I don’t want to go home yet and be confronted with Talia’s demands in person, so I dip into a nearby bookshop and wander between the shelves, picking up books, only to set them down again. I’m so busy with assignments that it feels like I barely read for pleasure anymore.
I’m on my way out when I spot the display in the window: a full fifteen-book spread, complete with a photo of the author blown up to massive size. The poster announces the release of the posthumous masterpiece by Ellis Haley: Avocet.
My feet have grown roots that stretch deep into the floor. I stare at Ellis’s photo and Ellis stares back, her gray eyes steady and alive, somehow, despite being printed by pixel. It’s not the same portrait that was printed in her first novel. I know, because I spent hours staring at that original photograph back when we were still at Dalloway, fantasizing about what Ellis’s mouth could do to me.
This photo was taken more recently. Ellis has the same hairstyle she wore when we were at school together, a few stray strands tumbling over her brow and her lips set in a flat line.
“Have you read it?”
I whip around. The bookseller stands over my shoulder, with both hands clasped in front of her lap, a hopeful expression painted over her face, an expression that says I make commission.
“No.”
“Oh, well, you should.” She chooses one of the books off the display and presses it into my hands. I glance down at the front cover: spare, minimalist, emblazoned with the gold medal of the National Book Award.
“I don’t know if this is quite my genre.”
“Literary fiction? That should be everyone’s genre, I hope,” the woman says with a little laugh. I want to hit her in the face. “But if it’s any consolation, this particular book crosses over into the territory of mystery and thriller. It’s about a female psychopath who falls in love with a beautiful woman who appears innocent at first glance but who”—she glances down at the marketing copy printed on the poster—“harbors deadly secrets of her own.”
“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”
The woman at last seems to get the hint; her cheeks flush pale pink, and she retreats back behind the counter, peeking up at me occasionally from over her wire-rimmed glasses as she riffles through paperwork.
I turn my attention to the book in my hand.
So this is it. Ellis’s magnum opus. The book she cared for enough to sacrifice anything: Clara’s life. Her own. And all the rest of us bit players in her masterpiece.
I open the cover, flipping past the title page.
For Felicity. I did it all for you.
I snap the book shut. Abruptly the air seems to have been sucked out of the shop—the cashier and the shelves and the London street outside all falling away and plunging me into the darkness of oblivion.
Once again it’s just me and Ellis, two figures emerging on opposite sides of a stage. Once more I feel her take my hand, drawing me into the night. It’s been three years, but all at once it feels like I never left that place, Godwin House with its dark history and wicked shadows, magic drenching the stones and murder like a legacy passed from generation to generation.
I did it all for you.
I drop the book onto the table and leave, tumbling out of the bookstore and into the street. A bus blares past, and I’m blinded, I’m deafened, I’m falling and falling and falling through the cold.
I don’t remember how I make it home.
Talia is in the kitchen when I do, a wooden spoon held in hand like a conductor’s baton, surveying the bolognese that simmers on the stove with a moue of disapproval that suggests that if the sauce is a metaphorical orchestra, it’s playing several measures behind cue.
“Felicity,” she says, putting the spoon down as soon as she catches sight of me. “You look terrible. Did something happen?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.” The excuse falls from my lips like honey wine as I pull my pill bottle out of my purse and swallow one tablet; I’ve learned from experience never to be late on doses. “Is dinner almost ready?”
Talia seems happy to see me. She’s a chef—or she wants to be, anyway. She has a job as a line cook at a small restaurant in the West End, hopes to work her way up. I’ll miss her food when she’s gone.
“All ready,” she says. “Your mother called, by the way. She wanted me to tell you.”
I make a face, and Talia rises up on the balls of her feet to kiss my temple. “I don’t know why she bothers,” I say. “I was clear the first time: I don’t want her to be part of my life anymore.”