‘You think there’s some kind of virtue in making life as hard for yourself as you possibly can?’ Jean slams her hand against the table, palm stinging as the glass shudders. ‘There’s not. There is, however, a lot to be said for making the most of the cards you’ve been dealt.’
Ava’s hand, still reaching towards Jean, withdraws. Her voice wary. ‘What are you saying?’
Now it’s Jean who advances, finger pointing in accusation. ‘That you could blend in if you wanted to. You could have done anything at all if you had, instead of limiting your own potential.’
Ava goes deathly pale, white as the moon’s impassive face as it looks down upon them. ‘I don’t… That’s not…’
‘You tell me that I’m scared because I don’t live what you consider anauthentic truth.’ Jean injects real venom into those two words. ‘But I think you’re the coward, too afraid ever to find out just how far you could have gone if you’d really tried.’
‘Fuck you, Jean.’
‘I wish you would, instead of going all touchy-feely on me.’ Instead of slipping past every defence to claim some part of Jean that she had long since locked away.
The words are sharp enough to cut Ava’s knees out from under her; she slumps into Jean’s recently vacated chair. ‘Who are you?’ Tears spill down Ava’s cheeks as she searches Jean’s face. ‘Because I don’t know this woman at all.’
‘That’s exactly my point! This is who I’ve always been.’ Jean slams a hand against her breast, and something cracks beneath the muscle and sinew. ‘This is who I will always be. You don’t know me, Ava. At all. The person you’re asking to be with you? She doesn’t exist.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
But Jean doesn’t recognise herself either, in the morning. That ever-smiling, freckled woman has vanished from the mirror; only a tired shadow remaining. She’d woken alone in their bed, the air impossibly still, and known even before checking Ava’s drawers that all her things would be gone. Though Jean had waited until dawn spilled through the curtains, casting a pale glow over their bedroom, still Ava hadn’t joined her. And Jean’s eyes, puffy and sore from crying, had drifted shut. She must have packed in silence while Jean slept. There isn’t a note or a text – not that Jean expects either. After all, what’s left to say?
Numb, she packs her things and tidies the house. There’s no point in lingering – though the sun’s still bright in the sky, Jean can’t feel the warmth. Scrubbing down the kitchen and bathroom at least gives her something to do. Jean calls an Uber, locks the Baird family’s cottage, and tucks the key back into its safe.
The journey back to London passes in a similar blur, Jean’s chest knotting tighter with every passing mile. There is no reason now to look up from her book and smile. Nobody now to twine their ankle round hers like a cat.
She goes back to work the next day, determined to prove Ava wrong, to fill the emptiness that had plagued her with the firm’s hustle and bustle. To show all who had doubted it that Marianne’s ghost has not defeated her.
Helen greets Jean in the lobby, all business as if she’d never been away, which makes it easier to sink back into DDH’s routine. But there’s a bouquet on her desk – chrysanthemums, freesias, birds of paradise in full bloom. An elaborate arrangement with a discreet card, signed personally by Minerva’s CEO. Jean drops it into the recycling bin. ‘Get rid of those.’
‘Ms Howard…?’
Jean sighs. ‘Take them home if you want, Helen. Just get those flowers out of my sight. And open a window.’
Helen does as she’s bid, carrying the arrangement out into a corner of the reception area. But even after she returns, Helen stares whenever she thinks Jean’s not looking. It’s impossible to settle into the Priestley tribunal she is preparing for in the face of such concern.
And she’s almost relieved when Peter arrives in the afternoon, fresh from the golf course, a shrink-wrapped charcuterie board for them to share for lunch. Helen slips from the room, and he launches into the update Jean has really been waiting for – the one neither of them wants committed to paper.
Marianne has been suspended. Caught in that strange limbo between joblessness and gainful employment. ‘They’re waiting,’ he says. ‘To see if we’ll take any further action against her or Minerva, since she was there representing them.’
‘No, I—’ Jean shakes her head. ‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so.’ He clears his throat. ‘You know, I was glad that you switched off so completely on your holiday. That you didn’t take your laptop or your work phone. Did you have a good time?’
Jean nods, unable to swallow her cracker, hoping her tan and freckles will speak for themselves.
But Peter doesn’t appear entirely convinced. He squeezes Jean’s shoulder. ‘My door’s always open to you, Jeanie. You know that, don’t you?’
Again, Jean nods. And he leaves her to it. Peter, who has supported her through thick and thin. There is, Jean realises, a good chance that he’d understand – be delighted, even – if she’d come to him with news of a female partner. But Peter is not the only one who’d have an opinion. Together, a pack of hyenas may bring down a lion. And Jean cannot repay his trust by feeding DDH back through the rumour mill hot on the heels of their last scandal, or risk rebranding herself at a time when it’s more important than ever to project the image of stability.
She just about manages it too, reining in Edward, who had grown too bold in her absence, redirecting those left floundering after the Leonides contract fell through to other briefs and projects.
Jean steps up her training regimen, keen to burn off the extra pounds she’d gained luxuriating with Ava. Every day she works late, nothing now to lure her from the office. By the time she gets home, she has no spare energy to spend dwelling on her bed’s emptiness.
And yet, though nobody in her life had known what Ava was to her, somehow they all find ways to remind Jean of what she has lost. Bernard calls one evening, friendly as ever, asking how they’d enjoyedHamilton. And Jean’s overwhelmed by the memory of Ava’s fingers linked with hers in the dark; of Ava attempting to sing every single part as she’d performed the musical in her shower, mostly succeeding.
At brunch, Naomi and Cora push her for more salacious details about Aiden, ignoring Jean’s reticence and Imogen’s attempts to redirect the conversation.
‘Really, Jean.’ Naomi twirls her cocktail glass, the margarita sloshing against the sides but never quite spilling over. ‘A beach holiday, a toyboy lover, and a promotion on the horizon – you could spread the joy a little.’
