She’d allowed her curiosity to get the better of her again.
Silence.
God, this is excruciating.
She had to fill the gap quickly. ‘You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’
No wonder Alfie used to just talk at her all the time. Filling the space with something felt much better than just sitting in the silent vacuum.
‘I do want to. I really do. I guess it’s just harder than I thought.’
He took a deep breath and then started his story.
26
Alfie
For so long he’d wanted to find someone he could open up to. Someone he could talk to without feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Now, at last, someone was asking and he couldn’t find one single word to answer. The doctors had always put him on edge. He couldn’t work out if they found the act of witnessing his grief awkward, or whether they were immune to the pain after hearing thousands of similar stories, but either way he found talking to them impossible. There was no eye contact, just endless scribbled notes and the occasional ‘How did that make you feel?’
So, like them, he’d simply shut down. The regular mental health support sessions continued, but the degree to which Alfie opened up grew smaller and smaller over time. In their minds, the flashbacks had subsided and therefore no more questions were asked. In reality, they were simply being buried deeper and deeper into the recesses of his mind.
As he lay there searching in the dark for a starting point, it struck him how vulnerable he felt, even though Alice couldn’t see him.
‘We’d been at a friend’s wedding just outside London. We thought we’d be clever and save money by driving home that night – it made sense as we were only a couple of hours away. Ciarán knew he was driving so he didn’t drink.’
The pain throbbed at the back of his throat.
‘He would never do that to us. Ever.’
The words came out more forcefully than he intended but she had to know the type of guy Ciarán was. He took a deep breath and let the anger subside.
‘I was so tired I was pretty much asleep the moment I got in the back of the car. I remember waking up to the two idiots arguing over what song to play next. Ross was insisting on Ariana Grande for the fifteenth time – it was his new girlfriend’s favourite song, apparently – and Ciarán just kept switching the track back. “It’s my phone,” Ciarán kept saying. “But it’s my turn to choose,” Ross kept whining. They were going at each other like this for ages, back and forth, over and over. I couldn’t be bothered to deal with them because I knew this would go on for the rest of the journey. They are – were – both stubborn bastards.’
Past tense, Alfie.
‘I reached forward and took the phone off them. They both looked round to try and grab it back. It was my fault: I took the phone so no one was looking at the road; it was such a brief moment but he didn’t see it coming. He didn’t see it coming because I’d distracted him.’
His words were falling out of his mouth so quickly he couldn’t catch his breath. The guilt that had been building up inside him was forcing its way out.
‘Some drunk arsehole a few cars up had swerved into the wrong lane and thrown a lorry off course. It came right at us and no one fucking saw it. All I remember is feeling theweight of everything hitting me all at once. It was like someone was ripping me inside out. There was so much pain I couldn’t work out where or who I was any more.’
He paused. His hands were clutching the bed sheets so tightly he could see the whites of his knuckles glowing in the dark.
‘They say I was thrown five metres from the car. That’s where the dreams always start. Me waking up, face down on the road with a knife in my stomach telling me something is very wrong. Then I look up and I see it. The car. It’s crumpled like it’s nothing more than paper. There’s smoke everywhere. I can hear screaming. I’m trying to find the others and then I see Ross’s face. He’s still in the goddam car. It’s like I’m so close, but every time I try and drag myself towards him he just gets further and further away. I’m screaming for him, begging him to get out of the car. But it’s like someone’s muted me or turned the volume up so loud on everyone else that my words just disappear into nothing. And then. Fuck. Then it burns. The heat is hitting my face but I don’t care because I just want to go in there and get him out. But someone’s grabbing me, trying to pull me away, and I can feel their hands gripping me so tightly, but the harder they hold me, the more I’m pushing them away. I try to get up and walk but I can’t. My leg is a dead weight underneath me, useless. Every time I push myself up enough to try and stand, the pain grabs hold of me and it becomes too much so that I almost black out again. I’m stuck. I’m stuck, unable to save my friend, who is so fucking close to me. I can’t think or feel anything but rage, as if I’m on fire too. And then out of the corner of my eye I see Ciarán. I see him just lying there. He’s so broken. Just a heap of human mass left on the road. But it’s Ciarán. I know it’s Ciarán. I startscreaming for him, pleading for him to wake up. But he just stays so still. I need him to wake up. Why isn’t he waking up? We need to go and get Ross. I’m so mad at him for just lying there, and I’m so scared I want to hold him, but there’s more people pulling me away and I can’t fight them off any longer. I want to hold on so badly. I can’t leave them. I can’t fucking leave them there.’
When the tears started, they hit him with such force he could barely keep himself upright.
Suddenly he saw her hand come through for him. He was too scared to reach out and grab it, so certain that if he released his grip from his bed sheets he would fall and never come back.
‘Alfie, I’m here. Take my hand.’
He didn’t need to see her to know there was no pity, no awkwardness or repulsion. She would hold him. She would anchor him. He held her hand and she squeezed him tightly.
‘I woke up in hospital, adamant they would be just a couple of beds away from me. I wouldn’t believe them when they told me. It was only when I saw the look on my mum’s face that I knew they were really gone. I didn’t even care that they took my leg. They could have taken all of me. I just needed to not be the only one to survive. Seeing the resentment in their families’ faces became unbearable. They loved me like a son but wanted me to be the one they were grieving for. I suppose that in the end, the only way I could get through it was to bury it. Shut all the pain off. But the truth is that sometimes I wish I was the one they put in the ground.’
They held hands as if it was all they could do to keep on breathing; he couldn’t tell who was holding on more tightly. Tears from both of them ran down their arms to meet in the middle.
The silence unfolded around them, bringing with it a sense of peace. Alfie could feel the tightness in his chest melt away as his breathing grew deeper and more measured. He had survived the storm and someone was next to him, picking him up from the rubble.
