‘You were in love with Opal,’ said Lio. ‘Weren’t you?’
‘It was a fraught thing,’ said Theodora, rubbing her eyes. ‘Aside from me, Opal only ever chased after men. She had no attraction to me. I think I was a comfortable amusement to her. I cared for her excruciatingly, but it is not possible to beinlove unless that person loves you in return. I suppose I was in love with the idea of who she used to be, just like you were, Lio.’
‘You have no idea what I felt,’ said Lio, pushing himself to a stand.
‘She humiliated me far worse than she humiliated you,’ said Theodora.
Lio stepped out of the wardrobe. Theodora stared after him for a moment. Then, she looked at Dot, Rupert and the unconscious spirit.
‘I love Belchamber,’ said Theodora, voice faltering. ‘I love you, Rupert, like a brother or a kind of son far too old for me to have had. I love you, Dorothy, in a protective and sisterly sense, though I have hurt you so badly. I love the tea shop. Here, I get to be Theodora. I get to know who I am.’
‘And yet,’ said Dot, ‘we never knew you.’
Dot too pulled herself up, her legs shaking. Rupert cradled Belchamber. Together, they clambered out of the wardrobe, through Theodora’s bedroom and carefully down from the attic.
Dot sat on the kitchen floor, eating unbuttered bread. She could not parse the individualities of her emotions. She listened to the sound of the house for a very long time, curiously quiet, at last empty of its ghosts.
Eventually, the grandfather clock tolled, and she noticed that she’d been sat uncomfortably for too long, and that she was bleeding through her bandages and that she was quite sick of bread. Dot went to her room. She drank a whole phial of tonic and then climbed shakily down to the courtyard where she found Lio sitting on the porch in the early morning sun, staring angrily at the autumn-dead ivy. There was a bottle of whiskey in his hand.
‘Lio? Are you alright?’
‘No,’ said Lio, swatting Dot away as if she were closer than she was. Had he taken the bottle from the Raven’s Attic? ‘No, no – notyou.Not with those eyes, like a bloody nine-year-old’s. Don’t look at me.’
‘You should go lie down, Lio. Here – let me take the whiskey.’
‘Ha!’ he shouted, and it frightened her a little. He giggled and then began to sob.
‘Oh Lio,’ said Dot. She sat beside him on the porch and, after a moment of hesitation, carefully took his hand. He did not react. She went on holding it, watching him; he was shaking. Beneath the reek of the liquor, he smelled of sesame and ink. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock.’
‘I could care less.’
‘Couldn’t care less,’ corrected Dot before she could stop herself.
‘Could,’snapped Lio, and he yanked his hand away. ‘Icouldcare less because I care a great deal that my entire life has been a humiliating waste.’ He lurched off the porch. Once he started shouting, he grew only louder. ‘I gave my youth to the worship of a woman who never even existed, Dot. Who in actuality was a vile,manipulative creature, laughingat me up in that attic, watching me faff about with wards, while I pined after her, and why? Because her boss asked her to? Because she wasbored?’
He hung his head in his hands.
‘I am twenty-nine. I am oldandI have nothing.’
He crumpled against the far wall and sobbed. Dot’s whole chest ached for him.
‘Lio, I’m so sorry,’ whispered Dot, eyes on her hands. ‘You deserve so much better.’
‘Have you a brain?’
Dot looked up sharply. Lio was glaring at her.
‘There will never be anyone better,’ said Lio. ‘That is precisely the point. I don’t mean that wretched shell we met in the attic, I mean Opal as shewas.And you—’ He was on his feet again now. ‘You, Dorothy, are a child. You are so young that you don’t even know how to lookat me without yearning. It is embarrassing.’
‘Lio,’ said Dot.
‘Truly!’ Lio shouted. ‘Opal’s up there watching the house, and what are you doing? Putting on a show for her! Do you think I didn’t notice? Every time I walk into a room, you jump a metre in the air or you stop mid-conversation or you turn plum-red, and, if you aren’t in the room already, you appear magically for a glass of water or a lost jumper every single time.’
‘Stop,’ whispered Dot. ‘Opal’s spell is making you—’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he snapped. ‘I am myself and I am telling you that you have made me desperately uncomfortable since the very first second I spoke to you. Even the customers noticed!’ Somewhere inside, there was movement. Rupert was listening. ‘Every other day in the tea shop, I was tortured with it. “How’s that young lady of yours? Oh, she’s clearly quite taken with you!”Humiliating. You know what else is wrong with you?’
Dot could not reply.
