Looking for Alex

by Marian Dillon

  ‘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.’

  CARINA™

  ISBN: 978 1 472 05532 3

  Looking for Alex

  Copyright © Marian Iseard 2013

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