And so, Dot stood at the edge of the Ollianne Shrine beside Theodora and Lio.
It was time to say goodbye.
The witch had helped to cut her hair. Dot’s short curls now peeked out from the periwinkle cloche upon her head, the lovely thing purchased among other gifts with Theodora’s first true pay packet from the King.
And even still, stood on the precipice, Dot fiddled with the train ticket. This, she knew, was a betrayal. Dot looked upon her two friends: Lio in a new suit and Theodora in that same, extravagant midnight-blue coat. She hugged them each and kissed Belchamber on the cheek and promised to telegram when she arrived in Seafarthing. With Archie by her side, Dot turned to climb down the stairs of the shrine.
Theodora stepped forward. Dot glanced back.
But the witch did not call out, and Dot did not stop.
Theodora watched as Dot trundled carefully, painfully, all the way down the stone steps. Propped up by her grandfather, Dot came to the footpath and walked across the pavement and down the street, and slowly, the spellbinding girl who had once cried on the steps of the tea shop receded against the tableau of the city until, at last, the two of them tiny in the distance, she stepped with her grandfather up and onto a tram. Lio had long since gone inside and so too had Belchamber, but Theodora stayed out there, in the cold wind, watching the spot where Dot disappeared.
CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
The white-washed cottage at the end of the lane was smaller than she remembered. The hansom cab set them down. The sun was setting and the snow was thick. Dot breathed in the smell of the brine and the river. Within the house, the lamps were lit but no one waited at the door to greet them.
Dot took her new carpet bag from her grandad. It had in it a few phials of tonic and her new clothes and a small library of magic books from Theodora. She stepped up to the front door and readjusted the glove that covered her afflicted hand. Every step was laboured. She drank her tonic every hour and yet it hurt to raise her arm to knock. Archie, noticing this, gently shooed her hand away.
‘It’s your home, love.’ He turned the handle and called, ‘Hello?’
‘They’re back!’ cried a voice down the hall, and then her mother was on her, hugging her. Her father kissed her on the head. Celia hovered behind them, beaming. She was taller, her face sharper. Dot untangled herself and came into the kitchen and found Willard beside the table holding an infant.
‘Hello,’ said Dot.
‘Hello,’ said Willard. Florence smiled tightly beside him.
‘Is this little Polly?’ asked Dot, and Willard softened mildly.
‘It is,’ said Florence, her hand on a port and lemon. ‘Seven months old. You missed the good bit.’
The family ate dinner together at the table: salty roast pork, steamed vegetables, cockles and herbed bread. Their questions were brief.
How was the city?
What was your favourite bit?
Did you see the Cathedral? The Tower? The river?
But then Willard began to talk about his old colleague, and the attention on Dot was dropped. A friend of Willard’s had found a new job at the abattoir outside of town. Dot listened for a long time, trying to understand, to be a good sport and to take no offence at their disinterest of her, and asked, ‘Didn’t he work with you at the cannery?’
The table went quiet. That had been the wrong question. The only sound was Archie loudly buttering bread, quite unaware of the shift.
‘It closed,’ said Willard, and quickly Martha asked Willard if his old colleague liked his new job better and if the pay was good. Celia chattered to her dad about a new novel she was reading. Archie took up a research paper on glaciers and their inhabitants, and Dot realised with a rush that she had, somehow, stepped back in time.
She was a creature of the peripheries once more, always on the outside, staring in. And she realised, in a profound rush, that this was a feeling she never once had inside the tea shop.
After dinner, Dot took her bag and went to her bedroom and when she opened the door she was greeted by a fleet of towering boxes and baby toys and blankets messily tumbling about the space and over the bed.
‘Mum,’ Dot called. ‘Do you mind if I take this stuff out my room?’
Willard came into the hall.
‘That’s Polly’s room,’ he said.
‘It’s my room,’ said Dot. ‘That’s my bed. Those are my pictures on the wall.’
‘Well, Polly needed a room,’ said Willard, folding his arms. In crept that familiar anxiety that only her elder brother could stir in her. ‘You weren’t here.’
