Solace

56 | the bare minimum

Alessia

Time stood still, worlds intermingled. Distinguishing reality from imagination or memories became more and more challenging with every minute spent down here.

For example, when I started to hear footsteps. In my head, I heard them quite clearly, Henry's footsteps coming towards me. Only when shoes appeared in my field of vision could I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing it was not him.

I looked up and smiled at Rafael, who was looking at me with what I understood to be worry in his eyes. Maybe the bags under my eyes or the fact that I was still half asleep made him wonder if I was here or there- at a time when four walls were my home and Henry, my family.

Yet, despite all the question marks in his head, he did not utter a word. He did not ask why I was down here, whether I wanted to go upstairs, what was wrong with me or why I was playing with the necklace in my hands. He also did not comment on how he had thought those days were over. Instead, he sat beside me and put his suit jacket around my shoulders.

He was here voluntarily, without invitation or obligation, but I felt I owed him an explanation as it was 3 am, and he was losing sleep because of me.

"Yesterday was Henry's birthday," I told him, "And I forgot."

Rafael gently took the necklace from my hands and put it on the floor, probably because the noise I made with it bothered him.

"Would you have called and wished him a happy birthday if you had remembered?" he asked, and I looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

"Of course not. It's not that I forgot his birthday, but the day itself," I tried to explain to him. "I forgot the only day of the year when he treated me like... like a person."

I could not bring myself to make Henry the villain. Yes, he may be a villain in my story, but he was far from being the villain. But I noticed how I found it harder every day to remember his good side, not only because he had rarely shown it but also because everyone pointed their fingers at him and told me Henry was the bad and evil guy, even though no one ever heard his side of the story.

"Do you think he did not want to be alone, and that was why he did it?" I asked Rafael but did not dare to look him in the eyes.

Until I would get a why from Henry himself, I had no choice but to hypothesise.

"Do I think he kept you locked up for years because he was afraid to be alone?" he repeated slowly. "No, I don't think that was the reason."

We could not approach this subject objectively. We both had a very subjective opinion when it came to this subject, to this person, which agreed on a few points and differed dramatically on most.

"Do you think he's just a bad and cruel person?"

He did not have to think long about this answer, nor did he mince his words. "I think so, yes."