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“I’ll give you your precious time, but I’m not a patient man, O’Connell. I won’t wait for long.” He released me and I fled, the pain in my gut twisting with every step.
I hurried to my office and slammed the door behind me, sinking to the floor, feeling as if the wind had just been kicked out of me. I heard his car screech out of the car park, and then I let the tears come.
The rest of the day was a blur to me. Keira called in a flurry of worry over allowing Alfie to take me last night. I didn’t care. It wasn’t her fault and I told her as much. When she wanted to know how he knew where she lived I didn’t tell her that either. She would lose her mind if she found out about the tracker. I told her that I’d given him her address earlier. She didn’t sound like she believed me but I heard a whir and a hiss of a sewing machine followed by a string of expletives so I was spared any more questions.
I spent most of the morning working on sketches for my Harrington plot, but everything looked wrong. The flowers Alfie sent me days ago sat on my desk, slowly dying. The card sat open, his words mocking me.If you’re struggling for inspiration, just imagine me fucking you in it.
That was exactly the problem though, I imagined myself intertwined with him in every sketch I drew and that made every line of the pencil too painful to carry on.
In the end I gave up, dumped the flowers in the bin. The card I put in my drawer. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away. Asthe day drew to a close and I hefted myself into my old van, I checked my phone. Nothing. No calls, no messages, nothing. It was exactly what I’d expected, but seeing the blank screen was reality slapping me in the face.
I drove home in a numb state and even Ryan, with a pirate hat on and a face covered in glitter, couldn’t drag me out of my funk. I gave Natalie a feeble wave and headed to the one place I knew could give me comfort and guidance.
Entering my Memory Garden was like being wrapped in my mum’s arms. I felt parts of my gran too, but it was always my mum that I craved. I settled into the low swing seat and draped my arm over the side, allowing my fingers to tip-toe over the soft petals of the bleeding hearts. I meditated on the white tree, seeking guidance.
What would my mum tell me to do? It had only been nine hours and already I felt like someone had punched a hole through my chest. I missed his eyes that fluctuated between cold hard steel and vulnerable insecurity. I missed the warm dominance of his body. I missed how he made me feel; safe and treasured. But was it worth everything else? His controlling nature? His arrogance?
We were so very different, how could we ever match up? I couldn’t survive more losses. Icouldn’t.I was strong but there were only so many times a person could get back up. Here, surrounded by the memories of what I’d lost, I didn’t believe I could survive adding Alfie Tell to the list. Could I live with his secrets? Angie, his family, The Never Tell Club?
What about his company? A man didn’t get as successful as he was without working 100 hour weeks and putting everything else on hold. Could I stand being put on hold once he was sure he had me? Could I stand eating dinner alone? Sleeping alone?
I couldn’t answer any of those questions and I begged my mum for guidance. My fingers went to my necklace and, like acatholic with a crucifix, I prayed to the deity of my mother and asked her what I should do. She would tell me to be brave. But that was easier said than done.
I woke the next day with a renewed sense of determination. I was Lola O’Connell. I wouldn’t be broken by a man, no matter how deeply I felt for him. My stubborn fire stirred inside me, willing me to be strong without him. I stoked that fire into a burning blaze and threw myself into my work—the only thing that could compete with him for space in my mind.
By lunch I’d caught up with the office work and decided to spend the rest of the day researching my project. I wouldn’t let that be broken either.
Sketching wasn’t working so I decided to tackle a theme instead. With Mark gone I had free range of the office so I set up an idea board and began to brainstorm. At the end of the day, I leant back in my chair, satisfied with my progress.
When I got home, Ryan launched himself into my arms the minute I got through the door, despite me being laden down with Chinese food.
“Auntie Lo, can you help me with my novel, please?” he asked as he clung to my neck. I raised an eyebrow at Natalie and handed over the take-out so I could hold Ryan.
“You’re writing a novel? What’s it about?”
“It’s about a big fat giraffe – Geoffrey the Giraffe! – who breaks out of the zoo to go and hunt down ice-cream!” He jumped off of me and mimed stomping around and stuffing his face with food.
“Sounds ingenious. Sure, I’ll help after dinner.” He whooped with joy but it sounded more like a screech, before running into the kitchen in search of food.
The take out was even better than usual. We ate on the living room floor, our plates and cartons of food all crammed onto my gran’s old coffee table.
It didn’t take Natalie long to ask me about Alfie. I filled her in, giving her the child friendly version as Ryan listened to every word. I skipped over Alfie’s more questionable behaviour. Instead, I stuck to the secrets, the arrogant snobbery and his callous mood swings. Natalie was frowning by the time I finished telling him about what had happened at Keira’s.
“Do you think I did the wrong thing by asking for a break?” I asked her quietly while Ryan was distracted with pretending his noodles were a pit of snakes. She spooned some chow mein into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
“No, I think you needed it. Look, I can’t comment on his behaviour because I don’t know him, but I do know you. I can’t help but feel that you might have let your fear get the better of you this time.” She spoke softly, trying to take the sting out of her words but they hurt all the same. Was she right? Everything about Alfie frightened me. How deeply I cared for him, how like Adam his behaviour could be, the likelihood that he was going to leave any day.
“From everything you’ve told me, he cares about you. You don’t go to all the effort he has gone to just for a quick tumble.” I wondered if she would say that if she knew the extent of Alfie’s bad behaviour. I could tell her everything, but I didn’t want to land more drama on her plate. She had enough to deal with.
“I know it isn’t a tumble to Alfie. It’s a game and sometimes I don’t know whether he actually cares about me or if he just wants to win.” I sighed, pushing my food around my plate with my fork. “His behaviour all seems insecure, like someonescrambled his brain and made him see the world black and white and backwards.”
“It sounds like you’ve discovered that Mr Perfect has a flaw. People don’t come gift wrapped, Lo. You certainly aren’t. You’re quick tempered and stubborn. You open your mouth when you should close it and you close your mouth when you should open it.”Gee, thanks.“Maybe he just needs more time before he lets you in. He must be surrounded by people trying to find a weak point in him, those walls of his are probably for self-preservation.” That was true for sure, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
“Look, Lo, you left Adam because at his core he was a nasty piece of work. So I guess my question is, when you look at Alfie’s core, do you think there could be a good man in there?”
Did I? Alfie had infuriated me in a thousand ways that blared so brightly the good things were hard to see, but if I really looked for them they were there. In the beginning I’d thought they were just ploys to win me, like the flowers he’d sent to Natalie and sending me my phone gift-wrapped. But he’d had me since then, and the soft moments had kept coming.
He’d looked so uncertain of himself when he’d wrapped his arm around me as we left the Serenity Gardens to protect me from the cold. And later, at The Carlton, he’d touched the nape of my neck to soothe my nerves. When he’d taken me to bed he’d been so careful with my body. Even the next morning when we had that fight, he’d pinned me against the door, but as soon as I’d asked him to, he’d released me, even when he’d thought I might run. I thought about how he’d gently cleaned me after we’d had sex. ‘Aftercare,’ he’d called it.