Chapter 51
ALICE
My whole body is shaking as I stand in Spence’s kitchen.
I don’t know why I’m here. I can barely remember the drive over.
One minute I was leaving the hospital, the next I was taking out the key hidden under the plant pot.
The sunflower Georgia had painted when she was six, now chipped, the paint flaking away.
The paper bag is scrunched in my hand, one wholemeal roll festering in the bottom.
The pack of ham sits on the countertop, the edges curling up and turning brown.
I squeeze the bag in my hands, knuckles tight.
I slam the ham and the rolls into the bin.
My hands scrambling for the anti-bac and cloth under the sink.
Family only.
My hands work furiously. Spray, wipe. Spray, wipe.
I head into the lounge, picking up one of Georgia’s discarded hoodies.
I bring it to my nose, the smell of her pistachio perfume that she wears ironically.
The closest thing she’d get to the real thing, she jokes.
And beneath it all, her. My body folds, and all the fear, the anger, bubbles up, overflowing.
Sobs crack out from within my chest. What if I hadn’t been here?
I’m breathless as I clutch the material, pulling it closer to my chest, as if I can keep everything I’m feeling inside.
I try to calm my breathing but wave after wave of emotion comes thick and fast. I’m drowning beneath everything that has happened over the last year – the loss of Ryan, my career, Mike – but through all the hurt, and loss, and fear, there is love… and them.
Spence and Georgia.
My family.
Family isn’t always blood; family is the people who make you a better person, who don’t judge you for your success. They love all the messy parts of you, the failures as much as the triumphs.
I wipe my tears away with the heel of my hand and take the hoody upstairs.
My steps are slow. With each one, photos smile at me, my fingers gently reaching out.
Spence, so young, hair sticking up, dark shadows under his eyes, a dark mark on his green top that only I would know is from a blob of ketchup from the bacon sandwich I’d made in the middle of the night.
His expression doesn’t show any of that though, it’s just looking at me behind the lens.
These photos show moments that I wasn’t here for. But I know each detail through phone calls, spoken quietly late at night. Step by step, I’m drawn closer and closer.
I’ve spent so long looking into the past, trying to unpick Michael’s life when all along the answers I was looking for were right here.
I push open Georgia’s door. I’m hit with a flash of her clutching her throat, my own voice firing out instructions to Heather.
I sit down on her bed, hands smoothing out the duvet.
This room is filled with ghosts from my past. A past I have always belonged to, even though my eyes were ridiculously focused on the future, on accolades.
A small hiccup escapes my throat as I reach for her teddy, the one she’s always slept with, the one I bought the day she was born.
I get up and clear away the plate still on the floor, make her bed while my ears ring with the words I need to say.
I love you.
I love you both.
This is where I belong.
There is a click, the scratch of a key in the door. My pulse rushes.
I make my way to the top of the stairs. Spence is leaning against the door. Clothes crumpled, his hair standing up, eyes closed, shoulders slumped. I clutch the banister, taking a step down.
He looks up.
‘Al…’ His voice is raw, and the way he’s looking at me—
I open my mouth, not quite trusting myself to speak.
‘Is she OK?’
He lets out a long breath, tears in his eyes. He nods. ‘I’ve just come back to get some things… She was asking for you.’
I take another step down. He takes a step up. Then another, and another. My heart is pounding hard in my chest. How could I have thought he was just my friend? My whole body is aching to hold him, to take away some of his pain.
I reach up a tentative hand, cupping his cheek.
He leans into my palm, voice catching. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
‘Where else would I be?’
He closes his eyes again, as if the weight of my words is pushing down on him.
When he opens them, even though he hasn’t moved, it feels like we’re closer than we have ever been before.
His body is trembling, the warmth of his body against mine thawing any doubt that I’ve had about my love for him.
‘I keep thinking.’ His voice catches. ‘I keep thinking that if you hadn’t been here… ’
‘Shush…’ I press my forehead against his. ‘I was. I am. I’m not going anywhere. I belong here. With you.’ His eyes scan my face, the truth of my words landing.
‘Say it again.’ His eyes dip to my mouth, his body pressing closer.
‘I belong with you.’
His finger runs along my bottom lip as though he’s trying to imprint my words on his skin. I take his hand, bringing it to my chest, my heart beating rapidly beneath his palm.
My words hang in the air. I wait to feel the need to pull them back, for the fear of ruining what we have, but the emotion doesn’t come.
‘Spence, I—’
There is a flicker, a hesitation. It’s barely there, that slight space between us, but I can feel it as though he’s back at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve left it too late.
‘Al…’ His hand tightens. ‘Don’t.’
‘I…’
‘Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. Not this time.
’ His words hum through my whole body. He’s not saying this to push me away.
He’s saying it because he’s afraid. He’s bracing himself.
He thinks I’m going to walk away again like I always have: to uni, to Ryan, to London, to Michael.
He’s always been waiting for me to walk away. ‘I can’t lose you. Not now. Not again.’
My hand slides around his neck, my hands locked in the hair at the nape. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not this time.’
A long breath shudders out of him. And he looks at me, something like hope in his eyes.
‘I’m in love with you, Spence. I think I always have been. I’ve just been too blind, too stupid…’
The rest of the sentence is lost as our mouths meet. His body pressing against mine. The kiss is urgent, tender, desperate, calm. Everything we have always felt for each other but never said.
‘What took you so long?’ he asks, breathless, fingers brushing away a lock of my hair.
For a second, my eyes catch on my bag beside the door, the corner of one of Michael’s letters peeking out.
I know his handwriting is slanting to the right, filled with his rich voice, thick with a time and place that I don’t belong to, with longing for a woman who didn’t exist. Not really.
His true love was hidden between the lines.
I pull myself back to Spence, to the warmth in his eyes, his heart beating beneath my palm.
Michael’s letters had taken me on a journey, but it wasn’t the destination I thought it was.
He was leading me here, to the quiet, messy love that springs up through the cracks of the ordinary: a glimmer of colour, of beauty, that thrives despite being overlooked and passed by.
I smile, give a little shrug. ‘I got lost along the way.’
He lets out a small laugh. ‘And… are we there yet?’
I hold on to the collar of his shirt. ‘Yes.’
I give Michael’s letters another fleeting glance. Spence follows my gaze, but there isn’t the usual side-eye that tells me he thinks I’m losing myself in the past, this time, the left side of his mouth curves upwards.
Spence lets out a short laugh.
‘What?’
‘I… I wrote you a letter… figured it was the best way to get your attention.’
I quirk an eyebrow. ‘What did it say?’
He lets out a breath. ‘It said that I—’
I steal the rest of his words, my mouth meeting his. I pull back. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ I look into the eyes that have always seen me for who I am and loved me anyway. ‘I don’t need to read a letter to know who you are, Spence.’ I smile. ‘I just need you.’
His forehead drops to mine, and for a moment the world goes completely, gloriously still.
This is love. This breath, this touch, this truth finally spoken.
Because after all the detours and wrong turns and near misses…
I found my way home. Not in the past, not in the future, but here. Now.
Love isn’t always in grand gestures, it isn’t like in films or in books, it’s not kissing in the rain, or running through the airport to stop them boarding a plane. Sometimes it’s said in a house that you’ve painted, in a house where you became a couple.
Sometimes love is right there in front of you, even if you’ve spent your life looking for it in the wrong place.
And as Spence’s arms wrap tightly around me, and I let myself fall deeper into his kiss, the world feels like it clicks into place, like a living, breathing snapshot of something so right that it should be hung in a gallery: a perfect moment.
Somewhere, in the air, in my heart, in my soul, there is a whisper, a fleeting echo from the past already drifting away…
Aye. Took you long enough, lass… but you got there in the end.