Chapter Twenty Three
A lli was fuming. How the hell had weak Charles talked his way out of this when she hadn’t been able to? The only thing she could think of was bribery. And now Josh was clinging on to her waist, carrying her down the corridor like she was a toddler having a tantrum.
“Put. Me. Down.”
“If I do, are you going to try to hit me?” Josh asked calmly.
“No! Why would I hit you?”
“Because you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry with you, idiot,” she snarled. “It’s that Luke that I want to get my hands on.” Josh put her down and looked at her speculatively. “Purely metaphorically, of course,” she added. “I might get mad, but I don’t get violent.”
“Mmm,” Josh said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Although if you were going to punch someone, I suppose Luke wouldn’t be a bad choice.”
Alli eyed him. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No, just being honest.”
Which could be somewhat useful. “What do you know about Charles?” she asked.
“What do you know about Daria?” he countered.
Alli sucked her teeth and considered things. “Fine, she offered to get me out for money, I gave her the money, she ran off. Happy?”
“Makes sense,” Josh said thoughtfully. “We’re all dead broke here. As for Charles, really, your guess is as good as mine. His lawyer told him something on the phone, but I don’t know what. He came looking for Luke like he was going to crucify him. Luke talked to him, Charles left. Still not looking very happy, in my opinion.”
“Can you get me his phone number?” Alli asked.
“Charles’s? I can try, we must have it somewhere.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Josh said. “Just do me a favor and keep the sparring verbal. I don’t need to be called into every class just to carry you out of it.”
“Fair enough,” Alli said. “Um, sorry?”
“I’m probably not the one you should be apologizing to. Try Bea, it was her class. And maybe your classmates too.”
“Yeah, yeah, I will.”
But as it turned out, she didn’t see Bea for the rest of the day. In fact, by teatime, she was starting to think that Bea was avoiding her. And by dinnertime, she was sure that Bea was avoiding her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Marcus asked, mouth full of chips. “You look like you’re going to lose it again. Are you?”
“No,” Alli said rudely. “Are you?”
He held up huge hands. “Hey, I’m not the one that got carried out of yoga.”
“She’s apologized for that, haven’t you, dear?” Julia said, patting Alli’s hand.
“Right,” said Alli. She’d given a half-hearted apology at lunch and everyone had seemed to accept it.
“Seems odd without Charles here,” Izzy said. “Like we’re a limb missing or something.”
“Seriously?” Alli said. “We haven’t even been here a week yet. We’re not a bonded band of brothers or anything.”
“I loved that show,” Marcus sighed.
“Me too,” said Izzy .
“Two angry people loved a program about fighting, what a surprise,” said Alli.
“No,” said Marcus. “No, not at all. It wasn’t a show about fighting. It was a show about love, compassion, about friendship and sacrifice.”
Izzy sniffed and looked like she was blinking away tears. “It was beautiful.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not like that,” Alli said. She looked over at the place where Charles normally sat. “But it is a bit weird,” she added.
“Maybe he’ll come and visit,” Julia said.
Alli scraped her plate and then stood up. “I’ve had enough of this. Josh is getting me Charles’s phone number. If you lot want it, you can have it. That way you can ring him, alright?”
“Really?” Izzy said, beaming. “Thanks, Alli. That’s really nice of you.”
Alli sighed. She wasn’t trying to be nice, not really. She just wanted them all to shut up so she could think. She couldn’t see Bea and it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t coming to dinner and Alli was starting to think that she might have really screwed up.
Alright, she shouldn’t have lost her temper like that, probably. But she hadn’t been angry at Bea. Surely Bea could see that?
She took herself out of the dining room, checking all the classrooms and finding them empty.
It was only now that she had a thought. A dreadful thought. The thought that maybe Bea had changed her mind. Given that just this morning Alli had no intention of touching the woman again, the idea that Bea might not be interested anymore was more painful than she’d expected.
She sighed, leaning on the banister at the bottom of the stairs, wondering where Bea could be and what was going on.
Dare she go upstairs to the staff quarters? She closed her eyes. As far as she could remember, the rest of the staff were in the dining room. With the exception of Luke. He hadn’t been seen all day .
Okay, so she was going up.
She paused when she got to the corridor, listening for any sound she could, but there was nothing. So there was nothing she could do except walk down the corridor and open doors until finally, inevitably, she opened Bea’s.
And there she was, lying on her bed, reading a book. She looked up as Alli opened the door. “Don’t you knock?”
“Don’t you eat?” countered Alli, leaning on the doorframe and feeling more relieved than she’d thought she would.
Bea sighed and swung her legs over the edge of the tiny bed until she was sitting. She patted the bed next to her. “Alright, I’ve hidden away enough. Close the door, sit down, and let’s talk.”
“About what?” Alli said, a weird twisting starting in her stomach, like she was being sent to the headmistress’s office or something.
“About this morning,” Bea said calmly.
Alli swallowed. This was not a position she was used to being in. She closed the door. “Yeah, right, I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t angry at you, you know.”
“I know that,” Bea said. “But I didn’t like it. It worried me, scared me even. That anger was real, hot, frightening, surely you can understand that.”
Alli sat down on the bed, a sudden chill inside her. “I didn’t mean it to be,” she said.
“But you did,” said Bea. “And, frankly, seeing you like that made me have some serious second thoughts.”
Now the anger was coming, warm and liquid inside her and Alli almost, almost let it go. But Bea’s hand was on the bed next to hers, close enough to touch and as she took a deep breath she saw it out of the corner of her eye and the anger stilled itself. “Right,” was what she said in the end, a little sadly.
Bea’s hand crept a little closer but didn’t touch hers. Alli’s heart felt heavy. She wasn’t used to these feelings, didn’t particularly like them. She’d broken things already. What a surprise.
“You look… sad,” Bea offered .
“Because I am,” Alli said. “I, uh, I can only apologize.” She hesitated. “Is there anything else I can do?”
Bea sighed. “Why do you get so angry?”
“Dunno.”
“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” Bea said.
Alli took a breath, closed her eyes, swallowed, thought. “It makes my voice heard,” she said finally.
“Do you need to try so hard to make your voice heard?” Bea asked gently.
Alli’s eyes flashed open. She snorted. “Do you have any idea?” she said, the anger starting to build up again.
“Hey,” said Bea, letting their hands touch now. “I’m here. I’m listening. You don’t need to get angry, I’m already hearing you.”
The warmth of Bea’s hand tingled through her. Instinctively, Alli knew that as unpleasant as this was, it was her only chance at getting Bea back. Because she had lost her that morning, she realized. Losing her temper like that had scared Bea off and without some kind of sacrifice, Bea wasn’t coming back to her.
“I went to boarding school when I was seven,” she said, not looking at Bea. “I hated it. I was the smallest one there. I didn’t want to go, but my parents didn’t listen. My dad was in the army, he was being posted abroad, my mum wanted to go with him.”
“So they didn’t have much choice,” Bea said.
Alli shrugged. “I was left alone and I was so lonely, so scared. And one of the other kids kept making fun of me, poking me, testing me.” She took a shuddery breath. She hadn’t thought about the incident for years. “Then one day I lost my temper, yelled at her, and everyone backed off and left me alone and I wasn’t the weak one anymore. I was strong, I was scary.”
“You learned that anger protected you,” said Bea, letting her fingers twine with Alli’s.
“It does though, doesn’t it?” Alli said, turning to look at her. “I mean, it just does. All my life it’s been like that. I work surrounded by men, I need to make sure my voice is heard and it is. If I have to look like a bitch to make that happen, well, that’s the way it is. ”
“Except you’re not just using your anger on people who deserve it,” said Bea. “You’re using it on everyone. It’s out of control. Anger is a tool, certainly, but you don’t use the same tool for replacing a window as you do for replacing a door.”
“Right,” Alli said, letting herself be drawn in by Bea’s dark eyes. “Right. You’re right. I see that. I need to do a better job of directing my anger. Message received.”
“You need to do a better job of controlling your anger,” said Bea. “That’s what all this is about. Meditation, yoga, therapy, they’re all supposed to help you temper that anger and make it a tool that you use, rather than something that uses you.”
Alli nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I can see how that might work.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I just wanted to find you to… to apologize.” She realized as she said the words that they were the truth.
Bea had felt bad, she’d made her feel better. She felt warm with that knowledge. Like she’d done something good.
“You’re in my bedroom to apologize,” Bea said with only slight emphasis on the word bedroom.
Her hand tightened on Alli’s.
Alli eyed the closed door, her breath coming faster. “Yes?” she tried, but it definitely came out as a question.