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“I couldn’t see anything else but you, Alfie.” My voice broke. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t break. Warning bells rang at the back of my head that maybe this was a play. He was being calm and understanding to win back my trust. Once he did, he would be in my head again and I would allow it because I was an addict. A dirty, desperate addict.
We were silent for a moment, each of us lost in our own thoughts, neither of us sure where to go next. Alfie gazed at me, a pensive look on his face. “You know, I think a part of me wanted you to find out about the pills. The way I went about it wasn’t very smart. There were a dozen ways I could have done it better. I know an excellent pharmacist, it would have been nothing to have replaced them with placebos.” He paused again, seeming lost in his own thoughts. His own self-reflections.
“Then why didn’t you? Why would you want me to find out if you knew it would bring us here?” My voice shook with the tension that thrummed between us, threatening to erupt at any second.
“I think I wanted you to stop me, to do what I couldn’t. I know it was wrong but keeping you was an act of self-preservation.”
“Self-preservation?” I hissed. “Well, while you were busy preserving yourself, did you ever stop to think about me, Alfie? Do you have any idea what being pregnant would have done to me? I’ve been in hell, terrified about this, sick with the thought of the decision I might have to make. What if I had been pregnant? Did you even think about the baby we’d be bringing into this mess?”
“No,” he answered, as if that was obvious. “I couldn’t see anything else but you, Lola.” He repeated my words back to me. Was he blaming me? Was this my fault? The corner of his mouthlifted in that grim smile once again. “It isn’t as flattering as you would think, is it?” He spoke, almost as if I wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to say so I remained silent, unsure of what either of our next moves would be. My mind spun. Alfie had stolen my birth control. Mike had been responsible, not Elliot. Alfie didn’t want a baby. Somewhere inside, I’d known that already. This hadn’t been about becoming a father, it had been about becoming my owner. Getting me pregnant was the ultimate power play.
Alfie’s eyes hadn’t left my face since the moment he’d looked up from that test. It was as if he couldn’t bear to look away from me, couldn’t risk missing some clue, some hint as to how he could put us back together again. His X-ray eyes were invasive as ever but I bore it. I had nothing left to hide. Eventually, with a decisive nod, Alfie moved first.
“I can’t change what I’ve already done, Lo. We have no choice now but to move forward. I will visit London as often as I can. It will hurt but I will make it work. Just tell me what you need.”
I rubbed my temples, willing myself to stay calm. “I need you to talk in a straight line. You just said you were letting me go.”
“I changed my mind,” he said and I threw my hands up in exasperation.
“Alfie—”
“Iwillfix this, Lo.” He sat forward in his seat, his hopeful determination spearing my chest. He didn’t understand yet. It hadn’t truly sunk in for him. I slipped my feet out of my shoes and pressed them into the earth. The grass and honeysuckle bed felt comforting under my feet. I drew strength from it, knowing what had to be done. “I can be better, I was getting better. I’m just…everything gets so fucking loud, Lola, but then you come in and you fix every?—”
“It’s not my job to fix you!” I yelled, the words forcing themselves out of me. I had never realised the truth of them untilthis moment and suddenly, I knew a part of myself with perfect clarity that before had always lain in shadow. The same saviour complex that had led me to offer my home to an estranged sister and nephew, that had kept me with damaged Adam for so long, was the same complex that had intertwined me so deeply with Alfie.
I had failed to save my mum from drowning in that car. It wasn’t my fault, I was only twelve years old, but the guilt had ridden me hard ever since. Now I had made myself responsible for saving Alfie, but his damage wasn’t my fault either, and just as my twelve-year-old body didn’t have the power to save my mum, my lack of a psychiatric degree meant I didn’t have the power to save Alfie. It was my job to care for him, to be his soft landing and to love him, but to fix him? That wasn’t my responsibility, especially at the expense of myself.
“I need you, Lo.” His throat bobbed, a small sign of the frantic current under the ice. “I know you’re hurt about the pills?—”
“You think this is just about the pills? You’re a manipulative liar, Alfie. You’ve said it yourself. You’re a selfish, ruthless liar. Look at what you’ve done to me! Is anything you’ve done even real? Spending time with my family, the red dress…You isolated me from my whole world, you tried to come between me and Keira. You controlled me and took advantage of my body. You had me kneeling at your goddamned feet as you pulled my hair for lying, for betraying you, and all the while you were...” My words got stuck, emotion overwhelming me. “Do you even want to marry me, Alfie? Or is this just another way to control me? In all ways. Even legally.” Looking at him was suddenly too much and my despair threatened to overwhelm me. I stood and he followed me, prepared for the chase. I turned away from him but couldn’t make my feet take a step further. I closed my eyes and tried to stay calm, but I couldn’t. I never could.
I turned back to him, my soul missing the sight of him. He stood there, towering over me, watchful, waiting.
“Look at what you do to me.” I held out my trembling hands for him to see and in one move he took them and stilled them with his own. I ached to lean into him. Everything hurt. His eyes bore into mine, a silent plea. “You aren’t good for me, Alfie.” The words tasted like acid on my tongue, my body rebelling as I forced it to do something that felt so unnatural.
“Don’t give up on me.” His voice cracked as he spoke and I cracked too. He wielded his words like a knife and sunk it deep, twisting it. I forced myself to take a step back, to pull my hands away. There was one final thing I needed to know. I looked up into those beautiful steel greys as I prepared the final killshot.
“Adam.” I said his name clearly and watched as recognition flickered.He knows. “Are you responsible for his death?” The surreal question hung between us. Alfie paused, the moment dragging out. I watched his beautiful mind turn over, working out how to play this, to play me. “Alfie, please. If you say you had nothing to do with it, I’ll believe you. But if you’ve done this, there’s no coming back from it. Please, just tell me the truth. I can’t take any more manipulation. It’ll break me.” I took a shuddering breath, needing an answer to a question I didn’t want to ask. “Are you responsible?”
Alfie studied me, eyes searching, but for what I didn’t know. For once, I didn’t try to read him. I just stood there, like an innocent woman sentenced to die. Alfie’s choices were always the same—manipulate and control, a way of life that he knew well, or do the good and honourable thing, a language in which he had never become fluent, though I knew he had tried so hard.
I stood there, with nothing in my hands but the hope that here, at the finish line, he could be the good man I had tried so hard to show him had always been there, resting inside of him, buried underneath layers of corrupt bullshit heaped on him bythe world. Finally, with a decisive lift of his chin, he answered me.
“Yes. I am responsible.” His voice was clear and somehow strong, but the knowledge that this was really over speared me. Up until this moment, some miniscule part of me had held out hope that he hadn’t done this, that there would be some way, some day, that I could make my way back to him. Now, that foolish illusion shattered into a billion pieces.
I can’t fix this.
I had no more questions left to ask, nothing left to say. The fight was over. I wrapped my arms around my torso, fighting the urge to crumble, to cry and beg and pound the precious earth for giving me something I needed so desperately and then snatching it away.
I hated everything.
I hated my father and mother for leaving me alone. I hated Alfie for his lies. I hated whoever had damaged him so deeply that they had left my soulmate so broken.
I hated myself for needing him. Even now, when I should despise him, all I wanted was his touch. I wanted him to take me home and wash my hair, to kiss me and hold me in our bed.
Alfie…
“You need to go, before I do something to make you stay.” He sounded numb. He stood there in the backdrop of our broken garden, an eidolon, a spirit-image, a phantom. He looked almost translucent, any life I had breathed into him, gone.