She’d drawn him until her hand had started to ache. Until the charcoal clutched between her fingertips had worn to dust – and even that hadn’t been enough to stop her remembering the way he’d looked at her in that room – the way it’d thudded into the pit of her stomach.
‘I didn’t mean with Miss Lillian,’ said Miss Fairchild – following her at pace as they wound their way down the dark corridor towards the underbelly of the theatre, frigid now thanks to the greying skies outside and just as cluttered as ever. ‘Although it’d be nice to have her ire trained away from me for once. I meantwith me. Isaw you.’
‘Doing what?’ Ava asked, reaching for the door handle at the other end – and the dressing rooms that lay beyond.
‘Screaming at strangers in the street.’
Ava’s fingers hesitated against the cool metal handle – and she turned back to Miss Fairchild. ‘You haven’t told Lillian, have you?’
‘Oh, I’m considering it.’ Miss Fairchild’s dark eyebrows twitched upwards, a look of faux innocence upon her face. ‘After all, I reckon she’d rather want to know if you’ve finally married.’
Ava shunted a breath through her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut. It was abominably damp in this corridor – and it made her chest ache. ‘It was only an act. A way of getting those men away from him.’
‘Away fromwho?’
‘No one.’ Ava said it too quickly, and too forcefully, and Miss Fairchild’s eyes flashed with delight.
‘He didn’t look like a no one. In fact, he most definitely looked like asomeone.’
Ava felt something grip at the pit of her stomach, felt it twist – and for once the feeling that surged within her was one she could wield. One she coulduse.
‘What do you want from me, Miss Fairchild?’ Ava said, turning to her – her face warm, her breath stinging in her chest. ‘Do you wish to humiliate me? Because you have already done that once. Do you wish to hold power over me? Because Lillian already commands more than you could ever know. You have the top spot. You have the act. What more can I give you? What more could you want?’
Ava’s chest was heaving by the time she’d finished, the constricting feeling that’d begun to press against her lungs getting heavier by the second, though the sharp expression on Miss Fairchild’s face crumpled. ‘I just … I want to know how to do what you did,’ she said. ‘I want to know … how to make it better. More believable.’
In that moment, Ava saw herself standing there – in the gloom of this corridor, asking the very same question of her mother. She remembered the press of her mother’s hand against her cheek, the way her head had tilted as she’d said:But darling. You already can.
That had been a poor answer. Another riddle Ava had never solved – and she felt some of the bluster leave her. Felt some of her anger melt. For the agreement she’d made with Miss Lillian was tohelpMiss Fairchild – not lead her in circles.
And perhaps she could do that.
‘Well, for one you need to stop talking so much about the history of mesmerism as part of your act,’ Ava said.
‘But Lillian suggested I ground it. Besides, you always had some patter about Franz Mesmer being the first mesmerist in your performances—’
Ava shook her head. ‘Franz Mesmer was the father of mesmerism, yes, but he believed we had this fluid within us, a—’ She paused, coughing slightly, her voice catching in her throat now. ‘A physical fluid – that coursed through humans as well as animals. It was disproved of course, but his whole career was about healing physical ailments with mesmerism – which is why it isn’t working in your act. Your act is all about the power of themind, not the failings of the body. Besides, you’re clearly not interested in the topic – it sounds like you’re reading notes you haven’t fully memorized.’
The look on Miss Fairchild’s face suggested that wasexactlywhat she had been doing, though she merely crossed her arms over her chest and said: ‘What else?’
‘You put too little focus on the sleep portion of the act. It’s the key to it all – to the audience’s belief, to their understanding of how it works. You make it look too easy to entrance someone – but the reality is it takes work. It’s a gentle dance, back and forth – you have to really coax them into it, and you have to beconfidentin it. The audience has toseethat confidence in you, they have to feel it, too – for only then will they believe it. Only then will they believe what comes next.’
‘And the script? What do you think of that? Tommy’s lines.’
Ava glanced back at the door, lowering her voice. ‘It’s not enough,’ she said. ‘People never came on stage because they wished to recall something awful. It was always something beautiful they wanted to recapture – love. How it feels to love someone else, how it felt to have that person love them back. That’s what your stories need to be about. Your scripts. They need to be aboutlove, and nothing else.’
Miss Fairchild’s expression suggested she didn’t thinkthattrue, although there was a spark in her eye. ‘Very well,’ she said, lowering her voice between them. ‘I can try it. And if it works, perhaps I’ll start to believe youdoreally wish to help me.’
Ava shunted a short breath through her lips. ‘I’ve said that from the first.’
‘We’ll see what the audience thinks.’ Miss Fairchild reached for the handle then, the light from the dressing rooms spilling into the dark corridor. ‘And I won’t tell her,’ she said. ‘Lillian. Now come on, or else we’ll both be late.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Ava hesitated for a moment before stepping inside her father’s house, the key in the lock, her hand shaking the metal. The pulling sensation in her chest had eased through rehearsal, each breath coming easier than the last, but that wasn’t what made her tremble now.
For as she’d sat there, in the auditorium, and watched Miss Fairchild upon that stage, she’d remembered how it’d felt.
Not the fear. Not the panic.
