2nd November 2006
Alex felt him tense, harden like her clay; Finn’s whole body beside her suddenly off limits, no longer hers to touch.
‘That’s not it. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know, Finn. I just can’t upset him again, he’s my dad. I’ve already put him through so much.’ Finn took his hand back, slow enough that it wasn’t like a punishment. Only it was. Alex stopped herself from grabbing it and bringing those fingers back to her again. ‘Now’s just … it’s not good timing, Jem’s getting into trouble at school and—’
‘So how long, Alex? I’m ready to get my lights punched out to stand up for the way I feel about you, how long until you’re ready to stand up for how you say you feel for me?’
Alex’s palm was still lying against Finn’s chest. Should she move it? Everything about him was starting to feel defensive. The way he was pushing his hair away from his face, the tension through his arms.
‘I do feel that way, Finn. I love you.’
‘Do you?’
She was losing him. She could already feel it. ‘You know I do. You’ve always known.’
‘So tell him. Tell him, Alex. Tell him we’re young and in love and we’d do anything to change what happened. But we can’t. All we can do is keep moving forwards and sometimes that means moving against the current.’
Something had shifted in the air between them. It was a similar feeling to watching one of her clay pots lose its shape when it had stood to be so beautiful before she’d cocked it up. Maybe if she was careful, deft enough, she could bring it back again, coax it all back into shape. ‘He’s my dad, Finn. I can’t keep pushing him. I love you, and I love him too. I need him to have the chance to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘How sorry I am! It happened on our watch, Finn! I can’t be sorry for that and ram you down his throat at the same time. You know what he thinks we were doing!’
It was all coming flooding back. She didn’t want to go there right now. It would spoil everything, the candlelight, the snow outside. The taste of him still on her mouth. She was going to wear that taste away with these awful words.
Alex spoke quietly. ‘I just think we should keep things private, just for a while.’
‘Hide our relationship, you mean?’ Finn was not speaking quietly.
‘Not hide, just … take our time.’
Finn propped himself angrily against the headboard. ‘You want me to love you in secret, Alex? Hide how I feel, like I had to when my dad skipped out on my mum and me?’ Alex took her hand back. He couldn’t feel her now anyway. ‘That was no fun, Alex. Pretending I hated my own father because if I didn’t I’d be reminded of all the reasons why I should. I knew he hadn’t checked those brakes properly for your dad, I knew he’d rushed Mrs Fairbanks’ service to get to a shitty poker game, but I didn’t know how to tell anyone that I still loved him anyway because he was still my dad, or even how what he’d done to Millie Fairbanks and her mum wasn’t enough to stop me still wanting him home with us again.’
‘Finn …’ Alex felt herself shrink away in her too-small bed. Suddenly she felt totally, shamefully naked.
‘I know what my old man did, Alex. I know what he did to Millie, and your dad’s business and to my mum and me. But I still loved him. Only I had to do it in secret. I had to hide it.’ Finn shook his head. ‘I’m not signing up for that again, Alex. You don’t do that with love. You stand up for it and you take the blows and you bleed for it if you have to.’
‘I’m responsible, Finn. Don’t you get that? I lost Dill, I lost him! He was just a little boy, and I didn’t protect him. I stopped watching and I lost my baby brother. Their only son! I can’t just go home and—’
Finn’s eyes were greener with anger. His arms flailed wildly. ‘He died Alex! He didn’t get lost, Dill died! I had him in my arms, I could feel the knot in his lace, how I could free him!’ Finn’s body rippled with angry heartache. ‘But it was too tight. My fingers were too big and I couldn’t pull him from the root in time and he died. And you’re right. It was on our watch. But what can we possibly do that will ever make that better?’
Alex felt the hurt inside begin to twist into something resentful. ‘Not ram our happy-ever-after down his throat, Finn!’
Finn was suddenly up on his feet next to Alex’s books and their abandoned clothes, a naked ringmaster in the circus of Alex’s life. His arms were aloft again. ‘Fine! Well, what about all this? What are you going to do when you get a first with your degree, Alex? Because you will. You’ll graduate with flying colours and get the job you’ve always dreamed of in a career you’ll love. Then what?’
‘Finn.’
‘Let’s see, what about when you want to get married? Or buy your first house, or have your first kid. Are those things off limits for Ted Foster’s throat too? Or is it just me you can’t ram down it?’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘No, you’re being ridiculous, Alex!’
‘No I’m not!’ She heard the tears in her voice. They were coming, they were en route. ‘Dill won’t get to do any of those things because of me.’
Finn pinned his hands on his hips and shook his head.
‘Don’t shake your head! Dill won’t ever bring a girlfriend home for my mum to cluck over, or help my dad out at the garage so he’s not breaking his back working on his own all the time. He’ll never grow up and have a laugh with Jem instead of only ever pissing her off! Dill won’t graduate, he won’t even flunk!’ Alex’s voice wobbled. It almost stopped her but the thought was too heavy to be left inside her head. ‘My brother will never go home to the Falls and tell my mum and dad that he’s met “the one”! The one person he can’t imagine living his life without because he knows there’ll never be anyone else who’ll ever come close! So how can I?’
Alex felt the first tears escape the corner of her eyes. She saw Finn relent, the tension slipping with an almost indecipherable dip of his shoulders. Gentle, calm Finn was trying to come back. ‘You’re right, Alex. Dill won’t get to do any of those things now. And I’d do anything to change it. To go back and stay right there on the riverbank, instead of messing around in the undergrowth where we couldn’t see. But we can’t change that now.’
Finn moved silently back to the bed but Alex looked away. He stopped short of reaching her.
‘I need my dad to know that I haven’t forgotten what I did, Finn. That I’ll never forget. Sorry just isn’t a big enough word,’ she said quietly.
Finn shook his head gently. ‘You’re right, Foster, it’s not. But you have a life to live. How are you going to do that if every achievement, every bit of happiness or fun you have, feels like an insult to Dill? Live half a life because he lost his? You can’t hide from your own life, Alex.’
