Falling Free

-Nine-

Two weeks later

Niamh waited for the front door to close before she leapt up off of the kitchen chair she was sitting on and hurried upstairs to her room. Rummaging to the back of the wardrobe, she pulled out a basket of things she had hidden in there and tipped them out onto the bed. The first thing she needed to do was wrap up the gifts she had gotten Alfie for his birthday; the birthday she only knew about thanks to Karina passing on the information about a week ago.

It had been hard to know what to buy the man who had everything he could ever want but she had decided in the end to purchase things that she thought might make him happy. She had started off with having Alfie's driver, Ishmael– who was an absolute sweetheart– drive down to Margate to purchase a few sticks of rock candy. She knew Margate was Alfie's favourite place because it had come up in conversation during her first night in Camden. The second gift was a thick scarf that Alfie desperately needed now that the weather was growing colder and he would come home from walking Cyril at night with a blue tinge to his skin. The other two gifts were a record of Puccini's 'Madame Butterfly' which Alfie had confessed to Niamh some weeks ago that he enjoyed greatly but Cyril had chewed the last record up, and a new waistcoat as his current favourite one had more holes than a spider's web. It wasn't much but Niamh hoped he appreciated the thought behind each gift and she also hoped he wouldn't be angry.

From what Karina had said, Alfie ignored his birthday every year whenever she and Ollie tried to celebrate with a birthday dinner for him, claiming that he didn't need to be reminded he was another year older and uglier. But Karina personally thought it was just his way of pretending that it didn't bother him that he had no one else, no family or anything, to celebrate with.

"I know he loves us in his own way," Karina had said with a fond smile. "But it's not the same as an actual family, is it?"

And Niamh knew exactly what she meant. After all, her family always celebrated each other's birthdays with gifts and a special dinner or perhaps a party. So while she knew Alfie wouldn't appreciate a party of any kind, she figured that the least she could do was to make him a birthday dinner that the two of them could enjoy together. Karina had offered to help but Niamh wanted to do it herself. She couldn't exactly explain why but it felt important to her that she had been the one to prepare everything for Alfie, and she had about ten hours to get it all done which was more than enough time. She just hoped that Alfie stuck to his word of coming home early that night because he had been working incredibly late the past couple of weeks; leaving early and coming home well past midnight, making Niamh thankful that she at least had Karina for company during the day if she needed it.

It hadn't gone unnoticed by Niamh that Alfie had only begun working late since they almost kissed the night after dinner at Ollie and Karina's. Well she thought they almost kissed. It had certainly seemed as though they were going to and when she spoke to Karina about it, the woman wholeheartedly agreed. So Niamh's confusion only seemed to multiply now that Alfie was almost avoiding her. Or perhaps he really was just busy with the bakery. She hoped that was the case anyway. She decided the best thing to do was to try and put it from her mind and just get on with making Alfie's birthday one he wouldn't forget.

... ... ...

Slamming down his pen, Alfie put his head in his hands and rubbed his temples, wishing he could rid himself of his pounding headache through sheer will alone. Unfortunately he was going to have to take an aspirin, which he pulled from a paper sachet in his desk drawer and washed down with a glug of his lukewarm sugary tea.

Waiting for the medicine to kick in, he listened to the noises coming from downstairs, keeping an ear out for anything else going wrong because for the past week or two his employees had been driving him up the proverbial wall. It was bad enough having to deal with Ollie and his shenanigans every day but at least he could usually be counted on to keep the men in line, however even Ollie was struggling of late. Alfie blamed the intake of new employees but as far as he was concerned, they had one day to learn what they were doing and that was more than generous enough. So any mistakes made after that weren't acceptable and he made sure they knew it. But some of the daft fuckers still couldn't grasp their simple job roles and his patience was wearing thinner with each passing day.