Page 37 of The Redemption of Alex Cade
I’d chosen the reserve deliberately. It wasn’t the biggest or best, or the most renowned. The flat, featureless land sat in a shallow hollow and mobile signals were almost non-existent. Out here, until we were some way along the main road, nobody could reach us.
“Taking an interest in the birds and wildlife came later.” I hadn’t meant to say the words, but as Alex dragged himself back from wherever he’d been, the questions I saw in his steady gaze demanded answers. It was too late to backtrack.
“Growing up, I had the best and worst childhood. I was never in doubt about how much my mum loved me, but she had her demons. The days she spent in bed, barely eating, not having the energy or interest to get up and have a shower. Her dressing table looked like a pharmacy, with bottles of pills everywhere, which didn’t do anything other than turn her into a zombie. I learnt to look after myself from a young age—and her too when she wasn’t well. Depression,” I said, turning to look at Alex, the intensity of his concentration on me almost too much.
“You’re probably wondering where all this has come from and what this has to do with birding. Sorry.” Alex said nothing. He didn’t take my hand, didn’t offer any platitudes and I was grateful for that as my Mum was more than meaningless expressions of regret.
“There was a nature reserve near us. It was nothing much, just some scrubland and a silted up pond. Hardly anybody ever went there, which suited me fine. I’d go whenever I could, to get away from it all. It was like I’d found my own little world where I could pretend the illness and the pillsdidn’t exist.” I paused, just for a second or so, to steel myself for what I said next. “I was in my first year at university, when she died from pneumonia.” Until then, at that little table in the reserve café, I’d never talked about what had happened after she’d gone.
“I had to come home to clear the flat—we didn’t own it, it was rented. After the funeral I went back to the reserve for what I knew would be the last time.
“When Mum died, I never cried. There was too much to do, and only me to do it. But, as I stood on the edge of the pond, it all came out and I couldn’t stop. I thought I was alone, but there was an old couple there I hadn’t noticed, with their binoculars and cameras. Who knows, they might have had fish paste sandwiches. We didn’t exchange names, and they never asked me what was wrong, they just talked about the birds they’d seen. It was spring, so there was a lot of activity, not that I’d noticed up until then. They encouraged me to take a look through their binoculars. Life goes on, was the hidden message.
“I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at. I could identify a duck and a pigeon, and that was about it. But watching calmed me down and took me to another place, if only for a little while.” I glanced up at Alex, suddenly self-conscious at the way that locked up part of my life had all come tumbling out. “Sorry,” I mumbled, scrubbing my hands down my face. “I don’t know where that all came from. I’ve got a pretty screwed up background, but you already knew about that.”
“No more than most of us.” Alex took my hands, the only time he’d touched me or spoken since I’d started telling my story. “It’s made you who you are. Without what happened, you’d have been a different person,” he said, sweeping his thumbs over the backs of my hands.
“And what’s made you who you are?” I asked thequestion without thought. It felt like he knew so much of me, of what and who I was beneath the skin, but how much of Alex did I really know?
His thumbs stilled. Silence pressed in us as he stared at me, and I let my own gaze drop. The sweep of his thumb resumed.
“How I came to be me is a complicated story. Some of it I’m proud of, but a lot of it I’m not. It’s just taken me a long time to admit it to myself and face up to it.”
“What is it you’re not proud of?”
He said nothing as he turned his face to gaze out at the muted winter landscape. A dull ache pressed in my chest. He was shutting me out. Perhaps he’d tell me one day, perhaps not. I went to pull my hands away, but he tightened his grip as he turned back to me.
“Not here. Come back with me and I’ll tell you what and who I am, and why. But you won’t like it, Kit. You may even hate me for it. So you need to be sure you really do want to know. Ask yourself that, and answer the question honestly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
KIT
“I’m not sure who’s going to need this more, you or me.” Alex poured two generous measures of whisky before he sat down next to me on the sofa.
I wasn’t really a spirits drinker, but I had the feeling I was going to be grateful for its support before the evening was out. He knocked the drink down in one before he poured himself another. “Are you sure you want to hear this? Because it can’t be unheard.” He gazed at me over the rim of his glass, daring me to make my decision.
“If you don’t want to say anything…” I was losing my nerve, I knew I was. Maybe I didn’t want the Pandora’s Box of who Alex was opened.
“That’s not what I asked.”
The truth was, I didn’t know. Yet, too much had already been said. If he didn’t tell me now, maybe he wouldn’t evergive me another chance. I nodded, turning the drink I didn’t want around and around in my hands.
Alex put his glass down on the coffee table and leant forward. Everything about him was both tense andintense. My fingers itched to touch him, but I gripped my glass tight, afraid that if I did reach out to him he’d shatter.
“I first met Kelvin when we were teenagers.” He said the words slowly, picking through them, as though they had to be carefully navigated. “We were in foster care together.”
“Oh. I—I never realised.”
“Because I never said.” His face screwed up, it was like he was experiencing a real and visceral pain. My heart twisted. Foster care. Care homes. So many horrific scandals had hit the headlines about kids being mistreated, and I prayed to god he hadn’t been one of them.
“Alex?” I lightly rested my hand on his arm, letting him know I was there for him.
For a moment he said nothing. Alex stared at me, as if deciding whether to take the final step, whether to tell me what I would never be able to unhear. He nodded, the decision made, and a chill crept through me as I braced myself for a story I wanted to know, yet feared to hear.
“We were in a foster home, and escaped that horror at sixteen. God alone knows how those bastards passed the vetting process to be foster parents. I’d been there for about a year, and had spent most of my time fighting off my so called carer. Travis.” He spat the name out.
Oh, Christ. My insides shrivelled as I searched for the words of comfort I couldn’t find.
