‘It’s a nuisance,’ he huffed, drawing another page from his pocket, this one neatly folded into a tight square. ‘Here. This is yours.’
Ava held the small square of paper in her hands. For she knew who it was from. And now she knewwhyBertie had hammered upon the door to deliver it.
Inside there was only one sentence, scrawled in Lillian’s large, looping handwriting.
Be at the theatre this coming Thursday.
L.
Ava dipped the spoon hurriedly back into the pot of lemon curd.
‘Who’s it from?’ her father asked. ‘Jem?’
‘Lillian,’ she said, crumpling it into a ball.
‘Oh.’
For the first time since he’d stepped into the room, her father met her eyes. His were closer to Oliver’s, a true blue, rather than the grey she’d got. She watched the corner of his lips twitch downwards, and readied herself for the onslaught that would surely come next: about how her mother was but twenty-two when they’d met, and twenty-three by the time Oliver was in the crib.
Instead he said: ‘You know, I never thought the two of you were quite right together.’
Her expression froze. ‘What?’
‘You and Jem,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I know what love looks like. And I don’t believe you loved him.’
‘Ididlove him,’ said Ava, the words coming out with a little more heat than she’d intended. For shehadloved him. Part of herstillloved him. But …
But perhaps her father was right. Perhaps it wasn’t the kind of love that consumes you. That burns within you. It was the kind of love that felt precarious – as though it were never quite yours to begin with.
‘Your mother would’ve been disappointed though,’ he said, his voice low. ‘She always liked him.’
Ava looked up at him. ‘And what do you think she’d say to this, hmm?’ She gestured towards the cardboard still on the windows. ‘I think she’d have a few choice words, there.’
He looked away, down at the settee, picking at one of the loose threads upon the arm. ‘No doubt she’d tell me it was senseless. But nothing makes sense in a world without her, does it?’ He stopped, his eyebrows furrowing, his voice catching in his throat. ‘That’s why I don’t need Mrs Moss’ damned club. That’s why I don’t need to be reminded of all the … all the things outside the window. All thelifehappening out there.’
‘I know, Pa …’ She reached to place her hand atop his. She thought he would flinch away – but he didn’t.
‘You don’t, Ava,’ he said softly, squeezing her hand. ‘And I hope to God you never do.’
He eased himself up then, turning and trudging back up the stairs – though now she saw he’d taken the pot of lemon curd with him. Ava watched him go, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was something else for her list. She couldn’t fix the gap her mother’s death had left within him, but maybe she could help him see that life was still worth being a part of again. That the ‘life’ happening outside the window still held something for him, too.
She sighed.
Or perhaps she’d just settle for getting him out of the house.
Chapter Seventeen
If she was going to do this – if she was going totry– then she needed to believe in it again. She needed to find the quiet surety that’d existed within her once – and capture it. Keep it.
And though Ava hated to admit it, the darkness of the parlour – the horrible cardboard upon the windows – would help. Sitting here felt a little like that moment on stage, when the curtains were still drawn, and she waited in the shadows behind them, her breath a jagged rhythm in her throat. Now the only light in the room came from the kerosene lamps she’d dotted upon the mantlepiece, the windowsill, the cabinets, shadowing all of the things that could draw her eye, that could distract her, and leaving her instead with only four little pools of golden light.
She pulled the little black bag towards her, reaching inside for the metronome. The key wasn’t in the lock, and she had to pat the bottom of the leather to find it, turning it twice until the clockwork began to whir to life. Until the arm began its measured ticking – back and forth, back and forth – and she let her eyes follow it. Let herself focus on the rhythm of it, eachticka breath.
The bell. The watch. The penny.
She took them each out – one by one – fingers tracing the burnished metal. The bell had been her grandmother’s – the one she’d broken one summer by accidentally snapping off the clapper when they’d gone to visit at her grand old house in Crosby. The pocketwatch had been her mother’s – brass, although Ava always thought it looked more like gold – with delicate leaves engraved upon the hunter case.
She let her eyes wander to the clock upon the mantlepiece – for the pocketwatch was long dead, forever frozen at five minutes to twelve. For a moment she wondered if that clock hadn’t been wound either, for it showed the same time. And then the minute hand shuddered closer to twelve o’clock, and she heard the tentative knock at the front door.
