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“So, are you ready to leave tomorrow? You have everything in order?”
I nodded and took another sip of fake wine, wishing like hell it was the real thing, but it wasn’t, it was a phoney, a trick, a disappointment. Behind everything that I felt at seeing Alfie, a small flame of anger burst into life and I caught it, stoked it. I needed it to get me through this. There was one thing I had toknow before everything came spilling out, one thing that I had to have the answer to.
I cleared my throat and straightened, facing the man that had become everything to me.
“I have to tell you something.” My voice sounded stronger than I thought it would. Alfie cocked his head slightly.
“Will I like it?”
“You should but I don’t know if you will.”This is a bad idea.Keira’s words rattled around in my head but she wasn’t right about this. I had to tell him. I had to know for sure that what I feared was true. I took a breath and spoke. “I got into college.” My words hung in the air for so long I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
“College?” He repeated the word slowly.
“Yes. The London College, remember? I’ve been trying to get in for years and I finally did it.” I forced myself to shut up. I needed not to sway him here. I needed to see how he really felt without him mirroring what he thought I wanted to see.
“Yes, of course.” He paused and I watched those cogs turn, watched him recalculate as I’d seen him do a thousand times. He’d forgotten. Alfie Tell, a man of details, a man who knew everything about me, could read me like a book, hadforgottenone of the most important things about me. My dream, my ambition, had been discarded as a useless piece of information irrelevant to him and what he wanted.
“Congratulations. Though I can’t say that I’m surprised. I’m proud of you, Lola.” He did look proud. Hope fluttered in my heart, hope that I might have been wrong about everything. My pills had been taken by someone else and Adam really had just slipped in the shower. Alfie would let me go, he would want me to go, and would support me. It flashed in front of me. Our life together, hard for a while, but we would come together in the end—stronger, closer, better people. He would be a good man and I could be his forever.
“I expect they were very disappointed when you turned them down.” The illusion shattered and I hated myself for allowing it in. How many times would I do this to myself?
“You don’t think I should take it?”
“Baby, you know that it isn’t a realistic option. We have been separated before, remember?” I remembered. It was agony. ‘Remember the pain, Lo. Remember how much this hurts.’
“But the course is only for a few years.”
“And after that?” After that I would be tied to something else. An apprenticeship maybe, or an assistant designer position if I was lucky. “Lola, I understand that this was important to you and giving it up will be painful, but what was important to you before you met me isn’t what is important to you now. You know that.” I looked down at my empty place setting, allowing his words to settle into me. It hurt, but I needed to feel them. This was who Alfie was. He manipulated. It wasn’t all he was, but it was the part of him that would destroy me if I let it.
“Look at me.” I flicked my gaze up. “You will be happy with me. I will find a way to be everything that you need, so that you don’t ever need to leave my side. And if I get it wrong one way then I will try it another and another and another until I get it right.”
Alfie…
He paused, slowing himself down. He seemed agitated and, as always, I felt the urge to go to him, to soothe him. It felt cruel to sit and watch but that is what I did.
“I know that I don’t share much with you, but I want you to know something. I’ve been a ghost among ghosts in my own life for so many years now. Before I met you, I would wake up every day, blank and empty. There would be a moment, when I woke up, where everything that haunted me threatened to overwhelm me. It hurt and I would grit my teeth, swallow it down, slip on the mask that I know you can see through, and get on with theday. Now, I wake up and there’s this moment where I forget that you’re there. I’m back where I was months ago, before I found you. In that moment, the deadness starts to set in but then I realise you’re in bed beside me, your hair glowing in the sunrise. Just like that, the deadness fades away and I feel warm again. When I found you…I know you won’t understand this, but I felt like you were given to me. Like someone up there was letting me off the hook, saying, ‘Alright, you’ve suffered enough. Here’s a foul-mouthed angel to fix your fucked up wings.’”
“Alfie—”
“Don’t. I need to get this right. I’ve practised it so many times but now that I’m here the right words are failing me.”Practised what?I wondered as he gave a short laugh aimed at himself.“See? See what you’ve done to me? Vulnerability slips out so easily now. This is how you’ve changed me in a few months. Imagine what kind of man I will be in a year? A decade? You are healing me, O’Connell.” He took a breath, his words splicing me down the middle.
“I know that I’m a difficult man, but every day I spend with you I get closer to being a good one. I told you a while ago that I was going to keep you, and I meant it.” I watched, my heart beating a heavy staccato in my chest as he reached into his pocket and produced a small velvet box, a deep blue to match my dress. He placed the box in front of me and I stared at it, my hands twisting in my lap.
This wasn’t happening…Not like this…Not now…Please.
“When I bring you into my world, I want you to have the security of being my wife. I don’t want you to feel that you have no autonomy. My wealth will be yours to do with as you wish and I…I want you to be mine. In all ways.”In all ways. Even legally.He was good, he was so very good. “Please open it.” I didn’t want to open that box. It sat there, taunting me until I took it in my hands and carefully lifted the lid.
For a moment, my mind went blank.
A flawless diamond in the shape of a bleeding heart stared back at me. My heart broke, snapping straight down the middle so completely I could have sworn it was audible, that we had both heard the crack. It was perfect. Beautiful but understated, completely mine.
I closed my eyes, trying to squeeze him out of me. I wanted this, I wanted him. Why did I have to find out? I saw myself then, the ring on my finger, at Alfie’s side. How happy he would be. I could keep him forever.Remember the pain, Lola. Remember how much it hurt to lose him.I did remember. I tried to put the monkey back in its cage, tried to unlearn what I had learnt yesterday. But I couldn’t.
“Lo?”
I forced myself to look at him, his beautiful face, seemingly unaffected, but I knew better. Alfie was the epitome of a frozen river, and I knew what swirled beneath the still surface. I prepared for the pain. I could do this. I was a goddamned show girl.
“I have something for you, too.” My voice sounded so far away from me. My jaw was loose, as if I wasn’t the one speaking the words. He twitched slightly. He was too smart not to realise something was very wrong. I opened my clutch and pulled out the small item I had hidden there. In dead silence, I placed it on the table between us. He focused on the pregnancy test, those beautiful eyes flashing as he read the result and realised that the course of our future had changed forever.