Chapter Four
It took Ava a moment to blink the sleep from her eyes, to remember that she was back at her father’s, back in her truckle bed. For a moment she’d expected to find Madame Morell leaning over her, her lips pinched into a line.
Ava sighed, rolling onto her back to stare up at the ceiling and the damp stains that spread their dark tendrils from the window to the opposite wall.
The last time she had lain in this bed she hadn’t slept at all.
Instead she’d drawn her thorned thoughts until her fingers were black, and the sky outside the window had gone from blue, to indigo, and back again.
Frowning, Ava reached down, fingertips tracing the mattress seam delicately, feeling for the smallest sliver of a gap. For she had left it here, and … yes. Her fingers bumped the bundle of pages, covered in soft leather.
Her notebook.
She turned the pages and saw only questions – hundreds of them, captured in the soft line of his jaw, the crease that appeared between his eyebrows when he frowned, the dimple in his cheek when he smiled.
A thousand, spiralling questions, all without answer, formed from all the spooling thoughts that had chased her away from Liverpool; drawn and redrawn as though if she asked enough questions she could deduce the answer.
Why did he change his mind?
Why did he stop loving me?
She glanced at the grate, at the glowing embers. It was hard to look at these drawings now. Hard to look back at the longing, the hope that she’d etched into each shadow, each smudge.
She’d planned to give this to him. She’d hoped – in some foolish, naive way – that he would see how much she loved him and apologize. Tell her it’d all been a mistake and that he did want to marry her, after all.
She was glad now that she hadn’t.
She turned to a new page, one unmarred, unblackened, and sucked in a breath before fetching her charcoal. Her hand moved quickly, tracing the shape of the cobbles, the way the light had pooled, and there, in the centre—
The man from the train station. His face tilted upwards, to drink the rain from the sky.
When she was done she looked back at the fire for another long moment, before slipping the notebook back under the mattress instead.
Oliver was already bent over the stove when Ava padded into the kitchen, stirring buttered eggs in their cast-iron pan. He turned as she entered, eyebrows lifting slightly. ‘Did you not sleep?’
‘I slept,’ said Ava, wincing as she pressed her fingertips into the bunched muscles at her neck. ‘Though I swear, that truckle bed has spikes instead of springs.’
He snorted. ‘You might be better on the settee.’
‘The one with all its cushions stacked against the window, you mean?’
She couldn’t see her brother rolling his eyes, though she could hear it in his voice. ‘I thought perhaps we’d move the cushions back first. What do you reckon?’
‘I reckon we do more than that,’ Ava said. ‘Mrs Moss will have kittens when she sees the house.’
‘Can we please worry about that after breakfast? Lay the table, will you?’
Ava opened the wooden cabinet behind her to fetch the plates – not the fancy ones they kept behind the glass but the chipped ones in the cupboard below.
And then a knock came at the back door.
And they both froze.
‘I thought Pa said she was in Manchester,’ said Ava – for there was only one person who knocked upon the back door.
‘She’s supposed to be there for another week,’ said Oliver – unmoving.
‘Perhaps if we don’t open it, she’ll go away?’ Ava whispered, hopefully, at the same moment as the handle turned, and Mrs Moss swept into the kitchen, her enormous carpet bag clutched beneath one arm.
Ava had always read about women being described as ‘forces of nature’ in novels, and never quite understood what that meant until she’d met Mrs Moss – for no matter the day, no matter the occasion, when Mrs Moss blew into a room, you felt it.
She was dressed head to toe in black as always; from her dahlia-trimmed hat down to her neatly stitched leather shoes, though the time for full-mourning garb had long passed.
Mr Moss had died the year before Ava’s mother Adeline, some four years ago now.
‘Most people use the front door, you know,’ Oliver muttered.
‘Most people aren’t your landlady,’ said Mrs Moss stoutly, pressing a kiss to Ava’s cheek. ‘How was Edinburgh, my dear? What brings you back? Oh, and have you seen what’s happened to the house – my house? What your father has done to the windows?’
Ava – somewhat stunned by the sheer volume of questions – decided to focus on the safest possible thing.
‘Is that … a new hat?’
Mrs Moss frowned for a moment, reaching up to touch the faux-silk flower upon the bonnet. ‘Do you like it? My niece bought it for me. You remember Miss Collins, of course? Oliver?’
‘Miss … Collins?’ Oliver turned – the wooden spoon dangling from his good hand. ‘What was it she did again? Assistant to the Queen? Or …’
Mrs Moss blinked at him. ‘She’s a governess, Oliver. As I’ve told you a hundred times.’
‘Ah, no – I remember now. She just speaks as though she’s high and mighty.’
‘Don’t be clever, Oliver – it doesn’t suit you,’ Mrs Moss said flatly, turning her attention back to Ava. ‘I thought I could bring her to one of your shows! Wouldn’t that be lovely? We could make a night of it, the four of us. Oliver and Miss Collins, Arthur and I?’
‘That might be hard,’ Oliver said, turning back to the stove. ‘Seeing as Ava—’
‘Hasn’t been past the theatre yet,’ Ava said quickly, for she didn’t need Mrs Moss berating her for her decisions alongside her brother.
‘All in good time,’ Mrs Moss said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. ‘Now then – Oliver? Tell me – how fares the job hunt?’
Her brother shrugged. ‘I’m still sending out applications.’
‘Well, I saw Mr Bramwell when I went to fetch my bread,’ Mrs Moss said. ‘You know – the baker? He’s still looking for an apprentice.’
‘I don’t want to be a baker,’ said Oliver. ‘I want to work in a restaurant. As a chef.’
‘I still remember when you wanted to become a cooper,’ Ava reminded him.
‘Barrel-making was never my dream, I just did it for the money.’
‘Like the theatre job?’ Ava asked – giving her brother a meaningful stare. ‘Which you quit?’
‘I didn’t quit the theatre. I was fired, because I can’t work there with a broken arm.’
Mrs Moss tilted her head to one side. ‘Well, we can all have dreams, my dear. But they’ll never come true if you don’t leave the house. As I’ve tried to tell Arthur a hundred times.’
‘I leave the—’
Ava gave her brother a meaningful look, and shook her head. It was never a good idea to answer back to Mrs Moss – least of all when the house looked like a mausoleum. ‘When is your niece arriving?’ Ava asked instead, trying to steer the conversation back to safer waters.
‘Hopefully next month,’ said Mrs Moss, unpinning her hat with the utmost care.
‘If the show isn’t ready, I thought perhaps I’d sign her up for one of your private sessions, Ava.
Wouldn’t that be lovely? She so wanted to see you on stage before, but by the time she’d made it here for a visit, you’d already upped and …
’ She paused, licking her dry lips. ‘Moved.’
Ava wondered whether it was the broken sleep, or the rising heat in the kitchen, but her thoughts felt sluggish and slow. ‘Did you say, “private sessions”?’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Moss. ‘The interviews?’
Oliver turned back to the eggs and began stirring them intently.
‘Oh, but Mrs Moss, I’ve …’ Ava wondered how best to put this, now that she would be forced to say it. ‘I’ve quite given up on my memory work.’
‘You have?’ asked Mrs Moss, clearly unbalanced now, for she was blinking rapidly. ‘Well, someone ought to go and pull these handbills down, then. For they’re pasted all over Liverpool.’
She rummaged through her bag and fished out a thin, slightly damp sheet of paper, handing it to Ava.
Her own face stared back at her, or rather, a line drawing of it, and above in black, bold lettering were the words ‘The Memory Binder’.
‘I found that one near the docks,’ said Mrs Moss – taking a seat at the table beside her. ‘But they’re all over the city.’
‘Are they, indeed?’
Ava glared at her brother’s back, for he was suspiciously quiet. ‘And how did they get there, I wonder?’
Oliver took the eggs off the heat, and turned back to her, his good hand clutching the elbow of his broken one. ‘I put them up, Ava. I thought I would be helping you. I didn’t know you’d given it all up – because you never wrote to me.’
Ava could feel her breath starting to catch in her throat. ‘I see. So this is my fault?’
‘Partly, yes! What could you possibly have been doing that rendered you too occupied to scratch out a note that said: “Good day Oliver, I’m still alive, in case you are worrying – oh, and just so you know, I’ve given up my life’s work.”’
Ava opened her mouth, and then closed it again. ‘You had no right to make this decision for me, Oliver.’
‘Well, I’m quite glad I did now,’ he said, pale eyebrows furrowed. ‘Because giving it up is foolish. You’re too good at it.’
‘Hear hear,’ said Mrs Moss. ‘I thought you were just wonderful when I saw you on stage myself – and that poor young woman’s story still brings a tear to my eye. As someone who has lost someone myself—’
Ava gritted her teeth together. ‘Then I must be foolish,’ she said, her voice low and dangerously measured. ‘Because I’ve made my decision.’
‘Why?’ Oliver pressed. ‘Because of what some silly critic wrote in the Herald?’
Ava felt his words like a sizzle of heat across her face. ‘It wasn’t just—’
‘Don’t be like Pa, Ava.’ Oliver looked at her, his blue eyes serious. ‘Don’t hide from the world just because it knocked you down. Learn to hit back, instead.’
She opened her mouth to reply, but not a single word came out. For what could she say to that? He was right. She was hiding. That was the promise she’d made to herself after Edinburgh: to be more careful. More cautious. To put less of herself out into the world.
But she didn’t say any of that to her brother, and his worried eyes. Instead she stood, taking the pan and spooning portions of eggs onto the plates.
‘You should’ve asked me,’ she said.
‘You would’ve said no,’ countered Oliver.
‘For good reason!’ Ava looked back at the handbill on the table. ‘Tell me what you have you promised these people, so that when we cancel the interviews—’
‘We can’t cancel them,’ Oliver said, snatching the poster up.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re today.’
Ava felt as though the world had slowed for a moment, and been replaced with only the angry th-thud of her own heartbeat roaring in her ears. ‘Say that again.’
‘They’re today,’ said Oliver, his tone more tentative now, as though he knew she was just a hair’s breadth away from throwing the eggs – and the pan – onto the floor. ‘Ava, it had to be today. If it’d been any later you’d have seen them around town, and it wouldn’t have been a surprise.’
She looked at him as though she would spear him with her gaze. ‘Oh, I think you’ve achieved the element of surprise rightly enough,’ she spat. ‘Then you shall be the one to turn them all away at the door, Oliver – for this is your doing.’
‘No, Ava.’ He sat down, looking to Mrs Moss for support. Wisely, Mrs Moss busied herself rummaging around for something in her carpet bag. ‘I shan’t do that. Just as you shan’t give it all up.’
Ava narrowed her eyes.. ‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ Oliver said slowly. ‘Because you think the best solution to life’s problems is running away, and hoping they will disappear. Well they won’t, Ava. They don’t. And I shan’t make them disappear for you. If you wish to quit – then you shall tell those women yourself.’
Ava put the pan down with a thud, staring at the half-filled plates, at the blue pattern in the ceramic, scratched and scrubbed until it had faded. That was how she felt, too. Washed-out. Weakened. And it didn’t matter that months had passed. It didn’t matter that she’d been away.
Because now she was back, and it felt as though she’d never left. As though all of these feelings had simply stayed here, waiting for her.
Mrs Moss stood up quickly. ‘Well, I see the two of you have much to catch up on. Oliver, dear – I need your help baking some scones for the next Widows’ and Widowers’ Club meeting. We’ll be at the teashop if you wouldn’t mind … ?’
‘He wouldn’t mind,’ said Ava, ignoring her brother’s exasperated expression. ‘If he is able to sign me up for work I do not wish to do, I don’t see why I can’t repay the favour.’
Mrs Moss’ affable smile wobbled slightly. ‘Wonderful. Oh, and Ava darling – if you could see about the windows—?’
‘She certainly will,’ said Oliver, batting her smugness right back. ‘In fact, she’d be happy to.’
‘Well then …’ Mrs Moss said, suddenly in quite a hurry to reach the back door. ‘I shall bid you both a good day … and don’t forget about Miss Collins!’
‘We won’t,’ said Ava. ‘I imagine Oliver is very eager to see her again.’
‘Not as eager as Ava,’ spat Oliver, shutting the door behind Mrs Moss with a little more force than necessary.
Ava pulled the plate of eggs towards her. ‘I cannot believe you,’ she muttered.
‘Nor I you,’ said Oliver. ‘“Eager to see Miss Collins again”? I’d be more eager to break my other arm. Though look at me – unemployed, living in a mausoleum? Clearly she’d be lucky to have me.’
Ava felt her lips twitch upwards, and wrestled it back into a frown. ‘Stop trying to make light of this, Oliver.’
He placed a hand upon her wrist. ‘Listen,’ he said quietly. ‘I know what Jem did hurt you, but—’
She felt his words reach into her chest, felt them squeeze at her lungs, and make it hard to draw breath.
‘Hurt me?’ she managed to say.
It had crushed her.
‘But you cannot stop doing something you are good at because of it.’
‘I was never good,’ Ava said, the words sour on her tongue. ‘I was only ever—’
‘You were good,’ Oliver said. ‘You just didn’t believe it. But perhaps you might start to … ? If you just give this a chance.’
‘I wish I’d never got off that train,’ Ava muttered, pushing her plate away now, for she found she had entirely lost her appetite.
‘I wish I’d ridden it the full way back to Edinburgh.
Better yet – I wish I’d shoved you onto another train, travelling in the entirely opposite direction. Preferably all the way to Timbuktu.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Oliver, giving her a wink. ‘I knew there was some fight left in you. Now eat up. They’ll be arriving soon.’