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Then he turns to me. “This is Ava.”
Finally, I get an uninterrupted look at her face. She resembles her photos back at Highgate, not least the grey eyes that bear some similarity to mine. Looking pale with her curly hair tied back, her expression is one of cautious relief.
“I’m so happy to meet you,” I say, nervous. We’re holding hands as if we’re about to dance a jig or something. Gently, she pulls me closer, greeting me like a long-lost friend. We hug, and I hope she doesn’t notice how I shake.
“Thank you. I can’t say it enough times.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long.”
Firmly, she shakes her head as I straighten. “Don’t ever be sorry for living through that and coming out the other side.” And in that one sentence conveys a world of empathy. A world where only we might exist because we’ve suffered similarly.
Even though her eyes are a similar colour to mine, they’re not as fucked up. They’re not a smidgeon too wide apart ortoo almond-y. She’s very pretty.
“Ben told me you’re very beautiful,” Sabine says. “I started to wonder if I should be worried.”
My eyes dart to her husband. Does she know quite how far he was prepared to go to find my memories? If Max and I hadn’t connected in Shropshire, I’m sure Ben would have pretended to be single for the sake of his wife’s location. I think that was why he didn’t want me to know he was married.
Ben looks contrite, guilty. And he should be. Max should be too.
“But I also heard that Max and you are together. And by the looks of things,” she says, her eyes travelling to Max at my side, “smitten.”
Words fail me, so I just smile happily because he rescued me.
“Sorry,” she says, sensing some awkwardness that I don’t mean to project. “I’m in desperate need of good, happy things, and my brother being in love is just that.”
Max murmurs, “I have some amends to make with Ava, Sabs. It’s a bit complicated right now, and I’ll fill you in another time.”
“Yes,” Sabine says, turning her attention to me. She stretches out a hand towards me again and I take it, smiling gratefully but inwardly devastated.She knows.She knows what Max did to me. What he and Ben conspired over. Does that mean she’s forgiven Ben? Would she forgive him anything if it meant she was saved?
Probably, I concede. You’d forgive just about anything to be safe with your loved ones.
“Naturally, I’m very grateful that he came back for me.” I look at Max now, feeling this should be said to him. “I am. I would still be there now, months later, if not. You paid an obscene amount of money to save me, and I honestly don’t know how to repay you.”
He steps closer and cups my face. His eyes dance between mine before he leans in and kisses me. It’s a soft kiss, one that joins us for several seconds before we break apart. “You can forgive me. And give me another chance,” he murmurs. “The money was nothing—I’d have paid a hundred times that to set you free. Surely you know that by now.”
I’m not sure I do. Max has never shied away from showing how much he wants me. The problem now is separating his need forme, versus his need for mymind. “I don’t know what to think right now.”
My eyes skip away to find Sabine eyeing my right hand. “That ring alone is worth the GDP of a small country, Ava. I don’t doubt Max’s heart. But the important thing is whether you do.”
Christ, she’s just been found in some politician’s house, locked away in a suite of rooms to please him whenever he felt like it. She’s savvy and perceptive. Only a woman who’s had to question everything and everyone can know what fears I have.
“You’re very wise,” I say with a melancholy smile.
Nils quips, “That’s why she’s our best lawyer.”
We laugh quietly, getting accustomed to this growing levity, even though my heart weighs as much as the Titanic.
“I know this is an odd thing to raise right now,” I say, “but I wonder whether we’re related.”
Sabine starts to nod, very slowly, as if she gets it.
“I don’t know my father, other than his name, but I look like him. And I think I look like you. And I know you were adopted,” I say, gesturing to Max too, “and Santiago Pérez—my father—lived in New York.”
“I was born to a Canadian woman who lived in New York. She returned to Toronto to have me.”
Earlier, Barbara had told me as much. At the time I let my imagination go wild, speculating that she might have been fathered by Tilly’s father—he was a New York fashion designer who employed many seamstresses no doubt, and it seemed a logical connection. But the eyes suggest Sabine might have been fathered by Santiago, a model on the New York scene. Sabine is a year older than me, Barbara said. It’s plausible.
It’s still a wild leap, but I put it down to that haunting voice. This connection of two lost sister souls who needed to find each other.
