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Alfie, who hated using phones.
But had somehow left her ten voice messages.
And a grand and unbelievable total of thirty-seven texts.
Then when he’d obviously not been able to get hold of her, he’d done something even more astonishing. Something that made her groan in horror the second she saw it. She had to put her phone down for a second and take several deep breaths. Because Lord in heaven, he’d only gone and joined Twitter. He had joined it, and put his face on it, and written a bio and everything.
Do not talk to me I am here to talk to Mabel,it said.
And it was true, he was. The first thing he’d done was attempt to DM her. It was there in her inbox when she looked:MABEL YOU HAVE DRIVEN ME TO DO SOCIAL MEDIA ANSWER IMMEDIATELY BEFORE SOMETHING MUCH WORSE HAPPENS, he had put, as if he thought his difficulties with contacting her were purely down to using the wrong method.
Instead of imagining it could be literally anything else. Or at least, something that wouldn’t have led him to make the worst move in the world. Because of course the first thing people had done was go absolutely nuts that Alfie Harding was on Twitter. Then once they’d finished being nuts about that, they’d gone absolutely nuts about the fact that he referred to her in his bio.
And then once she’d seen them going nuts about that, she unearthed exactly what had started all this. She scrolled through the news section after someone linked to something, and it was like opening the seventh fucking seal. Literally there was just tweet after tweet quoting the same twenty articles and Instagram posts from names she actually recognized, and every single one of them was about Alfie Harding and the fight he had apparently had the night before. Some of them joking and using his old game names and such (Alfred the Great at It AgainandDuracell Bunny Brawls Outside Bar), some serious (Alfie Harding Attacks Reporter On Street), and all, without exception, absolutely hideous.
And not because he’d been fighting.
No. Mostly it was what he’d been fightingabout.
Right there, in black and white, on something that wasn’t even the middle ofThe Bumfuck Bulletin. It was dead center on the front fucking page. Of a national newspaper. Under a garish red headline about his fisticuffs, and a picture of him looking like an apoplectic werewolf on the verge of eating someone.
Harding yelled the words “How dare you say Mabel Willicker is too fat to be dating me,”she read with what felt like the most amount of mounting horror she’d ever experienced in her life. And then somehow, somehow, it got even worse than that. Because he hadn’t stopped there, apparently. He’d kept going, directly into a bunch of even more terrible things. Like punching whoever had leveled this accusation. And headbutting the man who’d agreed.
And finally, oh god, finally he’d said the words:
Trueandshe’sandloveandmy.
In an order that made her stomach drop right out of her butt.
Honestly she screamed the second they sank into her brain.
Even though the reporters were still on the other side of the door and would definitely hear such a sound of panic from her flat. In fact, they’d probably be recording it, ready to send it to TMZ.True Love of Maniac Footballer Bellows in Horror,she imagined wildly. And couldn’t even make it not make sense.
Because it made plenty, compared to all the rest of this shitshow.
He’d punched someone. And headbutted someone else.
Then declared her to be his true love.
Dear god in heaven why did he declare me to be his true love, she groaned silently to herself. But she had no good answers to that. It was inexplicable and preposterous, and not just because of the circumstances. Because it was him doing it. It was Alfie Harding, a man who never revealed his feelings about anything. Who had never so much as revealed a single detail about any relationship he’d ever been in. Heck, she wasn’t even sure what kind of relationships he’d had, aside from one-night stands and brief things with a series of glossy famous women.
Yet somehow, he’d done this.
And he didn’t even have a good explanation for it.What else was I supposed to tell them, he actually had the nerve to say in one of his messages.
Even though she could think of at least fifty things right then and there, off the top of her head, while sweating buckets into her pajamas and being hounded by the paparazzi on her doorstep.You could have told them they’re fatphobic wankers, or that you weren’t at liberty to discuss your private life, or Christ, even just say we’ve been on one date and you find my body hot as balls, she thought.
But no, no. He had to go and say something that inescapable and ridiculous.
Now they were practically a grand romance. Next thing you knew, people were gonna start speculating about their impending nuptials. Or not even next thing you knew, because Instagram and Facebook and Twitter were already full of people wanting to know if they were engaged.There’s a ring on her finger in that video of her leaving his house, someone with three hundred thousand followers was saying.
Then they’d shared enhanced photos.
She had to spend the next hour examining gigantic pictures of her own hand, while trying not to absolutely lose her ever-loving mind. Or text Alfie to tell him she was going to punt him into the bloody sun. Or answer her phone, which was now ringing almost constantly. Courtesy of numbers she did not know.
And when she googled them, the news wasn’t good.
It was bad, it was real bad, she was in a lot of trouble.
