Alice Fitzwilliam

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Contents

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Out of Character

Scout's creation.

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In Character

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Specifics

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Full Name: Alice Josephine Fitzwilliam-Capio
Nickname(s): Alice's name has been divided up rather a lot. Baby Josephine very rarely, she was Leecey from her father (it started as Alicey), Fifi, Fi, Al, Old Thing, her grandmother Betsy called her Jojo. For a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Alice was often called Zuzu, as she was the same age as the girl in the film. Her father never wasted chances to baby her.
Species: Angel
Birthdate: 12 April, 1940
Birthplace: Corsham, Wiltshire, England
Hometown: Cape Town/Corsham/Devizes/Alnwick/91-95 Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3JZ/apparently everywhere
Currently Resides: Alnwick, Northumberland, England
Family: Husband, Robert Capio. Child, Fabian Fitzwilliam. Two beautiful granddaughters. Two big brothers. Lots of nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews. And her mummy is back.
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: MARRIED!!!!!!!!!! to her Robert as of 19th May, 2008. After forty six years.
Schooling: Primary school somewhere. The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Nursing school for one month. Somewhere to learn accountancy.
Occupation: ACCA/CPFA within FDC, now retired

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Detailed Information

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Physical Description

Little baby sister Alice is of average height for normal people, about 5'4", something inherited from her grandmother, but unfortunately making her a foot shorter than her father and just about a foot shorter than her brothers. This wouldn't be nearly as distinctive if she wasn't also very tiny all over (her proportions are also muddled--her legs are incredibly long). When she met Robert at the age of twenty-one, she was probably about a hundred pounds. She's gained weight since then, but not terribly much, and lost most of it after Robert crossed. Girl is small. A bit stick-like. Not much hips not much chest.

She has curly, dark red hair, much like her great-great aunt's. She cuts it shorter on occasion but at the moment it hangs just past her shoulderblades (she grew it out after Robert crossed). Her eyes are blue, bordering on light grey, her skin is slightly freckled but very pale, and she looks to be around her early twenties. She's very pretty and inherited the cutesy-girl looks of her mother. She has a very bright and cheerful smile.

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Personal Information

Alice is perhaps the most homely of the Fitzwilliams, which says a lot because there isn't a single homely Fitzwilliam. She is as beautiful as the rest of her family, but she's always very relaxed in appearance. She loves scarves and long, clingy sweaters, and knit dresses. Woven sandals are her summer staple. She has a bit of a hipster/earth mother style that developed after the birth of her son and the craze of the earth mothers in the late 80s. Oh, yeah, she really bought into being an earth mother and still has a lot of the same habits. It was probably more sane for Robert, as she went for cloth diapers and traditions that have been around longer. It still manifests itself in a more organic way of living. She's not and has never been a vegetarian, but she's very selective about what she buys. Not the biggest fan of processed foods. She makes her own things from scratch when she can. But, like any human, she has her temptations and won't snub her nose at a twinkie-esque invention.

Generally, her attitude and general personal style was dictated by how many years she and Robert traveled. She's very worldly in her taste and likes artsy things, as she's no artist herself. She collected masks, shoes, and statues on all of her trips (she really went after fertility statues and has quite a collection). When she lived alone, these decorated every wall. Her taste in music is eclectic but she's more often found listening to someone like Bobby McFerrin.

When she was young, she was as glamorous as her mother, with a playful spin that fit her petite, boyish frame and wild hair. She was very into Mod fashion (for a girl with no curves, it was a blessing), then became a bit of a hippie in the mid-60s. This didn't last terribly long (long enough to grow her hair out and then cut it short again), as her lifestyle was more put together. By the late-60s, she was back to being into high fashion, but she had retained the earthy side.

She really likes math and spent almost two decades doing accounts for her family's company. Even scarier than that, she's an auditor.

Before then, she spent over twenty five years as a homemaker (sometimes a traveling one) and developed a love for cooking and baking. She has experimental phases but thankfully they are always edible. While she can't see herself turning this into a career, she loves it and enjoys it and wiles her time away in the kitchen. Her dream would probably be to farm. And I mean farming as in slaughtering animals for food and milking cows and growing lots of edible plant life. The real deal.

While on her own, she's very reserved, but she loves her family and must always be around people. Naturally, she is very outgoing and kind, but rather blunt and boisterous at times, probably to compete with her older brothers. She also probably inherited that from her mother, but Alice has slightly less self-confidence. She tends to blush rather readily, but having very fair skin is a major reason for it. Alice can also be a bit of a prankster and loves to tell ridiculous stories and do impressions. As the baby in a family of older and taller brothers, Alice knows how to handle groups of slightly immature people rather well. She doesn't let anyone walk all over her. (Her personality can be, essentially, divided in half: quiet while alone, loud while with people. She is easily excited and swears like a sailor.)

When she moved to a new home in London after Robert crossed, she bought an airy flat and filled it with all kinds of comfortable items, which didn't include a television (she had one but stopped watching television because half of the shows made her sad). She visited her family constantly because she cannot stand to be alone. She may be quiet and like time to reflect, but she simply does not do well outside of a family. The last six or so years were very difficult for her. (Understatement.)

She attended stage school as as a girl and learned how to do amazing slapstick comedy, and she would put on one girl shows for her family when she was little. She also knew how to tap dance, sing, and act, but the years and difficult times have worn these talents away. All except one: her talent for pulling pranks on her brothers.

She should really be a librarian.

She has an extreme affinity for orange peel tea, as she soaked her feet in orange peel when she met Robert. However, after Robert crossed over, the smell triggered memories that were no longer comfortable, and she didn't drink any for about six years. She still has trouble.

But, happily, her addiction to hot cocoa never died. (And she has a minor addiction to turtle clusters.)

When she was younger and full of high spirits, she often liked to force Robert to break from routine by deliberately getting in his way. Taking off and hiding his hat (which she did love, but sometimes it got in the way). Buying him new hats in different colors and hiding the old one (so she could wear it). Buying him new shoes (because would Robert ignore Alice gifts?). Cornering him with snogs in semi-public places and not letting him go. Buying a computer in the early 90s so she could work on her degree. Because she is very dominant, if a bit self-conscious, she does things from which he can't escape without making a fuss, and Robert was never one to make a fuss. It's very naughty of her, but she's still young, after all.

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Backstory

Alice was born to Randolf (Andy) and Isabella Fitzwilliam on 12 April, 1940. She was a surprise for her father, who was away in the war during Isabella's pregnancy and Alice's birth. Alice was known as Baby Josephine Fitzwilliam until Randolf was told about the birth and asked to name her. As he was being evacuated from Dunkirk at the time, he named Alice in person upon arriving in London, where the family was waiting for him. The name he chose for his daughter was that of a young girl whose parents were killed in the attacks and who later died of fever before she could be rescued.

Alice was the third and final child for Randolf and Isabella. She has two older brothers called Charlie and Scott. But because she was the youngest and only daughter, Isabella pampered and spoiled her when she was young, and Alice often acted incredibly bratty (and still sometimes does). This was especially problematic when she was a teenager, as she became very blunt because her brothers were away at school and she hated it. Charlie married when Alice was just about fourteen, which curbed her budding teenage attitude and made her vastly more quiet.

She spent a majority of the first five years of her life with her grandparents, Betsy and Fred, at the manor house in Surrey. It was there she was born, in a pink guestroom with flowery wallpaper and pink drapes and sheets. While she did go back and forth between estates, Isabella preferred staying with Randolf's parents during the war, as all three Fitzwilliam children were involved (Andy and Nigel were serving in the RAF, and Anne was a QA), and Fred, who had served in WWI, was actively involved as well, but not in combat. Both Isabella and Betsy helped donate clothing and money and time to destroyed hospitals and homes affected by the air raids in London. They also felt safer being together.

Growing up with two older brothers and a mother who put her in everything from voice lessons to tap and acting lessons, Alice was consumed in varying degrees of competition from the time she was old enough to feel jealous. Though she loved her girly lessons, as Charlie and Scott called them, and loved stage school, if the boys were playing with friends or doing some sort of sport on the property, their baby sister would be quick to join them.

It wasn't that she was a tomboy. She wanted to outshine them and shine brightly for her mother. Everything she did was in some form or another for the benefit of someone else's approval. She was very confident in herself, and in fact she never felt as though she wasn't getting what she wanted, but she was far more of a blender than someone eager to do something different. If she couldn't best her brothers or show her mother how very talented she was, she was rather quiet and kept mostly to herself. She collected dead bees from the window sills and kept them in the freezer, which caused a bit of a problem when their head cook, Lucy, mistook them as seasonings.

At around the age of ten, Alice fell ill with what most people assumed was simply a bad virus. When it rapidly began to deteriorate, her aunt Anne immediately saw her taken to hospital, where it was easily discovered she had TB. Not wanting their daughter to stay in a sanatorium (Alice refused), they decided to pack everything up and move back to South Africa, where the warmer climate would benefit her lungs. Unfortunately, it really didn't do much for her health at all, as by 1951 she was so gravely ill that the family members unaware of her predisposition thought they were going to be burying her.

Because Charlie frequently had Ruth visiting, Alice rarely saw much of her brothers. Randolf's sister Anne left her job at a London hospital and moved her family down so she could be Alice's nurse.

The symptoms slowly cleared but Alice suffered a persistent cough and very weak immune system that only fully disappeared by 1954, two years after her first manifestation (which was brought on by coughing--and she was so excited that she nearly jumped out of her quarantine and ran around the house). She was well enough to be in Charlie's wedding.

The family returned back to England shortly after, and Alice attempted to get her physical health back by rejoining stage school and spending most of her time outside.

After Charlie left, Alice was old enough to attend the parties her family always threw. She began to date off and on, though none of the boys were very good choices for her and she was a bit flighty.

Her first incident was with a boy she had fancied for weeks. He snogged her (being her first non-childhood kiss) backstage during crew, and they had a couple weeks of snogging before they broke up. Next came Archie Miller, who also broke up with her, causing Alice deep distress. She ran off and hid in the woods when it happened. After Archie came Rory Peterson, who took her virginity at a party. He was drunk, attractive, and at sixteen, too old to be legal for fifteen year old Alice. Still, she was overjoyed at the attention and endured a quick fucking that hurt and gave her no interest to ever do it again. She decided to date him in order to feel less horrified at her behavior, but he didn't like that she refused to go any further than a blowjob. He got one, at least, before cheating on her and eventually breaking it off.

The mid- to late-1950s were as wild for her as wild gets. She was a raucous teenager who had giant groups of friends, both preppy and biker, and conglomerated around soda fountains and burger joints just like post-war American teenagers supposedly did, and in high speed antics down motorways. While she was always more self-conscious than her mother, her anxieties about how people viewed her never got in the way of how she acted--they simply embarrassed her later, when she was alone. As such, Alice was one of the loudest in her circles, always doing things that shocked others, and probably only doing them for that reason.

Her first boyfriend of any lasting value, though she had eighteen in total between the age of fourteen and twenty, was a greaser called Don. She met him on the streets of London, a promising start, when he was slightly drunk and surrounded by his biker friends. He was handsome. She watched him as she walked by, making a show out of it, and he whistled at her, so she played a momentary game of hard to get and he followed her slowly, smoking, then grabbed her ass.

She eventually climbed on back of his bike and went with him to an abandoned warehouse.

Most of their relationship was based solely in sex. They had sex just about everywhere, even in somewhat public settings, the most famous being by the fountain in her yard while her two best friends, Violet Darlington and Mallory Walker, were there. Don was a heavy smoker, a heavy weed smoker, and a heavy drinker, and it was rare to find him sober enough to drive the bike that he did drive all the time. He also used to climb into Alice's window and stay over, uninvited, barging in on everyone. Don was possessive, angry, and quick to fight anyone who might not have actually looked at Alice at all, though he was usually convinced they were. He was even jealous of the close relationship Alice had with her two pets, a corgi called Theodore and a formerly stay kitten called Junebug. He didn't like her having so many friends, didn't like her having any friends when he decided they didn't like him (and they didn't), and he would go out of his way to yell at them and to turn them away from her.

Still, Alice found it hard to really dump him, as he was physically doting and really good in bed, and she was a teenager who didn't care about anything else, while she still wanted to find what her parents had. They kept the sexual part somewhat quiet, as Randolf detested him and openly so, but when Scott found out what was going on, well, he threatened to tell her parents and Alice cut Don off.

Don was not easily cut off. He continued trying to get a hold of her. Called her for months after the breakup. There was more here but, frankly, it's not developed yet.

The next interesting boyfriend, though we're skipping two after Don to get to him, was Allen, or Al, another greaser. Al and Al, as they were called, were even more reckless than Alice and Don.

Allen, while sober more than Don, was a speed addict. Alice, raised by two car-lovers who never liked the speed limits, was fueled by it. He would drive Alice's car faster than all the others on the road, playing chicken and getting people to race. He brought out a very wild side in Alice, as demonstrated when she first saw him.

Alice was in a car full of her friends, all girls, when it stopped at a light. Allen was parked by the curb with his friends. He looked up, saw her, and she noticed him and dangled out the window to flirt. Allen beckoned to her, she climbed out the window just as the light turned, and got on Allen's bike.

There were other boyfriends who came next (seven more, to be exact), but they were never worth talking about. Some had crushes on Alice's mother, and a few were caught with the Playboy magazine. The only ones who have ever been mentioned in any sort of passing are the first kiss, the first time, Don, and Allen. Don by name, Allen not at all. Allen is her usual cautionary tale about speeding.

At the urging of her aunt, who was a nurse and, at one time, a ward sister in a nursing college, when Alice turned eighteen, she enrolled in nursing school in London. However, when they were set to deal with actual patients, Alice found she couldn't handle it and left the program. During the month she went to school, she lived with two of her friends, Mallory and Violet (or Vi). While they stayed and completed their education, both developing massive crushes on Robert Capio in the process, Alice returned home to stay with her parents and, about two years later, Scott married and moved out.

Out of all the siblings, Alice was probably closest to her parents. Being the baby and the only girl, it was almost expected. When she no longer had brothers in whose lives she was the number one girl, Alice stopped dating and stayed quiet and solitary and pursued no secondary education. Unlike her mother, Alice saw the mortality in their father, who was going grey and occasionally required the use of a cane because of a wound he received during the war. She was especially close to her father and protected by her mother, who wanted her with them whenever they went out, if only because Alice was very lonely.

She began to go to parties with her parents and there she found some sense of esteem, simply because she had grown up in a house full of people. Like her mother, Alice always saw the benefit of fancy dresses and looking her best, but she didn't go to parties to be the center of attention. She went for the noise and the conversation. She only dated once more and it dissolved as quickly as the others (they had sex in a closet and that's all I know). Meanwhile, Mallory and Vi's obsession with the doctor was mentioned at least every time they spoke, which was very often, as the girls made a point to visit Alice as much as they could. The obsession didn't necessarily bother Alice, but as she had never even seen the man, nor did she care about any man in particular, she grew tired of hearing about it and tended to zone out.

While she never became the same level of socialite as her mother, there was interest in her and what she did and how she dressed, and Alice made sure no one was disappointed. Still, at the age of twenty one, she was still very young and she felt very distinctly like she wasn't going to be as lucky as her brothers, both of whom met their future wives before the age of twenty. She was always the baby of the family. Randolf's daughter, Charlie and Scott's sister, Isabella's girl. Her mother's shadow was incredibly difficult to step out from under. But being famous was not important. She was merely fixated on finding someone who would sweep her off her feet like her brothers did for their wives and her father did for her mother.

Being unable to be a bridesmaid in Scott's wedding due to not enough room and other fickle business (I guess she wasn't always the bridesmaid, though she was never the bride), Alice began to quietly plan her own wedding. Not having a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé, made this rather silly, but she didn't care. (One of the weddings had her looking like Cinderella; the other was a sunshine yellow dress, bicycles, and the Cotswolds.) She was determined to marry and have a house full of kids. She was too used to her large, loud family, and she had no career goals.

And then, when she was twenty one, she met the man of her friends' dreams.

They met at a party. Not very surprising because Alice loved them. Both Mallory and Vi were meant to attend, and in fact had wanted her to come so that if they spoke to Robert, they wouldn't look stupid, but both had ended up working late and couldn't get there in time. Alice went anyway. She wore a green Balenciaga cocktail dress.

The party was in Manchester and Alice's companion for the drive was the family chauffeur, Martin. She didn't expect to have an interesting time, but she wanted to see the man her friends idolized and was simply too bored not to go. Her mother told her it was always acceptable to make an appearance without any interaction.

After perhaps one of the most entertaining parties Alice had ever been to, including yo-yos, Marx Brothers impressions, a foot bath in tea (the only sort of tea Alice will drink with any regularity is the tea that she soaked her feet in--the downside is that she avoided this tea after Robert crossed and still does), and innocent dishevelment in a closet.

Alice's crush on Robert was instant and perhaps one of the reasons why she was so obnoxious in the first place. Whatever had hooked her friends had also hooked her. He was nearly three hundred years her senior, incredibly handsome, and very endearing. She chattered about the evening in great detail, as she had to explain why she came back smelling of tea with her hair down and her nylons gone (and a gentleman's bow tie in her purse). Instead of being grounded for the rest of her life, as she had done absolutely nothing wrong except stealing tea, her mother especially found the story one of the oddest she had ever heard and wanted to meet the doctor one day.

Alice then began to share the story with anyone who would listen. She knew she had a crush on him and that was why the only people she didn't talk to were Vi and Mallory. To them, her evening her boring and she did nothing of any consequence, but she saw Robert and agreed he was handsome.

Alice never expected to truly interact with Robert again, though she allowed her crush to develop out of control and took to daydreaming about him in great detail. Too much detail, sometimes. Seeing Robert and Dawn, his staged twin but really thrice-great niece, again was purely by accident, as Dawn saw her in London after she had been eating with Vi and Mallory. Dawn took her back to see Robert at his office, and Alice created mayhem and mischief and pranks. They agreed to meet again and have a little party in Surrey, and Iz and Randolf were to come, as well.

Alice and Robert became good friends. Alice, who always entertained her family, took this job very seriously when she was friends with Robert, Dawn, Sully, and Mikey, Dawn's boyfriend. She constantly did things just to make him laugh and after awhile (weeks or months or who knows!) started to steal his hats, as well. Not to keep them; to wear them. (Then she'd do lots of ridiculous slapstick. She was ridiculous.)

She was close to Dawn, Sully, and Mikey, who were all at the gala in Manchester the previous December, and shared a closet with her and Robert. The gang of five were a strong gang of weed-smokers. It had to be said.

They were also just a strong gang of friends who loved each other dearly. Alice felt like one of them, even if she was the last one to join.

At some point after becoming friends with Robert and perhaps even after her parents gave their permission for them to court (yes, court), Alice moved out and into her own little cottage in Devizes, not too far from home. It was most likely a step to keep herself distanced from her parents while she was seeing Robert. The cottage was quite old and covered in wisteria and other foliage. It was virtually hidden. She kept it quaint and bright inside and loved the little place, but she didn't see it as a permanent home (she still owns it to this day). It had a pond and absolutely no neighbors for miles, which she loved, but she spent more time with her parents than at her cottage, and presumably a lot of time with Robert, as well. A lot of time that made her friends both shocked and jealous but not entirely resentful because they could live vicariously through her. (Alice kept her friendship with Robert a secret until after she was seeing him more than her friends--and pictures of him were showing up everywhere in her room.)

She and Robert became an official couple on her twenty second birthday, but she was never private about her affections for him before that point. The only people who didn't know were, of course, Vi and Mallory. She teased Robert about her feelings quite often. Asked him when he would finally kiss her. Told him about particularly intimate dreams just to see his reaction (she is her mother's daughter, after all). She never lost faith that he wouldn't come around eventually, but he did frustrate her from time to time as he was old-fashioned and she was the daughter of two jazz age lovers. She may have actually gotten huffy enough to leave whatever they were doing, but quickly ran back and apologized with a kiss. Her crush was not an unbearable force. She quietly enjoyed it. Though she had faith in their relationship culminating in something far more than friendship, she also thought that Robert simply didn't see himself as a sexual being, after having been generally a bachelor his entire life. She thought this was the only hurdle and the only reason they weren't dating immediately. And this was fine with her.

For a while, anyway.

Having such strong feelings for one of your closest friends is one thing. When that friend knows how much you love him and may or may not feel the same way, it can be unbearable.

It wasn't, for a long time. Early in their friendship, Alice was silly and girly and embarrassing. Her crush was typical. Made her say and do awkward things that she turned red over. It was becoming his friend and feeling less intimidated by him that gave her the comfort to open up her feelings, and for most of their first five months as friends, along with Dawn, Sully, and Mikey, Alice was comical about the entire thing. While there were moments where she got huffy at his lack of response or continued stubborn behavior, she always apologized for getting huffy. She wanted his friendship. His love would be a bonus. She teased him, anyway. Pushy but not serious. And yet, at the same time, quite serious.

A few weeks before her birthday, for whatever reason, she started wishing she had no feelings for him. Her feelings had grown and mounted and overwhelmed her. It wasn't a girly crush. It's possible that there was yet another rebuff that usually ended with her laughing and calling Robert silly and flustering him even more. On this occasion, however, it began to feel like she had hit a brick wall. That even if he did have feelings for her, he wasn't going to act on them. And after three hundred years, she believed he was capable of doing what he wanted. She started physically distancing herself. Not avoiding him or acting sad, just not her usual touchy self. No more kisses and sitting on him and holding his hand just to make him turn colors. She wanted to get over him, but it was impossible.

It's possible, however, that this change was what really set off alarm bells and instigated the relationship.

When the entire thing became official with a very formal birthday dinner, Alice was never more happy. She threw herself into the relationship. Attached herself at his hip. Or to whatever appendage he liked.

More things happened here. These things involved Alice moving in with him (taking a romantic and not quite direct request and deciding it was direct enough for her) and waiting very patiently to marry him. Also, because of Sully and just her own nature, Alice went a bit flower child in the late 60s.

Okay, she really went all out flower child. Typical of the rich kids of the decade, she shed her own natural upbringing and grew her hair out for the first time in her life. She wasn't exactly your typical hippie girl, but she looked like one. And sometimes smoked like one.

For the first five years, she never seriously thought of marrying Robert. While she didn't see their relationship ending, she also didn't care. She was young. She babysat for her brother. Besides, she was head over heals over head over heals in love with Robert and would do nothing to jeopardize her relationship with him. Robert and Alice traveled together a lot and possibly learned a lot of languages. And were cultural. The Beatles were involved (as was Morgan Brandt). Alice collected shoes and masks from every culture. For eight years, everything was blissful. Charlie was finally catching up to Scott with the kid count, and Alice was falling more deeply in love every second because there was a great deal to learn about Robert. Around 1967, Vi got married and Alice was the bridesmaid, an honor she shared with Mallory. They were really quite embarrassed at having Robert as a guest. Sometime after 1967, Mallory got married, and Alice was once again a bridesmaid, this time sharing it with Vi. Violet got pregnant. It wasn't until Dawn and Sully got married that anything changed.

For the first time, always the bridesmaid but never the bride took on a new and unhappy meaning. Alice turned thirty in 1970. Her time spent as a hippie began to come to a close with Woodstock. She had stopped considering herself a little girl who was floating between stages of life and love, but it wasn't until she went to the wedding that she felt as though her life had hit a wall. Shortly before, she had told Robert she wasn't going to be the one encouraging birth control and she staunchly refused using any on herself. It was his decision if he wanted it and he was in charge. She was thirty. Thirty and unmarried and going on eight years with one man. For most people, this would be enough. For most people, their chances would not seem to be running out. But Alice's parents married at twenty. Her brothers married at twenty. Mallory and Vi had married their boyfriends and Vi was pregnant. And now Dawn and Sully had done what she never thought they'd do and gotten married, too. Being thirty and never even having a discussion about marriage was alarming.

So Alice held herself together on the outside but on the inside was seething with jealousy. The likes of jealousy not known to most people. While she never outwardly displayed any signs of it and never talked about it or acted as though anything was wrong, it was the first kick of the decade. A decade with many kicks. She spent the night after the wedding feeling miserable and claimed she had a headache. The fun they had had the night before with wings and secrets (Sully had to find out what Dawn was at some point) seemed a thousand years earlier.

She began to drop hints about marriage, though these hints were genuinely hints and not direct confrontation (she was afraid he would just say no). A subscription to a bridal magazine was taken out and one of the copies was dropped on Robert's office floor so that he would have to pick it up and not just ignore it. She canceled the subscription three years later.

Alice only really had one serious moment of doubt and frustration over her relationship, and it came about eleven years after they first started formally dating, in early autumn of 1973. The family was all together for the first time in a long time, and Ruth had just given birth to a very sick Patrick. The family posed for a formal studio shot with everyone in it. Husbands, wives, children. There were seventeen people in the shot, all but eight of them children, and Winifred (Scott's wife) was pregnant with her sixth child, Kevin. Alice felt slightly left out, standing with Robert, her boyfriend. She had babysat for Scott and Winifred numerous times and been to South Africa to see Charlie and Ruth numerous other times, but never had the family all been together. Alice felt incredibly strange, as though she stuck out like a sore thumb. It wasn't all in her head. A few people made jokes about her relationship status, that they expected there to be at least one child running around, treating it like Alice had not yet noticed, as no one knew it was always on her mind. She laughed. Brushed it off. No one suspected anything was wrong.

At home, she was quiet and disengaged and spent most of the next day napping or simply resting in bed, claiming she had a migraine. From that point onward, she didn't joke nearly as much about marriage or children, as it became a vaguely more sensitive topic. But by 1980, she realized it just wasn't going to happen. No marriage, no children. And, as she loved Robert enough to stand by him no matter what, got used to it. Adjusted, even.

And then, quite accidentally, they had a son.

It would be untrue to say that she had been totally happy about not being married, even as 1980 rolled around. She certainly was madly in love with Robert enough to move very far from her family and to never leave him or even to think of leaving him, but she had a folder of ideas about her wedding that was yellowing in her old childhood bedroom. It would also be untrue to say that she dwelled on this for their entire relationship. As they were together for over twenty years before their son was born, anyone should safely assume that this was not the central point of their relationship. Alice was genuinely happy most of the time. The pitfalls were few and far between but important. Had she been so unhappy for so long, she would have never stayed with him as she did. Marrying him and having children were important to her, but not the central part of her life. She was always subtle about her needs. She was happy for a great majority of their relationship. But the fact remained that marriage just wasn't going to happen. The longer they stayed together, the more deeply it sank in. And their only child was certainly not a house full of them, though she was never more happy than when she had her son. He was what gave her a second chance at the relationship, as she had been catching herself in a wedding trap.

The conception wasn't the best timing. It was the week her father died, in fact, and no one had told her that Randolf was relapsing back into his pneumonia. Alice was too far north to be aware until Charlie called. Instead of Alice being able to tell her brother she was pregnant (she hadn't even told Robert as she had been putting it off all morning), Charlie told her that their father had died and that their mother was following and that they were needed immediately. Alice went (possibly after throwing the phone at the wall and having an extreme fit over the loss of her father and not being able to say goodbye to him--none of the children did). She and Robert left immediately and Alice probably demanded to drive, if only because she speeds like her mother and she wanted to take her mind off what she was heading into. Having been closest to her parents, the potential of losing them both before she could even say goodbye was the worst feeling she had ever known in her life. And coupled with the fact that her child would be the one her mother would never know made the feeling even worse.

To keep people from knowing that she was pregnant, Alice refused to let anyone touch her, even Robert (especially Robert, as he knew what to look for more immediately than her brothers). This lasted for days.

She didn't tell anyone she was pregnant until well after the funerals. She tried to avoid any sort of situation where Robert would discover it (layers in the summer, continual physical avoidance). Still, layers or not, she couldn't hide it forever. (Of course, being in a family of angels meant that someone might have known but chose not to say anything until she initiated it.) I'm not sure if she ever said it or if someone confronted her first, but eventually everyone knew. By then, she was almost showing.

The pregnancy itself likely saved her from being crushed by her parents' deaths. While everyone knew Isabella would leave when Randolf died, the fact that she did was hard for anyone to swallow. So when Fabian was born, Alice was renewed. She didn't care about weddings and five children and living on the estate--for the time being. She had never been so very much in love with a single being in her life as she was with her tiny child, and she wanted only the best for him. And he got only the best. For the first time, she felt completely secure in her relationship with Robert. They had a child. Her situation felt, even twenty years later, official. That Robert was really and truly hers and she was really and truly his. Still, her parents' deaths hit her very hard and that was probably one reason why staying north wasn't good for her anymore. She wanted to be near her family. Had to be, because she was dependent on them. They moved to London when Fabian was three and even visited Claire and her family quite often so that Fabian could see his cousin and where Alice's family was from.

As Fabian got older, Alice began to work with the family accounts, eventually becoming an accountant in the early 90s and working properly until 2008. It seemed she couldn't stand sitting home alone with her son at school. Being a homemaker had been fine for her until her parents died. She wanted to have more children and the urge to marry returned, but she suppressed it because there were other matters. Robert was not going to stay forever, certainly not just to have more children, but Alice hadn't been expecting him to leave as soon or as suddenly as he did.

Robert crossed over in 2002. There were two weeks of rather extreme difference in behavior before he did, leading her to realize that it was going to happen. And not just realize, but induced terror. The timing seemed random to her. She couldn't figure out what had changed. Robert wasn't talking to her. Wasn't acting normally. Fabian wouldn't stay around. She couldn't get anyone's attention. Glasses were shattered against walls. Begging Robert didn't get a reaction. She analyzed her own behavior to see if she had done something wrong, but there was nothing and their relationship was very stable. She couldn't just attribute it to his growing tired of the world, as she expected him to stay until Fabian was older. Neither mother nor son knew what caused Robert to go downhill so quickly, and he never told them. Alice begged him not to go every moment she saw him. When Robert did leave, it was right before her birthday. She realized how much of her life had become intrinsically part of Robert's--without him, she felt like a little girl again, only she had no parents to run back to. She was severely immobilized by grief. She would tell you that the seconds after Robert faded away were the worst moments of her life, perhaps rivaling the death of her father. After forty years with one man, she felt very much like her mother did when her husband died. The only difference was that Alice's partner wasn't going against his will, which, no matter his reasons, made the entire thing as bad as it was. But being the way she is, she didn't talk about it then and won't talk about it now.

That's mostly because she shut herself down completely. After two days without him, she simply stopped functioning and went into an ice coma eerily similar to her mother's. Robert had gone into one, as well. Alice had no intention of crossing over, but she couldn't live.

It didn't last long. She took time off from work and moved into her own flat, leaving the house to Fabian. Two thirds of her life had just been wiped away and she went into a far less sinister hibernation. But when she emerged, she buried herself in work. No one there knew that her domestic partner was gone. Only her family knew, but she was very reluctant to tell them (and, in fact, mentioned nothing directly to them until they began to ask where Robert was and why they hadn't heard from her in so long). She pretended that he had simply retired and they were living quietly and he had never liked being in the middle of a dozen social events, anyway. It wasn't a strong lie and most people assumed they simply separated, though she kept a picture of him and a picture of Fabian on her desk.

She learned to cope rather quickly, though she struggled with insomnia for the first year (one of her solutions was to downsize from a king-sized bed to a twin, thus eliminating empty space). Coping, however, was only a relative term. She was very unhappy but she managed to go through the motions--to survive, but not to live. She felt lost and alone and alienated, even when she was visiting her brothers, and refused to date anyone else or to start over again. She had been forced to start over when she wasn't ready, and was content to simply spend forever with absolutely nothing to look forward to, except visits from her nieces and nephews and their children. And though she never wanted to cross over, she was considering it in several decades' time and wondered how Robert would handle her giving him the silent treatment for all eternity--or if he would be the one ignoring her.

Because after Robert left, Alice was completely confused as to why he would choose when he did and if she had done something wrong. Or if he had done something wrong. In the wake of his disappearance, her mind covered every possibility, even thinking he had found another woman and the other woman had either died or crossed over, thus explaining why Robert was so unhappy before he left. She also wondered if she had simply missed signs of discontent and that she had overstayed her welcome in his life. No matter what she thought of, however, none of it really made sense. She knew he loved her but by the time he had been gone for a year, her mind had started to picture everything differently. Started to think that maybe he hadn't loved her at all, or that she had misinterpreted his feelings.

By five years, Alice became very quiet and domestic. She no longer pulled out flashy clothes and sought out interesting parties. A few men asked her out but she declined them. A picture she kept on her bedside table was turned face-down so that she wouldn't stare at it forever. No matter how she worked to turn herself into a single woman living alone, she had spent two-thirds of her life in Robert's company and it was impossible to erase those memories. It felt as though one day she had a family, and the next day she didn't. She missed him and more than anything it hurt that he was not dead, but gone. And, like anyone might do in a similar situation, she took it extremely personally that he hadn't stayed. Not only had they never married, their son was relatively young and even Alice was not old enough to even consider crossing. Within a couple of years, she taught herself to believe that she and her son were the last footnote in a life that had lived and formed and developed without them. Again, no matter the justifications, when he left, her life went into a tailspin.

Alice was now forced to look at her life in a new way. There were moments when she was once more shut down and angry, and there were moments when she could pretend that Robert was coming back. Then, of course, it would hit her that she would never see him again, that she wouldn't know how to handle him when she finally crossed over (and that by the time she did, he would probably have moved on from her), and she would fall into another period of depression. Most of the six years were spent that way, with bouts of monotony and bouts of depression.

Making matters worse for her was the fact that she also really disliked her son's private life and the way he never seemed to want to see her, which is something she will hold over his head for the rest of his life, most unfortunately. She never tried to control him but she did try to intervene. After all, he was her only little baby and she was incredibly attached, having not expected to ever have a child at all. Fabian may not want to know how much she wanted him and how grateful she had him and how she would lay down her life for him even now. Still, by 2007, she had simply given up. In the wake of her mother's reappearance alongside her very deceased father, Alice spent a lot of time at the Wiltshire estate trying to keep her mother company. Most of 2007 was spent in Wiltshire when she wasn't working.

And then, on the 2nd of January, 2008, Robert came back. She was notified by Fabian but thought it was a joke to get her to come north. Happy enough that her son wanted to see her, Alice went. And when she saw Robert, she was so delighted just to have him back that it took more than a day of complete bliss for everything to sink in. When it did, she changed her demeanor. To say that she blindly threw herself back into their relationship as though the last five years had never happened would be an exaggeration. She became cautious and edgy and worried that this is actually still a temporary thing. She still feels abandoned by her tiny family. She dedicated much of her life to her partner and son and when comparing her own family to the families her brothers have established, she feels as though she is the lesser part of her own family's equation. Moving north, where she's not entirely comfortable, became a necessary task so that she could feel a bit more secure, but she still finds herself waiting for the day when he's gone again and she hasn't yet returned to her former, far more carefree self (nor has she unpacked everything). She does, however, continue to avoid talking about anything that transpired.

Alice has felt as though her life is stretched in a thousand different directions. Tired of making herself appear older just to go to work, she retired. However, now she's just slightly confused at life for throwing lots of curve balls that involve two of the most important people in her life returning from the dead. She's not the happiest she's ever been and she wishes she was, but nothing feels as certain as it should and she takes each day as they come and waits for the inevitable. She believes in the inevitable. And the inevitable is that she will be alone again.

(In a rather bold move, during a moment alone when she felt as though she was going to have a mental breakdown, she drove back to the estate to hide with her mother. While she had been driving away a lot lately, something she never did before, two months of holding things in had forced her to crack enough to let everything out. But even though she feels so much, she doesn't talk about it to Robert or Fabian. The most visible sign is that she has become very distant after an initial euphoria--which Scout messed up because she really would have just run and jumped on him sobbing like a little girl in the kitchen--and that she doesn't talk about how she feels. She's just 'fine'.)

Despite the fact that Bess's birthday party brought everyone back to the estate and to her, there is still a rocky road ahead. She now understands that Robert hadn't left her and their son because he was bored or had found someone new, and because she simply doesn't understand the significance of what Robert did, that is, let a patient die, she easily overlooked it and saw only her future with Robert.

However, she still has a lot of mending with her son and as she mentioned to Robert, she is not going to leave him alone. Six years traumatized her, most especially those two weeks before Robert crossed, and she has some recovering yet to do--something she has begun to realize. Something that isn't making her happy.

Her mental health took a wild spin again, after having vaguely leveled out. She stopped doing much more than getting out of bed to shower and her thoughts weren't necessarily ones indicative of stability. In any sense.

Still, though, as she recovers and returns to the person she used to be, she wonders what her future holds for her. Robert promised to stay, but why and what for? Alice assumes work, and as she is a homemaker again, not having any goals has become bleak. But Alice only ever wanted two things in life, anyway. A marriage and a large family.

So when Robert proposed on the 27th of April, she said yes.

It was an easy yes. It wasn't an easy moment. It didn't drastically improve her feelings, as Robert started over but Alice never got the chance. She still thought he had no idea what it was really like to endure those weeks while he was depressed, and the six years he was gone, and the five months since his return. How her life was in limbo. She felt guilty for getting angry, will always feel guilty for feeling that way, but she can't stop it.

He also proposed the idea of moving to Manchester, which Alice more happily agreed to do.

She and Robert married by courthouse on 19th May, 2008.

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Backstory: Prose
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Backstory: Simplified

Charlie Fitzwilliam's younger sister, Claire Camden's aunt, and most importantly, Robert Capio's wife and Fabian Fitzwilliam's mother.

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External Links

Alice's Journal
The Wasting Diary: Alice's diary from 1949 to 1954

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