He watched the man’s lip twitch, as though he might say something else. And then he sighed, and pressed a small square of paper into Damien’s outstretched hand.
‘You might want this.’
Damien unfolded it carefully, for he hadn’t taken Mr Jane to be a sentimentalist – and felt something flicker in his chest as he saw Ava’s face staring back at him. It was just a line drawing, but it still picked out the fine line of her cheekbone, the pale grey of her eyes.Ava Adams returns to the Penny Farthing Theatre tonight – now reborn as The Storyteller.
He stared at it for a moment, and then two – his breath tight in his throat. And then he folded the paper back up, and tucked it into his pocket.
‘Goodbye, Mr Jane,’ Damien said.
‘Well, see, I don’t do goodbyes,’ Mr Jane had said, reaching to squeeze his shoulder instead. ‘I do “Until next time.”’
Damien had smiled. ‘Until next time then.’
‘And may it be sooner, rather than later,’ Mr Jane had said, returning Damien’s smile with a taut one of his own; before grabbing his battered holdall in one fist. ‘Come on. I’ll walk yer.’
Boston.
Damien knew enough to know that whenever he returned –ifhe ever returned – it would not be ‘soon’. From Boston he’d no doubt try and hitch a ride back to New York, or perhaps he’d head north – into New Hampshire, or even Canada – and try and make a go of it there. He didn’t know yet; all he knew was that this was it.
This was the reason he’d come to Liverpool: toleave.
And yet now he was here, standing upon the deck of the ship that’d take him to a new life, he found himself faltering. The wind was fierce, and it stung his eyes to look back at Liverpool’s docks, to trace his walk between the butter-coloured buildings up towards Mr Jane’s teahouse, or east, towards the terraced house that Ava lived in, one thought circling him like the seagulls trying to flap against the bracing wind above:
You cannot make a fresh start in the shadow of your old life.
The ship bellowed then, its great horn piercing the air, making him tighten his grip upon the railings. For Mr Jane was wrong. Damiencouldstart a new life. He’d done it a dozen times, moving to a new place, taking on a new name, a new story.
The difference would be that this time, it would be filled with the knowledge that he was there, and she was here.
It would be filled with a hundred little wonderings: what was she doing? Was she looking up at the same moon as he? Was she walking to the theatre, or sitting upon the settee in her father’s sitting room, her notebook spread across her lap? It would be filled with a list of all the things he wanted to tell her, all the things he wished for her to know. It would be filled with unspoken words, and a gap in his chest that spanned the full breadth of the Atlantic.
The ship’s horn sounded again, and he watched the men upon the dock begin to hurry, running now up and down the gangway as they raced to load the last of the boxes and cases.
But he could live with that, couldn’t he? He could live with the loss. The longing. For though he no longer blamed himself for the worst of it: his mother’s death – that dark, trailing shadow – he blamed himself for the rest. For lying to her. For betraying her.
Damien’s grip upon the railing loosened as the ship’s horn let out a last, thunderous groan, and the men below began to call to one another, fetching more hands from the docks to try and haul the last of the luggage up and down the slamming gangway.
Is that what this is?Ava’s voice threaded through his mind.Are you … are you trying to prove it to yourself?That what your father told you, all those years ago, was true?
The thought made something clench in his chest. Leaving Ava here for noble reasons: to save her having to run with him, to protect her from that kind of life, that all made sense in his mind. Leaving to save himself made sense too, for it soothed the snarling sensation in his chest, the one that snapped its jagged teeth whenever he felt cornered and thrust his rules before him, as though they were his claws. As though they would protect him.
But then he thought of what Mr Jane had asked him. What he’d said.
What if you’re running from a ghost?
Mr Briggs was chasing him because of his mother.
And now he knew that the guilt that had stitched itself to his shadow all these years wasn’t his.
It’d been an accident.
His mother’s death had beenan accident.
So then why was he running from it?
Damien bit down upon his lip, eyes flitting to the gangway that led back to shore as another whistle came, followed by three sharp blasts of the ship’s horn. It was more frantic this time, and the rising waves suggested the captain was keen to depart, to stop smacking sickeningly back and forth against the jetty.
For running made it look as though he were guilty. Running made it look like an admittance, a confession of fear. And though he was still afraid: he could feel it in the trembling sensation buried deep beneath his breastbone, could feel it in the way his muscles were coiled and ready –it had been an accident. All these years he’d spent believing he was a monster; wouldn’t running now be believing it, too? Wouldn’t running now tell whomever was chasing him the very same?
