After You

Willow

Dear Alfie,

The inquest is tomorrow, and I'm terrified.

I feel so torn. On the one hand, I feel so strongly that your poor family deserves closure. They deserve to know everything that happened in the lead-up to your death, and whether our actions had any impact on your decision. If we were to blame for you committing suicide, your parents deserve to have the truth. I'll take any punishment they want to throw at me. I doubt anything could be much worse than the guilt I've been feeling lately.

At the same time, I keep imagining the judge or coroner or whoever runs the inquest stating that the deciding factor in your suicide was my betrayal, and everyone turning to stare at me. I picture your parents starting to cry, and Jacob glaring at me, and everyone knowing that I caused you to kill yourself. I have no right to be worried; if it was me, people deserve to know. Selfishness seems to be my modus operandi at the moment.

More than anything, I think I'm scared of being interrogated. I've never been to an inquest before, and I have no idea what to expect. Will it be in a massive courtroom with a judge and a jury? Will someone be put on trial? I've been too scared to ask, to be honest. I don't want to stand in a witness box and have lawyers shouting questions at me. They'd have warned me if I was going to be on trial, wouldn't they? Or if I was a witness? Part of me is considering not going. I want to know why you did what you did, but maybe it's something best left to your family.

I hope Max stays away. I don't mean that in a nasty way, just that I think it would be safer and wiser for everyone if he did. He deserves to know what happened too, but putting Max and Jacob in any room is a recipe for disaster at the moment, never mind a courtroom full of emotionally-charged people discussing your death. I know Jacob didn't want to hurt Max, and I'm sure he regrets what he did, but the inquest is not the best place to figure it all out.

I wish these letters weren't so short. I wish I felt I could pour my heart out to you, like I did when you were alive. Even if things are emerging now that give me a different viewpoint on our relationship, I do think we trusted each other, and confided in one another.

I believe Max's letter. Jacob has written him off as a fantasist and a liar and a lot of other people have too, but they didn't know you as well as I did, and I found the letter entirely believable. You were always close to Max. He always said that he felt like an outsider when we all got together, but sometimes it seemed as though you only had eyes for him. Even I got jealous from time to time of the way you two looked at each other. I don't for a second think that you were gay – at least, you seemed to enjoy the things we did in the three years we were together – but maybe you had a crush on him, and he definitely had a crush on you.

Maybe you kissed. I doubt we'll ever know if it's really true or not, but I'm not writing Max off as a liar, because I can believe it. It would be hypocritical of me to be angry, wouldn't it? Especially as the kiss happened right before you died, and I'm growing more and more convinced that you knew what happened between Finn and I. You were angry and hurt and Max was there and I don't blame you. I'm hurt, but that's because I'm selfish.

I want to change, I really do.

Willow