Chapter Six
There were nine women waiting outside the Adams’ house on Park Lane. Nine women, all standing about a foot apart from one another, all trying very hard to look as though they were waiting for any reason other than to interview with a mesmerist.
‘Do you think we need a codeword?’ Oliver asked, coming to stand beside Ava at the sitting room window, his chin resting upon her shoulder. ‘You know, if it’s going poorly and you want a way of saying “Get this person out of my house” without offending their sensibilities? What about “crumpets”?’
‘I thought you said you’d made eggs?’
Ava let the cardboard snap back into place, turning to find her father standing in the doorway.
He was thinner than when she’d left Liverpool, the robe that had once strained against his stomach now folded almost the full way to his hips.
Wrinkles bunched the skin beneath his neck, and – Ava realized with a kind of quiet dismay – he was beginning to look old.
His eyes were the same, though. A clouded blue, and now they settled upon her, his expression twitching.
‘You look pale,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘You not see sunlight in Edinburgh?’
‘And you look like you’ve not been eating,’ she countered, moving to give her father a hug. Or half a hug, at least – for he merely stood there, hands loose at his sides.
‘He eats,’ said Oliver indignantly. ‘Your eggs are in the kitchen. Eat them in your room, and by the time you’re done I’m sure they’ll all be gone.’
‘Who will be gone?’ her father asked, padding towards them to peer beneath the corner of cardboard himself before huffing a breath through his teeth. ‘That damned Mrs Moss. Was this her idea?’
‘Actually, you have Oliver to blame for this.’
‘To thank, for this,’ her brother corrected. ‘They’re for Ava to interview.’
Her father’s brows furrowed as he turned back to them. ‘As much as I’d like to see Oliver out of the kitchen, we don’t have the coin for a cook.’
‘I shall try not to take that personally,’ muttered Oliver. ‘Besides, they’re here for Ava’s memory work.’
Her father’s expression changed, encompassing the full spectrum from bewilderment to disbelief before settling, quite firmly, upon distaste. ‘Ah,’ he said, straightening. ‘That nonsense.’
‘Pa.’ Ava had to work very hard not to let the sizzle of anger that streaked through her ribcage show on her face. ‘You never thought it nonsense when Ma was doing it.’
‘That was before,’ huffed her father. ‘Now I see that memories are nothing but a pox, and anyone who pays money for them is a fool.’
Ava opened her mouth to say something sharp, and it took everything within her to push it down and say instead: ‘You know that’s not true, Pa.’
‘I tell you what I would pay coin for,’ he said, padding towards the kitchen. ‘Forgetting.’
‘Is that what you would rather?’ Ava fired at his retreating back. ‘You would rather forget Mother, than remember her? Would rather pretend that she never existed?’
Her father paused then, one hand resting on the doorjamb. Then he walked into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut between them.
‘Ava,’ her brother said, his voice quiet. ‘I said don’t be too hard on him.’
‘Yes, well,’ Ava huffed, blinking rapidly. ‘It’s harder to remember that in the moment.’
The kitchen door opened again, and her father padded through the sitting room without looking at either of them, a plate of eggs clutched in one hand and a fork in the other.
‘Shall I let the first one in?’ Oliver asked.
Ava blew a sharp breath through her teeth, but she nodded. ‘Although I don’t know how one slips “crumpet” into conversation naturally.’
Two and a quarter hours later, Ava had not uttered the word ‘crumpet’ once, though she felt as though she had stepped onto a merry-go-round, and it was spinning ever faster.
People never came to her because they wished to call up unhappy memories. No one wished to line up the small, scratching moments of their life and feel them sink their claws in again.
It was usually only one thing people wished to remember.
Love.
The feeling of being loved. The feeling of loving someone else. A child. A spouse. A mother. A grandfather. It was those golden moments of life that people wanted to not only remember, but clutch close. To keep forever.
And that was why she was still sitting here, long after the last woman had left, with a tear-streaked face, and but one sentence written in stark black ink in her notebook.
I cannot do it.
‘So?’ Oliver asked, coming to sit beside her. She hadn’t even noticed the kitchen door creak open; hadn’t noticed him walk in. ‘How many wanted to become clients?’
He was baking something, for now the smell of it was wafting into the sitting room: sugary sweet, and for a moment she was six again, and her mother was going to come walking through the door, her blonde-brown hair scraped into a tight bun.
‘All of them,’ Ava said, sinking into the cushions, one hand reaching to try and rub some of the tension from behind her eyebrows. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’
‘All of them! But that’s wonderful, isn’t it?’
She turned to look at her brother. ‘Oliver, I can’t do it anymore.’
He huffed a breath between his lips. ‘Not this again—’
‘No,’ she said – her voice low. Urgent. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t do it, anymore. I can’t … it doesn’t work. No matter how hard I push. No matter how much I try it just … it doesn’t work.’
He blinked at her a little. ‘But … I’ve seen you do it. On stage.’
She shook her head, her chest squeezing. ‘When I began performing under Ma’s name, we used stooges. Lillian had them planted in the crowd to make it seem as though they were audience members, but it was all scripted. All planned.’
Because after everything that’d happened with Jem, she’d found that something had changed.
She couldn’t keep all her worries, all her fears, in the darkness anymore.
Instead they’d begun to follow her on stage – and the more they followed, the worse it’d become.
But Lillian wouldn’t remove her name from the marquee – and so the only other option left was to lie.
And so, when the critic had called her act eye-wash, when he’d called her ‘naught but a storyteller – a peddler of false tales’, he’d been right.
There’d been no truth in it anymore, no heart in it.
There’d been nothing real about it.
Oliver’s brow furrowed, and he sat a little straighter on the settee. ‘I’ve seen you do it properly though, Ava. And not just on stage, either. Remember? In the storeroom, with Jem?’
She pressed a fingernail into the palm of her hand, pinching away the memory. ‘But that was before. After everything happened with Jem … I don’t know. It felt as though it broke something within me – whatever tether I’d had to it had been snapped. And I just … I couldn’t do it anymore.’
Oliver’s mouth opened, and then closed. ‘You didn’t breathe a word of this to me,’ he said, his voice low.
‘Because telling you would’ve made it real,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t want to make it real.’
‘But I might’ve helped you!’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, but …’ He sat cross-legged on the settee. ‘Try it now. With me. Perhaps it was just the pressure of the theatre – Ma’s act, Ma’s name on the dressing room. Try it here.’
‘Oliver …’
‘Come now, how hard can it be? You put them to sleep – and then you guide them back to their memories. That’s how it works, is it not?’
‘That is a simplified version of how it works, yes.’
‘So then put me to sleep.’
She shook her head, hating how tight her throat felt, how she could feel the panic swimming beneath her skin once more. ‘It won’t work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I need to believe it will work, Oliver. Because I need to be sure of it – sure of myself – and I’m … I’m not anymore. That’s why I went to Edinburgh. I wanted to try and find it again. This … this piece of me that I have lost.’
‘And?’ he asked softly. ‘Did you?’
‘What do you think, Oliver?’ She looked at him, her expression weary. ‘I’m going upstairs to rest. No need to wake me for supper.’