The man ran a gloved hand over his beard, the leather coming away shiny. ‘Why don’t we go inside?’ he said, gesturing to the door. ‘And I shall explain everything.’
‘You can explain it here,’ she said, unmoving. ‘What do you want with Damien?’
‘You are on first-name terms,’ he said slowly. ‘So you must know his address? Know where he is staying in the city?’
‘Answer my question,’ said Ava, crossing her arms over her chest.
The man paused, tapping his pencil against the page. ‘I wish to help him,’ he said. ‘Him and his father, both. But each time I get anywhere near him, he runs.’
Ava raised an eyebrow. ‘What are you?’ she asked, eyeing his coat, his brooch. ‘Police?’
‘No,’ said the man, scribbling something else upon the page. ‘Damien’s father tasked me to find his son. Did youknow it has been almost a decade since Damien has seen him? His father has been very worried.’
Ava let the words sink in as the cold air tugged her wisping blonde hair from beneath her hat. ‘If Damien wants to see his father, I imagine he knows where to find him. If he’s running—’
‘He’s running because he believes a lie,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘A lie that his father is rather desperate to unravel. Surely you would be, too? He must be suffering for it.’
Ava blinked, and for a moment she was back on that street, listening to the thud of her own heartbeat in her ears as he’d said:This cannot work between us, Ava. Itcan’t. No matter how much I wish it could.
Ava’s gaze caught upon the diamond, twinkling now in the low lamplight, and she watched the sharp angles of it blur.
I just don’t want it to happen again.
I don’t want you to change in front of me, like he did.
‘And what would you do?’ she asked. ‘If you were to find him?’
‘We would talk,’ said the detective. ‘I would straighten some things out. And then, all things being equal, I would reunite Damien with his father. That is what I have been hired to do, Miss Adams. Reunite a grieving man with his son.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all,’ said the man, snapping the notepad shut, and tucking it into the silk pocket of his coat.
Ava swallowed, considering it, her thoughts as loud as the wind picking up between the trees. Because the man was right – Damienhadsuffered for it. He’d spent years believing he was a bad person – worthy of only bad things – and sheknewthat wasn’t true.
But he hadn’t believed her, when she’d tried to tell him.
But perhaps … he would believe this man.
He would believe his father.
And then perhaps everything he had said at the teashop – everything he had unravelled – perhaps that would go away, too? For he wouldn’t need to go to America. And he wouldn’t need to leave. And then …
‘He’ll be at the apothecary in Manchester Street,’ she said. ‘In a few days’ time.’
And the man’s smile was like the flicker-flare of a match being lit.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The question of whether she was doing the right thing had followed her ever since Mr Briggs had come to the door. It’d chased her into her dreams, waited for her around every corner – and now it was nearly Tuesday, and her stomach pitched and roiled as though she’d swallowed glass.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Her brother huffed, appearing red-faced in the doorway to the sitting room. His blond hair was sticking to his scalp, the normally fair tendrils dark where they met the flush of his face, as though he’d not left the heat of the stove all day.
‘No,’ said Ava, a frown creasing her forehead. She was sitting upon the settee, and hadn’t realized until now that she’d been doing naught but staring at the fireplace.
‘I said I got the interview. In York.’
‘That’s wonderful, Oliver,’ Ava said, though there was no inflection to her voice. ‘When?’
