Page 178 of Never Tell Secrets

My hair.

That was the very first one. Me sitting in front of my bedroom mirror, locks of hair laying like dead leaves on the floor. I looked like a ghost.

“I needed to remember what I’d done to you,” Alfie whispered, his breath hot on my neck, holding me just like I had held him in a jacuzzi once as I whispered to him about our Evergarden. “Every time I was tempted to come back into your life, this reminded me how badly I’d hurt you…why I needed to stay away.”

My heart pounded, beating heavy. I didn’t want to look but now that it was right here in front of me, I couldn’t turn away.

The next images were more of the same. Me crying into my pillow, me sobbing in my sleep. Keira in my bed, holding onto me through my nightmares. Photo after photo of me looking empty and broken.

I ached for that girl, how much she’d hurt because of the man holding me now. For her sake I hated Alfie, felt her anger all over again.

Then it changed. I was standing outside the entrance to The Kew Gardens, the notebook Keira had given me tucked under one arm, nervous excitement on my face. My newly shorn hairwas loose, my blue skirt and white blouse too light for the autumn weather. That was my first day at college.

“I was in awe of you that day. Watching you pull yourself out of the hole and embrace something new.”

The next was one of me with my hand raised in class, in the one after I was working on a project with my classmates, building a sculpture out of grasses and scrap materials.

“I loved watching you work. The way you play with your mum’s necklace when you’re thinking. How excited you were to show off your designs.”

The next images were of me meeting Imani, coming top of my class, graduating. I’d worn my blue dress that day, the one he loved. There were a dozen images of my graduation and the party afterwards. Me accepting my diploma. Close ups on my face, smiling, hugging my classmates, Keira popping a bottle of champagne over me. On and on it went.

“I loved watching you thrive. I wanted to see that you were okay without me, how you healed yourself in a way I couldn’t begin to understand.”

I had thrived, but still, interspersed between all of my happiness were photos of my nightmares, or the empty stare that Keira had mentioned so many times, the one that I wore when Alfie had consumed my thoughts. Those moments had hurt the deepest. Those moments where I missed him like rain in a drought.

Keira was there too, us watching films on the couch, us dressed up in halloween costumes, us dancing in clubs.

I winced over the photos of me on dates, laughing at another man's stories, letting another man's lips touch mine, then the inevitable tears that came when I got home.

“Every time you went on a date I hoped and dreaded he’d be the right man for you.”

None of them ever had been, not even close.

Before I could dwell on that, the first images of me with my family appeared. It was Christmas and by the length of my hair I guessed it was the first Christmas after we’d separated.

Alfie held me tighter, he knew this would hurt the most. My family was so precious. I would rather he’d taken pictures of me naked than done this.

He’d had those cameraseverywhere.The lengths he’d gone to…it was mind boggling.

My stomach twisted at the picture of Ryan and I decorating the tree, Keira sitting in the background getting tipsy on what was probably rum.

“Your family has always fascinated me. So different from my own memories of Christmas.” I wanted to turn around and shake him for talking about my family like we were guinea pigs. “Hold on, Lo.”

I lay in his arms, watching hundreds of images fade in and out, tears sliding down my face as I realised that all of this was never about me, it was all about him. His need to see that I was better without him, to remind himself of the damage he’d caused so he’d stay away.

They weren't salacious, not a single one of them. It wasn’t malicious, it was tragic, borne entirely out of pain from a man that didn’t exist anymore. That Alfie Tell really didn’t exist anymore. This Alfie Tell that hadn’t tried to use sex to manipulate me, that went to therapy and gave me choices, he was who existed now.

Alfie grew silent as the images played on but I could feel his tension growing, his muscles stiffening.

The final image was us on the street but I couldn’t tell where. The way I was looking at him had my heart stuttering. It zoomed in closer on my face. I stared at it. Was that how I looked at him? I looked like a bride gazing at her groom on their wedding day. I looked certain. Like I knew I was exactly where I belonged.

The image faded and the slideshow started over.

Alfie’s arms relaxed, not leaving me, but giving me the choice to leave if I wanted. Instead I just lay there, in a kind of shock.

It was finished.

Done.