Page 41 of The Quarterlands (Dark Water #4)

Chapter Twelve

Alex

Alex was shaken by the incident with the clothes and the watch.

With Tyler’s words of warning reverberating in his head, he knew he should try and pull himself together.

What was stopping him? Was it all these memories that kept replaying as he swam?

Were they trying to tell him something? If so, what?

Or was he simply trying to make sense of it all, finally, after all these years?

He tried not swimming, but he yearned for it; it was the only thing that soothed him now. A few days after Tyler left, he couldn’t hold out anymore. He slipped into the pool, and immediately, he was back at Long Lake, sitting next to his mother on the day he’d told her about his sexuality.

Isobel reached out and tidied a lock of hair away from his face.

“My beautiful boy. You’ve been so brave to tell me all this. I love you very much.” She kissed his cheek, and he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, inhaling the scent of her perfume.

Her nanopad chimed, and she drew back and answered it, her expression changing instantly .

“Now? Where are you? I’ll be right there.” She jumped to her feet.

“Where are you going?” Alex asked, startled.

“Back to the hotel. WADO are there.”

“The doping people?” He knew his mother found them a pain in the arse as they could turn up at any time; Charles had to submit weekly diaries of his movements, which she found a drag.

Isobel didn’t reply – she was already running back to the hotel.

He caught up with her only as she entered Charles’s room, breezing inside with a flurry of her famous charm.

“Ezra! Long time no see, darling.” She took the hands of a bespectacled, middle-aged man and kissed his cheeks. “Would you like a drink? It’s so hot, isn’t it?”

The doping control officer happily accepted, and they went out onto the balcony, where they chatted and sipped cocktails, while Alex sat on his bed, reading his nanopad.

He’d never met Ezra, but Isobel and Charles clearly knew him well.

They were all laughing and joking, discussing the games and the famous winning medal.

“It was a fantastic race. This is just a formality, you understand.” Ezra beamed as he activated the medibot.

“Of course.” Charles put his arm on the table while Isobel drifted back into the room and opened the fridge to top up her drink.

She had her back to the balcony, but Alex could see her clearly as she took a vial of blood from the fridge and slipped it into her bra, all while continuing to laugh and joke.

There was an odd incongruity between her easy banter and her sly movements that startled him.

Then she wafted back to the balcony, chatting away, more vivacious than he’d ever seen her.

She ruffled Charles’s hair playfully at one point, and he looked up, laughing.

“I’m trying to decide on an outfit for this party tonight,” she announced. “Perhaps Ezra can help me choose.” Disappearing into her own room, she returned with a couple of dresses, holding them up. “What do you think, Ezra darling? The gold or the black?”

“Both are lovely,” Ezra assured her. He oversaw the taking of Charles’s blood, then placed the full vial in the medibot’s refrigerated storage unit.

“Will I show too much cleavage in the black? Here, tell me what you think.” She slipped into the bathroom and emerged moments later, looking stunning in the black dress. It was low cut, but that never normally bothered her, so Alex had no idea why she was worried about it.

“Too much?” She waved her hand at her cleavage. Ezra leaned forward, enjoying the invitation to ogle her beautiful breasts. Alex rolled his eyes; she was such a flirt.

Then he saw it out of the corner of his eye.

Charles, opening the medibot while Ezra’s attention was elsewhere.

Alex watched, stunned, as Charles removed the vial of blood he’d just been given and replaced it with the one Isobel had hidden in her bra.

When had she passed that to him? Alex hadn’t seen the sleight of hand taking place.

It was so silently done, so easy. Ezra didn’t notice; Isobel was busy commanding his full attention. She didn’t hurry him out of the room once the swap had taken place, though. She carried on joking and flirting with him for several more minutes before, regretfully, he took his leave.

When he’d gone, she fell into Charles’s arms.

“Gawd, that was a hard one,” she exclaimed dramatically, looking exhilarated.

“You were magnificent, Mum.” Charles laughed, twirling her around.

“As were you.” She kissed his cheek. “Oh!” She drew back as she saw Alex, staring at them both from shocked eyes. Unable to speak, he ran for the door.

“Darling! Alex. Come back.”

Ignoring her, he ran downstairs – straight into a huddle of paparazzi lurking in the lobby.

“Alex! How’s Charles today? Hear it was a late night.”

He shielded his face as he was temporarily blinded by camera flashes. Why were they still taking pictures of him? Charles’s victory was two days old. Surely there was nothing new to see or say about this whole ridiculous hoopla now?

He shoved his way through the throng and out of the door, then he ran and didn’t stop until what felt like hours later.

Only then did he realise that he’d returned to where he’d been earlier, to the shores of Long Lake.

His heart was thudding in his chest as he tried to calm down.

What had he just seen? What did it mean?

The hot weather broke with a sudden cloudburst of rain that was more than welcome. It poured down, the storm almost tropical in intensity. Alex kept on walking, head down, so he didn’t see her coming until she was upon him.

“Alex, darling, please, let’s talk about this.” Isobel put her arm around him, but he pushed her away. “Alex, please, it’s not what you think.”

Did she think he was an idiot? It was exactly what he thought.

“Does Dad know?” he growled. Were they all in on it? Was he the only one who didn’t know? Always the outsider, the family fool?

“No, of course he doesn’t. Please, darling, let’s sit over here.” She waved at a sodden picnic table nearby, and he allowed her to lead him there and push him onto the bench. She sat down opposite him.

“You must have so many questions,” she said, smoothing her wet hair away from her face. She was still wearing the evening dress and it looked ridiculous, soaking wet, clinging to her curves. How Ezra would love to see her like this, Alex thought bitterly.

“Why?”

“Because Charles was never going to win without it,” she told him, her voice harsh and flat.

“And winning is that important?”

“Yes.” Spoken like a girl born in a work camp. For all the advantages she’d won by marrying his father, he could see how her childhood had scarred her. Born into the worst of circumstances, she’d become hardened, desperate to escape. But she had escaped.

“Why risk everything for the stupid gold medal?” he demanded.

“We had to have it,” she exclaimed, her eyes burning with an almost religious fervour. “I’m ambitious, darling, always have been, and that ambition needed somewhere to go. Your father has Lytton AV. He didn’t want me to work, but I wanted success too. Charles was my way of getting it.”

“Charles agreed to this?”

“He wanted it as much as me.” Her face was cold and closed off. She’d made her decision years ago, and she clearly didn’t regret it .

“It’s cheating, Mum,” he told her desperately.

“Oh, grow up, Alex. Everyone cheats,” she snapped.

“In sport, in life. Do you think I won that scholarship to Oxford by being a good little girl in the work camp? Bullshit! Mum and I had to hustle our way out of there. If we hadn’t, we’d still be there.

” He didn’t know precisely what that meant, but he didn’t want to. He could guess.

She leaned across the picnic table, grasping both his hands.

“Listen to me, Alex. Charles wanted that gold medal more than anything, and I wanted him to have it. So, we did what we had to do.”

All those years of listening to their tedious stories about training schedules, diets, and muscle strains…

they’d all been a deceit. They were cheats, lying not only to his father and to him but to the entire country – to the world.

Had they been laughing at him all this time?

Amused by his naivety, his excited joy at Charles’s win?

At his stupid, misguided quote – “nice guys do come first”?

Only, it seemed, Charles wasn’t so nice after all.

He stared at her in disgust. Even though her honey-blonde hair was sticking to her head, she still looked beautiful.

Feeling a sudden wave of nausea, he leaned over to retch.

He hadn’t eaten anything, so there wasn’t much to come up.

When the sickness eventually subsided, he realised she was stroking his hair.

“I know this has been a shock,” she murmured soothingly.

“A shock? For fuck’s sake! This isn’t about me, it’s about what you’re doing. It’s so fucking risky,” he yelled, sitting up. “What if you’re found out? How many times have you done that routine of switching the blood samples?”

“Not as often as you might think. I sometimes use bribes, but I know most of the Doping Control Officers. I’ve made it my business to get to know them, and I knew Ezra wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to stare. Sometimes, I let them have a good feel, too.”

“Stop it,” he growled, hating to think of his beautiful mother whoring herself out in this way.

“It’s exciting.” Her face lit up. “Darling, the truth is, I’m so bloody bored I could shoot myself some days.”

He was more shocked by this than anything else she’d said.

“You’re still a child. You just see me as your mum, and I am that and proud to be so, but I’m a person, too. I know children never think that about their parents, and sons certainly never think it about their mothers, but it’s true.”

“Of course I know you’re a person.”