Page 50 of Always Alchemy

Exhibit B: Dex.

I start small.

‘How are you getting on?’ I ask innocuously.

‘I’m fine,’ he answers. His tone is just shy of curt, with a defensive edge.

‘You look well.’

‘I am. I’m in training—I’ve been doing a fifteen-mile walk twice a week. There’s a pilgrimage to Walsingham at the end of the month.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Impressive.’ That explains the weight loss. Walsingham is a millennium-old Catholic shrine to Our Lady, and it’s got to be a good hundred miles from London.

‘It should be a wonderful occasion.’ He leans forward and claps as Rosalie gets herself unsteadily up from another fall and totters towards us, beaming toothily. ‘Brava! Brava young lady!’

I hand her a baby cheese puff thingy and clear my throat. ‘So you’re doing okay without Mum?’

He gets his stern, unimpressed look. It’s averystandard look for my father. ‘Your mother is a lost sheep at the moment, and I’m praying hard for her. But I know I have to leave her to find her way back to the light. I miss her terribly, but I’m offering it up.’

Of course he is. It’s hard to argue with moral superiority and even harder to argue with that belief that suffering is worthy, is something that can be exchanged at the gates of Heaven for redemption.

‘Got it,’ is all I say.

‘But it’s hard to be glum when this little angel is smilinglike that,’ he says, face softening, eyes fixed on my little girl, drinking her in.

‘It certainly is.’ I clear my throat.Again.‘Which is why I can’t understand how you can be so cruel about rejecting Dex’s little baby before he’s even come into the world. He’s just a baby! How can you possibly say no to more of the kind of happiness Rosalie brings you? I honestly don’t get it.’

After all we’ve been through, I honestly think it still surprises Dad when I stand up to him. To be fair, I don’t bawl him out often. That’s not my style. I communicate more through my actions. But given the message I have to impart imminently, I’m damn well going to try this avenue first.

His face closes up immediately, and he shakes his head. ‘No. No. It’s not about the baby. I wish the baby no ill, of course.’

Well, have a fucking Nobel Peace Prize, you pious git,I think. I push on.

‘Rafe and I are no more married in your eyes than Dex and Darcy are.’

‘There’s a difference between living in sin and living in a godless, deviant relationship with two other people. How does he even know it’s his child?’

‘DNA tests, Dad!’ I shout. ‘They did a DNA test, for Pete’s sake! It’s Dex’s baby.’ And even if it wasn’t, my brother would still love it like it was his own flesh and blood, and so should my fucking father.

‘I cannot condone,’ he says, the quiet coldness in his voice feeling like a rebuke for my emotional outburst, ‘debauchery like that. It’s wicked, and it’s so, so far from what Christianity can even begin to tolerate or forgive that I have no choice but to stand with my faith and pray hard thatyour brother can come back from this darkness. I fear he can’t, but I don’t give up hope.’

I am absolutely not about to enter into a theological debate about sexuality, because Dad will quote Old Testament bullshit at me until I’m screaming and tearing my hair out in rage. Besides, this conversation is far from new in our family.

Instead, I say, ‘Dex is still the same person. He’s still the same incredible human being, and I can’t begin to understand a religion that would tell you to turn your back on your own son because you don’t agree with his lifestyle choices.’ My voice is trembling. I’m sick with fear and horror. After years and years of having no voice, no right to an opinion, no right to challenge him in our household, having showdowns with my Dad is still my worst nightmare.

‘I’ve told you, I pray for him every day,’ Dad says. His voice sounds unsteady too. ‘It’s all I can do. I really don’t know where I went wrong with him. For him to have chosen such a wicked, unnatural path for himself…’

I can’t sit here and listen to this bullshit. ‘My God, you didn’t go wrong with him! He’s literallyperfect!He’s one of the most wonderful human beings I know, and if you can’t see that then I’m devastated for you.

‘We’ve talked about this before,’ I continue. ‘You’re entitled to your view—however sad and messed up I think it is, and so am I, and so are Mum and Dex. Just because youropinionis that something is wicked, that doesn’t make it so.’

‘But I’m entitled not to tolerate that kind of behaviour in my home and in my family,’ he insists, and my shaky little spine grows steelier. I sit up straight. Rosalie has wandered to the grassy edge of the playground and is picking up fallen cherry blossom wonderingly.

‘You are entitled not to engage with it,’ I clarify. ‘Butactions have consequences, Dad. I know you think you’re making these noble sacrifices for the sake of your beliefs, and I know nothing about this situation makes you happy, but you’ve torn your family apart. You’ve driven Mum and Dex away, and I can’t sit by and just hang out with you like nothing’s happened, because if I do nothing, then I’m basically absolving you.’

I don’t know if it’s my tone or my language of forgiveness that has him jerking his head around to look right at me.

‘What are you talking about?’ he demands.

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