Alice picked at the pastry of the croissant on her plate, not really wanting it, but knowing she should eat something. She checked her phone’s display again. Ben wouldn’t be much longer. Once she’d composed herself after Faye’s arrest, she’d called and asked him to collect her.
Last night’s events had certainly put things in perspective. She’d never wanted to see and hold Ben as much as she did right now. She just wanted to put her hands on his cheeks and kiss him like it was the last time. Too often, couples take one another for granted. We all have an end, but when you’re in a relationship it’s easy to ignore that ticking clock.
Alice vowed she’d never allow herself to take Ben for granted again. Their marriage had got off to a rocky start, but they’d survived it, and it would make them stronger as a result.
A couple were arguing at the next table over. The man was wearing button-up pyjamas and must have been roasting given the warm climate inside the café, and presumably the woman was his wife or sister, who’d stopped by to visit him. He was emptying a fourth sachet of sugar into his mug, and she was slapping his free hand away from reaching for a fifth.
‘It’s this much sugar that’s made you diabetic to begin with,’ the woman chastised.
Alice was pretty sure that was an inaccurate statement, but the woman’s aggressive neck tattoo dissuaded Alice from confronting her on it.
The man looked older, his hair a shade of mid-grey, uncombed, and hanging down over his ears. The skin hung from his face but the paunch beneath his pyjamas suggested he had been overweight for some considerable time. He stirred the sugar around the mug and grimaced as he sipped from it.
Alice’s phone vibrated on the table. Dropping the croissant, she answered it when she saw her mum’s profile picture.
‘Morning, Mum. How are you? Did Scott get off to the airport okay?’
There was a huff on the other end. ‘You haven’t heard then?’
Alice’s eyebrows dipped. ‘Heard what?’
‘It’s all over the news; have you had your head buried in the sand today?’
Alice didn’t know how to begin to explain where she was or why. ‘I’ve been busy. What’s going on?’
‘Scott’s been arrested. At the airport of all places. Why on earth didn’t you tell me he had a drug problem?’
Alice’s eyes fluttered, certain she hadn’t heard right. ‘What? Is this some kind of joke?’
‘Do I sound like I’m joking?’ her mum said shrilly.
‘I’ll call you back,’ Alice said quickly, hanging up the phone and opening the Internet.
Sure enough, typing in Scott’s name, the first half dozen results alluded to an arrest at the airport. She skimmed the first two articles. Apparently, his bag had caused the dogs at Geneva airport to go crazy and after he’d been escorted to a back room, a block of cocaine had been discovered in his hand luggage. The article didn’t say where he was being held or what actions the Swiss authorities were planning to take, but the news was barely two hours old.
Scott had told her he was flying out to prepare for his race, but she hadn’t realized he’d meant so soon. And he’d certainly given her no reason to suspect he was taking drugs to enhance his performance.
He just wasn’t the type. He’d worked so hard to recover his fitness after the accident which had almost ended his career prematurely. That had been three years ago and he had done everything the doctors had told him: physiotherapy, muscle strengthening exercises, a carefully controlled high-protein diet. She’d seen the work he’d put in and it had looked like all his effort would be worth it, with a crack at the Tour de France a very realistic possibility.
All that would be wasted now.
Alice called her mum back. ‘I swear I had no idea.’
Her mum huffed again. ‘It’s bad enough having a son-in-law arrested and questioned by the police, but now a stepson too! What is happening to this family?’
Alice couldn’t miss the accusatory tone in her mother’s voice. Although she wouldn’t utter the words, Alice knew exactly what her mother was thinking.
‘You’re the one he was living with,’ Alice wanted to say. ‘If anyone’s to blame, it’s you for all the pressure you put on him.’ She bit her tongue instead. Now was not the time for blame and recrimination.
‘Have you spoken to him yet?’ Alice asked, after a moment.
‘No, he hasn’t called,’ she sighed. ‘Do you think I should try and phone them? What if they’re speaking to him in French? You know he wasn’t good at foreign languages in school.’ Her mother paused. ‘You need to go out there. Today. I’ll pay for your flight if necessary. He needs someone who can speak to the locals. You’re a French teacher, you’d be perfect.’
Her mother was being as impractical as ever.
‘I’m sure they’ll provide a translator if necessary,’ Alice replied quietly. ‘Besides, I can’t just up and fly to Switzerland. We don’t know where they’re holding him, or even if they’re holding him. They might have extradited him back to the UK for all we know.’
‘He’ll be terrified. You know what he’s like when he’s on his own. He needs family around him at a time like this. Someone who can help him through.’
The fact that her mum was more concerned about Scott than her hadn’t been lost on Alice. Scott had been the golden boy since the remarriage. Her mother apparently didn’t want to acknowledge that Scott was responsible for his current predicament. After all, it was he who had packed the cocaine in his luggage.
‘I think we need to sit tight for now,’ Alice said calmly. ‘When Scott makes contact we’ll deal with the situation, but in the meantime I have more important things on my plate.’
‘What could possibly be more important than your brother?’ Her mother’s tone cut Alice to the core. She hung up the call without a second’s thought, dropping the phone to the table. The clatter caused those closest to turn and stare.
Alice shoved what remained of the croissant into her mouth and fumed silently. It was true what they said: you could pick friends, but family you got lumbered with.
The woman at the other table had gone back to the counter to buy a cake, and Alice watched as the older man emptied another sachet of sugar into his mug. He caught her watching him and put a finger to his lips cheekily.
Maybe it was human nature for people to lie to those closest to them. She wasn’t surprised that Scott had kept his drug use a secret, nor that Ben had tried to keep his marriage to Mary from her. Had she found herself in Faye’s situation, would she have been brave enough to tell her friends that her husband was abusing her? She couldn’t say for certain that she would have.
Yet each of these secrets had led to irreparable damage. She had forgiven Ben for omitting Mary from his life, but it would always hang in the air between them; forgiven but not forgotten.
Then there was Kerry Valentine’s secret double life. She was a mum to Finn by day, but at night she became an exotic figure of lust. Her secret had borne the ultimate cost.
So many secrets, was it possible that one could ever really know another person fully? It was with this thought in her head that she pressed redial and decided to console her mother, rather than judge.