Chains in the Deep - Chapter 4

The story between Alistair and me began a long time ago.

Alistair is six years older than me. When I was a young girl, this age gap fascinated me, but it also unsettled my father-a doctor who worshipped science-who, with a touch of superstitious anxiety, advised me to let go. Looking back now, his worry was not unfounded; my marriage with Alistair indeed ended badly. But falling in love with him, I have never regretted.

I must emphasize this. He does not love me, he betrayed me emotionally, he wants a divorce, and now he even wants to kill me… Yet my love for him has never wavered.

By nature, I am stubborn, obsessive, always going to the end of the road. To have him, I would stop at nothing, my possessiveness shadowing me everywhere. I have a clear understanding of myself.

Perhaps it was because I was spoiled as a child that I developed such a strong and pathological character.

My father is the director of a major hospital, my mother excels in the business world. I grew up pampered, the center of attention. With a privileged family and decent looks, I have never lacked suitors. But to me, everyone else was just settling; in this life, I have only ever loved Alistair.

I did not know how to express love, never truly entered his heart, only ever forced him.

In Alistair’s eyes, I must have seemed like a perverted stalker. But I was powerless. I had all the fervor of a lover, but none of the ability to love. Isn’t this, too, a kind of personality defect?

Everything that happened today is of my own making. But I am unwilling to accept it; even in death, I will remain this stubborn.

There is a reason why I am so obsessed with Alistair.

Though I am proud and willful, I am not ignorant of the ways of the world. On the contrary, I saw through the truths of life earlier than my peers. In my girlhood, an age that should have been full of pink dreams, I held a pessimistic view of love.

Because I grew up following my father in the hospital, witnessing all the warmth and coldness of humanity, all the separations of life and death.

A hospital is the most naked stage for human nature. A serious illness can sometimes shatter even familial bonds, let alone love. So many couples of many years, torn apart after one falls ill. Human nature is such: sharing happiness is easy, enduring hardship together is hard.

When boys pursued me, I felt fear. I never fantasized about strolling under the moon or traveling the world together. What I thought about was: if I fell ill, became crippled, unable to care for myself, would he still love me and care for me as always? Or would he grow to resent me?

Before the real test arrives, love always looks bright and beautiful. I dared not gamble, afraid of falling into the unknown, so I simply refused to begin.

Until I met Alistair.

That year, I was nineteen, he was twenty-five.

One day, I happened to pass by a ward and saw Alistair leaning over the bedside, eyes downcast, gently kissing the girl lying there. The golden morning sunlight enveloped them, beautiful as a sacred oil painting.

His girlfriend was suffering from kidney failure, beyond saving. Her face was gray, mottled, and haggard from illness. Yet the way Alistair looked at her was always filled with love so thick it could not be dissolved.

I was captivated by the affection in his gaze, unable to extricate myself, even though that look was not directed at me. From then on, I went to the ward every day to watch in secret, watching for half a year.

I eavesdropped on their conversations, heard Alistair gently encouraging her, sharing bits of daily life-“The tabby cat downstairs had kittens, the oleanders by the river are blooming… When you get better, we’ll go see them together.”

I heard her confession to him-“I like how you look in a white shirt, I like the light in your eyes, I like your soft, slightly curly hair… When I’m gone, I’ll remember forever. But you must forget me, and go love the next girl well.”

So I couldn’t help but think: Could I be the next girl?

His ex-girlfriend never found a suitable kidney donor and passed away. She was a kind girl, signing an organ donation agreement. No one donated a kidney to save her, but her heart saved someone else.

After she left, I began plotting how to enter Alistair’s world. I collected information about him, slowly infiltrated his circle, cultivated mutual friends. Until I was twenty-two, at a friend’s gathering, we “officially” met.

To Alistair, that gathering was nothing special, but for me it was a long-planned encounter. I was full of confidence, convinced of my own charm, sure I could win him easily.

Little did I know, what I loved most about him was his unwavering devotion. He never forgot his late girlfriend, his heart tightly shut, unwilling to begin a new romance. He felt nothing for me, only saw me as a willful little sister.

At the time, Alistair had already stayed on as a teacher, just promoted to associate professor, busy with work. I always invited him out at inopportune times, exhausting him.

With family and friends, I could always handle things with ease; only in love did I have a fatal personality flaw.

It was truly a tragic beginning-

When I was twenty-four, I once saw Alistair sending a female colleague home. Jealousy instantly consumed me. The next day, I asked him out and had him take me home.

I tricked Alistair into entering my house, and when he wasn’t expecting it, hit him with a heavy object, knocked him unconscious, tied him to a chair, and kept him captive for a whole week. I drugged him and forced myself on him.

Yet even in the most confused, heated moments, Alistair never looked at me with that deep, loving gaze.

After that week, I became pregnant. Alistair married me. But that child could not be saved in the end.

I naively thought that no matter how dirty my means, as long as the shackles of marriage fell, I could truly possess him.

But I never expected that from then on, every intimacy in our marriage would require drugs.

When even the most basic act between husband and wife was so difficult, how could I expect the loving gaze I craved? I racked my brains to please him, prayed he would fall in love with me. But his eyes never truly lingered on me.

I planted bugs in Alistair’s phone, trackers in his car, hidden cameras in his office… I watched him like a ghost, oppressing him by every possible means. And he accepted it all, indifferent.

Because Alistair had no feelings for me at all. No love, no hate, not even any other desire. He simply did not care what I did to him.

We maintained a ten-year marriage, but Alistair never forgot his ex-girlfriend. I gave up my former arrogance, began recalling her every smile and gesture, imitating her voice and tone, even starved myself to become pale and sickly like her.

I deluded myself into thinking I could become her substitute. Yet Alistair remained unmoved. He was like a block of wood sealed in ice. Since his ex-girlfriend died, there had been no ripples in his eyes, his heart turned to ash.

The living can never defeat the dead. The living can’t even defeat a part of the dead-their heart.

Lucy Bennett was the girl who received her heart transplant all those years ago. It wasn’t until Alistair met Lucy that he seemed to come alive again. By then, Alistair was already over forty, and Lucy was just in her early twenties.

It’s said that those who receive heart transplants often take on the temperament of the donor. Maybe soulmates really do exist-Lucy could replace his late girlfriend and spend the rest of her life with him.

My clumsy imitation, after all these years, was no match for the beating heart in her chest. Even in the most melodramatic of substitute stories, I am nothing but a pathetic supporting role.

Alistair found Lucy and hid his marriage to me, lying that he was divorced.

But in reality, Alistair could never get rid of me. It was I who bound him with the chains of marriage, tightly locking him down.

He endured me like a walking corpse for so many years, and now, for Lucy, he can’t bear it any longer.

For Lucy, he wants to kill me.