‘You know I’m right,’ I persisted, even though I was aware how thin the ice was when it came to this particular topic. And if we fell through… that wasn’t going to end well. For either of us. ‘We need to bring Victor to heel.’
Ashton rolled his eyes but didn’t argue, and I knew him well enough to realise that in itself was a win. ‘Speaking of: how’s it going with your little protégé?’ he asked instead, after he’d been handed a fresh glass.
Now it was my turn to reach for my drink to avoid meeting his eye. ‘Fine. I’ve got it under control.’
‘And byitdo you mean you or her?’
I was clenching my jaw so hard my teeth grated. ‘Both.’
‘Hmm.’ Ashton rested his head in his hand and regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Then why did Victor tell me she’s been asking an awful lot of questions? And why did he see her hanging around in the library the other day, poking through the university and city archives?’
I closed my eyes.Damn it, Mabel. ‘She’s on a full bursary,’ I said after a pause that was a little too long. ‘She’s always at the library. And she’s… just generally interested in things.’
Ashton contemplated me. I knew he was absorbing every single detail: every shade of blue in the circles under my eyes, every fine line drawn by the tension of the last few months, every miniscule imperfection in my skin. I cupped my glass in both hands so he couldn’t touch them and feel how cold they still were. ‘Did you tell her anything I ought to know about?’
‘Are you fucking joking? How naïve do you think I am?’ Of all the mistakes I’d made with Mabel, that wasn’t one of them. It would be not only my undoing but hers as well.
‘I think you’re out of practice. And we both know it can be extremely intoxicating if you’ve been abstinent for a while?—’
‘I haven’t said anything,’ I interrupted him brusquely. ‘To her, or anybody else, for that matter. What makes you think I have?’
He threw out his arms, and his hand brushed the waist of a man walking past. Ashton shut his eyes, but I knew his pupils were dilating. ‘Just a hunch,’ he said, unruffled, and folded his arms again. ‘Vic told me what books she was looking at. We need to keep an eye on where that’s leading. Perhaps you should be showing her a little more affection.’
‘Right, like you’re doing with her friend?’
‘At least my moth is behaving exactly as she’s supposed to.’
We were silent as the barman removed a few bottles from the shelf in front of us. ‘One Hundred Years’ by The Cure was playing in the background, a song that took me back–to a time when I would have agreed with him unhesitatingly. I couldn’t do that anymore, but then again, I couldn’t bring myself to contradict him either.
‘Why was Victor spying on Mabel in the first place?’
Ashton chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, he’s been told to keep his hands to himself. But you know Vic. Once he’s caught the scent, it’s impossible to call him off.’
‘What scent would that be?’ I tried to make my voice sound annoyed, but even I could hear the note of anxiety. As stubborn as Mabel was, if Victor set his sights on her, she had no chance of escaping him. Nobody did.
‘You know as well as I do. She just has a certain something.’ Ashton shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t important.
I knew Mabel was a thorn in his side, but I also knew he didn’t take her very seriously. Why should he? We always won out in the end. As I thought about the reality of what this would mean for her, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss.
I didn’t notice Ashton’s hand until it was touching the one I’d rested on the bar. He turned it over and pressed two fingers to the vein in my wrist. I could see the accusation in his frown, but instead of saying it out loud he let me go and said, ‘She likes you.’
I laughed. False and cold, splinters of ice in my mouth and chest. ‘She doesn’t know me.’
‘Of course not. But she likes what she thinks she sees in you. If I’ve sensed it, then so have you.’ He gave me a knowing smile, and of course he was right. I had sensed it: a flicker, a sliver of a crack in the door, a glimpse of something extraordinarily alluring–something I desperately needed to keep at arm’s length. ‘You’ve tormented yourself for long enough. Come home, why don’t you?’
Ashton’s voice was unusually gentle, and the shift hit me like a ton of bricks. Conscience pricking, I shut my eyes. ‘I never left.’
‘You left a long time ago.’ He would never say it, but I knew exactly what moment he was thinking about. It was the moment when we’d all left, in our different ways. Then, knocking back his drink in one gulp, he rose to his feet and placed both hands on my shoulders, which I’d hunched slightly. ‘You know it, and I know it. But we also both know that we’ll all wait for you. As long as you need. Just… try and make a bit of an effort, okay?’
He waited for my nod before picking up his coat and heading for the exit, without paying. That was Ashton: he came and went as he pleased, but he was right about one thing. Unlike me, he hadn’t checked out.
I rubbed the heel of my hand over my eyes, which throbbed dryly, then reached for my phone. Social media always made me feel a stab of compassion. It was proof of a universal human urge, one which no one wanted to admit: they were desperate to be seen–mostly not for who they truly were, of course, but who they wanted to be. For someone like me, who’d been working for years to hide exactly that, none of the platforms held much interest. I maintained my profile as diligently as was expected of me, uploading the occasional photo from a high-profile event or sharing a post about the Ames family’s foundation, but that was all. If I ever did log on voluntarily, it was always using my second account, under a fictional name.
Mabel’s feed felt like it reflected real life. Unfiltered, unvarnished, raw and… her. There were photos of yellowing pages on her desk, of coffee mugs smeared with lipstick, and a collection of the lipsticks themselves–Holy Sinner, Darkest Dream, Lullaby Heart–of curtains flecked with gold in the morning light, of library windows beaded with drops of rain, of Zoe and Mabel eating waffles, walking through colleges, boots kicking through the autumn leaves, sitting side by side in one of the tiny student rooms I’d shunned for years. Every now and then, another face would appear: a man with dark hair, who had a way of looking into the camera that betrayed more about his feelings for the photographer than I wanted to know.
When I got to the most recent post, I paused. Mabel, underneath an ivy-clad archway at Trinity Hall. The tattered coat, the bulging bag she never closed, the plaid scarf pulled up to the tip of her nose. You could see almost nothing of her face, but her eyes alone made it impossible for me to look away. So there I sat, gazing at the photograph of this woman, facing up to a truth I’d been fighting for days, wishing I could rip it out of my head and–most crucially of all–out of my heart.
I felt drawn to her. Not to her eyes, not to her face itself or her body. I felt drawn to the expression in her copper-brown irises. To the furrow that appeared on her brow when she thought no one was looking, to the way she lifted her chin even when I could sense her heart racing, to the intelligence in her questions and the close attention she paid the answers. I knew so little about her, but I felt herso strongly. And it was wrong, so terribly wrong that I couldn’t bear to look at her. Not even the version of her in a photograph.
