‘Ava?’ Mrs Moss’ voice was dangerously high-pitched. ‘The scones are ready.’
‘Coming, Mrs Moss,’ Ava called back, her gaze not leaving his. ‘Ask me,’ she said – feeling how her heart had begun to thunder in her ribcage.
‘I want to know …’ His voice cracked, and he hesitated. Uncertainty flickered across his expression – softeningthe lines of his brows. ‘I want to know why you agreed to help me.’
‘You know why,’ she said, brows furrowing. ‘Because you volunteered, and because it would help me try and reconnect with my craft.’
‘No, I mean – whyme?’
She looked at him for a long moment, and then looked away. ‘I suppose … because you were quite confident I would fail and that felt … safer, somehow, than someone who might only expect me to succeed. But also because I made a promise to myself. One you helped me make, actually.’
‘What promise?’
Her lip twitched up at the edge. ‘That sounds like a second question. I thought your prize was only one?’
He reached down for the pouches, fingers tracing the outline of them. ‘I believe these might be worth a second question.’
Ava bit her lip – feeling how dry the skin was. ‘When you asked me why I wanted to become her,’ she said, her pulse quickening a little now. ‘My mother, it made me realize that perhaps what I thought had been broken within me wasn’t gone at all, just … stoppered behind the weight of all of that. My expectations. Other people’s expectations. I’d spent so long wanting to be just like her, I hadn’t thought of how to make it my own.’
‘And?’ Damien asked. ‘Did you keep you promise?’
Ava nodded. ‘I believe so,’ she said. ‘After all, I’m able to help you, aren’t I?’
‘Ava!’ Mrs Moss’ voice was becoming increasingly shrill. ‘Please will you fetch the scones from the kitchen?’
‘I’m coming,’ she said, blowing a breath through her teeth.
Damien looked as though he might say something more, but then he gestured towards the table. ‘I’ll finish this,’ hesaid, scribbling numbers on the brown paper labels. ‘Go and help.’
Ava nodded, hurrying towards the kitchen.
She’d expected to find Oliver there, but instead it was empty, scones and flour littering every conceivable surface, and she frowned.
‘Oliver? Can I take these?’
She passed through the narrow galley kitchen, towards the door at the other end. It led out into a small courtyard, and she could see her brother framed on the other side of the glass – no doubt trying to get some air, for if the teashop was oppressively hot, the kitchen felt like the devil’s belly.
And yet, as her fingers reached for the handle, she froze.
For another figure stepped behind the glass then – someone with mussed copper hair and a crooked nose, and he placed a hand upon her brother’s shoulder.
Jem.
She could hear his muffled voice through the door – and she pressed her back to the wall so they wouldn’t see her.
‘You can’t keep doing this, Oliver. Blaming yourself. It’s tearing you apart.’
‘I can go back to blaming you, if you’d rather?’
‘I think you were blaming yourself with that, too. It was just easier to direct it at me.’
Oliver was quiet for a long moment. ‘It wasmy idea.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Enough, Jem,’ Oliver muttered. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘But perhapsshemight – if you spoke to her?’
