Before I Saw You(93)
In a mild panic, Alice ran into her bedroom and flung open her wardrobe doors.
Suits, suits and more suits. Mostly black, a few navy pieces and one beige cardigan. Holy shit, the situation was more dire than she’d imagined. She started to rummage through the clothes, praying that tucked away at the back somewhere would be at least one suitable outfit, when suddenly her hands clasped around something bulky.
She reached in a little further and pulled out a plastic bag.
What the hell?
Alice turned the bag over and saw the neat black letters stamped across the top.
PATIENT’S PROPERTY.
Of course! Her hospital bag. She must have thrown it in the cupboard when she first got back home. It was a painful token of the accident and an embarrassing reminder that, without family or friends around, Alice had been forced to keep her belongings in a donated hospital bag.
Intrigued, she peered inside.
Toothpaste.
Toothbrush.
Discharge leaflets.
Hospital slippers.
Then she saw it. A small rectangular package, wrapped up in brown paper. Confused, Alice turned it over in her hands, looking for clues as to where it could have come from. She sat on the floor and started to unwrap it. As the last bit of paper fell away, Alice took a sharp intake of breath. In her hands she was holding a book. A puzzle book. The cover was hand-drawn in a familiar scrawl.
Alice Gunnersley’s Very Special Book of Very Hard Puzzles
Her heartbeat quickened. She tried to keep her mind from flashing back to the ward, to him, to his voice. She had to focus.
Why had she not seen this before?
Then something clicked. There was a memory. What was it?
Of course!
Alice reached back into the bag, frantically searching until at last she felt it. His letter. What had he said right at the end …?
Her eyes scanned it anxiously for that one line she knew she’d seen before. YES! There it was.
P.S. Enjoy the puzzles!
The present she’d stuffed away and forgotten about! Alice took a few breaths, closed her eyes and held the book in her hands for a moment.
He made this for me.
This is a part of him in my hands, right here, right now.
She reached for a discarded pen in one of her drawers and opened the first page. A dot-to-dot … of course! She quickly set to work, letting the pen reveal the secrets of the puzzle.
It was the shape of an eye.
Come on, Alfie, you can do better than this.
She turned the next page. Another dot-to-dot.
A very accurately drawn human heart.
OK, this really was random. Although what was she expecting? A hidden message? She laughed to herself and carried on overleaf.
Another dot-to-dot. No points for imagination, she thought.
A sheep.
Just as she was about to give up, she noticed a little note at the bottom of the page.
Put those together and what do you get, Alice?
There it was, clear as day on the page.
I. LOVE. YOU.
She felt like she hadn’t taken a breath for an eternity. She turned over to the next puzzle.
I. STILL. LOVE. YOU.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Every page she turned to had a similar pattern. There it was: fifteen pages of ‘I love you’, until she reached the very last page.
Her heart must have stopped when she saw it.
Alice, I don’t know if I’ve made it clear enough yet, but I have completely and utterly fallen in love with you. If you feel the tiniest spark of anything towards me, please come and find me. Let’s meet, let’s talk, let’s read Harry Potter together! I will forever be hopeful. Yours, Alfie x
Without thinking, she jumped to her feet. Her entire body vibrated as adrenaline flooded her veins. There was so much energy moving through her that she could barely think, let alone sit still. She needed to go somewhere.
But where?
She smiled, clocking the tiny scrawled address at the bottom of the page.
71
Alfie
Alfie had known physical exertion. He’d played sport his whole life; he’d learnt to walk again, for heaven’s sake, but therapy: now that was a whole new level of tiring.
Five sessions in and he still hadn’t wrapped his head around it. How could the hardest part of his entire recovery process involve sitting in a room for forty-five minutes talking? After every session he’d leave devoid of energy, as though someone had pulled the plug and let the life drain out of him. It required effort to simply keep his eyes open, let alone walk home from the station. But he did it. Because he’d promised he would and because ultimately he knew it was helping.
Today’s session had been especially difficult. Once again they’d come back round to Alfie’s incessant need to please people. To be the hero and to make people laugh. Deep-rooted patterns were being pulled up and exposed over and over again, inspected and analysed in minute detail. By the time he got home, the only thing he could think about was sitting in his wonderfully tidy flat and watching mind-numbing TV until Matty arrived. Turned out not coming home to piles of your own dirty laundry and mouldy takeaway containers really did make a difference. At last he felt settled in his flat, and he relished being able to call it home again.
He heard the doorbell go just as he sat down on the sofa. For the first time in his entire existence, Matty had decided to show up early. He had asked to come over to talk through the weekend he wanted to plan for one of the boys’ stag parties, which, considering his early arrival, filled Alfie with dread.