Falling Free

-Twenty Seven-

That Monday had started off like any other. His mother had sent him off to school with a sandwich and a piece of the apple pie that she had made the night before. She always made the best pies, his mother, on account of her cold hands.

"Cold hands, warm heart," she would always smile.

Just as on every other school day, Alfie would make it almost to the gates before he would take a sharp turn left and walk the fifteen minutes to the docks where there was plenty of work for a young lad with arms and hands that could reach places grown men couldn't. He hated school anyway, and the chance to earn a pretty penny that he could sneak into his mother's purse seemed a much better use of time, even to a child not yet near double digits in age. His mother never picked him up from school so at three thirty on the dot, Alfie hurried in order to be just in time to catch up with his friend, Zus, who lived next door so they could arrive home together. For a bag of barley sugars on a Thursday, Zus' silence and compliance was easily purchased.

Dinner that night felt different than usual. Alfie couldn't explain why exactly, all he knew was that the unsettling feeling lingered even as his mother tucked him into bed, singing him a lullaby he was too old for and telling him a story that he didn't need or want, but that made her feel happy to do so. The gnawing in his stomach churned even as he heard his mother tiptoe into her bed a couple of hours later, and in the still of the night, Alfie crept out of his own bed and was unsurprised to find his father smoking a pipe in the living room. The thing that did seem odd to him however was the bag that he had pulled out from beneath the sofa.

"You should be asleep," his father said, stubbing his cigar out in the ashtray on the sideboard. "Although I suppose it's a good thing you are here so I can say goodbye."

"You goin' somewhere, Dad?" Alfie frowned. "Does mum know?"

"I'll let you tell her in the morning," his father's smile was cold.

"Will this be like when you went away the other month 'cos mum didn't know when you were gonna come back and she was proper upset the whole time."

"You could say that," his father muttered. "What about you, Alfie? Were you upset?"

Alfie paused. He loved his father, of course he did; he couldn't control that primal instinct to love the man who had fathered him, but the relationship between them was different to that of him and his mother. His mother was soft and cuddly and loving. She knew all the names of his friends and what he liked to eat and why his favourite colour was blue. She made him feel warm and safe and wanted. But his father was the man who was out of the house more than he was in it, and who only spoke to Alfie when it was to tell him off or to belittle his mother to him. The truth was that Alfie hadn't missed his father when he had gone away last time, but he didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him that, which seemed odd even to his young brain considering that the man hurt his wife's feelings most days.

"I was busy takin' care of mum and stuff while you were gone so I didn't have much time to be upset about anythin', Dad," he answered diplomatically.

"And a good job of it I'm sure you did," Alfie Solomons Senior said, closing up his bag as he reached for his coat on the back of one of the dinner chairs and pulled it on. Taking his wide brimmed black hat off the table, he plonked it on top of his son's head with a smile. "And a good job you'll do this time, Alfie."

And just like that his father walked out of Alfie's life for good, never to be seen again.

Until now.

Alfie sat back in his chair and played with the handle of his desk drawer as he heard footsteps approaching the office. Ollie was first inside as Alfie's eyes pretended to be absorbed in the newspaper in front of him, refusing to look up even once his unwelcome guests were seated. When he did look up finally, he clenched his jaw in order to stop any emotion from showing; emotion that he hadn't been expecting, because while he knew he would be angry, he hadn't expected the wave of hurt and upset that washed over him before he pushed it away. He acknowledged that perhaps it should have been expected that he would feel something upon seeing the man who had fathered him and then neglected him for the majority of his life, but that didn't mean he would allow it to fester.