They ordered breakfast as the train entered London’s outskirts.
Charlotte was looking at her phone. Diana stared out the window. The suburbs were, truly, a graveyard of female ambition, she thought. Here were women tending to homes, taking jobs that could fit around childcare or around their husbands. Compromising. It pained her to think of it.
Lights shone from the windows of the houses. Women were waking up, facing their reflections, their husbands, packing their children’s lunches. Some might be waking feeling loved and fulfilled, but so many would already be engaging in self-criticism, in domestic scuffles. They might be experiencing violence. She’d seen it firsthand. The drudgery and subjugation of domestic married life had worn her own mother down and, Diana was certain of it, contributed to her ill health and early death.
They rolled onward through a commercial district of offices, bars, and shops. The streetlamps were still on, with their false promise of security. Diana thought of all the women discovered dead or hurt by men in places just like this. Women weren’t safe anywhere. This simple but horrendous truth was at the core of everything the Larks did. Diana could think of no better cause to dedicate her life to.
The train pushed deeper into the metropolis, and her tired eyes drank in everything she saw. The City of London looked dazzling, such confident geometry in the architecture, lines straight as a bullet’s path, curves that were elegant yet robust. How bold did the steel and concrete look? It was virile design. She even saw a muscular touch of poetry in the way two skyscrapers framed the falling moon while their mirrored flanks reflected the burgeoning sunrise. Stunning. Powerful.
Diana wondered if this was how the world appeared to Anya Brown: if everything she saw was inextricably linked to something else, everything suggesting a dozen connections, good and bad. It could be overwhelming, she supposed. It invited the question: Was every talent a gift? But that was Anya’s problem, not hers. The world kept turning. Days broke, one after the next, and sometimes the pace of their progress could feel horribly slow, but not right now. They were Larks. They welcomed new dawns. And maybe, finally, the sun was breaking on a world in which they would be making a difference.
She looked at Charlotte. “I’m going to freshen up.”
She was brushing her teeth when she heard a knock on her door. She let Charlotte in.
Charlotte handed her a thick envelope, the contents soft enough that the paper crinkled beneath Diana’s fingers.
“The embroidery,” Charlotte said. “I think you should have it. Keep it safe until you are back in St. Andrews. When the time’s right to show it to Anya, don’t hesitate. But remember, we need to know she’s completely on board with the new benefactor before you let her see it. Otherwise, she’ll be a liability.”
Diana’s heart beat a little faster. This was more proof that things were accelerating. It was an unexpected responsibility, but she was up to it.
When Charlotte had gone, Diana slipped the embroidery into a zipped compartment of her handbag. She hesitated, wondering ifshe could keep it closer to her somehow, because if it were mislaid, it would be a disaster, but she had no suitable pockets.
The bag would be fine for now. She wouldn’t let it out of her sight. When she picked it up, it felt as if she were carrying a bomb.
Sid
Sid sat at his desk in the attic of the cottage. He had a view of the big sky and the ocean, and its wildness was bringing him joy. Oxford had felt so dull by comparison, so stultifying. He felt like he could achieve here, like he had the time and space and energy to focus on Lucis and really make something of it.
It was a welcome surge of optimism, because he hadn’t slept well. Without Anya home to distract him, he’d got spooked late yesterday evening. On a walk before bed, he’d discovered that there was a dearth of street lighting at this end of town. The ruins behind the cottage weren’t lit at all. There were shadows on shadows everywhere, and the ocean’s roar had sounded unnervingly close. The wind had howled all night, too.
He checked his email, pleased to see confirmation for a meeting scheduled for the next day with a professor at the computer science department. He was looking forward to it, hoping for a part-time position to earn him some money so he could contribute something to the household. It would be nice to meet some like-minded people, too. He was hopeful that he and Giulia Orlando’s partner, Paul, might hang out together, but he would need more friends of his own up here. He had no intention of being dependent on Anya for everything.
He drained the last of his coffee, and felt the caffeine doing its good work. Ready to start, he reached for his headphones but heard the doorbell chime. He considered ignoring it, but they’d ordered a bunch of stuff for the cottage, and it was raining, and the cottage’s small porch didn’t provide much shelter.
A woman stood outside staring up at the roof. She had the look of a busybody, and Sid’s heart sank, because he was itching to be at his desk, getting on, but there was no avoiding her now.
“Hi,” he said. “Can I help?”
“You are?” A brusque question, but she sounded friendly enough.
“I’m Sid Hill. I just moved in here with my girlfriend.”
She shook his hand firmly. “I’m Maggie from next door. Nice to meet you. We have a leak in our front bedroom, and I think it’s a problem from your side.”
Sid stepped out and joined her in looking up at the roofline, where the cottages were adjoining. Everything looked fine to him. “There’s nothing leaking on our side, but we’ve only been here a couple of days. I could ask my landlord.”
“Would you mind? Diana Cornish never answers my messages. I’m getting stonewalled by her secretary. Just like last spring when I called to ask about a girl who lived here. My tenants and I were anxious because she left very abruptly.”
“Oh, dear,” Sid said blandly, to discourage her from chatting, but Maggie was on a roll, barely drawing breath before she carried on talking.
“She disappeared in the middle of the night and left quite a lot of her stuff here. My tenants said it didn’t seem like her to do something like that. Their impression was that she was a courteous person and they considered themselves friends of hers, though of course they questioned this afterward, when she didn’t respond to any of their messages. Anyway, I phoned Diana about it and the secretary wouldn’t put me through, so I called in at the Institute and she was extremely abrupt with me. She said Diana had told her to tell me that it was nothing to worry about, the girl changed her mind and left her job at the university.”
Sid blinked at her. This was a lot of information. “I mean, it happens,” he said. He was thinking of the time he messaged a guy on his course who he’d been partnered with to do a presentation,and the guy had messaged back that he’d left Oxford and returned home. Nobody had noticed. “University populations are always in flux, especially when there are a lot of international students.”
She looked at him sharply. “It was veryfishy,” she said. “Though she was foreign.”
“Okay,” he said. “Well, I should get back to work.”
