Soon afterwards, as part of her training, Alison started a placement at the Accident and Emergency Department, which meant less predictable shifts often leaving her completely exhausted. This irritated Al, especially as his weekend visits would often be to an empty flat.
His solution was to propose that he move in with her and effectively be her house husband. It was all a bit quick for Alison, so she gently rejected his kind offer. However, she started to notice more and more of his possessions were stacking up in her cramped apartment. Her objections and his reassurances changed nothing; his clutter kept coming and coming.
Eventually he finally admitted that he had let his London flat go and had effectively moved in. Angry but boxed into a corner, Alison felt all she could do was negotiate that he support her with the rent. She implored him not to make big decisions like that again, at least not without a discussion. With an apology, he meekly agreed.
Fourteen years after losing her first husband and the father of her children, Pam — Alison’s mother — was soon to marry the man who had brought meaning back into her life: defence contractor David Gray. The whole family were looking forward to him becoming stepfather to Alison and her brothers. The wedding was to be a celebration of a new chapter in her mother’s life.
Al insisted that this would be the ideal occasion to introduce him to the family, especially as two of her brothers lived abroad. This was a rare opportunity, as all the Hewitts would be in one place.
As Alison was to be her mother’s bridesmaid, Al was paired up with her grandmother, Peggy, so he was not left alone. During the day he was most affable, chatting easily to Peggy and other guests, moving effortlessly among them. He enchanted them with his derring-do past and his multifarious achievements.
To Peggy, he confided in fine detail the tragic death of his parents in a horrific car crash of which he was the only survivor. The verdict from the gathered well-wishers was that Al was charming — if a little intense — and that he had coped well, considering that meeting all the family in one go must have been quite overwhelming.
Peggy thought otherwise, however. His resistance to her gentle yet rapier interrogation caused her to conclude that he was hiding something; he had a big secret. More than once, after the event, she warned Pam, ‘This is not the man for Alison.’
Not long after the wedding, Pam treated her four-year-old grandson to a visit to the seaside to see his Auntie Alison. During a meal at a seafront restaurant, Pam gently questioned Al about the tragedy that had so scarred his childhood. Instead of an emotional skate through the events that orphaned him at such a tender age, he painted a gruesomely detailed picture of a raging fire, the stench of petrol and the screams of his dying parents. His clinically detailed, emotionless testimony convinced Pam that Al was lying.
The Accident and Emergency shifts were starting to take their toll and Alison felt she needed some proper time with Al. They decided on a romantic getaway to the Greek island of Skiathos. Having selected the date and hotel, Alison got online and made the booking. It was while she was entering the passport details that she noticed something odd. Al was, in fact, five years older than he had maintained and had only been in the UK for two years not the five he had previously said. She immediately asked him for an explanation and he apologized, explaining that he felt that to tell her his true age might have put her off him at the get-go. She accepted this white lie, smelling no rats, and they flew off to Greece.
Sun, sand and sea provided the perfect relief from those punishing shifts. However, on her return from snorkelling one day, another of Dhalla’s unwelcome surprises awaited her.
As she dried off she noticed him grinning like a Cheshire cat next to a freshly built sandcastle. For some reason, she mischievously kicked the castle over only to reveal a black box buried in the powdered rubble. Her heart sank as she flipped the lid. The contents glistened.
They had talked about this. He had quizzed her about ring sizes. He had hinted about marriage. She thought she had been firm in her rebuffs and had made it clear. Apparently not.
‘Alison, will you marry me?’
Her stomach was in turmoil. What had he not understood? Why was he putting them both through this? Once again she gently but firmly refused his misplaced offer.
His reaction to yet another rejection was pitiful. He behaved like a scolded child so, to appease him, Alison reluctantly agreed to briefly slip the ring on her fourth finger. Of course it fitted, of course it was stunning but there was no way she could keep it.
Sheepishly, he gathered up the box and slipped it away, out of sight but not out of mind. The rest of the day was a series of awkward silences, both of them walking on eggshells. She assumed that Al was wallowing in humiliation. She felt for him. He, on the other hand, like Want You Dead’s Bryce when confronted by Red’s first rejection, was burning with rage. You don’t treat men such as Al and Bryce like that. If you try, you will learn the hard way.
Meanwhile, Peggy’s warnings coupled with her own suspicions induced Pam to dig a little further into this enigma. During a call to her son Dave in Australia, he admitted that he had seen no reason to be wary but promised to play around online to see what he could come up with.
To his surprise, Al had been busy. A simple internet search uncovered a breathtakingly arrogant website which purported to catalogue Dhalla’s claims to various athletic, military, charitable and educational accomplishments. Titled ‘The Memoirs Of Al Dhalla (His Legacy And Contributions To Society)’ it read like a Boy’s Own sketch of a swashbuckling modern-day conquistador. Worryingly too, it paraded several, clearly staged, photographs of Dhalla with various women who he proclaimed were former girlfriends. Of most concern were nearly forty snaps of the woman he described as his fiancée. The woman who had gently rejected his proposal on those silver Greek sands.
Pam became more and more determined to protect her daughter from this man who at best was delusional, at worst predatory. Never had she thought she would need to immerse herself in the murky undercover world of secret surveillance, but never had she feared for her child like she did now.
Having researched extensively, she eventually found a private eye who she felt might fit the bill. After some mutual jousting to test each other’s credibility, Pam decided that Elliot was the detective who would be charged with unmasking Dhalla for what he was. She had been mildly surprised that she would never meet him in person, but he appeared thorough and the fact that he had contacts in Canada seemed ideal.
Al’s behaviour was becoming increasingly possessive. Despite the clear rejections of his marriage proposals, he persisted in his determination to get Alison down the aisle. Having been confronted by her about the website, he casually fobbed her off. He was by now starting to show a darkly offensive and condescending manner to others when he did not get exactly what he wanted. Alison brushed all this to one side. She had bigger worries, as there was an investigation at work following the death of one of her patients that was causing her great concern.
In October 2010, Alison and Al were invited to join David and Pam on a short break to their villa on the Costa Blanca in Spain. Around this time Elliot had revealed that he was convinced Al was not the orphan he purported to be. He was sure that Dhalla’s passport would confirm that.
One afternoon, while Alison and Al were out for a walk, Pam and David seized the moment and after a brief search they found what they were looking for. The pages of Al’s blue Canadian passport revealed not only his fictitious age and the lie about how long he had been in the UK, but that the aunt he had talked so often about, Gulshan, was in fact his mother. The whole car crash story had been a sickening sham.