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“You gonna drink that?” asked Lucy.
“Go for it.” Alex got up, dragging her bathrobe behind her. “I haven’t touched a drop since New Year’s. I need a clear head. There’s so much to mull over.”
“I don’t like this booze-free clear-headedness, not if it’s telling you to leave.” She sipped Alex’s wine. “Where are you going?”
“Dad’s. I just said—”
“No, right now.”
Alex opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a beat-up shoebox. She walked back to Lucy. “Can you help me shift this stuff? On the sofa, floor, wherever.”
They moved the food, glasses, cookie tin, and snapdragons onto the hardwood floor.
Alex lifted the small table onto its side and dug through the box, each movement of her hands clinking and clanging the contents inside.
“Dad’s house will be quiet during the day. Joan will be teaching, Helen’s busy at the hospital…”
Her hand reappeared with a screwdriver.
“Shame that thing’s not sonic.” Lucy laughed.
Alex slowly tightened the loose bolt at the base of the table leg. “I might stay for a few months, concentrate on writing. I could work on our graphic novel up there.”
Lucy looked hurt. “Come on, Lex. Don’t go up north. I’ll miss you.”
“You’ll be fine. Think of it as more time with Harry.” Alex tugged on the leg. Now stable, it wasn’t going anywhere. She returned the screwdriver to the box and the table to its feet.
“Look at that,” said Lucy. “Indomitable AND handy. Forget Harry, I should be dating you.”
Alex starred at the smashed chocolate orange, ignoring Lucy’s silliness. “When we were in Manchester on Boxing Day…did you notice Mark’s behaviour? I keep thinking about it. He went to the bathroom like, four times during that football match. He nursed one pint the whole visit, so I doubt he was peeing in the toilets. Maybe the ecstasy on New Year’s Eve wasn’t a one-off. Maybe he’s doing other stuff, too?”
“You think he was doing drugs? In the loo?”
Alex shrugged and set their snacks back on the table.
“I didn’t have Mark down as a pill popper.” Lucy reunited their glasses and the flowers with the table. “At least based on what I’ve seen.”
“I couldn’t get him to take aspirin when he hurt his shoulder, so what’s up with the recreational drugs?”
“Hurt his wha’?”
“His shoulder. Austria in November? He said he slipped during a snowball fight. It looked nasty, like the Hulk had stomped on him…all purple and yellow, really bad.”
“So much for him channeling Action Man, getting his arse kicked by Buddy the bloody Elf. Unless…do you think he was high, hurt himself that way?”
“He’s lost weight, too. He was thinner before Christmas, before Fallon. I thought he looked skinnier in Birmingham, but it was really noticeable in Manchester.”
“Really? Wow, maybe it is a drug problem, then. I never thought Mark would be one to have a quarter-life crisis. God, Lex, no matter how you slice it, you had to kick him to the curb.”
“It’s just been one thing after another.”
Lucy sneered. “Stupid guy. I think he came here figuring a few snapdragons, apologies, a box of cookies, and you’d be ready to forgive and forget. He doesn’t deserve you.”
Both women sat in silence for a minute.
“Lex, what you told me on Boxing Day…it’s been stuck in my head. Don’t get cross at me for asking but, if the cheating hadn’t happened, Fallon hadn’t come back on the scene…if it was just you and Mark and his bonkers schedule…would you still be together?”
Alex exhaled. “I don’t know. I love him, but a big part of me hates what our life had become, you know? That’s the problem: Mark’s a package deal now. The lack of privacy, the constant absences—it’s a huge part of him, just like panic attacks are part of me. And never the twain shall meet.”
