He would make it.
Hehadto make it.
The limelight flared again, swinging back to the stage, dazzling Ava.
She peered into the crowd, trying to pick out a single familiar face – but it was impossible. Each time she blinked she saw only the dark circles from glancing too long at the lamplight – the audience before her one large, bristling shadow.
‘What you will see tonight, what I can offer, is a story from your past. This is not magic – but nor is it strictly science. Your mind will do most of the work, with just a few suggestions from me, to help you move that memory from a place where it might become lost, to a place it will always be found. A page in a book you can re-read time and again.’
Usually that raised a reaction, but today only silence bored back at her, but for once – Ava didn’t care. It didn’t feel like it had before. It didn’t feel like she was on the edge, waiting to fall.
‘Now all I need is a volunteer. Who wants to walk away from tonight with a memory they’ll keep forever?’
‘I should like to volunteer,’ a voice called, cracking a little with the effort of speaking over a sea of hatted heads. ‘I should like to remember.’
Ava nodded, beckoning to the figure. ‘Come up here, sir. Into the light. So that I may see you.’
There was a rustling, and she watched as a row stood, watched as a shadow eased himself from it and walked down the aisle towards her. And it wasn’t until he had reached the stage steps that she realized who it was.
She felt her breath catch in her throat as he climbed towards her – his blond-brown hair flattened beneath his cap, his white shirt pressed and ironed beneath a dinner jacket she had not seen since that night of Mrs Foster’s dinner, the night Jem had proposed.
‘Pa,’ she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear it. ‘I didn’t know you would be here.’
‘I wouldn’t have missed it, my dear.’
He gave her a tremulous smile in return, taking a seat upon the lone chair, and turning to face the waiting crowd.
‘Tell me.’ She raised her voice once more, so that it rang like a struck bell across the theatre. ‘What is it you wish to remember?’
‘My wife,’ he said, and she saw how he had tightened his hands into fists, saw the white streaked across his knuckles. ‘Or rather, my late wife.’
A ripple through the crowd.
‘When she—’ Her father blinked, swallowing hard. ‘When she passed away, she had been ill for a long time. A long time. And for a long time after that, when I thought of her that was all I could see. The pain she had felt. How tired she had become. And it felt like –those memoriesfelt like – like I was keeping her there. In pain. Freezing her in that moment, and—’
Ava felt her throat grow tight.
‘And so I tried to forget her. I tried to push it from my mind. But you see – it pushed everything away. The day we met. The day we married. Painting the sitting room inour house the most awful shade of blue. The birth of our children. And I think …’ He wasn’t looking at the crowd now, but at Ava. Directly at Ava. ‘I think I pushed part of myself away, with it. The man I’d been with her. The person I was. And I’m sorry for that.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry,’ she whispered. ‘You were grieving.’
‘As were you,’ said her father. ‘As was your brother. But I put my own grief before all of that. I let myself sink so deeply into that hole that I had no idea how to get out of it again. But you knew. You and your brother. And Mrs Moss, too – with all her damned nagging. You pulled me back out of it. And I’m grateful for that, Ava. And I think … I think I am ready now. I am ready to remember her the way she was. When we were happy together. I think … I think I can do that now.’
Ava smiled, feeling the warmth drip from her cheeks to her collarbones as she rested a hand upon her father’s shoulder, and squeezed. ‘Then close your eyes,’ she said. ‘And let us begin.’
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Her mother.
Standing in front of the church on their wedding day, her veil blowing in the wind, a smile upon her face.
Her mother.
The day her brother was born, her father telling the midwife ‘Propriety be damned’ as he walked into the room, and pressed a kiss to her mother’s damp forehead.
Her mother.
Moments Ava had shared with them, and a very many she had never heard of. Her father had wanted to capture them all, and she had let him. She’d followed him from room to room of their house and unravelled dinners, and quiet evenings spent reading or painting, and their trips to Crosby before she had been born, and their teas with Mr and Mrs Moss – back when Mr Moss, too, had been alive. And for a moment, she was there with them. She was on that stage, too.
