Ben’s eyes bulged. ‘What? It’s true, isn’t it?’ He looked between his dad and Alex, appealingly. No support came.
‘What does that evenmean?’ Alex turned her body to confront his. ‘Slut?She was a mess. She was lonely. She needed help.’
The words came to her as she pictured her friend in tears by the jetty after yet another argument with Maxwell, waiting for Alex to bring the ferry across the river again. She remembered holding her friend and comforting her. None of that was fake. Eve had been utterly lost, like a child.
‘Maybe she’s just a bit hopeless. Maybe she doesn’t know how to help herself. Loads of people are like that.’ Alex’s eyes blazed. She was on a roll now and the words kept coming. She didn’t admit she was thinking of more than Eve’s situation as she spoke. ‘Loads of people find themselves stuck somewhere they don’t want to be, and with people who make them miserable. Maybe she didn’t have the courage – or the means – to get out. And if you thought she was such a nuisance why were you kissing her in my living room?Hmm?Was she less of a nuisance at that point?’
Ben stared at the headrest, not quite realising he couldn’t salvage this.
‘Mr Thomas?’ Alex said, getting no response. ‘Dad, stop the car, please.’ She said it softly at first. ‘Please, stop the car!’ This time she yelled it.
She saw Ben’s father’s shoulders drop in defeat as he pumped the brakes. The car rolled slowly to a stop under the spreading branches of an oak tree growing from the hedgerow. Alex unclipped her seatbelt and grabbed the plastic bag containing her few belongings from the footwell.
‘Where are you going?’ Ben yelped in horror, watching as she reached for the door handle.
‘I’m not coming home with you. You have Christmas plans with your family, go and enjoy them.’
‘No! No wait! What are you doing?’ He grabbed ineffectually at her coat.
Alex thought of Magnús back at the shop that they’d planned to open together today. He’d have woken up and found her gone. Her hand swooped to her pocket. It was empty. No phone. It must still be in Jowan’s spare room.
‘I have plans of my own,’ she replied.
‘We’ll drive her back,’ said Mr Thomas, turning in his seat and addressed his son.
‘But, Dad!’ Ben whined.
‘Let her go, son.’
Alex pulled the door open and slipped out. ‘I’ll walk.’
‘In this weather?’ Ben scrambled across the back seat after her. ‘So, youhavegone crazy! That’s what everyone was saying at home, and I didn’t believe them.’
She was surprised by the laugh this elicited from her. They could think she was mad and they could think that Eve was a slut. It didn’t matter any more. She looked down at Ben sitting where she’d been trapped a moment ago. He was staring up at her at a loss for what to do now.
‘It’s not that far back down the valley, and we passed loads of bus stops. I’ll get on the next bus that comes.’
The wind didn’t feel all that bad in the momentary lull that had settled around them by the side of the car and in the shelter of the stone walls and ancient hedgerows. ‘I’m walking.’ Her voice was stony and resolute.
Alex extended her spine to her full height, looking at the road behind her and the dark sky and sea beyond. There was still a tiny patch of blue far out over the water. The storm might not come to much after all. Maybe it was already passing? She buttoned her coat as Mr Thomas forced the driver door open and stood before her, not minding that he was getting wet again.
‘I’m sorry you had to come all this way,’ she told him.
‘I’m sorry it’s ending this way, love.’ He reached for her and she hugged him back. ‘You are always welcome at our house. Remember that. We all love you very much, like our own daughter.’
When he pulled away, Alex could see in his eyes that he meant it, but she knew she couldn’t call round any more. It really was over. She’d been desperately searching for a family and home comforts to the extent that she’d settled for any port in a storm. What she needed, she now knew, was a safe haven of her own making. Far better, she was coming to understand, to be her own anchor. She might not have all the answers – in fact, she barely had any – but she knew she’d seen a tiny glimpse of what was possible during the last few days down there, over the rain-sodden fields, in Clove Lore, and that was where she wanted to be right now.
‘I’ll pop in,’ she lied. ‘Once I decide what I’m doing with my life.’
‘You really won’t let us drive you back there?’ Mr Thomas scanned the narrow road ahead for a turning place.
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I can’t look at Ben…’ The rest of her words tailed away.
Mr Thomas only nodded and delivered a kiss, on tiptoes, to her cheek. ‘Bye for now, Alex. Just follow the road straight, it’ll wind back down to the harbour car park behind the pub – twenty minutes’ walk, I reckon.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, and she believed it too. ‘Tell Mu… tell Mrs Thomas I’m sorry I’m missing her Christmas lunch.’ She couldn’t call them mum and dad any longer.
This was her surrendering the Thomases, who she loved, to preserve herself, who she determined to love better. It was going to be far easier for the whole pack of Thomases to let her go than it was going to be for her to turn away from the only family she had, she realised with a stab at her heart, but she had no hope of a future of her own shaping if she went home with Ben now.
