My body seemed to be calming down again—though I was still a bit floaty and wobbly—and I took the opportunity to poke at my feelings. I found gratitude for Caspian and Finesilver, but not much else. Surely I should have been elated. At the very least relieved. Instead, there was just this fading hum, like a tuning fork going past the edge of hearing.
“Do you think…” I asked. “I mean, he’s not…he won’t try anything, will he?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’ve dealt with far more dangerous and far more unpredictable people than Jonas Jackson.” Finesilver smiled, not his usual smile, urbane and careful, but a predator’s smile, full of teeth and relish. “Always successfully. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll go away quietly. If he does not know what’s good for him, he’ll go away noisily. There are no other options.”
“Yeah, it’s”—I squirmed anxiously—“the noisy I could do without. I mean, what if he does try to come for Mum? What if he does go to the papers?”
“If he approaches your mother, he’ll be intercepted minutes after he arrives in Scotland, and then he will suffer all of the terrible consequences with which I most certainly did not threaten him. If he goes to the papers, the story—like so many others—will never see the light of day.”
I gave a stagey shudder, half in play, half in earnest. “I hope I never piss you off.”
“On the contrary, it’s crossing my clients that should concern you.”
Hopefully I was way too irrelevant for that. “What happens now?”
“I need your mother’s signature on these papers. But otherwise my part in this is done.”
Oh God. Mum. It was like everything inside me, blood, bones, organs, my fucking mitochondria,lurchedwith the shame of what I’d done, and nearly done, to her. How the fuck was I going to tell her? I mean, she’d forgive me. Of course she would. She was Mum. But, somehow knowing that just made it worse. It briefly occurred to me that I could run away to France and become an itinerant baguette seller.
“I’ll take them.” I forced out the words in a garbled rush. “If you don’t mind dropping me off at the train station.”
Another one of those looks I couldn’t quite read—a touch of warmth beneath that refined façade. “I don’t mind at all. But I can also accompany you, if you’d prefer.”
My mouth was dry as Mars. “I think…I think it should be me.”
“Whatever you think, Mr. St Ives. The divorce is largely a formality at this stage but it may afford your mother some peace of mind. Assuming, that is, she wishes to divorce your father.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
Finesilver suddenly got very interested in the steering column. “Abusive relationships are complicated. When you’ve had your power systematically stripped from you, it’s no easy thing to claim it back.”
I thought of Mum, with her quilts and her baking and her books, the way she spoke with her eyes, and how full of laughter they were these days, her hand slipped into Hazel’s as they walked hand in hand along the treasure-strewn tidelines of Kinlochbervie’s beaches. “I think she’ll want to.”
There was the briefest of pauses. Then Finesilver nodded. “I’ll take you to the station.”
He called up Google Maps and got us on the road again. I stared out the window, at the rough northern skies and unfamiliar streets, with their huddles of suburban homes, washed the dirty orange of Skittles by the streetlamps. Dread was as heavy as an unwanted coat, pressing me down into the seat. Though I fucking well deserved to feel it.
“So,” said Finesilver, making a frankly tragic attempt to sound casual. “What kind of Gothic novels does Miss Hart prefer?”
I had no idea if he genuinely wanted to know or was just trying to distract me. But either way, I was very willing to talk. And Finesilver, though he maintained an air of studied indifference, seemed more than willing to listen—though it was hard to imagine what use he was going to get out of knowing Ellery was a fan ofThe MonkandMelmoth the Wanderer. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could slip into casual conversation. But then again, it was funny to imagine him trying—standing there, with his neatly folded hands and his stiletto poise, wanting Ellery to behave in a legally responsible manner and also tell her he really liked du Maurier too.
Anyway, in fifty minutes I was at the station, and half an hour after that I was on the train, headed north. I emailed work to tell them I’d had a family emergency—which was actually true, even though I’d been the one to cause the emergency—and wouldn’t be able to make it for a couple of days, and I booked myself a room in a cheapish hostel near Edinburgh Waverly, since there wouldn’t be another train to Inverness until the next morning.
It was weird to be able to do that—my problem-resolving skills were obviously nothing compared to Caspian’s, and having to wait for a train counted as a pretty much minor problem, but I’d still managed to resolve it. Time was, I wouldn’t have been able to, at least not without scrounging money from my family. Having a job, even a job that didn’t pay all that well, could really change your perspective on things. And in spite of feeling broadly terrible about everything, I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit good about this. The knowledge that I could occasionally help myself. That I could, with careful saving, buy a plane ticket to Boston. Afford to get a room when I needed one. It was reassuring and liberating and probably the closest I’d ever got to grown up. And grown up in a real way. Not a desperate pretense of it or a nebulous sense I was failing to be, or do, what I was supposed to. And all it took was a tiny piece of control, dropped like the keys to Bluebeard’s castle into my hand.
This small triumph of adulting aside, I can’t say it was an awesome journey. True, the last two times I’d made it, I’d been in a state of dire heartbreak, but this time I was making it because I’d almost destroyed the one place I knew I could always go in a state of dire heartbreak. And that was way worse.
One bad sleep, four hours on a train, and a juddery bus journey later, I was on Bervie Road—a twist of grey through a world of brown, raw hills and brittle, scrub grass skeletons, and a sky the colour of stale tears. I always forgot how bleak this place could get in winter. Or maybe I stopped noticing because it never felt bleak. It was reading by the fire. And board games after midnight. And all the hot chocolate you could drink. It was the end of the fucking world, and it had been nothing but good to me. How could I have been so careless, so selfish and ungrateful, as to jeopardise it?
Pulling out my phone, I texted Hazel. Asked her to make some excuse and come to meet me. Then flipped up my collar, turned my face into the teeth of the wind, and set one foot in front of the other, making with steady steps for home.
I saw Hazel’s hair first—a spark of purple against the steel horizon—and then the rest of her, coat billowing Byronically behind her as she strode towards me between the ice-crisp fields. I was incredibly glad to see her. And terrified at the same time. And it was really hard to keep walking, like I was slowly turning to stone, legs first.
“Ardy?” Hazel called out, the moment she was within earshot. “Are you all right? That was a pretty worrying text you sent. You’re not pregnant, are you?”
