‘I didn’t think you’d wait to drive up here to your mother, you should’ve come to the house,’ he said. ‘I waited for you on the porch.’ He would’ve waited there longer for her too, had he not started thinking the same old thoughts, tying himself in knots until he’d found himself stalking angrily down to St Cuthbert’s.
‘It was early. I didn’t know if you’d be awake …’ But she knew it was a rubbish lie before she told it.
‘You’re my daughter. And it’s never too early in the day to see your child arrive safely home, Alexandra.’
‘Jem? Are you hungry yet? I think we should wait until Dad gets home. Shall one of us call him?’
Alex’s voice bounced up through the house as she sniffed the contents of the heavy casserole dish on the kitchen table. How Helen Fairbanks had managed to hoist all that cast iron and lamb hotpot up to the house and leave it on the porch deck without putting her back out was an enigma, but Mrs Fairbanks was one of those practical can-do women, cut from the same old-school cloth as Blythe and Susannah Finn. ‘Jem?’ Alex yelled again. Jem had regressed back to her early teens since they’d got back to the house. She’d been upstairs on the other side of a closed bedroom door while Alex had skulked around the kitchen in quiet contemplation. Someone had to keep the new puppy from chewing or piddling on anything else and Jem still seemed immune to all things cute and cuddly. Alex meandered back out from the hall. Their parents’ kitchen was still homely and vast as any of the other farmhouse kitchens along the track, it still smelled of the dried lavender Blythe had tied to the beams and the ashes in the Aga, despite the new addition to the household peeing with excitement every time Alex walked into the room.
Alex’s stomach growled. Helen Fairbanks’ mercy meals were legendary. Over by the log basket a bundle of fur the colour of wheat fields heard the noises of Alex’s gastric processes and began wagging herself to death again. The pup waddled excitedly towards Alex, a wet trail in her wake. ‘Agh, not again!’ Alex groaned. ‘You’re like a tap … dog.’ The dog needed a name. Alex seemed to be the object of its unwavering affection and if they were going to have this intimate relationship of ankle-licking and wee-clearing every time the thing set eyes on her, the dog definitely needed a name.
Alex listened to the bump bump bump of Jem finally plodding down the wooden stairs. Jem bobbed lethargically back into the kitchen, her hair tied up now like the renegade ballerina she’d briefly been in her childhood. Alex had only just shook her own out, her scalp was still throbbing from having had its hair follicles pulled back too vigorously, too carelessly in the rush to make the drive up here.
‘You cut your hair,’ Jem observed, reaching for the auburn tendrils sitting against Alex’s shoulders. Alex finished placing a knife and fork aside the last of the three placemats their mum had already set out for Jem’s weekend stay.
‘Yeah. Think I should’ve just hacked the lot off though. I have to keep it tied back all the time at work, so …’ Not to mention the swimming issue. It only took a few strands to break free and start floating around her face to freak her out completely.
‘Looks nice, anyway. You look like Mum did, in that photo she used to have of her and Dad.’ Alex frowned. ‘At the mayor’s annual dinner.’
Alex fished for the memory. ‘Oh, yeah. The one with Mayor Sinclair letting Dad wear his gold BA Baracas chains. I haven’t seen that picture for years.’ She smiled. It was one of her dad’s favourites. He used to tell everyone how he’d fallen in love with their mum all over again that night, she looked so beautiful. Like Grace Kelly. Grandma Ros had insisted that picture be kept in the hallway where visitors would definitely see it, having your photo taken with the mayor and his wife was a badge of honour too shiny to be left in a back room.
Jem moved lethargically over to her chair. Her mood seemed to have been on a steady decline since their debate on who should to call Mal for a proper chat about what had happened last night. Alex was probably just over-scrutinising again. Finn had accused her of that the night he’d showed up at her university digs, of looking for a problem until she found one.
An image of Finn, chest heaving with the rigours of his morning run poked Alex in her mind’s eye again. This morning was a fluke, it didn’t mean they would keep bumping into each other, not necessarily. Even if they did, a simple hello would suffice. Just a nice, polite hello, like old friends. They weren’t kids any more, were they?
‘Neither have I actually.’
‘What?’
‘Seen that photo of Mum and Dad and the Sinclairs. Can’t say I miss not seeing Louisa’s sour face every time I come into the house though,’ Jem said. ‘You know, she called me a thief once. Said I’d stolen one of the ornaments from Sinclair Heights. Like I’d want anything out of the mayoral mansion.’
Mal hadn’t grown up in a mansion, but he’d been the most well kitted-out kid Alex and Jem had ever played with. Ted had said they were the perks of being an only child. Mal had told them over toasted marshmallows one night that his dad really wanted Mal to have a brother but Louisa said no because she detested being fat.
‘Ornaments?’
‘Yeah, that miniature Viking ship, of Dill’s remember? I was showing it to Mal, he had one similar and was trying to tell me how valuable his was because it had these markings on the bottom.’ Jem’s face twisted as she recalled the tale. ‘Then Louisa saw me showing Dill’s ship to Mal and freaked. Said I was trying to steal it, that it belonged to a set of theirs Malcolm’s father keeps in his private study.’ Jem imitated Louisa’s acerbic voice. ‘She told me it was about time I stopped acting like a little thug and how coming from a family with no money was no excuse.’
Alex whistled. ‘That’ll do it.’
‘Oh yeah, she also said I should start behaving like a “lady”.’ Jem held her fingers up to denote inverted commas. ‘Starting with rectifying my boy’s haircut.’
Alex bit at her lip. She felt for Jem, everyone knew Mal’s mum was a tyrant. Alex had been lucky on the ‘boyfriend’s mothers’ score, Susannah Finn had treated Alex like a daughter, virtually.
‘To be fair, you were always a bit thuggish, Jem. But you never looked like a boy … not once your crew cut grew out a bit, anyway.’ Alex smiled, trying for a little light relief at the expense of Jem’s historic rash makeover choices. I just wanted a change, had been Jem’s official line when the head had sent her home. Alex had made a few of her own dodgy fashion statements in her teens but only Jem had ever come home from school with a short back and sides.
Jem wasn’t listening; she was too busy looking blankly at her mobile phone.
‘So who won?’ Alex asked, straightening the place settings. Her mum always laid the table so elegantly, an art form with its own choreography.
‘Won what?’
‘The battle of the Viking ship?’
Jem winked. ‘There was no way she was keeping that little carved ship. It’s in Dill’s room now, go and have a look.’
Alex caught her smile before it dropped. She didn’t go in there. Mum had kept it nice, unchanged. Everything in its place like her finely laid table settings. Alex didn’t even want to risk moving the dust in Dill’s room.
‘I believe you, Jem. How’d you get it back off her?’
Jem grimaced at her phone and slapped it onto the table, slumping into one of the chunky wooden chairs. ‘Louisa? I’d have prised it from her bony fingers if I’d have had to, Al. As it happened, Mal’s dad came home. You should’ve seen Louisa’s face when the mayor told her she’d made a mistake. Nearly killed her handing it back, you’d have thought she was handing me Mal’s inheritance. Anyway