Chapter Eleven
‘Let me get that,’ Jem said quickly, ducking at the same time as Oliver said: ‘No, thank you,’ and snatched it up.
Ava couldn’t help but stare.
Jem was thinner than the last time she’d seen him, and paler, too.
The splash of freckles that had still been sun-darkened then had now faded, and his hair, previously tipped with blond, had returned to a pale copper.
His wide, thin lips were pressed into a tight line, and his usually smiling face was drawn downwards, his pale eyebrows slanted.
But it was his right eye that caught her gaze – and the dark bruise that curled up, towards his eyebrow.
‘Good grief,’ Ava said quietly. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jem, reaching to pull his hat down more firmly over that side of his face. ‘When did you get back to Liverpool?’
‘She doesn’t want to speak to you,’ Oliver spat, not bothering to lower his voice, and causing the vegetable stall owner to look over interestedly.
‘I have a name,’ said Ava, noticing how dry her mouth had become. ‘And I can speak for myself.’
‘Then tell him to leave.’
Jem flushed. ‘Oliver, really—’
‘Don’t “Oliver” me,’ her brother snapped. ‘Whatever you wish to say, my sister doesn’t need to hear it.’
‘Though I might want to hear it,’ Ava said, feeling a flush rising upon her cheeks. ‘You’re being cruel, Oliver.’
‘And you’re being nerveless,’ Oliver countered. ‘He doesn’t just get to act like nothing happened.’
‘That’s not what I’m doing,’ Jem said, lowering his voice as more eyes started to flick their way. ‘I just saw the pair of you there and I wanted merely to say hello. I thought—’ He pushed a breath through his teeth, and shook his head. ‘But I see now that this was a foolish idea.’
‘No,’ countered Oliver. ‘A foolish idea was making a commitment to my sister, and then withdrawing it on a whim.’
Ava felt his words like a burn across her skin, and Jem’s gaze snapped to her brother. ‘It was not “a whim”,’ Jem said, his voice low and ragged.
‘Stop it,’ Ava whispered, trying to keep her voice steady despite the wrenching sensation in her stomach – as though the ground had dropped from under her and now she was sinking, falling. ‘The pair of you. This is neither the time, nor the place.’
Oliver narrowed his eyes, and for a moment they just stood there, Jem looking at Oliver, Oliver looking at Ava, and Ava staring somewhere into the middle distance so that she didn’t look too closely at Jem.
‘I’ll find flour,’ Oliver said at last, ‘and then I’ll meet you outside.’
Ava’s brow knotted as she watched her brother disappear into the thick crowd teeming between the fish stalls.
‘I haven’t asked him to behave like that,’ Ava said, hefting the basket into the crook of her arm and turning her gaze upon the pattern the wicker had left in the soft skin of her wrist.
‘I didn’t imagine you had.’ Jem’s gaze was still on the throng of people, the direction Oliver had stalked off in. ‘Although you have every right to be as angry as he is.’
She looked at him, her gaze snagging on the laughter lines at the edge of his eyes, the bump in his nose.
As a child she used to think him odd-looking, with his over-wide smile and his crooked features; but as she’d grown up she’d imagine herself tracing the same bump with her fingertip, or watching his smile grow as she pressed a kiss to each cheek.
She bit down on her lower lip. ‘I’m not angry,’ she said quietly.
‘No?’ Jem’s voice softened. ‘You left the city.’
‘Not just because of that,’ she said, stealing a glance at him only to be met with an expression of crumpled pity. ‘Not just because of you. It was Lillian, too. The show. It was all—’ Too much. Too much, and all at once.
Jem was quiet for a while. ‘What brought you back?’
‘Oliver’s broken arm,’ she said. ‘And Pa. He isn’t doing so well.’
Jem nodded. ‘You know if you need help you can come past the apothecary. If your father is ill—’
‘Not ill,’ Ava corrected. ‘Just …’ She looked at him, and he at her, and she knew she didn’t have to tell him.
He knew, because he’d seen her father when her mother was alive, and he’d seen her father after she’d died, and it was such a great relief not to have to try and put the starkness of that contrast into words.
‘Well, if I can help, then I will. In any way I can.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I want to do it,’ he said, his eyebrows furrowing. ‘I want for us to be friends again, Ava. And I should like for you to feel you can come and ask for help when you need it, and not stay away just because of something that happened months ago. I just … I can’t stand the thought of you hating me.’
Ava reached to pinch at the skin upon the back of her hand, so that her mind could focus on the sharp tug there, and not on the ache that was growing in the back of her throat.
She hated how his voice cracked as he said it.
Hated how it sent a spear of hope through her chest – for if he regretted it as much as he looked like he did – then why did he do it?
Why break the engagement? But more than that, she hated how even now she wished she could reach out and comfort him, despite the wall his words had built between them.
‘I could never hate you, Jem,’ she said softly, forcing herself to look at him – to meet his trembling gaze with her own.
For he was like family. He’d been like family – and perhaps that’s why it wasn’t anger welling within her now.
It wasn’t sadness either – it was something else, something which felt like a small voice in her ear, and three scratching words.
Not good enough.
She forced herself to smile, as though her heart was not aching inside her chest, and say: ‘If I need medicine, I’ll come past the shop.’
‘Good,’ said Jem softly. ‘Because it wasn’t anything you did, Ava. You do know that, don’t you?’
Now her smile grew taut. ‘Not you too,’ she said. ‘Do you and Oliver communicate in secret or something? Send one another messages in code?’
Something shifted in Jem’s expression. ‘What?’
‘He said the very same thing to me on our walk here,’ she mused. ‘Although I suppose the pair of you were always like that. One of you scrapes his knee, and the other one winces.’
‘Yes, well.’ Jem gave her a pained smile. ‘Not anymore, it would seem.’
‘He’ll come around,’ Ava said, turning to follow Jem’s gaze, and frowning. ‘You know his temper. Quick to anger, quick to forgiveness.’
Although months had passed now. So this was not ‘quick to anger’. And the look on Jem’s face seemed to suggest that he knew it, too.
‘I miss his cooking, you know,’ he said, heaving a deep breath between his lips. ‘His apple pie was always my favourite.’
‘Don’t tell him that,’ Ava said quickly. ‘He’ll call it proof he’s an excellent chef and stop practising.’
‘He’s practising again?’ Jem’s gaze flicked back to her.
‘Mmm. Said he wants to apply for an apprenticeship – even though no one takes on apprentices at his age.’
‘Well, I wish him the best,’ Jem said, casting a final glance towards the crowd.
‘If he wants some space to practise, I’m renting out the back room of the shop.
We need a bit more coin, Mam and I, and …
well, I imagine we’d have to get a better window in there if he were to cook, but I’m sure that could be arranged if he wanted somewhere to practise. Just … just let him know, will you?’
Ava nodded, although she already knew what Oliver would say. Jem must’ve known it, too, because his blue eyes looked sadder then, even as he stitched a forcefully cheery smile upon his face. ‘Well then, Ava.’ He blinked. ‘I can still call you Ava, can’t I? You’re not Miss Adams now?’
‘You can still call me Ava,’ she said, feeling a twinge in her chest. ‘So long as I can still call you Jem.’
‘No one calls me Jeremy,’ said Jem, wincing. ‘And Mr Foster was my father.’
‘Jem it is then,’ she said, taking his outstretched hand and giving it a squeeze. ‘Look after yourself.’
‘And you, Ava. And do me a favour?’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Try and win Oliver around for me.’
Oliver was waiting for her by the exit, a sack of flour tucked under the crook of his arm, one foot tapping out an uneven rhythm into the flagstone floor.
‘Well?’ he said, pushing a strand of hair back under his cap. ‘What did he want?’
‘Just to say hello.’ Ava handed him the basket, heavy with potatoes, and rubbed at the crease of her elbow, where the wicker had bitten deep into the skin. ‘Which you would know if you hadn’t stormed off in a temper. He misses us.’
‘He should’ve thought about that before he took a match to everything.’
Ava gave her brother a pointed look. ‘You can at least be civil with him. It should be me spitting venom and you playing the diplomat, and not the other way around.’
‘An insult to you is an insult to the whole family,’ Oliver said. ‘I can hate him all I want.’
‘You don’t hate him,’ said Ava, rolling her eyes.
‘I do hate him.’
‘Well, you needn’t.’
‘Thank you for that input,’ Oliver huffed. ‘Next time I need to be told how I feel about something, I’ll come straight to you.’
Ava pursed her lips, watching as he flexed and closed his fingers around the flour, her pale eyebrows knotting. She knew her brother had this streak – this uncanny ability to hold a grudge – and it’d felt somewhat gallant of him initially to turn it upon Jem, but now …
Now she wasn’t sure. Now he seemed more angry than she’d ever been.
‘Did you two fight?’ she asked. ‘Did something happen between you, other than—’ She saw it, then. Jem sliding her cup towards him, sloshing her father’s red wine all over the table. His apologetic grin, the candlelight turning his slate-blue eyes to deep pools of sapphire—
And then it struck her.
Jem’s eye.
Oliver’s hand.
‘That’s not how you broke your arm, is it?’
‘What, punching him?’ Oliver’s twitching expression vanished, replaced with a half-hearted laugh. ‘If only.’
The words caught her off-guard – for they were cool, and careless. There’d been a time when Oliver would’ve walked through fire for Jem – and she didn’t know which stung more, his jest, or the ease with which he’d made it.
‘I shall fix this,’ she said.
And she meant all of it. Everything that had broken. But when her brother turned to her, and said: ‘What, the money you mean? With Miss Lillian?’ she said yes. For that was the easiest place to start.
Especially as she knew where to find her.