free-divers, Alex always thought, when they found oxygen again after plumbing the depths on just one devoted lungful of air.
Alex had taken a reassuring breath of her own just before dialling her parents’ number. It hadn’t been half as uncomfortable as she always prepared herself for. It never was. She shouldn’t be so hypersensitive; she had no right. They all deserved so much more from her and what did she do? Drag her heels all day as if phoning her family was the worst thing in the world. You will remember this next year, Alex. You will remember that you make it worse, not them. But guilt was a lot like love, doing funny things to the mind.
Jem had railroaded the conversation beautifully as ever. Jem was an excellent railroader, a seasoned expert at smoothing the awkward away with a nice thick layer of normality, as if they were all just enjoying a regular everyday catch-up with each other. Blythe too, as unwaveringly warm as she was thoughtful, had gushed about the flowers Alex had sent home, lest Alex’s woefully inadequate annual gesture ever go un-championed. ‘Oh, Alex … sunflowers and thistles!’ Blithe had delighted, ‘Such a simple posy but, just so beautiful, darling. Really, the perfect choice. Ted? Come tell Alex how beautiful those sunflowers are,’ her mum had encouraged. ‘Your dad commented on them, darling, and you know how oblivious Foster men are. Did you know, your father wanted sunflowers at our wedding? Your grandma Rosalind said they weren’t a traditional choice though, so that was that.’
Alex did know that. She also knew how fond her dad was of the colour the thistles gave to the hillside behind the farmhouse, but she wouldn’t allow herself to question who it was exactly she always sent the flowers for. Ted hadn’t gotten round to mentioning the sunflowers when he’d finally come on the line anyway. He’d had to dash off on a callout, thinning out their already skinny chat about the price Alex was paying for diesel down south.
Alex felt another pang of guilt. As soon as she’d heard the front door closing after her dad at the other end of the line, that tightness in her chest had begun to release. She was resurfacing.
‘Boring you, am I?’ Jem asked.
‘You’re boring me a little bit, darling,’ Blythe echoed. Alex could tell her mother had her head in the Aga. Blythe was exceptional at keeping her kids and cooking in check at the same time.
‘No … Sorry, Jem.’ Alex smiled.
‘You know what I mean, though, don’t you?’
Alex rallied herself. ‘About what?’
‘The neon!’ Jem asserted.
‘Sure. Neon … for a florist’s.’ Alex agreed. ‘I mean, if Carrie’s making crazy decisions like that, what else is she getting up to in there, huh?’ She was teasing, but Jem missed it, her high-school nemesis was still ram-raiding her thoughts. Alex thought she heard her mother laugh but it was difficult to be sure over the clanking of the table being set.
‘Exactly,’ Jem huffed, ‘that cow is not to be trusted.’
‘Jem!’ Blythe implored. ‘Change the record.’
Dill’s birthday had become sacred, more sacred than Christmas even and Christmas wasn’t a day for crap or bitch or cow either.
‘You can’t tell me off, Mum. I’m twenty-four.’ Jem let out a sudden yelp. ‘And you can’t whack me with a wooden spoon, Mum!’
‘Want to bet, young lady?’
Alex smiled into the phone. It was impossible not to feel steadied by her mother. Throughout everything, Blythe had held the balance.
‘I’m sure there are more riveting topics you and Alex can talk about besides Carrie Logan, Jem, surely? Can’t you gossip about men, or diets or something … like normal sisters?’
It had occurred to Alex years ago that she and Jem were not normal sisters, not if swapping juicy titbits about boyfriends and diets was the standard. Alex still wasn’t wholly sure whether she should feel more or less sad about that. It wasn’t love or affection she and Jem were missing, but years. Those intense teenage years where experiences and emotions were heightened and giddy and sisters confided and shared. Alex had left for uni and overnight it was as if something seismic had shifted leaving Alex on one side of a gaping chasm and Jem on the other. Not just their age gap. Alex could feel something else there stuck between them, something more than five big teenage years. Whatever it was, Alex had never poked at it, in case it turned out she was responsible for that too.
The phone had fallen silent. Something furtive seemed to be going on at the other end. ‘OK, OK,’ Jem whispered. She feigned an over-excited tone. ‘So guess who we saw? At the church?’
Alex ran through the usual suspects. Blythe had already told her how Susannah and Helen had each left flowers for Dill this morning, but other than Blythe’s old choir-buddies and the Reverend no-one else sprang to mind. ‘I give up. Who did you see?’
Jem laughed then. An odd, pre-cursory chortle. ‘Guess.’ But Alex didn’t have time to guess, Jem couldn’t hold it in. ‘Only Finn.’
Alex felt her thoughts slow down, sinking to the bottom of her brain like globules of wax in a lava lamp – heavy, vivid, helpless colour.
Finn. She’d been pressing that name to the back of her mind all day and Jem had just let it loose. Thoughts of Dill nearly always came piggy-backed by thoughts of Finn. Bound together by time and circumstance.
Jem was riding out the pause. All of a sudden, she could wait all day. Alex made a grab for something coherent. ‘Finn? But …’ she managed.
‘I know, right?’
‘Finn’s back in the Falls? But … I thought …’
‘I know. The rover’s returned and, by the looks of things, he’s all done with the intrepid explorer bit.’
Alex could feel a warm uncomfortable sensation brewing over the back of her neck. Jem would test her this way, now and again. She’d poke Alex like a bruise just to gauge if she was still tender, and all Alex could do was do her best not to flinch. It was like being ambushed. Stupid really, that she would be ambushed by this of all news. Eilidh Falls was his home, after all, of course he wasn’t going to stay away forever.
Alex held the phone, waiting to hear the next nuggets of Jem’s reconnaissance back home to filter down the line. Surprise began to twist into resignation. Finn had gone back to settle down, with a wife probably. And a family. Children. Beautiful children, sharing his glorious scruffy hair and playful eyes. He could’ve met a thousand women as he’d backpacked and odd-jobbed his way around the planet, exotic and captivating like the places he’d daubed on his bedroom wall. His ‘Great Adventure List!’ Their list.
Alex waited for news of the impossibly beautiful wife and their impossibly beautiful offspring to sock her one through the earpiece. Blythe had gone quiet in the background. She’d have been pleased for sure to bump into him, Alex knew it. Her mum’s fondness for Finn had never waned. Blythe had never blamed Finn.
‘Mum turned into a bashful teenager when she saw him, didn’t you, Ma? She thinks he’s even more handsome with a bit of colour on him.’
‘I was not bashful, Jem. I just think it’s a shame that boy hasn’t been snapped up. He should be bouncing a small child around on
