Devil | A Solomons

THIRTY SEVEN - THE WAREHOUSE

The following Monday morning, Irina was getting ready to leave her house in the direction of the train station when the knock at her front door came.

It was quarter to nine in the morning and her train was scheduled to depart at nine-thirty, and so as she walked towards the door, she hoped the visitor wasn't planning on taking up too much of her time.

"Alfie?"

Stood on her doorstep was Alfie, holding nothing less than a brown paper bag filled with groceries, his coat draped over his arm as the warmth of the early autumn sun was strong that morning.

"I thought I was meeting you up in Liverpool, is this not what we planned?"

Alfie tilted his head in thought, narrowing his eyes, "Yeah, it is, but then I realised I wasn't going to have time to bring you your food this week if I didn't bring it this morning."

Since Irina set her pride aside and asked Alfie for his help in recovering the money stolen from her vault, he had spent the days looking into Joseph Levy and his men, hoping to find out some information that could give them an upper hand since Irina hadn't a clue where to start.

"Bet you've not had breakfast, have you?"

He pushed past her and walked into her home, heading straight for the kitchen where he began to unpack the bag of groceries onto her countertop.

"No, I haven't had time."

Alfie looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow, unimpressed at her answer. He shook his head and started to prepare some jam on toast for her while she packed away the rest of the food.

Irina was eating most days, but it had been an uphill battle to be able to eat as much as a woman of her size and stature should. That morning, she wasn't particularly hungry at all, but she knew there was no way Alfie was going to let her walk out the house without eating.

"Eat it. All of it."

He slid the plate across the counter to her, nodding forcefully before cleaning up crumbs from the work surface and washing his hands.

Every time she had seen or spoken to Alfie since asking for his help, the tension between them had shifted significantly. It was almost as if they had met all over again, like two different people. They felt like friends, and although they had a messy, passionate past that sat heavy in the back of both of their minds, a friendship had blossomed through the dirt against all the odds,  remaining strong through it all. It made Irina think that perhaps that was all they were ever meant to be, just friends.

Of course, the pain still resided with her, but Irina was doing her best to not dwell on the past. People made mistakes, she knew that, but as much as she first wished to never see Alfie Solomons ever again, she wasn't ashamed to admit that she quite liked spending time with him, as friends.

She was grateful for the help he gave her in recovering, even if he had contributed to her illness in the first place. Irina had chosen to view past Alfie and present Alfie as two different men, making it far easier to be around him that way, and easing the weight on her conscience that her forgiveness was too light.

"Right, we better get going, it's a long drive."

Irina dumped her plate in the sink and left it to soak, shaking her hands clean of crumbs before sitting down to put on her heels.

"I'm getting the train, I've already bought a ticket," she said, grabbing a thin, wool overcoat from the corner of the sofa.

Alfie just scoffed, jangling the car keys between his fingers, "That coat is Chanel, I'm sure you can afford to throw away a train ticket. Come on."