Chapter 10 Cliff
Cliff
Nowhere were the differences between myself and Ashton more obvious than at the pub.
Every time I stepped into the airless fug, the dim light and babble of voices, it was brought home to me anew.
To me, they meant constant sensory overload and ever-ratcheting tension.
To Ashton, they were paradise. People at pubs were generally in high spirits, and more open than usual. The alcohol did the rest.
I found Ashton at his favourite spot: at the bar, so that people were constantly having to edge past him. He had a drink in front of him, probably an Old Fashioned, his usual. I still found Ashton’s sense of humour baffling occasionally, even after all this time.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, surprised, as I jostled my way towards him. ‘When was the last time I saw you at a pub? Must have been in another life.’
I didn’t take the bait, but sat down on the stool beside him. ‘Norah told me you’d be here. I wanted to talk to you.’ I waited until the man next to us had been handed two pints of beer by the barman. ‘I just heard,’ I went on. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? That girl … June Owens, she’s dead.’
Ashton sighed and sipped his drink. Instantly his lips twisted a little. Definitely an Old Fashioned. ‘Yes.’
The word dropped into the pit in my stomach.
When I’d first overheard someone talking about what happened, I’d thought nothing of it.
Until they mentioned her name. The name I’d last heard from Victor, moments after we stopped him following her to her room.
And not long afterwards, she jumped off a roof.
This was no tragic accident, as most people assumed.
This was the repetition of a story. Our story.
‘You know what this means. Victor—’ I broke off as the barman appeared in front of me with an enquiring look. Reluctantly, I ordered a whisky and waited until he set the glass in front of me and walked away.
‘I’ve already had a word with him. He says he had nothing to do with it,’ Ashton said, before I could go on. ‘Not directly, anyway. He overestimated himself – well, her. It was an accident.’
‘And you believe him?
‘Does it matter? She’s dead, either way.’
‘It matters because he isn’t going to stop. You know him. He only followed the rule in the first place because he thought there’d be consequences. If he gets away with it … the whole thing’s going to happen all over again.’
Ashton was watching a woman standing at the bar. ‘Would that really be so terrible?’ He slid his hand casually across the wooden countertop so that it brushed her forearm. She didn’t notice, but that only made me all the more aware of it.
I shifted away instinctively, closer to the cool brick wall. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m just saying.’ He broke contact and turned back to me. ‘We only stopped to give the rumours some time to die down. But it’s been long enough. We can allow ourselves to bend the rules for a while. Have a bit of fun. It’ll do us good.’
‘You know better than anybody how bad it can get when you bend the rules a bit too far. Do I need to say her name?’
A hard line etched itself around his mouth. ‘Drop it. Don’t you dare … just don’t start.’ He finished his drink in two gulps and signalled the barman to bring him another.
‘You know I’m right,’ I persisted, even though I was aware how thin the ice was when it came to this particular topic. And if we fell through … that wasn’t going to end well. For either of us. ‘We need to bring Victor to heel.’
Ashton rolled his eyes but didn’t argue, and I knew him well enough to realise that in itself was a win. ‘Speaking of: how’s it going with your little protégé?’ he asked instead, after he’d been handed a fresh glass.
Now it was my turn to reach for my drink to avoid meeting his eye. ‘Fine. I’ve got it under control.’
‘And by it do you mean you or her?’
I was clenching my jaw so hard my teeth grated. ‘Both.’
‘Hmm.’ Ashton rested his head in his hand and regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Then why did Victor tell me she’s been asking an awful lot of questions? And why did he see her hanging around in the library the other day, poking through the university and city archives?’
I closed my eyes. Damn it, Mabel. ‘She’s on a full bursary,’ I said after a pause that was a little too long. ‘She’s always at the library. And she’s … just generally interested in things.’
Ashton contemplated me. I knew he was absorbing every single detail: every shade of blue in the circles under my eyes, every fine line drawn by the tension of the last few months, every miniscule imperfection in my skin.
I cupped my glass in both hands so he couldn’t touch them and feel how cold they still were.
‘Did you tell her anything I ought to know about?’
‘Are you fucking joking? How na?ve do you think I am?’ Of all the mistakes I’d made with Mabel, that wasn’t one of them. It would be not only my undoing but hers as well.
‘I think you’re out of practice. And we both know it can be extremely intoxicating if you’ve been abstinent for a while—’
‘I haven’t said anything,’ I interrupted him brusquely. ‘To her, or anybody else, for that matter. What makes you think I have?’
He threw out his arms, and his hand brushed the waist of a man walking past. Ashton shut his eyes, but I knew his pupils were dilating.
‘Just a hunch,’ he said, unruffled, and folded his arms again.
‘Vic told me what books she was looking at. We need to keep an eye on where that’s leading.
Perhaps you should be showing her a little more affection. ’
‘Right, like you’re doing with her friend?’
‘At least my moth is behaving exactly as she’s supposed to.’
We were silent as the barman removed a few bottles from the shelf in front of us.
‘One Hundred Years’ by The Cure was playing in the background, a song that took me back – to a time when I would have agreed with him unhesitatingly.
I couldn’t do that anymore, but then again, I couldn’t bring myself to contradict him either.
‘Why was Victor spying on Mabel in the first place?’
Ashton chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, he’s been told to keep his hands to himself. But you know Vic. Once he’s caught the scent, it’s impossible to call him off.’
‘What scent would that be?’ I tried to make my voice sound annoyed, but even I could hear the note of anxiety. As stubborn as Mabel was, if Victor set his sights on her, she had no chance of escaping him. Nobody did.
‘You know as well as I do. She just has a certain something.’ Ashton shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t important.
I knew Mabel was a thorn in his side, but I also knew he didn’t take her very seriously. Why should he? We always won out in the end. As I thought about the reality of what this would mean for her, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss.
I didn’t notice Ashton’s hand until it was touching the one I’d rested on the bar. He turned it over and pressed two fingers to the vein in my wrist. I could see the accusation in his frown, but instead of saying it out loud he let me go and said, ‘She likes you.’
I laughed. False and cold, splinters of ice in my mouth and chest. ‘She doesn’t know me.’
‘Of course not. But she likes what she thinks she sees in you. If I’ve sensed it, then so have you.
’ He gave me a knowing smile, and of course he was right.
I had sensed it: a flicker, a sliver of a crack in the door, a glimpse of something extraordinarily alluring – something I desperately needed to keep at arm’s length.
‘You’ve tormented yourself for long enough. Come home, why don’t you?’
Ashton’s voice was unusually gentle, and the shift hit me like a ton of bricks. Conscience pricking, I shut my eyes. ‘I never left.’
‘You left a long time ago.’ He would never say it, but I knew exactly what moment he was thinking about.
It was the moment when we’d all left, in our different ways.
Then, knocking back his drink in one gulp, he rose to his feet and placed both hands on my shoulders, which I’d hunched slightly.
‘You know it, and I know it. But we also both know that we’ll all wait for you.
As long as you need. Just … try and make a bit of an effort, okay? ’
He waited for my nod before picking up his coat and heading for the exit, without paying. That was Ashton: he came and went as he pleased, but he was right about one thing. Unlike me, he hadn’t checked out.
I rubbed the heel of my hand over my eyes, which throbbed dryly, then reached for my phone.
Social media always made me feel a stab of compassion.
It was proof of a universal human urge, one which no one wanted to admit: they were desperate to be seen – mostly not for who they truly were, of course, but who they wanted to be.
For someone like me, who’d been working for years to hide exactly that, none of the platforms held much interest. I maintained my profile as diligently as was expected of me, uploading the occasional photo from a high-profile event or sharing a post about the Ames family’s foundation, but that was all.
If I ever did log on voluntarily, it was always using my second account, under a fictional name.
Mabel’s feed felt like it reflected real life.
Unfiltered, unvarnished, raw and … her. There were photos of yellowing pages on her desk, of coffee mugs smeared with lipstick, and a collection of the lipsticks themselves – Holy Sinner, Darkest Dream, Lullaby Heart – of curtains flecked with gold in the morning light, of library windows beaded with drops of rain, of Zoe and Mabel eating waffles, walking through colleges, boots kicking through the autumn leaves, sitting side by side in one of the tiny student rooms I’d shunned for years.
Every now and then, another face would appear: a man with dark hair, who had a way of looking into the camera that betrayed more about his feelings for the photographer than I wanted to know.