she run away?’

  I stare down at my hands, neatly folded in my lap. They look demure but the palms are warm and sweaty. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I hear myself say, surprised by my own daring.

  ‘Oh, is it? Well, tell me, then, Beth, why did Alex get on a bus to London exactly two weeks ago today?’

  My head shoots up so fast I feel a sharp pain jab the back of my neck. DS Burton looks faintly gratified at the reaction from both myself and Mr Cue, who pushes sharply away from the window and says, ‘What?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I see the woman constable who’s taking notes throw me a sympathetic look. Burton sits down in Mr Cue’s chair and leans over the desk.

  ‘So you’re telling us the truth, then, Beth. You don’t know any more than we do.’

  I can’t speak, can’t form any thoughts that seem to make sense.

  ‘You know that for certain?’ Mr Cue asks and Burton sticks his chin out, runs one finger round his collar.

  ‘We found out early this morning. One of the drivers saw the article in The Star and came forward, remembered seeing her on his bus. I kept it back, for obvious reasons, and Beth here has just told me what I wanted to know. So, what we now have is a young girl who’s left home of her own free will and without telling anyone where she’s going.’ He glances at me, sees my face, and maybe my despair. He coughs, and his voice changes, morphs into a ‘giving bad news’ version of itself. ‘It does mean, I’m afraid, that there’s not much else we can do. Alex is seventeen, so legally old enough to live by herself, and she’s not done anything under duress. We have to assume that she’s chosen to leave home. She’ll stay on the missing persons list but…’ he shrugs ‘…that’s all.’

  His words jangle uselessly in my head — own free will, she’s chosen to leave home — and the cold chill in my stomach is almost as bad as when I believed something terrible had happened to her.

  *

  For the next few days, I walk around in a daze, telling myself I should be happy, that now I can stop imagining Alex being dragged into a car and unspeakable things happening to her, that there was no random attack, no sudden blow from a hammer. But although I do feel relief — who wouldn’t? — those sickening thoughts seem to have got swapped for ones that are somehow, in an insidious way, worse. I veer between disbelief and shocked hurt, until all I can think is: how could she do this and not tell me?

  My parents, although concerned at how desolate I am, have their own take on things. I see it in their faces and hear it in whispered words. We might have expected something like this; typical of Alex. I even sense a slight relief, once they know she’s not been raped or murdered, that now she’s out of the way I can get on with my studies, get my grades and go to university.

  Only I’m not so sure that’s what I want to do.

  Two letters arrive for me, both big, fat envelopes. One is a prospectus from Leeds University. The other is a brochure from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London. I’ve been expecting the first — my parents are encouraging me to apply there — but not the second, and it causes a row with my mother.

  ‘I thought we agreed that you’d go to university, get your language degree, and then do your acting afterwards.’ She’s ironing, her flushed
face bobbing up and down.

  ‘We didn’t agree,’ I say. ‘It’s just what you and Dad think I should do.’ I’m staring at the cover of the brochure, at students in white masks and black cloaks, wondering why this has been posted to me. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘You need something solid behind you, Beth, so that—’

  ‘Yes, I know, for when I end up as yet another failed actor.’

  ‘Actress,’ she corrects, always the keeper of correct grammar, and clunks the iron down on its stand as she tugs my dad’s shirt into position.

  ‘Actor. Actress is patronising.’

  She tightens her lips and says nothing more. Watching the iron sweep from left to right, I sense that she’s holding back because of my distress about Alex but I’m too cross with her to be grateful.

  ‘And anyway, I didn’t even send for this.’ Not yet, although I had intended to. ‘I don’t know why it’s come.’

  My mother parks the iron and comes over to pick up the Leeds prospectus. ‘Oh, this looks very good, Beth.’

  I flick the pages of the Guildhall brochure, seeing a montage of student life there — rehearsals, dance lessons, mime, productions — and a faint flutter of excitement, like the wings of a moth, begins to stir the gloom that has settled on me. Then something catches my eye, a loose piece of paper. I turn back to find it, a piece of Basildon Bond notepaper Sellotaped in near the end. I recognise Alex’s handwriting and the shock jolts through my entire body, nearly emerging as a sharp squeal. Quickly I snap the pages shut.

  ‘Let me see,’ my mother says, looking up.

  ‘No.’ I can think of no good reason why she shouldn’t. ‘You’ll only find something wrong with it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Beth.’ My mother sighs. ‘Look, acting is so hard to get into. It makes sense to get a degree first.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. It makes sense to do something that I’ll actually enjoy doing and if that doesn’t work out I’ll think again. It makes sense to try for what I really want.’ My voice is gathering pitch until finally I shout, ‘Just stop going on about it!’ I turn my back on her hurt face and walk out of the room, clutching the brochure tightly to my chest.

  Up in my room I sit down on the bed, breathing heavily and listening out for my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. Guilt and anger tumble over each other as I wait for her to follow me and carry the argument on. She doesn’t though, and after a while I hear the renewed clunking of the iron. Hurriedly I thumb through the brochure to find Alex’s short note. Reading it, I think I stop breathing for a few seconds; there’s a sharp tightness in my chest and the soft exhalation of breath when finally I release it.

  ‘I’m okay. Don’t tell. I’ll ring. 4 o’clock Friday. If you’re not alone say wrong number. I’ll try again Monday.’

  Four o’clock Friday. A time that I’m always in the house on my own, which Alex knows. Today is Thursday. I lie down on the bed, staring up at The Stranglers on my wall where David Cassidy used to be. Excitement bubbles up inside, because Alex is back, back in my life, and it’s no longer just me and everyone else. A wide grin of delight splits my face.

  Don’t tell. Of course not. How could I?

  *

  Her voice sounds far away, a small, tinny thing at the end of a wire.

  ‘Where are you?’ I demand. ‘Are you in London?’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘The bus driver remembered you.’

  ‘Oh, him. He kept asking stupid questions.’

  ‘Is that where you are now?’

  There’s a long silence, then, ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Where? Whereabouts? Are you sleeping rough?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, where, then?’

  ‘I can’t say, can I?’

  ‘But what the hell are you doing? And if you’re not sleeping rough who the hell are you with? I don’t get it, Alex. Why have you done this?’

  ‘Beth, don’t get mad. I can’t cope with you being mad at me.’

  ‘Well, what did you expect? “Hi, Alex, how nice to hear from you” — after three sodding weeks? Do you know what it’s been like for me? Do you have any idea how worried everyone is?’

  ‘Not everyone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not everyone will be worried.’

  ‘Of course they will. Whatever’s gone on they’ll be worried.’

  I hear the pips go and then the sharp clang of a coin slammed into the box.

  ‘Listen, I haven’t got much money. Don’t let’s argue, Beth. I just wanted to talk.’

  ‘Give me your number.’

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘Give me your number — I’ll call you back.’

  ‘They could trace it.’

  I hesitate. ‘Not if I don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘They’d see it on the bill, all long-distance calls. That’s what…what someone told me.’

  ‘Who? What someone?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Alex — this is crazy!’ I shout, enraged by all the mystery and my exclusion from it. ‘You should come back and sort things out here. It’s not safe down there on your own.’

  ‘Who said I’m on my own?’

  ‘Well, it’s not safe for you to be shacked up with people you don’t know either.’

  ‘I do know them and they’re okay. And who’s to say I’m safe at home? You don’t know, Beth, you don’t know but I’m telling you there’s no fucking way I’m going home.’ The pips go again. This time no more coins are shoved in and there’s just time for Alex to say, ‘I’ll ring again from another box. Don’t tell anyone, Beth. Promise?’

  I sigh. ‘Of course.’

  So I keep quiet, ignoring police instructions and putting up with the guilt of knowing that her parents must be, to use my mother’s expression, ‘beside themselves’. I don’t know what else to do, but then I live in fear of her never ringing again and think that if she did turn up dead it would be all my fault. When she phones again the following week I tell her I think it’s not right and that I don’t see why she can’t at least let her parents know she’s safe.

  ‘You don’t have to tell them where you are,’ I reason. ‘Just a letter, or a postcard, to let them know you’re okay.’

  ‘No. They can go to hell.’

  ‘Alex!’

  ‘Come on, Beth…don’t pretend you like my parents.’

  I think of her father, his ice-blond hair and cold eyes; of her mother, small and slight, the way she folds herself into the background. Neither of them ever seem to notice me.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Beth, don’t.’

  There’s silence for a while; outside I hear the soft drone of a distant lawn mower. ‘Alex…what’s been going on?’

  She sucks in her breath. ‘Too much and not enough.’

  This strange answer gets to me. ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘why don’t I come down?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just want to see you. I need to know you’re safe.’

  ‘How can you? You can’t just take off.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Yes, but… I don’t know.’ Suddenly she laughs. ‘Okay! Yeah. Why not? That’d be cool. Just get on a bus and come and stay. Hey, it would be amazing.’ I listen, fascinated, to this new Alex, the way she says, hey, and amazing, with its drawn-out middle syllable. ‘You could make up some story, say you’re going on holiday with someone. Hilary will back you up.’

  I close my eyes to think better. My parents are going on holiday soon, leaving my older sister Karen in charge. Karen is obsessed with her new boyfriend. She’ll appreciate having the house to herself, won’t ask too many questions.

  ‘I’m coming down,’ I say to Alex. ‘Ring next week and I’ll have it all worked out.’

  *

  24th July 1977

  The first Sunday of the summer holidays.

  I get up early and make my way to Pond Street bus station, where I board a bus to London under a slate-grey sky.
I’m carrying a duffle bag, a holdall full of clothes, and a rolled-up sleeping bag tied with an old belt. On the inside I’m carrying a bundle of nerves.

  I stare out of the window, half expecting to see DS Burton run up to the bus and haul me off, demanding to know where I’m going. I’m thinking of his last words to me as I’d left the head teacher’s study.

  ‘You will let us know,’ he said, in his gravelly, forty-a-day voice, ‘if you hear from Alex?’

  I nodded. It was easy to say yes, then, when I still knew nothing.

  The driver revs up and pulls out of Pond Street onto the Parkway roundabout, heading for the MI, and what’s been almost a game up to now suddenly becomes a reality that lurches into my stomach. I shut the Cosmopolitan I bought — making a mental note to read the ‘100 Tips for a Hot Sex Life’ at a later date, even though a sex life is something I have yet to acquire — but still the queasiness increases with every mile, until bile rises in my throat. A few times I think I’ll have to ask the driver to stop and let me throw up by the side of the road, but somehow, by remembering my father’s mantra — ‘keep your eyes on the horizon’ — I manage. I gaze at fields and factories and pylons, and think about Alex, imagining her on this same journey, how completely alone she must have felt.

  But then when I picture her at home I know that alone could just as well describe her there.

  It’s a long time since I’ve been to Alex’s house, but it always seemed full of shadows and silence. Set back from the park and surrounded by pine trees, it had a sort of chill, even in the summer. It never felt like a family home, more a collection of rooms where people led their separate lives; I don’t think I ever saw her family all together in one room. Her father was hardly ever there, always at work, or Masonic meetings, or rugby. Her younger brother David, who’s a small, chunky version of his father, plays every sport he can and I would mostly see him running in and out on his way to or from one of them. Alex’s mother was almost always home but still somehow absent; she never seemed to look at me directly. I would glimpse her flitting from one room to another, always busy, never stopping to talk. ‘Hello, er…Beth,’ is all she’d say, even though she’d known me for years. Not like my mother, who brings us biscuits, and Tizer, and asks Alex how’s this, that and the other.