Looking for Alex

by Marian Dillon

  ‘Were they all right with you?’

  ‘Yeah. Why wouldn’t they be?’

  ‘Just wondering what they’d think, him turning up with a seventeen-year-old girlfriend?’

  If I’d said that Alex would have thought I had some agenda, but because it’s Fitz she doesn’t bat an eyelid.

  ‘They took it in their stride,’ she says airily. ‘Anyway, I told them I was twenty-one and they seemed to buy it. I think his dad liked me.’

  ‘So after that you went to Pete’s friend?’ I ask, getting plates out of the cupboard.

  ‘Yep, then down here today.’

  ‘That’s a lot of miles,’ Fitz says, ‘just to stay out the way of some thugs.’

  ‘It’s been a nice break. In the country, away from it all.’ Pete steps into the kitchen from the shadowy porch. It’s his party trick, I think, listening in on conversations. He looks at me. ‘Jenny’s gone to pick some tomatoes. She said to make some tea and she’ll be five minutes.’

  Pete wanders round, picking things up and examining them, making the place his own in a way that I resent even though it isn’t mine. I fill the kettle, get some mugs out, then lean back against the warmth of the little range, not sure what to do or say next. Alex begins to drum her fingers on the table as an awkward silence grows.

  ‘So Michael’s fishing, then?’ Pete says. ‘Shame we won’t see him.’ I see Alex look at him, open her mouth, and then think better of whatever it was she was going to say. ‘When are you two planning to go back? Maybe we could give you a lift.’

  ‘No. Thanks.’ I say it quickly. ‘We’re staying until Tuesday.’

  I see surprise register on Alex’s face. She comes over to the sink, finds a clean glass on the drainer and gets some water from the tap. ‘You’re staying here till Tuesday? Aren’t your parents expecting you back?’

  ‘They think I’m still in Minehead. It’s all fine.’

  She raises her eyebrows and drinks down half the water in one go. Pete sits down next to Fitz, asks him what we’ve been up to here.

  ‘You’ll be going back to school soon,’ Alex says quietly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ She nods briefly over her shoulder at Fitz.

  ‘We’ll work something out. We’ve got a few ideas.’

  She grips my arm suddenly. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not now. On our own, later.’ Her eyes glitter. ‘God, I’m glad we came. I felt bad after that phone-call. I didn’t want to fall out with you, Beth.’ A wide grin lights up her face and there’s an air of excitement about her; I haven’t seen her like that since the day I arrived in London. Things can’t be that bad with Pete, I think. Maybe I was misjudging him all the time; maybe the bruise was accidental. I smile as a rush of relief sweeps away the continual need to worry. Alex is okay. And we are friends again.

  *

  We take the tea and sandwiches outside and sit around in rickety, faded deckchairs. The conversation is random and scattered, and a little strained. I mostly stay quiet, to avoid giving Pete any reason for a sarcastic comment, plotting how to get Alex on her own, trying to imagine what news she has. She seemed so excited and pleased that I push away what had been my first thought, of her being pregnant; I can’t see her being over the moon about that. Could she have spoken to her mother? That might be something she hasn’t told Pete and doesn’t want him to know.

  After we’ve eaten, Pete produces some weed and rolls a joint. He passes it round. I take a little and it goes straight to my head, just like that first time in Empire Road. Jenny refuses, which leads to her telling Pete and Alex about the baby. I watch Alex closely then, but she doesn’t seem more interested than you’d expect.

  Later in the afternoon a breeze springs up. Cotton-wool clouds begin to gather in the sky so that the sun keeps disappearing, and the warmth with it. At five o’clock Pete stands up and says they should be going.

  ‘Jenny,’ he says, ‘I think I left a sleeping bag here last time — a good one. I could do with taking it back.’

  They go off into the house to look.

  ‘Fitz,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you pick some apples for Alex and Pete to take back with them?’

  He rolls his head towards me. His eyes are hidden by shades but I think they’re closed; he’s quite stoned. ‘Good idea,’ he says, but he doesn’t move.

  ‘Come on, Alex, we’ll get some ourselves.’ I lead her round the side of the house, to where Fitz stashed the apples he’d picked in a wooden crate. I find a little plastic container and put some in.

  ‘They’re lovely, really sweet.’

  ‘Great, thanks,’ she says. Quickly, impulsively, she moves nearer and hugs me, and my own arms close around her, the box of apples still in one hand.

  When she lets go I say, ‘What were you going to tell me?’

  Her eyes light up. ‘Listen to this—’

  We’re interrupted by the sound of raised voices. Or at least, Jenny’s is the raised one. Pete’s can be heard more faintly, persuasive, cajoling. Alex and I stand rooted to the ground, staring at each other. I hear Jenny shouting at Pete to go, to get out, and I glance up at the window, as though I’ll see what’s happening. When I look back at Alex there’s a slow flush spreading over her cheeks. She puts her hands out for the apples.

  ‘We’d better go,’ she says.

  I shove the apples at her and walk quickly round to the porch.

  Fitz is there before me and inside, then up the stairs, two at a time. I follow him to the doorway of Jenny’s bedroom. Pete and Jenny stand facing each other in front of a pile of sleeping bags; Jenny has her arms folded across her chest, defensively, Pete just inches away from her. She’s as tall as him and probably not far off in weight, so I don’t think Fitz’s next action has so much to do with defending Jenny as with the build-up of rage in him. He crosses the room and lands a punch on the side of Pete’s face, his fist connecting with a dull thwack. Instantly Pete turns, catches Fitz’s arm in a strong grip and thumps him hard in the stomach. Fitz doubles over, choking. I run to hold him as Pete’s fist comes up again. ‘Leave him!’ I scream. His fist catches me, but not hard, as he’s already seen what’s about to happen and slows it down. It glances off my chin.

  ‘Pete, that’s enough!’ Alex stands in the doorway, glaring at him.

  ‘Alex, look at me.’ Alex’s eyes slowly turn towards Jenny. ‘I don’t know you very well, but I do know that you’re out of your depth. You’d be better off staying here with us.’

  ‘None of your business, Jenny.’ Pete holds his hand over his cheek as he speaks.

  Jenny raises her eyebrows, still looking at Alex.

  ‘It’s all fine,’ Alex says, in a dull voice.

  ‘So you knew he was going to ask for money?’Jenny says. I feel a jolt of surprise, and look for the same on Alex’s face. It’s as blank as her voice. ‘Pete just asked me for a loan, to pay off his debts. When I said no he didn’t like it.’

  ‘That’s crap.’

  Jenny ignores Pete. ‘He owes money and he’s frightened. That means trouble, of some sort. If you really can’t go home to your parents, Alex, then just stay here.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, don’t be so fucking ridiculous.’ Pete spits the words out. ‘I just asked, Jenny. You said no and I try a little harder then you start screaming at me. End of story. The result being that my friend here thinks I’m raping you.’

  ‘Alex.’ She turns towards me. ‘Jenny’s right. Don’t go back, stay here.’

  Pete gives a huge, deliberate sigh. ‘Jesus, here she goes, little Miss Whinger. Look, I think you all know that I can look after myself, and Alex too.’ He looks across at her. ‘Let’s go.’ He leaves the room, feet thudding on the stairs.

  ‘Alex, please stay. Or come home with me. My parents will help you sort something out.’

  ‘No.’ She has her stubborn mouth on. ‘You don’t get it. He’s okay. You all see the bad side of him
because that’s what you provoke, but he is good to me. Once we get this money thing sorted out it’ll be fine. He said he’s going to stop dealing and get a job, then there’ll be no more trouble.’

  ‘Yeah, and pigs will fly.’ Fitz speaks with a ragged voice, his breath coming quick and shallow. ‘Pete won’t change. You need to know that, Alex.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. You don’t know him like I do. I’m not listening to this.’

  She turns and walks out. Jenny says something to me but I need to make sure of something. I clatter down the stairs after Alex and out of the house in time to see her getting into the car. I run over and lean both hands on the open window before she can wind it up.

  ‘You knew he was going to ask for money, didn’t you? That’s the only reason you came — nothing to do with feeling bad, or not wanting to fall out.’

  ‘Oh, fuck.’ Pete rolls his eyes. ‘Can we just go, please?’

  ‘All right, I knew.’ Alex stares up at me, her eyes liquid with tears. ‘But it’s true that I wanted to make it up with you. You and Fitz, though, you’re so…together. So against us.’

  ‘I’m not against you,’ I say.

  She gives a huffing, disbelieving sort of noise and tugs at the handle of the window, begins to wind it up. At first I resist, pressing my hands down as the glass slowly rises, but then I take them away because there’s nothing else to say. Pete starts the engine and backs up, then drives off up the track at a speed that sets the car bouncing crazily. I watch them all the way until they round a bend and are out of sight.

  *

  On our last night we’re all invited to a party down the road in a neighbour’s field, where a huge bonfire crackles and spits flames up into the sky. There’s a chill in the air and people huddle round the fire in small groups; I sit hugging my knees on a blanket on the ground, sharing a bottle of wine with Fitz. There’s music and dancing, lots of drink, a fair amount of cannabis and plenty of food. It’s a good party but I’m weighed down by too many black thoughts to enjoy it. I stare at the ground, dumb with misery at how things finished between Alex and me, hardly able to believe that she’s still choosing to be with Pete.

  Yesterday Jenny, Fitz and I discussed things endlessly, deciding that the row with Pete’s father must have been about money. When that failed he went to try and scrounge off his friends, who either gave him nothing or not enough. Then, desperate, he thought of Jenny. This was the version we gave to Michael when we told him what had happened. His face fell.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he said instantly, and we all stared at him blankly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘On the phone the other night, he was weirdly chatty. He asked what we were up to and I said that I was going off on a two-day fishing trip. He knew I wouldn’t be around. He wouldn’t have dared pull that stunt if I had.’

  I remembered Pete saying what a shame Michael wasn’t there, and the look that Alex had thrown him.

  ‘He might have come anyway,’ Fitz said. ‘You can’t say it’s your fault.’

  Jenny leant forward, with her hands flat on the table. ‘Look, why don’t you two stay here until the end of the week? Beth could go straight back to Sheffield from here, get a coach from Cardigan.’

  Fitz shook his head. ‘I have to sign on. I can’t risk losing my dole. I’m utterly skint.’ He looked at me. ‘You stay if you want, Beth. I really understand if you don’t want to be around Pete now. But I can’t.’

  I reached for his hand and laced my fingers through his. ‘And I’ve left a bag and some clothes in London,’ I said. ‘I have to go back.’

  ‘Okay.’ Jenny shrugged her shoulders. ‘That settles that, then.’

  So tomorrow we’ll be hitching back. I watch people dancing, laughing, while that thought sits like a lump of concrete in my stomach. I drink one glass of wine after another and eat very little. There’s a song they keep playing — someone must have decided it’s their theme tune. Do Anything You Wanna Do it’s called. It gets into my head, keeps going round and round whenever there’s a gap in the music.

  We finish the bottle and I send Fitz off to find another.

  ‘You are going to have such a bad hangover,’ he warns me.

  ‘I know. And I don’t care.’

  While he’s gone Jenny comes over. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’She sits down, puts her fingers on my chin, tracing the very faint bruise where Pete’s fist caught me. It seemed like nothing at the time but was tender the day after.

  ‘Does this still hurt?’

  ‘No. It looks worse than it is.’

  She frowns. ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t be. This time next week I’ll be back in Sheffield and everything will seem like a dream.’

  Jenny wraps one arm around my shoulders. ‘Beth, I hope it works out for you and Fitz, but if it doesn’t, there will be someone else.’ I stare stubbornly straight ahead. I’m sure Jenny means to be comforting but it’s not what I want to hear. ‘About Alex,’ she goes on, hesitantly. ‘Michael and I, we…look, do you think it’s time someone knows where she is?’

  ‘I can’t do that!’ I shift around on the blanket to face her. ‘That would really mess things up between us.’

  ‘Aren’t they already?’

  ‘But that would be…’ I search around for the right expression and come up with one of my mother’s. ‘It would be the final nail in the coffin.’

  ‘So what’s more important? Your friendship, or Alex’s safety?’

  I groan. ‘Jenny, don’t ask me to go back on a promise.’

  ‘But when did you make that promise? You didn’t know then what you know now, or you may not have made it.’

  ‘But it won’t make any difference. If she got dragged home she’d run off again, maybe somewhere worse. At least this way I know where she is and Fitz can keep an eye on her.’

  We see Fitz coming back towards us. As he skirts the bonfire, his face half lit, half shadow, he stops to say something to Michael, sees me watching, and smiles. It turns my heart upside down.

  ‘A good excuse for you to keep in touch with him,’ Jenny says kindly.

  ‘Yes.’

  But as I watch her go back to Michael I’m hoping I won’t need an excuse, that somehow I can fuse this life here with the one at home so that Fitz and I will merge from one into the other, intact. I leap up and grab Fitz’s arm, spin him round, drag him over to the dancers. He has the bottle of wine in his other hand and I take it from him, swig some back, choke, laugh.

  ‘Come on, dance!’ I order him, and we do, for hours. I drink more and more, until my head starts to swim as I whirl and sway to the music. A few times Fitz catches me when I stumble, and once he tries to get me to leave, but I won’t go, I just carry on dancing. Somehow it gets into my head that if I don’t stop I won’t have to go home, I’ll just dance on and on. But finally I must give in because then I’m half walking, half carried back to the farmhouse, tripping up the stairs and collapsing onto the bed. Fitz brings water and pulls the covers over me. The last thing I remember is Jenny placing a bowl by the side of the bed and bending to kiss my cheek, and then I get confused and think it must be my mother.

  ‘Sleep, Beth,’ she says. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  *

  20th June 2013

  How quickly we get used to extraordinary events. Back in nineteen seventy-seven it took about two weeks for Alex’s disappearance to become a fact of life, something that had happened and couldn’t be undone. It became simply the way things were. Now I’d got used to the idea that Fitz had resurfaced in my life, used to the fact that I could call him up and ask him to meet me, to the point that I even felt irritated when once again he was late. Watching him bound up the steps of Hammersmith station, breathless and apologetic, I had to remind myself it was remarkable that we were here at all.

  ‘So sorry, we had a school trip today. We got back late.’

>   ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Museum of London. I’ve been there so many times now I could be a tour guide.’ He looked around, getting his bearings. ‘This way.’

  We’d been in touch by email during the time I’d been back in Sheffield. I’d sent him the YouTube link for Midnight Blue, and the one for the pub where they’d be playing. In his reply Fitz had said he knew the pub, had been to see a band there before. Two weeks later, when I’d still heard nothing from Alex, I’d decided I would go to the gig, and had asked Fitz if he would go with me.

  He’d phoned me the next day, questioning taking Alex by surprise. I’d said I hadn’t come this far to give up now. What was the worst that could happen? I’d asked him. Alex would be hostile, or ignore me, or both. Then Fitz had said it might not be a good idea, him being there.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to go on my own. Who else would I take?’

  ‘Someone neutral?’

  ‘But then I’d have to keep explaining things. And I don’t have a whole host of other people to choose from. I don’t live in London, remember?’

  He’d hesitated. ‘Obviously I am curious. And I guess it wouldn’t be the same, to hear about it second-hand.’

  ‘That’s a yes, then.’

  ‘Must be.’

  The pub was down by the river, a ten-minute walk from the tube. It was a warm evening so I slung my jacket over my arm; Fitz had his hooked over one shoulder. Crossing the road, I caught our reflections in a shop window and thought that we looked for all the world like an old married couple.

  Fitz asked me how things were back home.

  ‘I’ve said no to Ireland,’ I said. ‘Of course, Phil’s not happy and now he’s having doubts about going, but he’s committed really. So we’ve gone from one sort of difficult relationship to another. And now I feel like I’ve let him down, that he’s risked everything and I’ve done nothing.’

  We parted momentarily to let a glued-together couple through.