Anouska Knight - Letting You Go

A cycle of what ifs began circuiting Alex’s head. What if she’d have come home this weekend, just for once? What if she’d have been with Blythe in the churchyard? What if that could have made the difference?

Alex stopped herself. There was only one what if that could’ve ever made the difference and they all knew it.

What if I hadn’t followed Finn into the bushes?

The Acute Assessment Unit was quiet. No drama. No urgency. Jem announced herself at the intercom. The doors onto the AAU opened. Alex followed quietly as Jem gave the nurses stationed at the central desk a salutatory smile and headed for the second side room on the left. Their roles were already set – Jem, the daughter who knew her way around, what to do, where to go – and Alex, the bumbling visitor.

Alex rubbed at the back of her neck. It was impossible not to feel anxious at what lay on the other side of the door in front of them. This awful ominous build up smacked of one of the games she’d watched last night on Takeshi’s Castle, the maze game with its skittish contestants where the only difference between salvation and some unknown horror was a couple of inches of plywood. And what’s behind door number two? A scary Japanese monster? An emotionally estranged father? An unrecognisable mother.

Alex eyed the door as Jem reached to push on it and felt an unpleasant lightness in her stomach. She could have taken a running jump, like the nervy lunatics on Takeshi, but Jem was already a confident step ahead, silently slipping through the door.

The smell was subtle as it hit. Alex shuffled quietly across the threshold, the scent as familiar as a favourite winter coat. She readied herself. She always readied herself.

‘Hello, Dad.’

Ted was standing, grey and monolithic, beside the only chair in the room. Alex lunged clumsily at him for their obligatory kiss. Ted turned from where he’d been watching her mum sleeping to receive Alex’s kiss. They bumped jaws awkwardly. His skin felt rough, bristly with the greying beard that wasn’t hanging onto the last of its blond quite as well as the rest of his hair. Alex gave him his personal space back and tried to remember the last time they’d made physical contact for anything other than this awkward hello–goodbye ritual of theirs. The last time she’d hung onto his arm or pecked him on the cheek for no particular reason.

‘I spotted her in the car park. She still snores like you, Dad, mouth wide open and everything,’ Jem chirped, filling the void with warmth before anything cooler could creep in there. Ted rewarded her with a lazy smile. Alex wished she could think of something to say of equal worth. Nothing came. She shuffled back to the bottom of her mum’s bed, away from that distinctly subtle cocktail of her father’s – coffee, morning tobacco, the last engine oil her mother’s flowery detergent could never quite purge from his overalls.

‘You shouldn’t have driven through the night, Alexandra. Folks fall asleep at the wheel all the time,’ he said softly. He gave Alex a few more seconds’ eye contact before his attention returned to her mum. Alex watched his huge gnarly hands move gently over her mum’s hair. It looked redder against the stark white of the pillow. Jem was right. She didn’t look like their mum. Not sick, at least, but older. Different. Fallible.

‘Is she …?’ Alex tried past the lump forming in her throat.

‘Your mother’s just sleeping. She’ll be right as rain once she’s had a good sleep, slowed down for five damned minutes.’ He was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, he did this when something was niggling at him and he couldn’t light a cigarette.

Alex looked at the stranger in the bed. She’d never seen her sleeping like that, straight as an ironing board, sheets neatly tucked beneath her arms. It was all over if anything happened to her. Blythe was the thread holding their patchwork family together. It would all unravel without her.

‘Did she like the sunflowers?’ Alex heard her own voice.

Alex saw her dad’s forefinger begin back and forth against his thumb again only with more intent though now, as if trying to eradicate a sharp little irritant that kept finding its way back under his skin. Alex wished she hadn’t asked.

‘I, er … I know purple is mum’s favourite colour but the yellow …’ But the yellow was for you, Dad. Please don’t clench your jaw. He did it again. Jem saw it too and tried to pretend she hadn’t, which only made it a hundred times worse. ‘The yellow looked nicer against the thistles I thought …’ Alex was already floundering. Ted winced and she knew then that she’d already said something wrong.

‘Please, can we not talk about goddamn flowers? Just for five minutes? What the hell difference do flowers make anyway? Your mother wouldn’t have even been down there if she wasn’t having to cart the bloody things around.’

Alex felt herself recoil. Had her flowers arrived late? Was that why Blythe had gone back to the churchyard? Was it Alex’s fault Blythe had gone back there alone?

‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean …’ She didn’t know what she meant. Stupid girl.

Ted’s hand opened out where he’d been rigidly holding it at his side. Alex wasn’t sure if it was to placate her or to silently implore her to just. Shut. Up. Why didn’t she ever have anything better to offer them?

Jem caught Alex’s eye. ‘We’ll go and get the coffees, Dad. We don’t want to overwhelm Mum when she wakes up, all cooped up in here together.’

Jem waited for the door to swing closed behind them before she spoke.

‘He’s tired, Alex. He didn’t get much sleep last night.’

‘It’s fine, really,’

‘Alex,’ Jem’s hand was already on Alex’s forearm, ‘the flowers, that wasn’t a dig at you back in there. It was my fault, I was doing his head in on the ride here, I was going on about these evening flowers mum got so upset about. He’d already had his fill before we got here this morning. Honestly, Al, it was just bad timing, that’s all. Don’t be so quick to take it to heart, OK? He’s tired.’

Alex tried to relax her shoulders, let some of the tension slope away. ‘What evening flowers ?’

‘Pass. That was what I was trying to work out with Dad in the car, until he bit my head off. Something Mum was talking about when Mal first got her into A&E. No-one could really understand what she was saying though.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know about that.’ Alex tried not to feel out of the loop. ‘Did Mal know what they are?’

Jem shrugged. ‘I didn’t think to ask Mal about it, actually. The nurse said it was all part of it, Mum being confused.’ Jem rubbed her eyes as if she hadn’t slept much last night either. ‘Flowers that arrived in the evening, I guess.’

Evening flowers. No-one else had flowers delivered, it had to have been Alex’s bouquet that had arrived late. Great. No wonder Ted was so pissed off with her already.

‘What are you thinking?’ Jem was studying her. Big tired blue eyes glancing out through the breaks in her fringe.

‘Nothing.’ Alex smiled, but it didn’t reach her cheeks. She’d used one of the big flashy online department stores that offered astronomically priced ‘botanical giftware’. Never again. What good were flowers that didn’t arrive until the evening?

‘Come on, Al. I need caffeine.’

Jem began to walk off but Alex could feel she was onto something. ‘They were my flowers, weren’t they? That Mum had to go back for.’

Jem looked puzzled. ‘Yours the ones with no card?’

Alex nodded. She never sent a card.

‘Sunflowers and thistles?’ Alex nodded again. ‘Then I’m sorry, sis, but as much as I know you like to be the bad guy and all, you can’t take this one for the team. I signed for your bouquet after breakfast.’ Jem squeezed Alex’s arm. ‘I don’t know why Mum went back down there alone, Al, but whatever her reason was, it wasn’t your flowers.’ Jem turned on her heels. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’