Letting You Go. Anouska Knight

would be mostly the mud.’

      It wasn’t the mud, it was adventure seeking in the southern hemisphere while Alex had been making vats of chilli con carne at the food bank. He probably smelled of coconut oil and ylang ylang now, she usually smelled of fried onions and disinfectant. His hair had changed colour too, lighter at its edges than it was. It still sat long just over his ears but it looked more deliberate now, like he’d just fallen off a billboard advertising surfboards, or cranberry juice, or something full of antioxidants.

      ‘You haven’t changed colour.’ He smiled. ‘Still a striking red head.’ Alex cringed at her own statement. ‘Well, actually you look a little less red than the last time we spoke if I remember right.’ He offered a half-hearted smile.

      She was going to die. Right here on the spot. The last time they’d spoken had been in her student bedroom. Trying to be quick, efficient, like ripping off a plaster, hadn’t worked. There had been nothing clean and clinical about it. Just lots of arguing and hurt. And red faces, obviously.

      ‘Actually, you look a little pale, Foster. Are you OK?’

      She hadn’t heard her name on his lips since the last moments before watching him walk away through the snow. Be kind to yourself, Foster, he’d said. Because not having the balls to go home and tell her dad about them sure as hell wasn’t being very kind to Finn.

      Alex swallowed again. Finn’s breath was levelling off but hers was becoming shallower. She felt a bit fuzzy, actually.

      ‘I, er. Actually just, I erm … just tired, actually. Long drive.’

      Finn’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t want his eyes to narrow, he was always working something out when he did that.

      ‘Jem said you don’t come back here. Don’t they have fast food where you live now?’ Nope, he’d lost her. ‘Burger King, wasn’t it?’ Alex cringed. The woman on Oprah hadn’t sounded like such a muppet when she’d said it. ‘Or have you come back for a run in one of the most beautiful spots in the world? It’s some morning, isn’t it?’

      She felt a hand rub up the back of her neck and realised it was her own. Stop that, you’re not a child.

      ‘No, no … definitely not a runner. Or prolific burger eater.’ She smiled feebly.

      ‘But you do come back up here to the Falls though? Evidently.’

      Oh God, this conversation felt like swimming. In through the nose, out through the mouth …

      ‘Yeah, um, not really. It’s difficult with work and stuff and …’

      ‘Work?’

      ‘Yep. I erm, work with disadvantaged people.’ Disadvantaged people? Nice one, Alex. She wasn’t exactly in the Peace Corps. Don’t try to impress him, you plonker. He’s travelled the world!

      ‘Disadvantaged people? Must keep you busy.’

      Alex laughed a laugh that didn’t belong to her.

      ‘I thought when you left your university degree, you’d find another course somewhere?’

      ‘Ah, no.’ Alex batted the notion away, a silly childhood whimsy. ‘No I didn’t, actually. I er, I left uni for good.’

      ‘I know.’ He said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s too bad. Your work, all through college, I mean … you have a gift, Foster.’ He shrugged.

      Alex swallowed again. Only her mother said that. Have. Not had. As if there was still discernible potential in her somewhere. Alex looked at her shoes, embarrassed if anything. Mum would’ve loved this, this meeting of theirs in the forest like two star-crossed nymphs, back when Blythe’s heart would have been still up for the excitement. Reality thudded home. ‘Actually, I have to go. I need to get to the hospital.’

      The look on Finn’s face switched immediately. ‘Are you OK, Foster?’

      ‘Oh, no … I didn’t mean … it’s Mum. She er, she had a stroke last night.’ The words seemed to double back in her mouth and head straight back down her throat, clenching her heart in an angry fist. Suddenly there was a lump forming at the back of Alex’s throat, she could feel it coming. Don’t cry! Shit! Alex, if you cry now he’ll comfort you and then you’ll be dripping snot into his muddy chest before you know it and it’ll be all over.

      ‘I’m sorry, Foster. Is there anything I can do?’ Finn’s hand reached out for a second and grazed Alex’s elbow. Their skin touched briefly and she very definitely felt it, the same as before, exactly as Blythe would always describe it.

      It felt like lightning.

CHAPTER 7

      Ted Foster had woken up an hour ago to the sound of muffled whimpers drifting in off the landing. For a few dazed seconds, he imagined he were still a young man, sitting bolt upright in bed ready to trudge wearily across the hall to check on each of his three children, see which one of them was having a restless dream. He stretched his back through and reached up to rub the greying bristles of his face, turning to see if Blythe had woken too. Her pillow was as neat and plumped as she’d left it yesterday morning after Jem had helped her change the beds. Blythe had been grumbling about engine oil finding its way onto the bedspread again. ‘Well what can I do,’ Ted had protested, ‘if some evenings I rush my shower because I can’t wait to climb into bed with a show-stoppin’ redhead?’ Jem had started grinning at her mother then but Blythe had turned that beautiful porcelain chin of hers away in mock disapproval.

       God damn it, Blythe.

      The dawn was finding its way along the top edge of the curtains, waiting respectfully to be invited in. Ted took his first deep breath of the day and set a hand on the piped edging of Blythe’s pillow. She’d disapprove of all the fuss last night. All those strangers talking over her with their penlights and charts, as if she weren’t there sleeping beneath them. They were just kids. What did they know about her? A woman whose laughter they’d never contracted, whose neck they’d never smelled, whose beautiful voice they’d never heard singing on a morning.

      More impatient whimpering found its way through the gap under the bedroom door. Ted set two unwilling feet on the cool floorboards and went to find the source of all that disgruntlement. He quietly opened the door so as not to wake Jem down the hall. The door shushed open. Ted looked to his feet and the bundle of straw-coloured fur waiting expectantly there. The damned thing had sniffed him out and here it was, sitting there with its head cocked ready for breakfast no doubt.

      ‘Made it up the stairs then?’ This was their first Labrador, he’d heard they had more spring in them than most pups. Probably should’ve gotten something with less spring, not that he’d had any intention of having any more dogs, springy or not. The Cavern was an ale house, not a pet market. The damned thing had been what Blythe would call an impulse purchase, like half the stuff she’d bring home from the supermarket. Impulse purchase was about right. There it had been, all wide-eyed peeping out the top of Roger Muir’s coat. The runt, Muir had said. Ted knew instantly that Blythe would love it. Her face had lit up like one of the kids’ when she’d seen the pup, that smile she seemed to put her whole body into. A smile she didn’t have to think about. At this time of year to bring that smile back into the house was nothing short of a blessing.

      The pup cocked her head the other way.

      ‘If you were smarter, dog, you’d have tried my daughter’s room,’ Ted sighed. The girls had always gone gaga for puppies, just like Blythe. Ted wasn’t one to shout it from the rooftops but he’d always quietly beamed when somebody remarked how alike his girls were to their mother. Daughters should be like their mothers and Blythe and their girls were the most beautiful creatures in the Falls. He’d challenge anyone to say they weren’t. Of course, the same folks had said on occasion how Dill got his looks from Ted, but it was easy to tell the difference between