She picked one up, dusting some of the dirt from it and inspecting the brown skin. It wasn’t sprouting, and the mud on the underside was still relatively damp, which meant it was fresh.
‘Perhaps we should also get some more flour? Then I can put the leftover lamb into a pie, rather than having cold cuts for the week.’
‘Ava? Oliver?’
Ava froze. She knew that voice, and as she turned, she felt her stomach flip.
‘Jem,’ she said softly, barely noticing as the potato slipped from her hand and rolled underneath the stall.
Chapter Eleven
‘Let me get that,’ Jem said quickly, ducking at the same time as Oliver said: ‘No, thank you,’ and snatched it up.
Ava couldn’t help but stare.
Jem was thinner than the last time she’d seen him, and paler, too. The splash of freckles that had still been sun-darkened then had now faded, and his hair, previously tipped with blond, had returned to a pale copper. His wide, thin lips were pressed into a tight line, and his usually smiling face was drawn downwards, his pale eyebrows slanted.
But it was his right eye that caught her gaze – and the dark bruise that curled up, towards his eyebrow.
‘Good grief,’ Ava said quietly. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jem, reaching to pull his hat down more firmly over that side of his face. ‘When did you get back to Liverpool?’
‘She doesn’t want to speak to you,’ Oliver spat, not bothering to lower his voice, and causing the vegetable stall owner to look over interestedly.
‘I have a name,’ said Ava, noticing how dry her mouth had become. ‘And I can speak for myself.’
‘Then tell him to leave.’
Jem flushed. ‘Oliver, really—’
‘Don’t “Oliver” me,’ her brother snapped. ‘Whatever you wish to say, my sister doesn’t need to hear it.’
‘Though I mightwantto hear it,’ Ava said, feeling a flush rising upon her cheeks. ‘You’re being cruel, Oliver.’
‘And you’re being nerveless,’ Oliver countered. ‘He doesn’t just get to act like nothing happened.’
‘That’s not what I’m doing,’ Jem said, lowering his voice as more eyes started to flick their way. ‘I just saw the pair of you there and I wanted merely to say hello. I thought—’ He pushed a breath through his teeth, and shook his head. ‘But I see now that this was a foolish idea.’
‘No,’ countered Oliver. ‘A foolish idea was making a commitment to my sister, and then withdrawing it on a whim.’
Ava felt his words like a burn across her skin, and Jem’s gaze snapped to her brother. ‘It was not “a whim”,’ Jem said, his voice low and ragged.
‘Stop it,’ Ava whispered, trying to keep her voice steady despite the wrenching sensation in her stomach – as though the ground had dropped from under her and now she was sinking, falling. ‘The pair of you. This is neither the time, nor the place.’
Oliver narrowed his eyes, and for a moment they just stood there, Jem looking at Oliver, Oliver looking at Ava, and Ava staring somewhere into the middle distance so that she didn’t look too closely at Jem.
‘I’ll find flour,’ Oliver said at last, ‘and then I’ll meet you outside.’
Ava’s brow knotted as she watched her brother disappear into the thick crowd teeming between the fish stalls.
‘I haven’t asked him to behave like that,’ Ava said, hefting the basket into the crook of her arm and turning her gaze upon the pattern the wicker had left in the soft skin of her wrist.
‘I didn’t imagine you had.’ Jem’s gaze was still on the throng of people, the direction Oliver had stalked off in. ‘Although you have every right to be as angry as he is.’
She looked at him, her gaze snagging on the laughter lines at the edge of his eyes, the bump in his nose. As a child she used to think him odd-looking, with his over-wide smile and his crooked features; but as she’d grown up she’d imagine herself tracing the same bump with her fingertip, or watching his smile grow as she pressed a kiss to each cheek.
She bit down on her lower lip. ‘I’m notangry,’ she said quietly.
