Looking for Alex (8 page)

*

The little blue circle spun round and round on my laptop, searching for the website that Dan had found. I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the hotel bed, leaning back against the plump pillows. My feet ached and I needed to shower, but not before I’d followed up the link he’d texted. There’d been no time for even a peep during the day.

When the page finally loaded I found I was looking at the website of a complementary medicine service, Castle Therapy Centre. It was in Norwich. Curious, I clicked on the ‘find a therapist’ tab and there the name was. Alex Day, Psychotherapist and Counsellor.

My aim is to help my clients to discover their potential, to help them to realise it, and to move forward into living the lives they want to live.

There was an account of how she worked, and qualifications gained. And although there was no photo, there was a brief biography. It told me that Alex Day had been born in the north, but later had moved to London. She’d lived most of her life there, doing many and varied jobs — some were listed — but then retrained as a therapist. Ten years ago she’d moved to Norwich. There was other stuff, but those were the bones of it. Lastly there was an email address and mobile phone number.

My first reaction was this couldn’t be her, she wouldn’t do that, put herself on the web for anyone to find her. Or would she? What if after all these years underground she felt the need to surface? What if she wanted someone to find her? I looked again, and one part jumped out:
I have a strong desire to help other people reach resolution and fulfilment.

I reached for my phone and texted Dan.

It’s possible. Good work! Did you tell Fitz?

Yes,
he replied at once. And then,
here
’
s his number.

I stared at it. I can ring this, I thought, and talk to Fitz, which seemed even stranger than having seen him: a direct line to his voice, to his thoughts, any time I wanted. My hand hovered over the keys, wavering, wondering if Fitz would know Dan had given me his number.
Let me know if you do find Alex,
he’d said, but he hadn’t offered his number himself. Maybe that had been just a throwaway line, a way of leaving without having to go through the pretence that we might meet again.

I texted,
what do you think of Dan’s find?
Then after that,
he gave me your number, hope that’s ok

Half an hour later, when I was showered and dressed and just thinking that he wouldn’t reply, my phone buzzed, did a little dance on the silky bed cover:
interesting
. That was all. I threw my phone down and went back to the website, browsing the entries for other therapists, all of whom had photos that ranged from cheerful smiles to enigmatic stares. I was thinking, There has to be a reason why Alex Day hasn’t put her photo on. I looked again at the bio, trying to get a feel for this person. Waitressing and modelling were included as previous jobs, and I tried to picture my Alex serving hotel meals in a tight black skirt, or pouting sexily in mail-order lingerie. By closing my eyes briefly I could see her, petite and pretty, with an elfin face and hennaed hair, and coal-black eyes.

I reached for my phone once more and glared at Fitz’s text. Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you curious too? Or do you know things that I don’t? Then the phone vibrated in my hand and started to ring.

‘Hi, Fitz.’

‘Hi. How was your day?’

‘Mmm…it wasn’t the best. I was tired after last night, training a bunch of managers who didn’t want to be there. How about you?’

‘Well, I’ve been told to fuck off a few times and kicked in the shins, so not too dissimilar, I suppose.’

I laughed. ‘Just a bit more direct.’

‘Yeah, right. Where are you?’

‘Sitting in my hotel room, summoning the energy to go out and get some dinner.’

I heard the rattle of cutlery in a drawer and then a spoon in a pan, stirring. ‘I’ve been tired too,’ he said. ‘Late nights, mid-week, just can’t do them now.’ There was a slight pause, maybe while he peered into whatever he was cooking, lifting the spoon to his lips, tasting it. ‘It was good to see you. Who’d have thought?’

‘Unbelievable.’

‘Well,’ he said, after another silence, and this time I pictured him doing a small shake of the head, deciding not to say what had been in his mind, ‘I looked at the website. It’s hard to say if it’s Alex, obviously, without a photo. Like I said, it must be a common name.’

‘I suppose so. I could try to find out some more, maybe. Or I could just phone, say who I am and ask to speak to her? I don’t know. What do you think?’

‘Depends.’

‘On…?’

‘Well, if it is her, wouldn’t you want to give her some warning? To just phone out of the blue, it backs her into a corner. And then—’

‘Go on.’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, say it.’

‘I’m wondering how much you actually want to see Alex. Last night you didn’t seem so sure.’

‘No. I’m not. But it’s tempting too. If it is her. Straighten things out somehow.’ My face in the mirror reflected my doubts. ‘I’m not even sure why that’s important, now.’

‘Let sleeping dogs lie?’

‘You think I should?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just going with your thoughts.’ I remembered how good Fitz used to be at offering insight that made everything seem so clear. Not as Linda does, when I talk to her about Phil, not by listing pros and cons, but by going straight to the heart of the matter. ‘This is your call,’ he was saying now, when what I wanted was direction. ‘But you’d have to be prepared for anything. Anything. Like it or not.’

There was the sound of a spoon tapping the side of a pan. I wished I could see inside Fitz’s head. ‘What are you cooking?’

‘Chilli. A wicked hot one.’

‘You still make them like that? Once you made one so hot we had to stick our tongues in saucers of milk — do you remember?’

He laughed, said yes, he remembered.

‘Fitz, don’t ask me to rationalise this, but I just think it is Alex. I’ve got a feeling.’

‘Beth…’

‘Hmm?’

‘I can’t tell you what to do.’

‘Okay, I know that.’

It seemed like I’d been dismissed, and I soon made an excuse to finish the call.

‘I’ve got a table booked for dinner,’ I said. After we’d rung off I went down to the bar, where I ate a microwaved meal alongside two other solitary diners.

That night I dreamed of Alex and me, some jumbled stuff that involved dark rooms, blood on walls, and then running slowly down a long street, legs like lead and our panting pursuer catching us up. When I woke up, at three in the morning, I was hot, soaked in sweat. I got up to pee and drink some water, then lay wide awake until there was light creeping round the edge of the curtains, the dream lingering soupily in my skull, conjuring up a long-forgotten memory.

*

It’s cold; the air is heavy and damp. A February Sunday. We had set off walking, itching to get out of the house, and found ourselves way up on Crookes, in a small park, just a patch of rough ground really, wandering around like two lost sheep. We’re at that age — twelve or thirteen — where the playground has lost its appeal but we’ve found nothing much as a replacement. Our breath rises up into the foggy air as we sit on the swings and scuff our feet on the ground, gossiping about friends and boys and pop stars. And clothes, which is our new obsession; today we are lookalikes, in bomber jackets and flared jeans, our hair fringed and bobbed. We’ve been there a while when Alex points to some terraced houses that run down the hill.

She says, ‘That’s where me and Lee saw the witch-house.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ I remember some odd story she came into school with one morning before Christmas. I didn’t properly listen, trying to ignore the fact that she had a sort-of boyfriend and had been going out without me. It came to nothing though, with Lee, and I was glad to have her back to myself. I forgot about the witch-house.

‘We did,’ she insists now, and when Alex insists it’s hard to get her off the subject. Lee showed her an empty house, she says, and they looked through the window at the back and saw strange symbols scrawled on the wall. ‘There are such things as witches, modern ones.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I know. But they don’t live in a house in Crookes, do they?’

She laughs. ‘Where do you think they live? In the woods? Come on.’ She jumps off the swing, with a loud clank of chains. ‘I’ll show you.’

I follow her slowly, reluctant but curious too, as she takes me out of the opposite entrance to where we came in and down streets I’ve never before explored. I soon realise that Alex doesn’t exactly know where the house is. She keeps turning left and right, then back on herself, saying each time,
oh, yeah, this way
, or,
I know now
. I don’t say anything, not wanting to draw a prickly comment back, but I become more and more sure we won’t find it. At one point she stands and frowns at a house, a mid-terrace that looks like all the others.

‘This looks like it. But there was an alley at the side, and a gate that wasn’t locked, and you could look through the window and see the drawings on the wall.’ She squints round at me. ‘They were right weird. We were trying to work out what they meant but then this woman banged on an upstairs window and we ran for it.’

‘But, Alex,’ I say, ‘if there was an alley at the side this can’t be it. Can it?’

‘It looked like this,’ is all she says.

It’s getting dark and I’m beginning to feel chilled; the damp is seeping through my thin jeans and my legs are shivering.

‘Let’s go home,’ I say.

She pulls a face and points to the street on our left. ‘Just let’s try down here.’

‘Do you know the way back?’ I ask, suddenly aware that I don’t.

‘Of course.’

We go the way she wants but halfway along the street we come to a halt, startled by a sudden thin wail that seems to drop down from the sky. We look up to see an open window a few doors away, and when the noise comes again I realise that it’s a baby crying. It’s a bleak sound; if a baby could be said to despair then this one does. I have no experience of babies but somehow I know it’s the cry of a child that doesn’t expect to be comforted. I glance at Alex and see her face has gone white, her eyes are like two black buttons and her mouth is pressed tight. It’s unusual, for Alex to have no jokey comment at hand, something to make light of a heavy feeling.

She walks faster as we near the house. ‘Come on,’ she says, and I don’t need persuading. But as we pass the house the front door opens and there’s a shout.

‘Hey, you girls!’

We spin round to see a woman on the steps. She wears a summer skirt and a long, saggy cardigan, which she wraps round herself with folded arms. Her legs are bare and her face looks pinched with cold.

‘Can you ’elp me?’

Startled, we look at one another. How? The woman comes down the steps towards us, and all the time the baby is crying. She tells us that the child is ill and she needs to get her to hospital. She says it’s too far; she can’t walk; she has to fetch her husband home.

Alex says, ‘Where is he?’

She jerks her head down the street. ‘Down t’club. Playin’ cards.’ She asks if we’ll come into the house and mind the baby while she goes for him and I look at Alex and she’s shaking her head.

‘Can’t,’ she says. ‘We have to get home. We’ll be late.’

I speak up. ‘We could, just for a minute,’ I say, and Alex’s head springs round. She mouths,
what?
Turning to the woman, she says, ‘Can’t you ask a neighbour?’

‘Not anyone round ’ere.’ That’s all she says. She looks at us solidly, as though she doesn’t doubt that we will help. Maybe it’s because of that that I try to persuade Alex, no longer than ten minutes, I say, just while the woman runs down to the club. She’s reluctant still, and as I put my hand on her arm to draw her towards the house I see, quite suddenly, how it is to be her. For a moment I am Alex and she is Beth, the sensible, cautious one. I know we should not go into a strange house but I want to anyway, and the more she resists, the more I insist; her pull is my push.

So we go, following the woman upstairs, our shoes clattering on bare wood. She takes us into a tiny bedroom that contains little but the cot and the grizzling child, who is kneeling up at the bars. She tells us to watch her and she’ll be back as soon as she can. She says nothing to the child, no words of reassurance, a little girl in a grubby pink babygro whose age I try to guess — somewhere between one and two maybe. When her mother leaves the room she stops making any sound at all. She flops down onto her back and stares up at the ceiling.

Alex whispers, ‘I don’t like this.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Why did you say yes, then?’

‘What else could we do?’

‘Go and get someone to help?’

I say nothing. It’s cold in the room, and there’s a rank smell in the air that seems to come from a plastic bucket in one corner.

‘It’s a nappy bucket,’ says Alex, with a little of her old authority back. ‘Soaking, shitty nappies.’ She lifts up the lid on the bucket, and the evil odour escapes. Quickly she rams the lid down and turns back to the cot.

‘She doesn’t look very ill to me.’

I was thinking the same but I’m not going to admit that yet. Cautiously I move nearer to the cot and peep into it. The child’s face is pale and her eyes are red from crying. Her nose is snotty, and there’s what looks like dried milk, or vomit, round her mouth, which starts to crumple as I approach. I stop, pick up a teddy from the floor and dangle it over the cot. She stares at it silently, her bottom lip still unsteady. The one-eyed teddy looks sorry for itself, with stuffing leaking from where the head meets the body. I jiggle it along the cot rail, singing a funny, dancy song — dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-da, diddly-di-di-da — and am rewarded with the ghost of a smile. She stretches up one arm and I let her grab the teddy and pull it towards her; she cuddles it with both arms, flat on her tummy. I reach in slowly to pull the covers over her, and she lets me, her eyes not leaving my face.

I say, ‘There, that’s better.’

The woman is longer than she says, the ten minutes stretch to thirty and now it’s utterly dark outside; our faces moon in the window when we look down the street for her.