‘Give itback,’ said another man. He was built like a bull, and reaching to clasp at Damien’s collar. ‘You give it all back.Right bloody now.’
‘I played fairly, and I won fairly,’ Damien replied, turning to spit blood onto the pavement. ‘It’s not a gamble unless someone stands to lose.’
‘Very well,’ said the bullish man, landing a punch squarely across Damien’s cheek that Ava heard land – and before she knew what she was truly doing, she was across the road, and standing between the two of them.
She couldn’t strike them. She knew that much – and nor would she be able to persuade them to walk away, not if he had their coin in his pockets. And so she did the only thing she could think to do. The only thing shecoulddo.
She rounded on Damien.
‘You,’ she said, trying to pour some of the hurt, the pain, the vitriol she’d felt that afternoon at the theatre into her voice. ‘Howdareyou make those promises to me and then disappear! You said we would go to London. ToParis.’
Damien blinked at her, utterly bewildered, his mouth agape. ‘I—’
Ava slapped him. She hadn’t intended for it to be hard, although perhaps she’d miscalculated, for she could feel the stinging pain of it in the palm of her hand.
‘Out of the way, lady,’ murmured a second man, who was almost entirely bald. ‘You can have your turn with him when we’re done.’
‘I think I shall have my turn now, before he slinks away again,’ said Ava, all of the blood thudding into her face. It was the same coiling tension she felt on stage – the moment she stepped out beneath those bright lights, and felt every eye in the room swing towards her. It felt like walking herself to a cliff’s edge, pushing herself further and further until she could see the drop that awaited her on the other side, could feel her stomach twisting with it. She’d spend the entire show walking back and forth along that very edge, and it would only be the audience – their attention, their belief – that would stop her from falling.
And so when she felt that familiar curl of fear deep in her bones, she did what she did on that stage. She stuffed Ava Adams, and all of her worries into a box – and firmly closed the lid.
‘Did he lie to you, as he lied to me? Hmm?’ She rounded on Damien once more – who was dazed, but still standing, and looking more confused by the second. ‘You promised yourself to me in front of witnesses. In front ofGod. And then you – what? Ran away?’
Behind her, she heard the bullish man begin to chuckle. ‘Maybe we watch this play out first,’ he said.
‘Sod that,’ said a third man – all long limbs and sharp, jutting bones. ‘That man has our money.’
Ava laughed. ‘Money?He’s barely two pennies to rub together! Although of course he didn’t tell me that untilwe’d stood in front of the priest. Good sir, I assure you –allhis promises are paid in false coin.’ She clutched his coat in mock fury, trying to steady him. ‘You told me I had a voice likevelvet. You told me that you would love me forever. Was that all a lie, too?’
There was a crowd forming now. She could see them drawing closer – women with their shopping baskets, men with their briefcases. That was what she’d hoped for. What she’d wanted.
‘Iknowthe ring you gave me wasn’t your mother’s,’ she continued, her voice teetering on the verge of shrill. ‘I know it, because when I tried to sell it they told me it was paste.Paste!And look – now he has nothing to say to me! Not evenone word.’
She looked at Damien, and he at her, his lips opening and closing rapidly.
‘I’m … sorry?’
‘You should be more than sorry,’ said Ava, glancing at the crowd, willing more people to join them. ‘You should bebeggingmy forgiveness. Begging me to let you back into the house!’
‘Miss.’ The bull-like man grabbed her arm, and Damien surged forth with a fury she did not know he held within him.
‘Leave her out of this,’ growled Damien, shoving the man back.
‘Yeah, you leave her be!’ called an elderly woman from the crowd. ‘Clearly she’s suffered enough!’
‘Disgraceful,’ muttered one of the men to her left. ‘Hounding a girl on the streets. Your mothers should be ashamed of youse.’
‘Someone run for the constable!’
‘Yes!’ agreed Ava, her hands shaking now, her voice too – though whether it was from the fear, or the sheer madness of the whole thing, she did not know – her breath sawing inher chest. ‘Run for the constable. And when he gets here I shall be turning over my husband for being a sorry liar, and a cheat, too!’
The skinny man placed a hand upon the other’s shoulder. ‘Leave it, Walter,’ he grumbled. ‘S’not worth dealin’ with peelers over it.’
The balding man stepped close to Damien. ‘You come in this pub again and we’ll skin you. You hear me? We’llskin you.’
‘Oh, he won’t be coming back here,’ said Ava, sliding her arm through Damien’s and marching them determinedly through the tight press of people who had clustered around them, though she kept her voice raised. ‘No, I shan’t let you out of my sight again. You’re to give up drinking.’
One of the women who stepped back to let them pass murmured in agreement.
