‘Which of course is why you are having the sessionshere, in a house where one of us is jobless, and the other never leaves?’
Ava pressed her mouth into a line. ‘Oliver, this isn’t a jest. It’sprivate. You can’t just spend the entire time with your ear pressed to the wall.’
‘I don’t!’ Oliver said, indignantly, reaching to push his hair back from his face. ‘I hear youdespiteall the clattering I’m making. It’s not my fault. I cannot exactly scrunch my ears shut, can I?’
‘Well perhaps you should find a way.’
‘Or perhapsyoushould find a better place to hold your sessions?’
Ava raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes? And where might that be?’
Oliver gave her an infuriatingly blank stare. ‘How should I know?’
He turned and marched back into the kitchen, and Ava huffed a sigh through her teeth, resting against the edge of the settee. He was right, of course. She would have to find somewhere else for the sessions.
IfDamien ever agreed to sit for her again after that.
Chapter Twenty
Damien walked until he was sure she would not follow, until his breath sawed in his chest and he was forced to stop, pressing himself into the cool alleyway between two sandstone buildings. He reached blindly for the brick wall beside him, almost missing entirely as his knees buckled. A rash of clammy sweat prickled his face and he felt last night’s scotch race up his throat.
‘Vile,’ said a lady as she passed him, and Damien knew that she was right. He was vile. He was a vile, awful person, and he needn’t have asked Ava to remind him of it. He’d known it all his life. He’d known it ever since he was a small boy, writing endless pages to his father – only to receive a short note from the butler by way of reply.
The problem was, sometimes he forgot. Sometimes, he would meet someone, and for a moment he imagined he was a different person. The type who was worthy of a friendship, or a kind smile, or a secretive look. That was how it’d felt when he’d sat with Ava, in that room. In her house. As though perhaps there was a version of himself that deserved to feel at peace – even if was only for a moment.
What happened to ‘no ripples’?said the curling voice inside his own mind, the one that sounded like him, or his father, or both.What happened to your rules?
He retched again, and heard a woman drag her child to the other side of the street, muttering: ‘Don’t look, darling, that man is very sick.’ He almost wanted to apologize, for he knew that he should feel ashamed to be so indisposed, but then he gagged again, and it was all he could do to press his forehead to the brick and squeeze his eyes shut, until all he could see was darkness.
Where are you Damien, Ava had asked.And his mind had shot there, like an arrow to its mark: to the lake. How it’d dappled in the summer, and how he’d liked to sit at the edge, and watch the ducks ruffle water through their feathers. And a voice in his mind had shouted, yanking him back as though from a precipice.
No!
And yet as soon as he closed his eyes, that was all that he could see – the shadow of the boat bobbing above him. How quiet it’d been down there – how dark.
He wiped at his mouth with his sleeve, the cold wind kissing the sweat upon his face, when he felt a hand upon his shoulder.
‘You all right there, son?’
Damien shook his head, spitting the sour taste from his mouth. ‘Don’t bother yourself with the likes of me,’ he grunted.
He expected to hear heavy footsteps pad away, but instead he felt a hand come underneath his elbow, and someone help him surprisingly gently to his feet.
‘Thank you,’ he muttered, turning to find a mountain of a man staring back at him. His grey-brown hair was shorn close to his skull, highlighting the criss-cross of silver scars that ran from his ear to his collarbone, as though someone had pressed a molten fishing net to his skin.
‘You steadied?’ he asked, his bear paw of a hand tightening around Damien’s elbow.
Damien nodded, his gaze shifting to the apron the man was wearing. Because for all he looked as though he’d just stepped off the meanest ship in the navy, the apron straining across his midriff was bright yellow, and covered in what looked like daisies.
‘I’m steadied,’ Damien agreed.
The man appraised him in the same manner a farmer might appraise a limping cow. ‘You sick?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Damien.
‘Drunk?’
‘No,’ he said, trying to give the man a smile and finding he could only grimace. ‘Just my mind and my body having an argument about who’s right, I think.’ He could feel the burn in his throat once more, and had to fight to resist the urge to turn and spit onto the street once more.
