Chapter Forty
Come Sunday, Ava stood in front of the looking glass in her room, wearing one of her mother’s tea dresses, turning left and right to watch the blue material shimmer in the sunlight.
It was too fine a dress for a tombola, too fine perhaps for even a dinner, but she was sure no one but Mrs Moss would notice.
She pinned a brooch to her lapel – silver, and wrought in the shape of a butterfly – before turning for the stairs.
Her father, who had been fiddling with his neck-tie in front of the hallway mirror, glanced up at her. ‘A letter arrived for you yesterday,’ he said, nodding towards the small table. ‘I left it there.’
Ava frowned, for she didn’t recognize the small, scratched scrawl on the front of it. Inside was a note from Miss Fairchild. You know, it seems you were right again, it said. Perhaps I do have to make something of my very own.
‘Can you help me with this?’
‘Of course,’ she said, frowning a little as she turned to knot her father’s tie and remove some lint from the shoulders of his suit. He looked at her dress, and she took in his suit, and both met the other’s eye with a curious smile.
‘Is that for Mrs Moss?’ Ava asked.
‘Is that for Jem?’
Ava felt the air rush from her lungs. ‘Jem?’
‘Yes. Oliver said you’d invited him. Didn’t you?’
Ava opened her mouth and closed it again. Admittedly, she’d forgotten about that part.
‘I didn’t realize they were on speaking terms again.’
‘Seems so.’ His eyes fastened on her silver brooch.
‘It’s just a dress, Pa,’ Ava said. Although that wasn’t entirely the truth.
Damien would be there.
Her father began picking at the knot she had just tied, as though he would undo it. ‘I feel like a trussed-up goose,’ he huffed, turning back towards the stairs. ‘I’m going to change.’
‘You look wonderful,’ Ava said, hooking her arm through his before he could retreat back to his room. ‘Now come on, or else we’ll be late.’
It was a fine day for a walk, though her father had grumbled almost the entire way about the number of people crowding the pavements, or the din of the carriages rattling past them, and so Ava was grateful to step through the butter-yellow door of Mr Jane’s teahouse and lose herself in the welcoming warmth that lay behind it.
‘Finally, reinforcements!’ Mr Jane said, lifting a heavily ladened tray with ease as he turned, manoeuvring carefully through the tight gaps between the chairs. ‘Look what she’s done to the place.’
And he was right. The teashop had been utterly transformed.
A small tea cart had been repurposed to sell raffle tickets – tuppence each, if the chalkboard was to be believed – and the tables in the centre of the shop had been pushed together to show off the prizes.
Ava could see the two pies Oliver had made sitting alongside pots of home-made jam, knitted socks and hats, donated books – some new, others falling apart – as well as an assortment of other things.
Someone had even strung bunting upon the walls, threading it in looping lines across the ceiling.
‘I’ll warn you now,’ Mr Jane said, his lemon-yellow apron straining against the barrel of his stomach.
‘Mrs Moss is on a rampage. She’s had your brother in the kitchen all morning making more scones – as though he didn’t already bake enough for half of England.
And then there was something about the tombola prizes—’
Ava’s eyes cast about the room for Mrs Moss, and she froze.
For another familiar face stared back at her. His green eyes glittered beneath silver spectacles, and though he wasn’t wearing his usual clothes – his shirt looked several sizes too large, his waistcoat, too – she would know that face anywhere.
And the intensity of his gaze made her cheeks feel warm, made her stomach fizzle.
‘Damien.’
Mr Jane turned. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I’d heard the two of you were acquainted.’
‘I’ll just—’ Her words trailed off, for she’d already started weaving her way through the tight crush of tables to reach him. When he looked at her – a wavering smile dimpling his cheek – a warmth unfurled in her chest, her heart thudding so loudly she wondered if he could hear it.
Until Mrs Moss jerked into her path.
‘Ava,’ she said breathlessly. ‘We need to put raffle numbers on all the prizes. And I thought perhaps we should divvy up the scones for each table? Otherwise, you know Mr Willows, he’ll eat the lot.’
Mrs Moss looked unusually flustered – her face red, her hair frizzing a little where it had escaped its pins beneath her obsidian hat.
‘Speaking of which, where are the scones. Oliver? Oliver!’
The kitchen door slammed open then, sending a gust of steam into the room. ‘What?’
‘The scones, Oliver! Are they ready?’
‘Nearly.’
‘Oh, do hurry up, will you dear? Everyone will be arriving soon!’
She stalked towards the kitchen, and Ava seized her chance to hurry towards the small corner table.
To Damien.
‘I’m overdressed, aren’t I?’ he said, by way of greeting. ‘I told him I didn’t need a neck-tie—’
‘You are perfect,’ Ava said – and saw how the words had caught him off-guard. How they made his green eyes dance. ‘I mean, you look perfect.’
‘You think I’ll make a good impression then? On your family?’
Ava turned to see where Pa had disappeared to. Mr Jane had given him a tray of cups and saucers, and now her father was just standing with them, unmoving – which surely was not the point.
‘Oliver’s easier to please than Pa,’ she said. ‘Although I wouldn’t take anything either of them say personally, if I were you.’
‘Ava!’ Mrs Moss slammed open the kitchen door at the back. ‘The prizes, my dear. They need organizing!’ She gestured manically to the table, as though if Ava didn’t get over there that very second it might spontaneously catch fire.
‘Here, let me help you,’ Damien said, standing. ‘Although you’ll have to tell me what to do. I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a tombola.’
‘It’s simple really,’ she said, walking with him to the table. ‘Each prize just needs a number. You can write them on these—’ She pointed to a set of brown parcel tags, each one with a little loop of string threaded through it. ‘And then attach it to the prize. Then we need to—’
The words died on her lips when she glanced up, and saw how he watched her – as though she were a riddle he might try and solve. As though if he looked long enough, or hard enough, he might find his answer.
‘Which would you choose?’ Damien asked, plucking up the tea cosy and examining it. ‘If you won?’
‘I hope you’re not planning on cheating the tombola,’ she said, eyebrow tweaking upwards.
‘Oh, it will be conducted with the utmost honesty.’ He drew a finger across his heart, as though to prove it. ‘I’m merely curious.’
Ava studied the table for a moment before plucking up a promising-looking almanac – although upon closer inspection it was two years old, so likely only the moon phases would still be correct.
The jam would only get devoured by her father, and the elaborate fans perched on the corner of the table were a mite too showy for her.
Eventually, she selected a small basket of lavender sachets, each pouch tied neatly with string.
‘These,’ she said. ‘They’re good for keeping the moths away.’
Damien’s lip tweaked up a little at the edge. ‘You use those already, don’t you? I could smell them in your mother’s dressing room.’
She ran her finger along one of the pouches, feeling the bumps of the lavender stems through the muslin, a smile tugging at the edge of her lips. She hadn’t imagined he would remember that.
‘What would you choose?’ she asked.
Damien looked at her, green eyes sparking. ‘Guess,’ he said, and the way he looked at her made her heart stutter in her chest.
‘What happens if I get it right?’
‘You can ask me anything you wish,’ he said. ‘And I shall answer.’
‘And if I get it wrong?’
His eyes didn’t leave hers. ‘I get to ask something.’
She plucked up one of the candlesticks, testing the weight of it in the palm of her hand.
While it looked like silver, it felt as light as tin, and she placed it back down again.
She considered the gloves – though they looked as though they’d sooner suit a woman than a man – and the brown socks that were neatly paired together looked far too small.
Then her eyes snagged on one of Oliver’s pies. ‘There’s nothing of worth here,’ she said. ‘So I think you’d choose the next best thing.’
‘And what’s that?’
She nodded towards the pie. ‘Food.’
Damien laughed a little, reaching to rub at the back of his neck. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘Wrong? Why, what would you choose?’
Damien nudged a knuckle against the muslin pouches she’d chosen earlier. ‘You said nothing on this table has worth,’ he said. ‘But these do, now that I know you want them.’
She swallowed, feeling how her heart had begun to tick a little faster. ‘Well, a deal’s a deal,’ she said. ‘You may ask me whatever you’d like.’
He stepped a little closer, lowering his voice between them. ‘Ava, I want to know—’
‘Ava?’ Mrs Moss’ voice was dangerously high-pitched. ‘The scones are ready.’
‘Coming, Mrs Moss,’ Ava called back, her gaze not leaving his. ‘Ask me,’ she said – feeling how her heart had begun to thunder in her ribcage.
‘I want to know …’ His voice cracked, and he hesitated. Uncertainty flickered across his expression – softening the lines of his brows. ‘I want to know why you agreed to help me.’
‘You know why,’ she said, brows furrowing. ‘Because you volunteered, and because it would help me try and reconnect with my craft.’
‘No, I mean – why me?’
She looked at him for a long moment, and then looked away. ‘I suppose … because you were quite confident I would fail and that felt … safer, somehow, than someone who might only expect me to succeed. But also because I made a promise to myself. One you helped me make, actually.’
‘What promise?’
Her lip twitched up at the edge. ‘That sounds like a second question. I thought your prize was only one?’
He reached down for the pouches, fingers tracing the outline of them. ‘I believe these might be worth a second question.’
Ava bit her lip – feeling how dry the skin was.
‘When you asked me why I wanted to become her,’ she said, her pulse quickening a little now.
‘My mother, it made me realize that perhaps what I thought had been broken within me wasn’t gone at all, just …
stoppered behind the weight of all of that.
My expectations. Other people’s expectations.
I’d spent so long wanting to be just like her, I hadn’t thought of how to make it my own. ’
‘And?’ Damien asked. ‘Did you keep you promise?’
Ava nodded. ‘I believe so,’ she said. ‘After all, I’m able to help you, aren’t I?’
‘Ava!’ Mrs Moss’ voice was becoming increasingly shrill. ‘Please will you fetch the scones from the kitchen?’
‘I’m coming,’ she said, blowing a breath through her teeth.
Damien looked as though he might say something more, but then he gestured towards the table. ‘I’ll finish this,’ he said, scribbling numbers on the brown paper labels. ‘Go and help.’
Ava nodded, hurrying towards the kitchen.
She’d expected to find Oliver there, but instead it was empty, scones and flour littering every conceivable surface, and she frowned.
‘Oliver? Can I take these?’
She passed through the narrow galley kitchen, towards the door at the other end.
It led out into a small courtyard, and she could see her brother framed on the other side of the glass – no doubt trying to get some air, for if the teashop was oppressively hot, the kitchen felt like the devil’s belly.
And yet, as her fingers reached for the handle, she froze.
For another figure stepped behind the glass then – someone with mussed copper hair and a crooked nose, and he placed a hand upon her brother’s shoulder.
Jem.
She could hear his muffled voice through the door – and she pressed her back to the wall so they wouldn’t see her.
‘You can’t keep doing this, Oliver. Blaming yourself. It’s tearing you apart.’
‘I can go back to blaming you, if you’d rather?’
‘I think you were blaming yourself with that, too. It was just easier to direct it at me.’
Oliver was quiet for a long moment. ‘It was my idea.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Enough, Jem,’ Oliver muttered. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘But perhaps she might – if you spoke to her?’
Oliver’s laugh was hissing and bitter. ‘Don’t be a fool.’
‘I’m serious. Perhaps you underestimate her, Oliver.’
‘Perhaps you overestimate her.’
There was another pause, before Jem said: ‘She forgave me, didn’t she? Don’t you think she’d forgive you, too?’
‘No. No I don’t.’ There was an ache in Oliver’s voice, something ragged, and raw – and Ava’s heart stuttered in her chest as she drew back from the doorway, as Mrs Moss called:
‘Ava? Ava!’
‘Coming!’ She plucked up a tray of scones and pushed back into the warm teashop, her thoughts tangled.
They’d surely been talking about her. But what did Oliver need her forgiveness for?
The question settled in her stomach – a faint, nagging sense of unease – but people were already arriving, and taking seats at each of the tables, and when she looked up, and caught Damien’s eye, she almost laughed, despite herself.
For the look upon his face was one of pure terror – and when a group of people finally took their seats, she saw why.
Because sitting at the table with him was her father.