Easier than the truth.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Damien arrived at the apothecary early and stood for a moment on the other side of the street, watching the carriages clatter past, the people hurry by on their way to the market, or the church, or south – into the belly of the city. He’d told himself he would come early to make sure no one was here, no one was waiting for him – but the truth was he just wanted to stand here for a moment.
He wanted to look at this place – where they’d spent so many hours together. He’d wanted to try and burn it into his memory. He’d wanted to keep this image – this place they’d shared.
Even if he couldn’t keep her.
And seeing it for the last time squeezed at something deep in Damien’s stomach.
Today, he might finally answer the question that had been ricocheting around his skull for the past decade.
What did you do?
That should have been his greatest worry, as he walked up the weed-strewn path, and the door opened, and he saw her.
But it wasn’t.
His greatest worry was how he would walk from this place afterwards, knowing that he would not see her again.
Ava was already waiting for him in the little room to the side, her wisping blonde hair pinned under a hat the colour of summer skies, her dress adorned with buttons that looked like they might have been pearls, though when he drew closer he saw they were simply white beads, stitched in neat patterns from her collar to her waist, up each sleeve, and then around her neck.
Her jaw tensed, and though she usually held his gaze, today she looked down, to where her hands were clenched into fists in her lap.
‘Are you ready?’
Damien sat heavily on the chair opposite her, removing his coat and letting it sag towards the floor behind him. ‘I doubt I have ever been less ready for anything in my life.’
Now she smiled, though it didn’t reach all the way to her eyes. ‘All will be well,’ she said.
‘Will it?’
She nodded, her eyes finally meeting his. ‘I will be with you, every step of the way.’
Something in her tone, in the slant of her eyebrows as she’d said it, reached into his chest and plucked at a chord there so that it sang, a low, longing hum.
‘Back to the lake?’ she asked.
‘Back to the lake,’ he agreed, feeling how the words caught in his throat.
‘Focus on the pocketwatch. And try and relax.’
For once he found he didn’t want to. He wanted to sit here and look at her. To make a study of the strand of hair that had fastened itself to her eyelashes. To trace the sharp lines of her cheekbones, the elegant curve of herneck. To count the indentations in her skin – beside her left eyebrow, beneath her right eye – to draw a shape between them.
He wanted to burn that image of her into the backs of his eyelids, to see it every time he closed his eyes, and now, in the darkness, he tried to hold it. That image of her. The way she had said:I will be with you, every step of the way, as though she didn’t just mean today, their session. But always.
Ten.
He imagined them at the docks, the sea wind whipping into their hair, their hands clasped together as they leaned out, over the black iron railings, trying to see the grey smudge of Ireland in the roiling waves.
Eight.
Her silhouette cast in the flickering light at Mr Jane’s teahouse, her mouth twitching up at the edge as she reached across the table for his hand.
Six.
Watching the sea blur past them from the window of a train, the steam mingling with the sea-spray that ran diagonally down the glass.
