CONTENTS
Prologue: Kildare
The road between Naas and Sallins was not remarkable.
It ran through flat, green country, hedgerows on both sides, with the Liffey somewhere off to the east doing whatever rivers did when no one was watching them. The sky was overcast; the light was flat and grey; and the air carried that damp softness that meant rain was thinking about pouring but hadn’t committed. It was the kind of May afternoon that happened in Kildare without anyone noticing, a Tuesday or possibly a Wednesday, the sort of day that existed mainly to fill the space between more interesting ones.
Aoife O’Brien walked along the verge, keeping to the grass where it was dry enough and stepping onto the tarmac where it wasn’t, her bag over one shoulder and her coat unzipped because the air was mild despite the clouds. She was eighteen, slight, with fair hair she’d pinned back that morning, and which had been coming loose since lunchtime. Her face was just like her mother’s, or so Aunt Bríd said: the same jawline, the same pale blue eyes, the same way of looking at people that suggested she was listening to something behind the words.
Today, she was thinking about Tony Ó Rourke.
That boy had managed, for the third Sunday running, to position himself near the door of St. David’s after Mass, in such a way that was too deliberate to be accidental and too casual to be acknowledged; that boy, who had asked after her aunt’s hip, which was kind, and had mentioned the Kildare match on Saturday, which wasn’t, because Aoife had no opinion on the Kildare match—and suspected Tony knew this. He had stood there, with his hands in his pockets and his ears going pink while his mother waited in the car, with the engine running and the expression of a woman who knew exactly what her son was doing—and had views about it.
He was nice. That was the trouble. He was nice, and decent, and steady, and he had kind eyes and a good job at the agricultural co-op, and Aunt Bríd would approve, and Uncle Declan would approve, and Father Maguire would approve, and the whole of Naas would nod and say wasn’t that lovely, weren’t they well matched. And Aoife could not determine whether the warmth she felt when he spoke to her was the beginning of something real or merely the flattery of being chosen, which was a different thing entirely, and she was old enough now to know the difference, even if she wasn’t old enough to know what to do about it.
She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and stepped around a puddle that had colonised most of the verge.
The application for the secretarial course in Dublin was on her desk at home, half-filled in, the ball-point resting on the section that asked for her reasons for applying. She had written I want to and then stopped, because the honest answer was, I want to be somewhere that isn’t here, and that felt ungrateful. Aunt Bríd and Uncle Declan had taken her in when she was six, after her mother died, and they had been good to her in their quiet, uncomplicated way: they had fed, clothed, and schooled her; they brought her to Mass every Sunday, gave her a room of her own with a view of the fields, and never once made her feel like charity. She owed them more than she could articulate, and the idea of leaving felt like a repayment made in the wrong currency.
But the form was on her desk, and she hadn’t thrown it away, and that meant something too.
A blackbird sang from the hedgerow, three ascending notes and then a trill, and Aoife paused to listen. Her mother had loved blackbirds. She could just about remember this, a memory so faint that she wasn’t certain whether it was real or constructed from Aunt Bríd’s stories: her mother at the kitchen window, pointing, saying, in Gaelic, <listen, my treasure, listen to him sing.> Most of Aoife’s memories of her mother were in Irish: prayers, endearments and small daily words that Aunt Bríd kept alive because Mary Catherine O’Brien had believed in the language the way she had believed in the Church, as something inherited, sacred, and worth preserving, even when the world had moved on.
“Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire, atá lán de ghrásta…”
Sometimes she whispered it as she walked, more as a way of keeping her mother close than as a prayer. The cadence of the words was a thread connecting her to a woman she could barely picture, but whose absence was a shape she carried everywhere, like a stone in her pocket, worn smooth by years of handling.
A car passed, and she stepped further onto the grass. Then a lorry, rumbling and vast, the smell of diesel fumes trailing it.
She thought she would make a start on the application tonight, after dinner. Aunt Bríd was making shepherd’s pie and there would be the usual, comforting business of the evening: the six o’clock news, Uncle Declan’s commentary on the state of the nation, the washing up, and then the quiet hour before bed, when the house settled into itself and Aoife could sit at her desk with the lamp on and the dark fields yonder beyond the window, and think about what she wanted to become.
She didn’t hear the van until it was beside her.
It was ordinary, white and unmarked. It slowed, and stopped, and the side door slid open, and then there were hands and a sharp chemical smell. The hedgerow tilted sideways, the blackbird stopped singing, the overcast sky folded in on itself, and everything went dark.
There’s a fluorescent tube. It buzzes the way the strip light in the school toilets used to, but the sound is wrong, pitched too high, a whine that lives behind her eyes. The surface beneath her is cold and hard and she can feel it along her spine and the backs of her legs, which means she isn’t wearing her clothes anymore. She tries to open her eyes, but she can’t.
She can hear a language she doesn’t recognise, with too many consonants clotted together. There are two voices, both male, unhurried, discussing something above her body the way Uncle Declan and Tommy Walsh would discuss a heifer at the mart. One of them touches her. It feels clinical, not unkind but not particularly kind either. She is being assessed.
There’s pain. It’s dull, but there’s a continent of it, and she is lying somewhere on its shore, and the tide is coming in. She tries to scream. There is something in her throat. She tries to move her hands. They are held.
She can see now, sometimes, in fragments: an unknown ceiling and a window too high to reach. A woman’s face, once, leaning over her, speaking English with an accent she can’t place. She says not to fight it; it goes easier if you don’t. She thinks: fight what? Later, she understands.
She remembers a boy from Sunday Mass. He had kind eyes and pink ears. His name was… he had a name, didn’t he? It was a common name, and she tries to hold it, the way you try to hold water in cupped palms, but it runs through and there is nothing left. There was a boy. She is nearly sure there was a boy.
There’s a mirror. She has been looking at it for a long time before she understands that the face is hers. It isn’t hers, though, it can’t be. Everything about her is off: the lips are wrong—too full and too wide; the breasts are too large, their weight strains her back, and… her intimacy looks wrong too, too full, too plump. Her body wasn’t like that. She is certain of this the way she is certain of very little else. Her mouth opens and the mouth in the mirror opens too, with those wrong, obscene lips, and the sound that comes out is a name she has never heard before: Dove, Dove, that’s your name, say it. So, she says it, because saying it hurts less than what happens when she doesn’t. The girl in the mirror says it too. She watches those not-her lips move, and tries to remember the name she had before, but there is only a road, and a hedgerow, and a blackbird singing, and then… Nothing. Nothing at all.
Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire…
She whispers it in the dark, when they let her sleep, which isn’t often. She doesn’t know if she believes any more. She doesn’t know if anyone is listening. But the words are her mother’s words, and if she keeps saying them, then her mother is still real, and if her mother is still real, then so is the girl who walked the road to Sallins on an afternoon in May, and if that girl is still real then perhaps this isn’t all there is, perhaps somewhere, somehow, the blackbird is still singing.
… atá lán de ghrásta, tá an Tiarna leat…
She holds on to this. It is the last thing she has.
I
The language has too many consonants and sounds like gobbledygook.
She learns to recognise commands by their shape—the sharp upward inflection that means move, the flat tone that means kneel, the silence that means someone is deciding whether she has displeased them. She does not learn the words themselves. Words require a self to hold them, and she is learning not to have one.
There is a window in the room where they keep her. It is high, barred, and shows a rectangle of sky that is sometimes grey and sometimes blue. She watches it when she is permitted to be still. She counts passing aeroplanes and invents destinations for them: Dublin, Paris, New York, places that exist in a world where girls walk along roads, think about boys, fill in school application forms and go home for shepherd’s pie.
The aeroplanes are the only things that move of their own volition.
She begins to envy them.
Chapter One: The Auction
Evelyn Ashworth had not attended an auction in four years.
She stood near the back of the viewing gallery, a glass of champagne untouched in her hand, and wondered what precisely had possessed her to attend this one. The invitation had arrived three weeks ago in the distinctive, cream stationery and engraved lettering of the Harrington House, its crest embossed in burgundy. She had set it on her desk intending to send her regrets, as she had done with every such invitation since Vera, whom she had named Crystal, had passed. Instead, she had found herself RSVPing and reaching for her diary.
Promise me, my stubborn Mistress, Vera had said, near the end, when words cost her effort. Promise me you won’t gan and close yersel’ off. Divvent ye dare, or I’ll haunt ye ‘til ye make it good, pet.
Evelyn had uttered many promises in those final weeks. She had kept some; others had been… difficult to keep. So, Evelyn had set those aside. For now, she had thought. That had been then. Today, though, another idea whirled in Evelyn’s mind. See, Crystal? she thought, I didn’t close myself that much.
The viewing gallery occupied the upper floor of what had once been a Georgian townhouse, converted decades ago into premises suitable for Harrington House’s particular clientele. The aesthetic was deliberately subdued: warm lighting, Persian rugs, leather armchairs arranged in conversational clusters. One might have mistaken it for a private club, were it not for the lots being shown.
They were displayed along the room’s perimeter, each positioned on a small, raised dais, each identified by a brass number on a stand. Some knelt, and some stood. All were silent, speaking only when directly spoken to, and kept their eyes downcast, waiting to be examined. The viewing period would last another forty minutes before the auction proper began.
Evelyn had made one circuit of the room already, pausing before each lot with the detached assessment she had cultivated over twenty years in the scene. The lots this evening were high-quality, as one expected from Harrington House: a young man with a dancer’s build, his posture exquisite and sculptural; she remembered him belonging to Carla Perkins and being solid if a little uncertain in his service. She also knew Carla was retiring and had planned on rehoming him with a younger Mistress. There was a woman in her thirties, lush and dark-haired, who kept her breathing admirably steady, despite the hands that examined her. She remembered her, ten years ago, serving Oscar Sullivan and guests with the grace of a butterfly. Oscar was moving overseas for work for nine months, and, where he went, the lifestyle was frowned upon; so, she was being auctioned for a limited time for the duration of Oscar’s overseas contract. There was a pair of red-headed twins, kneeling in mirror symmetry; these girls belonged to Ivana McKinsey, whose recent diagnosis made keeping them untenable. They were graceful and young, and perfect for a younger Mistress. The proceeds from the auction were to go to a homeless shelter whose donations had dwindled.
She felt nothing seeing these slaves. Oscar’s girl recognised her and bowed her head in silent greeting. Evelyn corresponded.
Go home, she told herself. This was a mistake. You are not ready.
She was moving toward the staircase when she passed Lot Twelve.
The girl was young, in her mid-twenties by Evelyn’s estimate, with blonde hair that fell past her shoulders and a figure that spoke of surgical enhancement. Her breasts were too large for her frame, her hips too pronounced, and her lips too full. Someone had crafted her to a specification, and the specification had been obvious. She knelt on her platform in textbook form, hands on her thighs, gaze fixed on the floor.
Evelyn almost walked past her—and then stopped for a second look. What stopped her was not the girl’s body, but the stillness of her pose.
The other lots held their positions with varying degrees of discipline—one could read nervousness in the too-rapid pulse at a throat, anticipation in the slight forward lean, even arousal in the flush of skin. Lot Twelve was simply… absent. She knelt as one kneels when doing so is the only alternative to being struck. Her stillness was not discipline: it was the reaction of someone who had learned that visibility invited punishment and had decided, long ago, to become invisible.
Evelyn studied her a moment longer. The girl did not look up, react, or seem to register that she was being observed. Her pale blue eyes were fixed on a point approximately eighteen inches ahead of her knees, and there was no discernible emotion behind them.
The catalogue listed her as Lot 12 — Female, 26, trained, no limitations noted. The seller was listed only as a private estate. The reserve was surprisingly low—the surgical work alone would have cost more than that.
Someone is getting rid of her, thought Evelyn.
She turned the page to read the detailed notes. Previous training: domestic service, personal attendance, protocol. A list of skills that told her nothing. Reason for sale: Owner’s circumstances changed. Evelyn softly scoffed at the polite fiction. Owners whose circumstances changed found ways to rehome their slaves—some made private arrangements; others found their property a suitable new home amongst like-minded, trusted friends, ensuring continuity of care. Some preferred to stage an auction, after properly informing their property. It was an accepted manner of caring for their servants and to give back anonymously to the community. Lot Twelve fit none of those categories. This was an attempt to dispose of property that had become bothersome.
She looked at the girl again. There was faint scarring visible along her ribcage, too regular to be accidental. Her hands did not merely rest on her thighs but pressed into them, as though anchoring herself against an anticipated blow. Her breathing had a careful, measured quality to it—controlled, like the breathing of someone who had learned that sobbing earned punishment.
What have you gone through? Evelyn thought.
She had not intended to care. She had come to prove to herself that she could, that Vera’s death had not calcified her entirely, that she was still capable of re-joining the world she had withdrawn from. She had not come to acquire.
And yet.
The girl’s eyes flickered. For just an instant, she had glanced up at Evelyn, and in that instant Evelyn had seen something beneath the emptiness, a long-atrophied memory—but not entirely dead.
Evelyn then thought of how Crystal had looked, that first night at Evelyn’s home, when Evelyn had shown her a bed she was permitted to sleep in alone.
Lot Twelve had that exact same look.
… Och, mallaichte, Evelyn thought. Her heart shrunk and her Scots resolve set within her.
The auction itself was conducted in the ballroom on the ground floor.
Harrington House did not employ gavels. Such crassness was for cattle markets and estate sales. Here, the lots were brought forward one at a time, positioned on a raised platform in the middle of the room and prospective buyers indicated their interest with small, numbered paddles, raised briefly, almost languidly, along with their bid. A woman in an immaculate charcoal tailleur noted each bid on a tablet. When no new paddles rose for thirty seconds, the lot would be assigned to the highest bidder.
Evelyn had taken a seat near the back. She had told herself that she was merely observing—she wished to see how the auction proceeded before making any decisions. The champagne in her hand remained untouched for over an hour and gone warm and sour in the meantime. She asked for another one, and this time the glass did not go untouched.
Lots One through Seven sold briskly. The dancer went for a sum that made several attendees murmur in appreciation. The twins, sold as a pair, sparked a brief but intense competition between two buyers before one conceded with a gracious nod. The dark-haired woman was acquired by a silver-haired gentleman Evelyn vaguely recognised from events years ago; he had a reputation for being strict but fair, and she felt a distant sense of relief on the woman’s behalf.
You should leave now, she thought. You’ve seen how it’s done. You know at least one of the slaves on the block. You’ve proved you can be here. That’s enough. She did not leave.
Lot Twelve was brought forward.
The girl walked with her eyes downcast, moving with the careful gait of someone navigating a room full of landmines. She mounted the platform, sank into her kneeling position, and assumed that exact same terrible stillness Evelyn had observed earlier upstairs.
“Lot Twelve,” the woman in charcoal announced, her voice carrying without effort. “Female, age twenty-six. Trained in domestic service, personal attendance, and protocol. No noted limitations. The reserve is eight thousand. Do I see eight thousand?”
A paddle rose near the front. Then another, off to the left.
Evelyn studied the bidders. The first was a heavyset man she did not recognise, his expression one of casual appraisal, the way one might assess a used car. The second was a younger, sharp-featured woman, who examined Lot Twelve too intensely for comfort.
“Ten thousand,” the charcoal woman noted. “Do I see eleven?”
The heavyset man raised his paddle.
Evelyn thought about the scarring along the girl’s ribs; about the surgical enhancements that screamed of an owner who had wanted a doll, not a person; and about the too-low reserve that spoke of disposal rather than rehoming. But what haunted her memory was the utter emptiness in those pale blue eyes.
This is not your concern, she told herself. You don’t know this lass. You don’t know who she is, what she’s done, or why she’s being sold. You came here to observe, not to rescue strays.
“Twelve thousand.” That was the sharp-featured woman’s bid.
Crystal would have bid, Evelyn thought. Crystal would have been bidding from the moment the girl walked in. “Howay, Evelyn, look at the state of that lass—we cannae leave her here!”
But Vera was dead, and Evelyn had spent four years trying to learn how to survive with her absence—and failing at it, apparently.
“Thirteen thousand.”
The heavyset man raised the bid again. He looked pleased with himself, as though he were winning something.
The girl had not moved, nor had she reacted to any of it—after all, her immediate future was being decided by strangers with paddles. She knelt, and breathed, and waited. She had been through auctions before. Multiple times, by the looks of it, like furniture. And furniture did not have opinions about who purchased it.
Damn, Evelyn thought again. I’m going to Hell.
She raised her paddle.
“A new bidder at fourteen thousand,” said the charcoal-suited woman, remaining perfectly neutral. “Do I see fifteen?”
The heavyset man turned to look at Evelyn. She met his gaze without expression. After a moment, he raised his paddle.
“Fifteen thousand.”
No way I’m letting that creature go with a bawbag like ye. Evelyn raised hers.
“Twenty thousand.”
A murmur rippled through the room. The jump was significant—a statement rather than a bid: I am not here to haggle, ye tossers.
The heavyset man’s jaw tightened. He conferred briefly with a companion, then shook his head and left his paddle on his knee.
The sharp-featured woman studied Evelyn for a long moment. Annoyance flickered in her expression and then she too left her paddle on her knee.
“Twenty thousand going once,” the woman in the charcoal tailleur said. “Twenty thousand going twice… Final call…” She paused the requisite thirty seconds. No paddles rose. “Sold to paddle forty-seven for twenty thousand.”
Chapter Two: Coming Home
The transaction room was a small parlour off the main hall, furnished with a writing desk and two leather chairs. Evelyn signed the transfer documents with the same Mont Blanc pen she used for signing contracts at her firm, a well-known law office in the City that worked almost exclusively in matters of corporate and tort law. There’s something appropriately ironic about this, she thought as she wielded the fountain pen with care. A bill of sale, after all, is a bill of sale.
“The lot will be prepared and brought to you within the quarter hour,” the charcoal woman said. “Do you require any particular presentation?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. “I require shoes for her.”
“Very good, madam. And will you be requiring transport, or—”
“I have my car.”
When the woman left, Evelyn sat in one of the leather chairs and considered what she had done.
She had put down twenty thousand pounds for a girl she had never spoken to, whose name she did not know, and whose history was a carefully worded fiction in a catalogue. Twenty thousand quid on a flicker of something in a pair of empty blue eyes.
Crystal would be laughing so hard right now, she thought. She would’ve said, ‘About bloody time, pet’ and dragged you down to the pub to celebrate.
The door opened.
Lot Twelve entered, led by a Harrington House attendant who held a simple leather lead attached to a thin steel wire collar around the girl’s neck, with her lot number engraved on a steel disc—the house’s standard inventory collar, functional and deliberately devoid of personality. The girl wore the same simple shift she had worn on the platform. Her feet were shod in simple, kitten-heel pumps. Her eyes were fixed on the floor.
“Lot Twelve, Madam,” the attendant said, and offered Evelyn the lead.
Evelyn did not take it.
Instead, she rose, crossed to where the girl stood, and examined the collar. It was locked with a small barrel clasp, the kind that required a key. She turned to the attendant.
“The key, please, if you will.”
“Of course, Madam.” He produced it from his pocket.
Evelyn unlocked the collar and removed it from the girl’s neck. The skin beneath was slightly reddened—the collar had not been cruel, merely present, but it had been present for some time. She handed the collar and lead back to the attendant.
“You may dispose of these.”
The attendant blinked. “M-Madam?”
“She is no longer your inventory,” Evelyn said, and her voice shifted, showing a hint of her father’s steely Edinburgh accent beneath the measured vowels. “She is mine. I will provide my own collar when I choose to do so, and not before. That will be all.”
When the attendant had gone, Evelyn turned to face the girl, who had not moved, reacted, or looked up. She was trembling, very slightly—the only sign that she had registered anything that had just occurred.
“Look at me, lass,” Evelyn said.
The girl’s chin rose. Her eyes met Evelyn’s. They were the pale blue of winter sky, and fear and terror filled them.
“I am going to ask you some questions,” Evelyn said. “You will answer them honestly. If you do not know the answer, you will say so. Do you understand?”
A pause. Then, in a voice husky with disuse: “Yes.”
“Good. First question: what was your name? The name you were given, or the name you chose for yourself. Do you remember it?”
The girl’s lips parted. Closed. Parted again. The trembling had intensified.
“It’s all right,” Evelyn said, and her voice was gentler than she had intended. “Take your time.”
“… Dove,” the girl whispered. “This one… was called Dove.”
“Dove,” Evelyn repeated. The name sat strangely in her mouth—a name chosen or assigned, she could not tell, but it suited the girl somehow. Something fragile. Something meant to fly but caged instead. There was something in her voice, too, beneath the roughness of disuse—a softening of vowels that spoke of a familiar accent, though Evelyn could not place it. “My name is Evelyn. You will address me as Ma’am until I tell you otherwise. Is that clear, lass?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good.” Evelyn retrieved her coat from the chair. “We’re getting out of here, Dove. Follow.”
The command seemed to confuse her. “Y-Yes, Ma’am.”
The car was a dark grey Jaguar, understated and immaculate. Evelyn opened the passenger door herself.
Dove hesitated.
“Get in,” Evelyn said.
Another hesitation—almost imperceptible, but Evelyn had learned to read such things long ago. Dove was recalculating. Front seats were not for property. Front seats were for people. She was trying to determine what trap she had failed to perceive.
“Dove?”
“Yes, Ma’am, please forgive this one.” She slid into the seat, her movements careful, her hands immediately folding in her lap. She did not touch anything. She did not lean back against the leather. She held herself as though expecting the seat itself to punish her for having the presumption to occupy it.
Evelyn closed the door, rounded the car, and settled into the driver’s seat. She did not immediately start the engine.
“Have you eaten today?”
Dove’s eyes flickered toward her, then away. “Harrington House provides—”
“I didn’t ask what Harrington House provides. I asked if you ate.”
“Yes, Ma’am. This one had porridge this morning.”
It was nearly ten in the evening. Evelyn made a mental note and started the car.
The drive from Harrington House to Evelyn’s home in Hampstead took forty minutes at this hour. Evelyn did not attempt conversation; she had learned, with Crystal, that silence could be a gift. Some people needed to fill quiet spaces with chatter. Others needed permission to simply exist without performing.
Dove, she suspected, had not been permitted either in a very long time.
The girl sat motionless for the first ten minutes, her breathing shallow and controlled, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere beyond the windscreen. Then, gradually, incrementally, something in her posture shifted, marking a minute easing of tension. Her hands, which had been pressed flat against her thighs, loosened slightly. Her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.
Evelyn noticed—and said nothing.
As they turned onto the quieter roads of Hampstead, Dove spoke. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“Where are we going?”
It was such a simple question. Such a reasonable thing to ask. And yet Dove had asked it as though she expected to be struck for the presumption.
“We are going to my home,” Evelyn said. “It will be your home as well, for as long as you belong to me.”
Dove absorbed this in silence. Then, she said, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Evelyn’s home was a two-storey Georgian mansion, with a red brick facade, set back from the road behind a low wall and a garden that had been Crystal’s pride. Evelyn had paid a service to tend it, and, sometimes, on Sunday mornings after Mass, she would kneel in the soil herself and weed, because Crystal had loved the roses and Evelyn could not bear to let them die.
She parked in the drive and turned off the engine.
“We’re here.”
Dove did not move to open her door but waited, hands in her lap, for instruction.
“You may get out of the car, Dove. You do not need permission for basic movements. If I require you to remain still, I will tell you. Otherwise, assume you have latitude. Understood, lass?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” With infinite caution, Dove opened the door, stepped out of the car, and walked into her new world.
They walked to the front door. Evelyn unlocked it, disarmed the alarm, and stepped aside to let Dove enter first. Dove hesitated again—she clearly expected to follow, not lead—but she obeyed, stepping into the entrance hall with the cautious gait of someone expecting the floor to give way beneath her.
The house was warm and softly lit; Evelyn had left lamps on timers, disliking the idea of returning to darkness. Dove’s gaze moved over the space and carefully scanned it as if every object was a menace, from the parquet floors to the cream walls and the watercolour of the Cornwall coast that Crystal had bought on their first holiday together. Evelyn saw her and said nothing.
“The kitchen is through there,” Evelyn said at length, gesturing. “You need to eat. Come, lass.”
The kitchen was large and modern, all clean lines and pale granite. Evelyn opened the refrigerator and considered its contents. She had not planned for any of this, but eggs, cheese, bread, and butter a good omelette made.
“Sit,” she said, indicating one of the stools at the island.
Dove looked at the stool and at Evelyn. She did not sit.
“Dove?”
“Please forgive this one, Ma’am.” The words came out rushed, frightened. “Should this one not kneel? It can kneel beside you while you eat, or—or if Ma’am wishes to eat first, it can wait, this one does not require—”
“Dove,” Evelyn said, keeping her voice level. “Sit on the stool, bairn. That is not a request.”
Dove sat. Her movements were jerky and graceless, in stark contrast with the controlled stillness of the auction house. She perched on the edge of the stool as though ready to launch herself off it at a moment’s notice, and her hands gripped the granite countertop until her knuckles whitened.
Evelyn cracked eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them. She did not look at Dove while she worked, giving the girl space to breathe, observe, and recalibrate her expectations without the pressure of being watched.
“You referred to yourself as ‘this one’ or ‘it’,” Evelyn said, her tone conversational. “Is that how you were required to speak?”
A pause. “Yes, Ma’am. Depending on—depending on what pleased—”
“I see.” Evelyn poured the eggs into a heated pan. “That requirement no longer applies. You are Dove. You may refer to yourself as ‘I.’ You are a person, not an object, and I expect you to speak as one.”
Silence. Then, very quietly: “Yes, Ma’am.”
The omelette slowly took shape under Evelyn’s hands and, when it was ready, she turned it out onto a plate with a minimum of fuss. She then set it in front of Dove, along with a fork and a glass of water.
“Eat.”
Dove stared at the plate. At the omelette, golden and steaming, more food than she had likely seen in one sitting for months. Her throat worked.
“T-This o—” She caught herself, then started again, “I—I—” She stopped again, visibly struggling. “I… don’t understand, Ma’am.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why are you feeding me?”
The question was so plaintive, so genuinely bewildered, that Evelyn felt her heart break. She leaned against the counter and regarded Dove steadily.
“Because you are mine, and you are hungry,” she said, not unkindly. “ I do not starve what is mine. You have had a long day, and you need sustenance before you sleep. Is that clear, lass?”
Dove’s eyes were wet. She blinked rapidly, fighting for control, and lost. A single tear slipped down her cheek. She swiped at it with the back of her hand, a furtive, ashamed gesture.
“Eat,” Evelyn said again, gently. She raised a hand to stroke Dove’s hair but thought better of it. “… You have permission to cry while you do so, if you need to. There is no punishment for tears in this house.”
Evelyn suddenly found she was asking herself the oddest questions.
A Thíarna… Why are my eyes stinging? Why am I feeling both tight in my chest and with a strong urge to smash something?
Dove ate the omelette in small, methodical bites, as though she expected it to be taken away at any moment. She did not cry again, but her breathing remained unsteady throughout the meal, and twice she paused to press her hand flat against her sternum, a self-soothing gesture that spoke of long practice.
When the plate was empty, Evelyn took it to the sink, rinsed it, and set it in the dishwasher. Dove watched her do this with obvious confusion. Owners did not wash dishes. Owners did not perform domestic tasks while their property sat idle.
“Come,” Evelyn said. “I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
She led Dove up the stairs and down the corridor to a door at the end of the hall. The girl followed three paces behind, head bowed—as she had clearly been trained to do.
The door led to what had once been a spare room. Before Crystal, it had simply been storage. After Crystal, it had become the room where she had slept on the nights when her illness made sharing a bed impossible, or for when Evelyn needed distance from the grief of watching her cherished Crystal suffering.
Evelyn had not opened this door in years. She opened it now.
A small, carved crucifix hung on the wall opposite the bed—a memento of her mother’s, brought from Galway. It had watched over Crystal’s final weeks. It would watch over Dove.
The room was simply furnished: a single bed with a wrought-iron frame, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a small vanity with a mirror. On the far end of the room there were two doors, one that opened to the left and one that opened in front. Evelyn opened both doors: One of them led to a bathroom; the other one led to another room, larger, and more richly decorated. Stating the obvious, Evelyn said, “This is your bathroom, and that is my bedroom. The door to my bedroom is never locked; if you need anything, call. For now, you will sleep here, when you are not serving me. The wardrobe has some clothes. I think they will fit you, but if they don’t, they can be altered.”
Dove stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly, taking it in—the bed, the wardrobe, the window, with its view of roses and lawn; and the small crucifix on the wall, upon which her gaze lingered for a moment longer than the rest. Something flickered across her face that Evelyn could not quite read. Her expression was that of someone who had been shown a complex mathematical proof and been asked to solve it without prior training.
“Ma’am,” she said finally, “where do I sleep?”
Evelyn blinked. “Why, in the bed.”
“The…” Dove’s gaze moved to the bed, then back to Evelyn. “The bed, Ma’am?”
“Yes, bairn, in the bed. It’s what beds are for, ye ken.”
“But I—” Dove stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “If Ma’am wishes me to be available during the night, I can sleep on the floor beside your bed. Or if Ma’am prefers privacy, I can sleep outside your door. I don’t— I’m not—”
“Dove?”
The girl’s eyes looked at Evelyn, confusion and panic making them look around. Evelyn crossed the room and stopped right in front of her. This close, she could see the fine tremor running through the girl’s frame and the terror in her eyes.
“You will sleep in this bed. You will sleep under blankets, on a mattress, with a pillow. You will sleep for as long as your body requires, and you will not be woken to service me or anyone else. Is that clear, lass?”
Dove’s composure shattered.
It was not dramatic—no wailing, no collapse. Simply a quiet crumbling, tears spilling over, her breath hitching in her chest, her hands coming up to cover her face as though she could hide the evidence of her breakdown. She stood there, shaking, and wept without sound.
Evelyn did not touch or embrace her, though the impulse was strong. Touching her now would be another stimulus to process when Dove was clearly already past what she could withstand. Instead, she simply stood close, a steady presence, and waited.
“F-forgive me, Ma’am,” Dove gasped between breaths. “Please, please forgive me, I don’t—I can’t—”
“You have nothing to apologise for.”
“I’m… I’m b-b-broken.” The word came out ragged, torn from somewhere deep. “I don’t know how to— I don’t understand what you want—”
“I ken, lass,” Evelyn said. “I ken ye don’t. And I don’t expect you to understand tonight, or tomorrow, or perhaps for many weeks. What I expect is that you will eat when food is provided, sleep when rest is needed and speak honestly when I ask you questions. Everything else can wait. D’ye ken?”
Dove lowered her hands. Her face was blotched and wet, her eyes red-rimmed. She looked, in that moment, very young and very lost.
“No, Ma’am, forgive me,” she whispered. “I don’t.”
“You will, in time.”
II
The sea is very blue, and the weather is sunny and warm.
She will remember this later, when she tries to remember anything at all: the improbable blue of the water, the heat, and the low, white buildings with blue domed roofs clambering a steep, arid hill overlooking the harbour; and the smell of diesel, fish and a sweetness she cannot identify. She is in the back of a van, looking through a gap where the door does not quite meet the frame. She has been in the van for a long time. She has learned not to ask how long.
A woman is waiting on the quay. She has dark hair and a clipboard, and she does not look at the girls as they are unloaded; she counts them, the way one counts boxes or crates or anything else that needs to be inventoried before it can be sold.
The girl who was Aoife O’Brien is number seven.
She does not know the name of this place. She will never know it. It will exist in her memory only as the colour of the water, the scent of the harbour and the click of the woman’s pen against the clipboard, counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
She is worth a checkmark, nothing more.
Chapter Three: Learning to Be
Evelyn left the connecting door ajar as she retired to her own room.
She did not sleep. She lay in the dark, listening to the old house settle around her, and thought about what she had done. Many years ago, a broken, hurt, shattered girl had come across her almost fortuitously. That wrecked creature would later become not just a trusted partner, but a devoted servant. Today, four years after Crystal, Evelyn had invested twenty thousand pounds on a girl she did not know, whose damage she could only begin to estimate, and whose rehabilitation would require months of patience and care.
You’ve gone mad, she told herself. Crystal’s been dead four years, and you’ve finally lost your rocker.
But beneath the self-recrimination, purpose stirred.
She must have dozed eventually, because she woke to grey morning light and the sound of her alarm. She silenced it, rose, pulled on a dressing gown, and crossed to the connecting door. The room was empty and the bed had not been slept in. The covers were still tucked with military precision, and the pillow undented. For one lurching moment, Evelyn thought the girl had fled, but then she saw a shape on the floor, curled in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, and Evelyn winced with heartache as she observed that frail, broken-winged burdie fitfully sleeping.
Dove had taken the decorative throw from the foot of the bed and wrapped herself in it. She lay on the hardwood floor, knees drawn to her chest, deeply asleep. In repose, her face looked younger and softer. The tension that held her features in that careful blankness had eased, and Evelyn could see, beneath the surgical alterations, the ghost of the girl she might once have been.
Evelyn closed the connecting door softly, showered, dressed, and went downstairs to make tea. She would let Dove sleep. God knew the lass needed it—and Evelyn, who still said her prayers each morning, found herself adding Dove’s name to them.
Dove slept for thirty-one hours.
Evelyn checked on her periodically—opening the connecting door just enough to confirm she was still breathing, still present—but did not disturb her. She cancelled her afternoon appointments, citing a personal matter. She answered emails from her study, made phone calls, attended to the business of her life, and waited.
Mrs Holloway, who came in three days a week to keep the house running, was given a brief explanation: Evelyn had a recently arrived guest who was unwell and needed rest. Mrs Holloway had raised no questions. She had worked for Evelyn long enough to know when not to ask.
On the second morning, she heard movement.
She was in the kitchen when Dove appeared in the doorway. The girl had found the bathroom, clearly—her face was damp and her hair finger-combed—but she still wore the shift from Harrington House, and she stood at the threshold as though awaiting permission to enter.
“Good morning,” Evelyn said. “Come, lass. Sit, sit.”
Dove crossed to the island and perched on the same stool as before, in the same position—edge of the seat, hands gripping the granite, ready to flee. Her eyes tracked Evelyn’s movements as Evelyn poured tea, added milk, and set the cup in front of her.
“Did you sleep well?”
Dove paused as she thought about the correct response. “I… yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.” The words came out by rote, automatically. Then, she quietly said: “I… I slept on the floor, Ma’am, please forgive me. I know you said—”
“I know where you slept, bairn.” Evelyn poured her own tea and leaned against the counter. “I saw you this morning… and all day yesterday.”
Dove’s face went pale. “I didn’t mean to disobey, Ma’am, I tried to sleep in the bed, I did, but I couldn’t—it felt—” She stopped, struggling. “It felt… like… like I was stealing something, Ma’am.”
“You weren’t stealing anything, pet. The bed is yours.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Dove’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’ll do better. I’ll sleep in the bed tonight. I promise.”
“Dove?” Evelyn said, waiting until the girl met her eyes. “I am not angry. I am not going to punish you for sleeping on the floor. Do you understand?”
Dove’s face was a mask of confusion and wariness, her eyes fluttering as she performed the desperate calculation of someone trying to identify where the trap is.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Evelyn shook her head. She said, “No, I think you still don’t understand, pet. But that’s all right.” Evelyn sipped her tea. “Tonight, you may sleep wherever you are most comfortable. If that’s the floor, so be it. In time, I hope you’ll find the bed more appealing. There’s no rush.”
The first week established a pattern; the second one, the first setback.
Evelyn had grown cautiously optimistic. Dove was eating without being commanded—still waiting for permission but no longer flinching when food appeared. She had begun to use “I” more often than “it” or “this one,” catching herself mid-sentence and correcting without prompting. She had even, on one remarkable afternoon, asked if she might sit in the garden.
Then, on the ninth morning, everything changed.
Evelyn came down to breakfast to find Dove already in the kitchen—but not sitting at the island. She was pressed into the corner where the counters met, her arms wrapped around herself, her entire body trembling.
“Dove?”
She didn’t respond, and her trembling intensified.
Evelyn approached slowly, the way one approaches a wild animal. “Dove, can you hear me?” Dove’s head jerked up. Her eyes were wide, wild—and they looked straight through Evelyn as though she wasn’t there. Or as though she was someone else entirely.
“Forgive me,” Dove whispered. “Please forgive me, I’ll be good, please forgive me—”
Evelyn stopped. She was perhaps five feet away. Any closer, she sensed, would be a mistake.
“Dove… you’re in Hampstead, in my kitchen. No one is going to hurt you.”
“Back! stay back! Don’t touch me!” The words came out high and panicked. “Please, please don’t touch me, I can’t, I can’t, I—”
“I won’t touch you.”
Evelyn lowered herself to the floor, making herself small, unthreatening. “I’m going to sit right here and won’t come any closer. Can you breathe with me? In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
It took forty minutes of Evelyn sitting on the cold kitchen floor, breathing slowly, speaking softly, not reaching out no matter how much she wanted to. Forty minutes of watching Dove shake and gasp and whisper forgiveness to people who weren’t there. Forty minutes of waiting for the storm to pass.
When it finally did—when Dove’s breathing slowed and her eyes focused and she saw Evelyn, really saw her—she burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, I don’t know what—I woke up and I couldn’t—everything felt—”
“You don’t need to explain,” Evelyn said, staying where she was. “Can I get you some water?”
Dove nodded, in a jerky motion.
Evelyn rose, filled a glass, and set it on the counter, letting it there for her to reach for it, whenever she was ready. Dove’s hand shook as she picked it up, but she drank.
“This will happen sometimes, pet,” Evelyn said, keeping her voice calm and matter of fact. “Your body remembers things your mind has tried to forget. It’s how you process the cost of surviving what you survived.”
“I couldn’t—”
Dove’s voice cracked.
“I… I couldn’t bear to be touched. The thought of it made me want to scream.”
“Then you won’t be touched until you’re ready.”
Evelyn paused. “Is there anything that would help? Is there something you need?”
Dove was quiet for a long moment. Then, very softly, she said: “Could I… could I sit in the garden by myself, Ma’am?”
“Of course.”
Dove spent three hours among the roses. Evelyn watched from the kitchen window, working on her laptop, glancing up every few minutes to confirm Dove was still there. She didn’t approach, nor did she attempt to check on her. She simply made herself available as a presence that asked for nothing.
Dove could not bear to be touched for four days, in which Evelyn could not hand Dove a cup of tea without setting it down first, nor could she guide her through a doorway or offer her even the small, casual touches that had begun to punctuate their days. Four days in which Dove flinched at shadows, slept with her back pressed against the wall and looked at Evelyn with eyes full of apology.
On the fifth day, Dove reached out and touched Evelyn’s hand.
It was barely a brush—fingertips against knuckles, there and gone in an instant. But the way in which Dove’s face lit up when she did it told Evelyn everything.
Dove whispered, “I thought… I thought I’d never be able to—”
“You didn’t lose anything, little colm.” The endearment slipped out before Evelyn could stop it. “It went away for a while, and then it came back. That’s how it works.”
Dove’s eyes flickered at the Irish. Something—perhaps recognition—stirred within. “My mother used to call me that,” she said slowly. “I think. I can almost remember…”
She trailed off. The memory, whatever it was, stayed just out of reach.
But she didn’t pull her hand away.
Days after the setback, Evelyn rose early, made breakfast, and left a portion for Dove—who seemed perpetually startled by the presence of food. She went to her study to work, leaving Dove to her own devices, and discovered that “her own devices” meant kneeling silently in the corner of whatever room Evelyn occupied.
One day, Evelyn looked up from a contract she was studying to perceive Dove’s presence out of the corner of her eye. in the far corner of her study, knees on the hardwood, hands on her thighs, gaze fixed on the floor. She had been there for two hours without making a sound.
“Dove?”
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“What are you doing?”
Dove fluttered her eyelids in a flicker of uncertainty.
“Waiting, Ma’am, in case you need me.”
“I see.” Evelyn set down her pen. “And if I don’t need you? If I’m occupied with work for several hours?”
“Then I wait until you need me, Ma’am.” This seemed self-evident to Dove.
“On your knees, on a hardwood floor, for hours at a time.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Dove paused and looked up. “Is… is that not correct, Ma’am? If you’d rather that I wait elsewhere—”
“I’d prefer for you not to destroy your knees, pet.” Evelyn rose, crossed to the corner, and offered Dove her hand. “Up.”
Dove took the hand. She flinched for a moment, but quickly suppressed it, and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. Her legs were stiff, and Dove winced as blood flow returned to her lower limbs.
“There is a chair,” Evelyn said, indicating the armchair by the window. “Over there, there are some books on the shelves. If you wish to remain in this room while I work, you may sit in the chair and read. You do not need to kneel, nor do you need to wait in silence. Is that clear?”
Dove looked at the chair, then at the books, and then at Evelyn.
“Ma’am,” she said carefully, “I don’t… I’m not sure I remember how to read anymore. I used to, I think, but it’s been…” She trailed off.
Evelyn absorbed this. Added it to the mental catalogue of damage, the growing list of things that had been taken from this girl.
“Then we’ll start simply,” she said. “Sit in the chair, pet. Look out the window if you like. You don’t have to do anything. Just… be.”
“Just be,” Dove repeated, as though the words were in a foreign language.
“Yes.”
Dove crossed to the chair, lowered herself into it, and sat. Her posture was rigid, her hands folded tightly in her lap, her gaze fixed on some middle distance. She looked profoundly uncomfortable at an existential level. She truly had no idea what to do with herself when “doing” was not required.
Evelyn returned to her desk and her contracts. She did not watch Dove directly, but she was aware of her—the small shifts in her position, the occasional glance toward the bookshelves, the slow and almost imperceptible relaxation of her shoulders as the minutes passed and no punishment materialised.
By the end of the afternoon, Dove had fallen deeply asleep in the chair. Evelyn picked up a throw from her own armchair, and protectively covered Dove with it.
“ Codail, a cholmín beag” she murmured, in Irish, without quite knowing why.
On the twelfth day, Dove tried to offer herself.
Evelyn was preparing for bed, seated at her vanity and removing her earrings, when the connecting door opened. Dove stood there in the oversized t-shirt Evelyn had given her to sleep in—one of Evelyn’s own, soft and worn—and her expression was one of grim determination.
“Ma’am,” she said. “May I serve you?”
Evelyn set down the earring. “In what capacity, pet?”
“In… in whatever capacity you wish, Ma’am,” Dove said, and stepped into the room, moving to disrobe herself. Her hands were trembling, but she moved with purpose, crossing over to where Evelyn sat. “I can please you, Ma’am, I’ve been trained, I know how to—”
“Dove… Please, stop.”
Dove stopped. The nightshirt covered Dove’s body again. She stood before Evelyn, close enough to touch, and her breath was coming too fast, her eyes too bright. She was terrified, Evelyn realised, and pushing through the terror because she believed this was required.
“Why are you offering yourself to me?”
“Because—” Dove’s voice cracked. “Because you haven’t used me, Ma’am. It’s been twelve days and you haven’t—and I—I don’t understand why, Ma’am, I keep waiting for it to start and it doesn’t start and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong—”
“You’re not doing anything wrong.”
“Then why won’t you use me?” The words came out raw, almost accusatory. “That… that’s what I’m for; that’s all I’m good for. If you don’t want me for that, then why did you buy me? Why am I here? What do you want?”
Evelyn rose from the vanity. She was taller than Dove by several inches, and she used that height to provide grounding and presence.
“Sit down, pet,” she said, indicating the edge of the bed.
Dove sat. She was shaking openly now, her composure shattered.
Evelyn sat beside her—not touching, but close enough that Dove could feel her presence.
“I am going to explain something to you,” Evelyn said, “and I need you to listen carefully. Can you do that?”
Dove’s cheeks had taken on a dark flush. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“I did not buy you to use you. I did not buy you because I wanted a warm body in my bed, or a mouth to service me, or a convenient outlet for my desires. Do you understand?”
Dove shook her head. Her eyes were wet.
“I bought you,” Evelyn said, “because I looked at you kneeling on that platform, and I saw someone who had been broken, someone who expected nothing but pain and use. And I thought—” She paused for a moment, choosing her words. “I thought perhaps I could offer something else.”
“I… I don’t understand, Ma’am.”
Evelyn allowed herself, finally, to reach out and to rest her hand over Dove’s, where it lay clenched on her thigh. The girl flinched, then stilled. “I’m not asking you to understand tonight. I’m asking you to trust that when I want something from you, I will tell you clearly. And until I tell you, you do not need to offer, anticipate or perform. You only need to be here.”
“That’s—” Dove’s voice was barely a whisper. “That’s… that’s not how it works, Ma’am…”
“It’s how it works in this house, lass.” Evelyn squeezed her hand gently, then released it. “Go to sleep, pet. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Dove did not move. She sat on the edge of the bed, tears slipping silently down her cheeks, and stared at Evelyn as though she were some incomprehensible creature—a sphinx posing riddles with no answers.
“Ma’am,” she said finally. “May I ask a question?”
“You may.”
“If you don’t want to use me… what do you want?”
Evelyn considered the question. It deserved honesty.
“I want to find out who you are,” Evelyn said. “Beneath whatever was done to you, there is a person. I want to meet her. I want to know what she likes, what she wants, what makes her laugh. I want to give her the space to remember that she exists.” She paused and said, “that is what I want, Dove. Nothing more, and nothing less.”
Dove stared at her for a long moment.
Then she rose, walked to the connecting door, and paused with her hand on the frame.
“I don’t know if that person you are looking for is still there, Ma’am,” she said, without turning around. “I don’t know if there’s anything left.”
“Then we’ll find out together.”
Dove nodded once, a small and jerky motion, and disappeared into her room.
She slept in the bed that night. Evelyn knew, because she checked—easing open the connecting door in the small hours of the morning, just enough to see the shape beneath the covers, the slow rise and fall of breath.
It was not much. But it was something.
Chapter Four: Structure and Safety
The tenth week marked a turning point, though Dove did not recognise it as such at the time.
Evelyn had been observing her carefully—the way she drifted through the house without purpose, the way she still waited for instruction before acting, the way she seemed to diminish in the absence of structure. Freedom, Evelyn understood, was not the same as formlessness. Dove had been so thoroughly conditioned to exist within rigid constraints that removing those constraints had not liberated her; it had set her adrift.
She needed boundaries. Not the cruel, arbitrary ones she had known before, but something solid to push against. Something that would hold.
“I want to begin your training,” Evelyn said over breakfast.
Dove’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth. Her expression flickered through several emotions—fear, resignation, a desperate attempt at blankness—before settling into careful neutrality.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“You don’t know what I mean by training.”
“No, Ma’am.”
“Ask me.”
Another pause. Dove set down the spoon and folded her hands in her lap. The posture was automatic, defensive. “What… what kind of training, Ma’am?”
“The kind that will help you find yourself.” Evelyn pushed her own plate aside and leaned forward slightly. “You’ve been adrift since you arrived. You don’t know what to do with yourself when I’m not directing you. You have no routines, no rituals, no structure of your own. I intend to give you those things.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I ken.” Evelyn rose, retrieved a small leather notebook from the sideboard, and set it before Dove. “This is yours. Every morning, you will write in it—three things you observed the previous day, three things you felt, and one thing you want. It doesn’t matter how small. The discipline is in the doing.”
Dove stared at the notebook as though it might bite her. “What if I can’t think of anything?”
“Then you’ll sit with the notebook open until something comes. There’s no wrong answer, pet. There’s only the practice.”
The notebook was the first of many tools.
Evelyn introduced each gradually, allowing Dove time to acclimate to each before adding another. First came the morning routine: wake, wash, dress in clothes Dove selected herself, make tea and write in the notebook. Then came an evening ritual: review the day with Evelyn, discuss what had gone well, what had been difficult, and receive feedback.
Between these anchors, structured tasks—not busywork, but purposeful activities designed to rebuild Dove’s sense of competence.
She learned to properly navigate the kitchen, following recipes, measuring ingredients, and timing multiple dishes to finish together. The first time she produced a meal entirely on her own—roast chicken, potatoes and green beans—she stood in the kitchen and stared at it as though she had performed a magic trick.
“I made this, Ma’am,” she said, when Evelyn came to see what the delay was. “I actually made this.”
“You did, my colm” Evelyn surveyed the spread, noted the slightly overdone potatoes and the beans that could have used another minute, and dismissed these imperfections as irrelevant. “It looks wonderful.”
“It’s not perfect.”
“It’s yours. That’s what matters.”
Dove served the meal with hands that trembled only slightly. She watched Evelyn take the first bite with an intensity that bordered on painful, and when Evelyn nodded approval, something in Dove’s expression cracked open into a fragile, budding sense of pride.
The notebook entries evolved.
At first, they were sparse, almost clinical.
Observed: rain on the window. The roses are dying back. Ma’am wore the blue jumper.
Felt: tired. Confused. Hungry before dinner.
Want: nothing.
Evelyn did not comment on the “nothing.” She simply read, nodded, and returned the notebook each evening without judgement.
By the eleventh week, the entries had begun to lengthen.
Observed: the way the light changes in the study around four o’clock. Mrs. Holloway hums when she polishes the silver. There’s a bird that comes to the garden every morning—I think it’s a robin.
Felt: calmer today. Strange when Ma’am touched my shoulder. Something tight in my chest when I thought about before.
Want: to see the robin again tomorrow.
“That’s a want,” Evelyn said, when she read that entry. “A real one.”
Dove flushed. “It’s daft, Ma’am, It’s just a bird.”
“It’s not daft. It’s specific. It’s something you noticed, something that brought you pleasure, something you hope to experience again. That’s desire, Dove. That’s you, beginning to know yourself.”
The training expanded.
Evelyn taught Dove to meditate—not the esoteric kind, but simple breath awareness: ten minutes each morning, sitting in stillness and observing the contents of her own mind. The first attempts were disasters; Dove would fidget, panic and dissolve into tears at the sheer overwhelming noise inside her skull; but Evelyn sat with her through each attempt as a steady presence at her side, and, gradually, the storms began to quiet.
Evelyn then taught her protocol. Not the degrading, arbitrary rules Dove had been subjected to before, but something more considered—a framework of behaviour that applied consistently, on which Dove could rely. Evelyn taught her how to greet in the morning, how to ask for what she needed, and how to signal when she was overwhelmed. She also taught Dove how to request permission to speak freely, and how to return to formal address when the conversation was done.
“Why?” Dove asked, after a particularly detailed lesson on the proper way to position her hands whilst kneeling for inspection. “Why does it matter how I hold my hands, Ma’am?”
“Because structure creates safety,” Evelyn said. “When you know exactly what is expected, you don’t have to guess. You don’t have to fear making an unknown mistake. The rules are clear, and within those rules, you are free.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Evelyn circled her slowly, examining her posture. “Before you came here, what happened when you made a mistake?”
Dove’s jaw tightened. “I was punished, Ma’am.”
“And did you always know, beforehand, what would constitute a mistake?”
A long pause. “No, Ma’am.”
“So, you lived in constant fear. Every action might be wrong. Every moment might bring pain. There was no way to be safe, because the rules kept changing, or there were no rules at all—only the whims of whoever had access to you.”
Dove said nothing. Her hands, resting on her thighs, had begun to tremble.
“In this house,” Evelyn continued, “the rules do not change. They are clear, consistent, and I will explain the reason behind each one if you ask. When you follow them, you will not be punished. When you fail to follow them—and you will, because you are human, and humans err—you will be corrected. Do you understand the difference?”
“I think so.”
“Tell me.”
Dove swallowed. “Correction is… teaching. It’s meant to help me do better. Punishment is just pain for pain’s sake, Ma’am.”
“Good.” Evelyn stopped in front of her, looked down at her bowed head. “You may look at me, Dove.”
Dove raised her eyes. They were wet, but she held Evelyn’s gaze steadily.
“The protocol I teach you is not about control for its own sake,” Evelyn said. “It’s about giving you a container, something to hold you while you heal. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Dove’s voice was hoarse. “I think… I think I’m beginning to.”
Three months in, Evelyn introduced personal service tasks.
Dove had been doing household work since the second week and had found genuine satisfaction in it. Personal service added another dimension: Laying out Evelyn’s clothes in the morning, drawing her bath in the evening, kneeling at her feet while Evelyn read, and learning to simply exist in her presence without needing to perform.
Kneeling was hard. It brought back memories of endless hours on hardwood floors with aching knees and thighs and the terror of moving and incurring wrath. The first time Evelyn directed her to kneel on the cushion beside her chair, Dove froze.
“Dove?”
“I… I can’t.” The words came out choked. “Please forgive me, Ma’am, I can’t—”
“Breathe.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. Breathe with me. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.”
It took several minutes before Dove’s panic subsided. When it did, she was shaking violently, her face streaked with tears.
“Please forgive me,” she gasped. “Please, I want to obey, I want to be good—”
“You are good.” Evelyn’s voice was firm, grounding. “You are not in trouble, pet. You had a strong reaction to something that reminded you of pain. That is not failure; that is trauma. We will work through it together. But not today. Today, you will sit in the chair, and I will read, and you will simply be here with me. That is enough.”
They tried again the following week. And the week after that. Each time, Dove managed a little longer before the panic set in. Each time, Evelyn talked her through it, praised her for trying, dismissed her with gentleness rather than frustration.
On the fourth attempt, Dove knelt for twenty minutes without incident. When she rose, her legs were stiff, but her eyes were bright.
“I did it,” she said, wonder in her voice.
“You did.” Evelyn smiled. “How do you feel?”
Dove considered the question—really considered it, the way she had been learning to do. “Safe,” she said finally. “I felt… safe, Ma’am.”
III
The old man is talking to her in English. This is unusual. Others have used commands in languages she doesn’t know, or no language at all—hands, gestures or pain. But this one speaks, waits for her to understand, and does not strike her when she is slow to respond.
She does not trust this. She has learned that kindness is a trap. Kindness means someone wants something from her that force cannot extract—information, performance, or the simulation of willingness that certain people prefer. She waits for him to reveal what he wants, positioning herself to provide it with minimum damage, but days pass, and he does not reveal it. He gives her rules and expects her to follow them. When she fails, he corrects her—a word, a look, occasionally a measured stroke of discipline—and then it is over. She does not know what to do with this.
At night, in the room he has given her—a room, with a door that closes, with a bed she is expected to sleep in—she lies awake and waits for the trap to spring, but it does not. She wonders whether she misunderstood something fundamental about the world.
Some of what the old man teaches her resonates, and she finds some grounding in it; then, one morning, after some unknown time, he tells her that he is ill, and that she will be sold, and that he has arranged for her to go somewhere she might be treated well.
She does not believe him. Then again, she has stopped believing anything.
Chapter Five: Setbacks and Breakthroughs
The fourth month brought a setback.
Evelyn had been called away on business—an emergency with a client in Manchester that could not be handled remotely. She would be gone overnight, possibly two nights. Mrs. Holloway would stay, and Evelyn had walked Dove through the plan multiple times, ensuring she understood that she was not being abandoned, that Evelyn would return, that this was temporary.
Dove had nodded, agreed, promised she would be fine.
Evelyn came home to find the house in order, dinner prepared, everything apparently as it should be. But Dove’s eyes were hollow, and when Evelyn reached for her, she flinched.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, Ma’am.” The furniture-stillness was back. “Everything is fine.”
“Dove—”
“Everything is fine.”
Evelyn did not press. She ate the dinner Dove had prepared, praised it genuinely, and waited. It was not until they were in the sitting room—Dove in her usual chair, Evelyn on the sofa—that the facade cracked.
“I thought… I thought you weren’t coming back.”
The words came out in a small, flat, almost toneless voice. Dove was staring at her hands in her lap, refusing to meet Evelyn’s eyes.
“I told you I would return, pet.”
“Everyone says that. Everyone says they’ll come back, and then they don’t. Or they do, and they’re different. Or they send someone else. You said one night, maybe two, and it was two, and I thought—I knew—”
“What did you know?”
“That you’d decided to get rid of me.” Dove’s voice cracked. “That you’d had enough. That you’d realised I’m too broken, too much work, not worth—”
“Look at me, lass.”
Dove raised her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face blotched with the evidence of tears she’d shed alone.
“I am not getting rid of you,” Evelyn said, holding her gaze. “I have not ‘had enough.’ You are not too broken, and you are not too much work. I was delayed because my client is an incompetent fool who cannae manage his own business, and I should have called to tell you I’d be late. That was my error, not yours.”
A Thíarna Dia.
The thought came unbidden to Evelyn, in her mother’s voice.
What did they do to this child that two days’ absence convinces her she’s been discarded?
Evelyn kept her face steady, but something inside her had cracked open—a fissure of pain, grief and fury so deep she could not look at it directly.
She did not know how many people handled Dove—her mind refused to classify these individuals as owners. The results were self-evident; God only knew through how many hands Dove had passed over the years—and it was years of abuse her girl had endured, years of being handed over like… like… like a bloody parcel. It was obvious that Dove expected to be thrown away—even by her.
Evelyn found herself covering her eyes; they stung, and the void—God, that void—it was harder and scarier than the void Vera had left when she passed.
Dove’s voice shook Evelyn from her musings. Evelyn wiped her eyes—why do they sting this much? —and looked at her.
“Ma’am… you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m just—”
“Dove—look at me, lass.” The words came out sharper than Evelyn intended, her father’s burr surfacing beneath it, and she saw Dove’s breath catch. “You are mine, and that means I owe you honesty and communication. I owe you the courtesy of telling you when my plans change, so that you are not left wondering. I failed in that, and I apologise.”
Dove stared at her. “You’re… apologising? To me?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re—and I’m—”
“Aye, but that does not make me infallible, my colm, and it does not make your feelings irrelevant.” Evelyn rose from the sofa, crossed to Dove’s chair, and crouched before her—deliberately lowering herself, meeting Dove’s eyes from below rather than above. “I am sorry I frightened you. I will do better. Do you believe me?”
A long pause. Then, slowly, Dove nodded.
“I believe you’re sorry,” she said. “I’m… still learning to believe the rest.”
“That’s fair.” Evelyn reached up, brushed a strand of hair from Dove’s face. “We’ll keep working on it.”
She didn’t notice she was crying until Dove’s hand tentatively, tremblingly reached up to touch her cheek.
“Ma’am… you’re…”
Evelyn blinked. Her eyes were moist and she felt traces of tears on her cheeks. When had that happened?
Somewhere, Vera’s voice seemed to echo: “Howay, dee right by the lass or I’ll keep haunting ye forever, me daft granite Mistress.”
Rage came in the fifth month.
Evelyn had been expecting it—had, in fact, been gently probing for it, asking questions designed to surface the rage that must be buried beneath Dove’s compliance. Trauma of the kind Dove had experienced did not resolve into peaceful acceptance. There was grief beneath the numbness, and beneath the grief, fury—at the people who had hurt her, at the world that had allowed it, at herself for surviving it.
It broke through during a routine training session.
They were practising protocol, as Dove knelt in formal position while Evelyn circled her, correcting small errors in her posture. It was an exercise they had done many times before without any incident. But today, something was different. Dove was tense, her jaw tight, her breathing shallow.
“Shoulders back, Dove.”
Dove adjusted.
“Good; now chin up a smidgen.”
Another adjustment, jerky this time.
“Dove, your hands are clenched. Open them.”
Dove’s hands did not open. Her whole body had gone rigid.
“Dove?”
“I can’t.” The words came through gritted teeth. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Can’t do what?”
“This!” Dove’s head snapped up, her eyes blazing. “All of this! The kneeling! the posture! the—the rules! You say it’s different, you say you’re not like them, but you’re still telling me how to sit and stand and breathe and it’s just more of the same—”
“Dove—”
“NO!” She was on her feet now, cheeks crimson, hands balled in fists so tight her knuckles were white, and trembling with rage. “I’m tired of being told what to do! I’m tired of being good, being obedient, being perfect! I spent years doing everything they wanted, and it was never enough—a-and now YOU want me to do it all again and call it healing—”
“Dove…”
“I HATE THIS!” The scream tore out of her, raw and ragged. “I fecking HATE what they did to me! I hate what they MADE me! I hate that I can’t just be normal! I hate that I don’t know how to want things or feel things or… or…” She broke off, choking on sobs, her hands clawing at her own arms. “I… I hate myself… I hate everything about myself. I hate I let this happen to me… I hate this… this thing I have become… I… I wish they’d just killed me. I wish… I wish I was… d-d-dead…”
Evelyn did not move or reach for Dove; she stood very still, letting Dove rage and the wound drain, feeling every word as it landed like a blade between her ribs.
When the storm subsided and Dove’s screams had faded to hitching sobs, when her legs buckled and she sank to the floor—only then did Evelyn approach. She lowered herself to the carpet, sitting cross-legged a few feet away, close enough to be present but not close enough to crowd.
“That… was good,” she said quietly.
Dove’s head jerked up. “Good?”
“Yes, good.” Evelyn met her eyes steadily. “You’ve been carrying that for a long time. It needed to come out.”
“I-I yelled at you.”
“You did.”
“I said—I said terrible things—”
“You said true, painful things. And you needed to say them.” Evelyn’s voice was calm, unhurried. “I’m not angry, Dove. I’m not going to punish you for this. I’m… I am proud of you.”
Dove made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “P-P-proud? I just—I completely—”
“You felt something overwhelming you, and you let it out. You didn’t swallow it, you didn’t pretend it wasn’t there, and you didn’t collapse into the blankness you’ve used as armour for so long. You raged. That’s progress.”
“It doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like I’m fecking falling apart.”
“Sometimes that’s what healing looks like.” Evelyn shifted slightly closer. “May I touch you?”
Dove hesitated. Then, slowly, she nodded.
Evelyn reached out and took one of Dove’s hands. It trembled, and the fingers were cold. She held both of Dove’s hands in hers, gently, warming them between her own.
“What they did to you… was wrong,” Evelyn said. She did not notice it, but her voice was quavering with barely contained fury, which slipped in tiny glimpses in the way she hardened her speech to mirror that of her father. “You have every right to be angry. You have every right to rage. And I would rather have you screaming at me than be silent and dead inside. Do you understand?”
“No.” Dove’s voice was barely a whisper. “But I want to.”
“That’s enough for now.”
Later, when Evelyn looked at herself in the mirror, she found out she had cried. Again.
Stiff back, lassie, Evelyn thought as she wiped the evidence of her tears. Ye cannae afford to crumble noo. Dove be needing ye to be her pillar.
Dove’s rage did not disappear after that night. It resurfaced time and again during the weeks that followed—sometimes directed at Evelyn, sometimes at the nameless, faceless people who had hurt her, and sometimes—the worst times—at herself. Evelyn learned to recognise the warning signs, reading the tension that preceded an eruption, and created space for it rather than trying to prevent it.
Something else came back that day—Dove’s native Irish accent, distinctive and clear. It never left her again thereafter.
After the first rage exploded, Evelyn introduced a new element to Dove’s training: physical release.
The house had a cellar that Evelyn had converted, years ago, into a private gym. It was a spartan, minimalist space—a treadmill, a set of weights and a heavy bag suspended from the ceiling. Evelyn took Dove down there in the evenings and taught her how to wrap her hands, how to throw a punch, how to channel the fury inside her into something controlled and deliberate.
The first time Dove hit the bag with real force, she burst into tears.
“I didn’t know I could do that,” she said, staring at her wrapped hands. “I didn’t know I was allowed.”
“You’re allowed,” Evelyn said. “You’re allowed to be strong. You’re allowed to fight back. Not against me—but against this.” She tapped Dove’s forehead gently. “Against the voice that tells you you’re worthless. Against the memories that try to drag you under. You’re allowed to hit them as hard as you can.”
Dove hit the bag until her arms gave out. Then she collapsed against Evelyn’s chest and wept, and Evelyn held her until the shaking stopped.
The sixth month brought something worse.
It began without warning.
Dove simply did not come down for breakfast. Evelyn found her in her room, curled on the floor between the bed and the wall, exactly where she had slept that first night. But this was different. This was not sleep.
Dove was keening.
It was a sound Evelyn had never heard from a human throat—low and rhythmic and ancient, the sound of grief so profound it had passed beyond tears into something more primal. Dove’s eyes were open but unfocused. Her hands clawed at her own arms, leaving red tracks on her skin.
“Dove?” Evelyn kept her voice calm, though her heart was hammering. “Dove, can you hear me?”
No response. The keening continued.
Evelyn knelt beside her, close but not touching. “I’m here. You’re safe. Whatever is happening, I’m here.”
Dove’s head turned. Her eyes found Evelyn’s face—and there was no recognition in them, only black abject terror.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no, no—”
“It’s Evelyn. You’re in Hampstead. You’re in your room.”
“Don’t let them—please—I’ll be good, I’ll be good—”
She was not seeing Evelyn. She was seeing something dark, horrible and overwhelming, which had risen and swallowed her up whole. Evelyn stayed where she was, speaking softly, repeating the same phrases over and over: You’re safe, I’m here, No one will hurt you.
It did not help.
The first day was the worst. Dove screamed until her voice gave out, then continued screaming in a hoarse whisper. She clawed at herself, at the floor, at the air. When Evelyn tried to restrain her hands to prevent her from drawing blood, Dove fought with an adrenaline-fuelled strength that seemed impossible for her slight frame, fiercely struggling, biting and kicking until Evelyn released her.
“All right,” Evelyn said, her own voice shaking. “All right. I won’t hold you. But I’m not leaving.”
She sat with her back against the wall, close enough to intervene decisively if Dove truly tried to endanger herself, yet far enough that she would have space.
Evelyn did not leave for food, water, or for the bathroom.
Mrs. Holloway brought tea and sandwiches, which sat untouched. The day stretched into evening, and evening faded into night.
Sometime after midnight, Dove’s struggles subsided. She lay on the floor, breathing in great, ragged gasps, her eyes still unfocused. Evelyn risked moving closer.
“Dove. Can you hear me now?”
A long pause. Then, barely audible: “Ma’am?”
“I’m here.”
“I can’t—” Dove’s voice cracked. “I-I can’t make the images stop… They don’t… they won’t… stop…”
Evelyn reached out, very slowly, and brushed a strand of hair from Dove’s face. Dove flinched but did not pull away. “You don’t have to make them stop. You just have to survive them.”
“I-I don’t know if I can.”
“You can. You are. You will.”
The second day was quieter but not better. Dove lay motionless, barely responsive, her gaze fixed on nothing. She would not eat or drink. She whispered fragments of prayer in Irish—the Hail Mary, over and over, the words slurring together until they became meaningless sound.
Evelyn stayed. She read aloud—nothing demanding, just familiar words to fill the silence. She brought Dove’s hand to her own chest so Dove could feel her breathing, a steady rhythm to anchor herself to. She did not try to make Dove speak, eat, or respond. She simply was there—a presence that would not leave.
On the third day, Dove slept.
It was not a restful sleep—she twitched, tossed, turned, moaned and cried out—but it was sleep, and Evelyn, who had been awake for nearly sixty hours, allowed herself to doze in the chair beside the bed, one hand resting on the mattress near Dove’s shoulder.
She woke some unknown time later to find Dove watching her.
The wildness was gone from Dove’s eyes. In its place was exhaustion, shame, and wonder.
“You stayed,” Dove whispered.
“Of course I stayed. Where else would I be?”
Dove’s face crumpled. The tears that came now were different from the keening of three days ago—quieter, softer, the tears of someone who had passed through something terrible and emerged on the other side.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand why you—”
“Because I am responsible for you.” Evelyn’s voice was rough with exhaustion but steady. “Because, if you haven’t noticed, I care about you, my colm. Whatever darkness lives inside you, I’m not afraid of it. You don’t have to be alone with it anymore.”
Dove reached out tentatively, as though she expected her hand to pass through Evelyn like smoke, and touched her cheek.
“I thought I was dying,” she said. “I thought the memories would swallow me and there would be nothing left.”
“They didn’t swallow you. You’re still here.”
“Because you were here.” Dove’s voice was very small. “If you hadn’t been here, I don’t know if I would have—”
“But I was here. And I will be here, the next time, and the time after that.” Evelyn covered Dove’s hand with her own. “That’s what this is, little colm. That’s what it means to belong to someone who… who loves you. Whatever comes, we weather it together.”
Dove closed her eyes. Her hand stayed where it was, warm against Evelyn’s cheek.
“Together,” she repeated, as though testing the word, learning its weight.
“Together.”
Chapter Six: The Garden
Seven months.
Dove had been with Evelyn for a little more than half a year, and she was not the same being who had knelt on that auction platform. She was not yet healed—that still felt too far away—but she was healing.
She had opinions now and was not afraid of voicing them. She preferred Earl Grey to English Breakfast. She disliked yellow and loved deep greens and blues. She had read her way through half of Evelyn’s library and had developed a particular fondness for the Brontës, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, James Joyce and W. Somerset Maugham whilst harbouring a deep suspicion of Thomas Hardy and Marcel Proust. She laughed sometimes—not often, and not easily, but the emotion was genuine—and the sound of it made Evelyn’s breath catch every time.
She had also begun to want—and ask—for things.
The garden became Dove’s in stages.
It began in the seventh month, on an afternoon when Evelyn found her standing at the kitchen window, watching the rain batter the last of the autumn roses. There was a hint of longing in Dove’s expression that made Evelyn pause.
“You can go out there, you know. If you want to.”
Dove startled, turned. “Ma’am?”
“The garden. You watch it constantly. You’re allowed to be in it.”
“I didn’t want to presume.” Dove’s gaze drifted back to the window. “It was Crystal’s, after all.”
“It was. And now it needs tending, and I—” Evelyn hesitated, then admitted a truth she had not spoken aloud before. “I’m… not very good at it. I have been paying a service to maintain it, but it’s not the same. They keep it alive, but they don’t love it. Crystal would be disappointed in me.”
“You could learn.”
“I could. But I don’t have her gift for growing things.” Evelyn came to stand beside Dove at the window. “You might, though.”
Dove was quiet for a long moment. Then: “Would you teach me?”
“I can teach you what I remember, my colm. The rest, you’ll have to learn yourself.”
The lessons began that weekend.
Evelyn knew the basics—Crystal had talked her through the care of the roses often enough, usually while Evelyn sat on the garden bench with a book, half-listening, more interested in watching Crystal’s hands move through the soil than in the actual content of her instruction. She remembered enough: when to prune, how much fertiliser to mix to new soil, how to deadhead, and the importance of feeding and mulching before the first frost.
Dove absorbed it all with an intensity that surprised them both.
She asked questions about soil pH, companion planting and the relative merits of different rootstocks; and when Evelyn confessed her ignorance, Dove requested permission to research. Within a month, she had accumulated a small library of gardening books, their pages bristling with markers and annotations in her increasingly confident, round, well-formed, feminine handwriting.
She knelt in the soil for hours, even as the weather turned cold, even when her fingers went numb and her knees ached.
She also talked to the roses.
Evelyn heard her through the kitchen window, murmuring encouragements to the bare canes as she tucked them in for winter. She reported on their progress each evening, her face animated in a way Evelyn had never seen before.
“The Gertrude Jekyll is struggling,” she said one night over dinner. “I think there’s something wrong with the drainage on that side of the bed. I want to dig it up in spring and amend the soil, if—if that’s permitted.”
“It’s your garden now, Dove. You don’t need permission to do what’s necessary to care for it.”
Dove’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. “My garden, Ma’am?”
“Crystal would want someone to love it the way she did. You do, so it’s yours.”
Dove’s expression shifted from calm to one of complete and utter surprise, and her eyes became moist with emotion. She slowly let down her fork, rose from her chair, and crossed to where Evelyn sat. Then, slowly, deliberately, she knelt and pressed her forehead to Evelyn’s knee. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
Tears came unbidden to Evelyn’s eyes. Her hand found Dove’s hair and gently stroked it.
Winter passed.
The garden slept beneath its mulch, and Dove channelled her energy into planning for spring. She sketched layouts, researched varieties, and made lists of what to order from the nurseries come spring. She pored over Crystal’s old gardening journals—found in a box in the cellar, dusty and faded but legible—and learned not just technique but temperament. The journals were full of Crystal’s personality: wry observations about recalcitrant plants (“The Gertrude Jekyll’s being a right mardy cow this year—won’t flower for love nor money”), triumphant notes when something finally bloomed (“The climber’s only gone and done it! Champion!”), the occasional sketch of a particularly pleasing arrangement.
“Crystal was funny, Ma’am,” Dove said one evening, looking up from a journal entry that described a prolonged battle with aphids in terms usually reserved for military campaigns. “I didn’t expect that. The way she wrote—was she from the North?”
“Newcastle. A Geordie through and through.” Evelyn smiled at the memory. “Vera Thomson was her name. Dry as the bloody Sahara, but genuinely witty. She could reduce me to helpless laughter with a single raised eyebrow and a ‘Howay, lass, divvent be daft.’”
“You loved her very much.”
“I did. I do, still.” Evelyn looked at Dove, at the journal open in her lap, at the way she held it carefully, respectfully. “Does it bother you that I still love her?”
“No.” Dove’s answer came without hesitation. “I think—I think you love more deeply because you loved her. The capacity doesn’t diminish. It grows.”
“Where did you learn that?”
Dove considered the question. “I’m not sure. It just… feels true. The way you are with me—patient, careful, present—that’s not despite having lost her. It’s because of it. You know what it means to have something precious. You treat me like I’m precious because you understand what it costs to lose what you cherish.”
Evelyn was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached out, cupped Dove’s cheek, and said, “You are precious, little colm. More than you know.”
Chapter Seven: Spring
Spring arrived tentatively, as it does in England, with false starts and sudden frosts, and crocuses struggling to push up, only to be battered by a late snowstorm. Dove watched the garden with the anxious attention of a new mother, rushing out after every cold snap to check on her charges.
The roses survived. More than survived: they thrived. When the first buds began to swell in late April, Dove practically vibrated with anticipation.
“The Madame Alfred Carrière is going to bloom first,” she reported. “I can tell. The buds are fattest on her.”
“Her?”
“They have personalities.” Dove flushed slightly. “I know… I know that sounds daft, but… but it’s true, Ma’am.”
“It sounds like Crystal.” Evelyn smiled. “She named them all, you know. The Madame Alfred Carrière was ‘the Grand Dame.’ The Gertrude Jekyll was ‘the Romantic.’ The little climber by the wall was ‘the Upstart.’”
“The Upstart.” Dove laughed—a genuine laugh, full and warm, and Evelyn felt her heart clench at the sound of it. “That’s perfect. She’s always reaching beyond herself, trying to get higher than her roots should allow.”
“Perhaps she sees something worth reaching for.”
Dove’s eyes met Evelyn’s, a complicit glint passed between them, unspoken, but present and acknowledged.
The Madame Alfred Carrière did bloom first, on the first week of May.
Dove cut the first flower herself, brought it inside, and placed it in a small vase on Evelyn’s desk. She did not ask permission, nor did she announce what she was going to do. She simply did it, and when Evelyn looked up from her work to find the cream-white bloom perfuming her study, she understood that something had shifted.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It reminded me of you.” Dove was standing in the doorway, watching her. “She is elegant and enduring, and lovelier for having survived the winter.”
“Dove…”
Dove’s voice was soft but steady. “I know I’m not supposed to—I know you said we’d go slowly, and we have, and I’m grateful. But I need to tell you something, and I need you to hear it.”
“I’m listening.”
Dove crossed the room and sat on the ground beside Evelyn’s chair—simply there, close, legs tucked underneath herself and hands resting on her thighs.
“I dream about you, Ma’am,” she said. “I think about you when I’m in the garden, when I’m reading, and when I’m falling asleep. I think about your hands, and your voice, and the way you look at me like I’m worth looking at. I think about—” She faltered, gathered herself. “I think about what it would feel like to be yours, the way Crystal was.”
“Dove…”
“I-I know, I’m not ready. I know there’s still so much wrong with me. But I wanted you to know that—that it’s not just gratitude. It’s not just that you saved me. I want to be close to you. I want to touch you, and be touched by you, and… and I don’t know how to do any of that without being terrified, but I want it anyway. Does that make sense?”
Evelyn reached down, tilted Dove’s chin up until their eyes met. “It makes perfect sense, pet.”
“Will you—” Dove’s voice caught. “Will you please teach me, Ma’am? Will you please show me how to want things without being afraid?”
“I don’t think anyone can really teach that. I think you just practice, doing the thing that frightens you, and discovering that you survive it. When you do it again, you discover that it hurts less, and so you keep doing it until the fear becomes familiar, and then manageable, and then—eventually—something you can set aside.”
“I… I want to practice.” Dove’s gaze was steady, certain in a way Evelyn had never seen before. “I want to practice with you, if you’ll have me.”
“Oh, little colm.” Evelyn stroked her thumb across Dove’s cheekbone. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”
They did not rush.
What followed was a gradual exploration—kisses that lengthened and deepened, touches that ventured further, nights spent tangled together in Evelyn’s bed, learning each other’s responses. Inevitably, there were setbacks: moments when Dove froze as memories overwhelmed her and she had to pull away and breathe through panic while Evelyn waited, patient and present. But there were breakthroughs too. The first time Dove initiated a kiss without asking permission. The first time she guided Evelyn’s hand to where she wanted it. The first time she arched into pleasure and cried out her climax without shame.
“It’s never been like this,” she said afterwards, lying in Evelyn’s arms, her skin still flushed. “I didn’t know it could be like this.”
“Like what?”
Dove struggled for a few moments to find the right words; then, she said, “like we’re actually together, not just bodies moving against each other. It felt like it matters that it’s you, like it matters that it’s me.”
“It does matter. It matters very much.”
Dove pressed closer, her face against Evelyn’s throat. “I love you,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that. I don’t know if it’s too soon, or too much, or—”
“You’re allowed.” Evelyn’s arms tightened around her. “And I love you too, Dove. I have for some time.”
There was something in the way Dove said love that made Evelyn’s heart catch. She knew Dove showed a slight accent when stressed; its presence became more marked as she progressed with her healing, and especially after releasing that pent-up rage a few months back. Now, Evelyn could finally place it. Dove was Irish, like her mother had been.
Chapter Eight: The High Street
It had taken months to build up to this.
The first time Evelyn suggested Dove might walk to the corner shop alone, Dove had looked at her as though she’d proposed a trip to the moon. The second time, a week later, Dove had made it to the front gate before her legs refused to carry her further. The third time, she’d reached the end of the road, stood there for ten minutes, and came back trembling but triumphant.
“I did it,” she’d said, breathless with the magnitude of her achievement. “I walked to the post box and back.”
“You did,” Evelyn had said, and kissed her forehead. “I’m proud of you.”
Now, three months later, Dove had a routine.
Tuesday mornings were for the shops. The greengrocer first—Mr Anand, who saved her the good tomatoes and asked after the roses. Then the fishmonger, where Mrs Patel, the woman with the kind eyes, always wrapped the salmon twice because she knew Dove walked home. There was the butcher, Mr Perkins, where she’d learned to ask for cuts by name instead of pointing mutely. And finally, the florist on the corner of Willoughby Lane, where Mrs Margaret kept the interesting bulbs under the counter for her regulars.
Dove had become a regular, known—and cherished.
“Off to your rounds, then?” Mrs Holloway had asked that morning, as Dove gathered her canvas bags.
“The usual,” Dove had said, and smiled, and meant it.
She remembered leaving. She remembered the walk down the hill, the particular slant of June sunlight through the lime trees on Hampstead Lane. She remembered Aisha, Mr Anand’s daughter, who had passed her exams, and there had been sweets on the counter, and she’d taken one when offered because she was learning to accept small kindnesses.
She remembered Mrs Patel wrapping the salmon, twice as always, with brown paper and string.
She remembered stepping out onto the high street.
And then—Fragments. A voice. A face she couldn’t place but her body remembered, her body screamed at. Words that landed like blows—and then, and then… the word, that word, the one he used to whisper while he—
She was in the garden.
She didn’t know how she’d got there. She didn’t know how long she’d been there. Her knees were in the soil, her hands were gripping something—a rose cane, its thorns biting into her palms, drawing blood she couldn’t feel—and she was speaking words that weren’t English, words she hadn’t spoken in years, a child’s prayer her mother taught her before her mother became a ghost:
“Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire, atá lán de ghrásta, tá an Tiarna leat…”
She repeated it over and over, like a rosary without beads, the only safe thing left in her head.
She couldn’t stop. If she stopped, she would have to remember. If she stopped, she would have to be here, in a body that had been seen, recognised, claimed again by the past. So, she kept whispering and rocking, her eyes fixed on the roses—Crystal’s roses, her roses—and prayed to a God she wasn’t sure she believed in anymore to make it stop, to make it all stop, to let her stay here in the dirt where nothing could reach her.
“…Is beannaithe thú idir mná, agus is beannaithe toradh do bhroinn, Íosa…”
Evelyn knew something was wrong before she reached the front door.
The door was ajar, as though someone had pushed it shut but not checked. The alarm panel inside showed disarmed, but the timestamp was wrong: 11:47. Dove should have been home by noon at the latest. It was nearly three.
“Dove?”
No answer.
She stepped inside, and her foot connected with something soft. An apple, bruised and rolling. Then another. She looked down.
The hallway was scattered with the debris of a Tuesday shopping trip. A canvas bag had spilt, and tomatoes had burst against the skirting board, red pulp smeared like something worse. The paper-wrapped salmon had come half open, and the smell was beginning to turn in the afternoon warmth. Flowers—roses, Dove always bought roses from Margaret—lay crushed against the parquet, petals torn and scattered.
Evelyn’s heart stopped.
“Dove!”
She methodically moved through the house. The kitchen was empty, untouched. The sitting room was empty. The study was empty as well.
Upstairs, now.
She took the stairs two at a time, her breath coming sharp.
Dove’s room was empty. Her own room was empty as well.
She came back downstairs, forcing herself to think, to track, to find.
Dove’s not downstairs or upstairs. The groceries were dropped at the door; there was no attempt to put them away—
Only the garden is left. Daft woman, you should’ve checked there, first.
Evelyn went to the kitchen window and looked out.
Dove was on her knees among the roses, in the far corner where the oldest bushes grew. Even from here, Evelyn could see that something was terribly wrong. Dove’s posture was hunched, collapsed, her hands gripping the canes hard enough that the thorns must be drawing blood. Her dress—the blue one, the one she’d chosen that morning with such care—was smeared with dirt. Her hair had come loose from its pins and hung in tangles around her face.
She was rocking back and forth in a small, rhythmic motion, and her lips were moving.
Evelyn was out the door before she finished processing what she was seeing.
She crossed the garden at a run, then slowed as she drew near. Dove didn’t look up or seem to register her approaching at all. The rocking continued, and now Evelyn could hear the words—uttered in a language whose memories she’d heard deep in her heart:
“…Naomh Mhuire, a Mháthair Dé, guigh orainn na peacaigh, anois agus ar uair ár mbáis…”
Irish. Dove was praying in Irish.
Evelyn had never heard her speak it before. She hadn’t known Dove could.
But Evelyn knew those words. Had known them since before she could read, kneeling beside her mother’s chair in the evening light, the rosary beads clicking softly. Her mother’s voice, soft with Galway: Say it with me, a stór. Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire…
“Dove.” She kept her voice low, gentle. “Dove, it’s Evelyn. I’m here.”
Dove didn’t respond. The prayer continued, looping back to its beginning:
“Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire, atá lán de ghrásta…”
Evelyn lowered herself to the soil, heedless of her clothes. The earth was warm from the sun, and the air was fragrant with mulch and rose petals. She could see now that Dove’s hands were bleeding—multiple small punctures from the thorns, welling red against her pale skin. She was gripping the canes so hard her knuckles were white.
Words would not reach her. English would not reach her. Dove had gone somewhere deep, somewhere old, and if Evelyn wanted to find her there, she would have to follow.
She took a breath. And joined her.
“…tá an Tiarna leat.”
Evelyn’s voice was soft, rusty with disuse, but the words came back as though she had never stopped saying them. “Is beannaithe thú idir mná, agus is beannaithe toradh do bhroinn, Íosa.”
Dove’s rocking faltered.
“Naomh Mhuire, a Mháthair Dé,” Evelyn continued, her voice steady, an anchor in the dark, “guigh orainn na peacaigh, anois agus ar uair ár mbáis. Amen.”
Then, softer still, no longer a prayer but a promise:
“Tá tú sábháilte. Tá tú sa bhaile agus ní ghortóidh aon duine thú anseo.”
Silence. The garden held its breath.
Dove’s head turned. Slowly, as though the motion cost her everything she had. Her eyes—wild, lost, red-rimmed—found Evelyn, kneeling there in the dirt, in her good clothes, with her mother’s prayer on her lips.
“You…” The word came out broken, bewildered. “You speak…”
“My mother was from Galway,” Evelyn said softly. The Irish was still there, colouring her vowels, warming them. “I learned it at her knee. The same as you, I reckon.”
Dove stared at her. Something shifted in her expression—the wild panic giving way to recognition. She was not alone. She had never been alone.
“I didn’t know,” Dove whispered. “I didn’t know you—”
“There’s a great deal you don’t know about me yet, little colm. We have time.”
Dove’s breath hitched—a catching, gasping sound—and then she spoke, her voice raw and cracked:
“I can’t remember.”
“What can’t you remember?”
“How I got here.” Dove’s gaze drifted, unfocused, seeing something that wasn’t the garden. “I was—I was at the shops. I was fine. And then—and then—”
Her breath came faster. “There was a man. He knew me. He knew me. He said—he called me—”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I can’t remember how I got home.” Dove’s voice rose, edged with panic. “I was on the high street and then I was here and I don’t know—did I walk? Did I run? Did anyone see me? I can’t remember—”
“Dove?”
Evelyn’s voice was firm, an anchor. Dove’s eyes focussed on her.
“Stay with me. You’re here now. That’s what matters. You made it home. Your body brought you somewhere safe, even when your mind couldn’t.”
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t think. I could only—” Dove’s gaze dropped to her bleeding hands, still wrapped around the thorny canes. “I was praying. I haven’t prayed since I was a girl. I don’t even—I didn’t know I still knew the words… Mum’s prayers… and me aunt’s prayers…” Dove’s voice cracked. “She used to say them over me at night, when I was little, before—before everything—” She couldn’t finish. Her face crumpled, and the sobs came—great, wrenching things that shook her whole body.
Evelyn didn’t hesitate. She reached out and wrapped her arms around Dove, pulling her close. Dove collapsed against her, hands finally releasing the roses, blood smearing against Evelyn’s blouse as she clutched at her instead.
“I thought I was better,” Dove gasped between sobs. “I thought I was fixed. I had a routine. I knew people. I was starting to feel like—like a person—and then he looked at me and it all—I couldn’t—”
“Shh.” Evelyn held her tighter, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other wrapped firmly around her waist. “You are my person, Dove. Nothing that man said changes that.”
“He knew what I was. What they made me. He looked at me and he saw—”
“He saw an opportunity to cause pain.” Evelyn’s voice hardened. “He did not see you, Dove. He doesn’t know you. He never will.”
Dove was shaking so hard Evelyn could feel it in her own bones. The sobs continued, wave after wave, years of terror and grief and rage pouring out into the summer afternoon. Evelyn held her through all of it, steady and present, her lips pressed to Dove’s hair.
Finally—after however many minutes or hours, the sobs began to ease. Dove’s breathing slowed. Her grip on Evelyn’s blouse loosened, though she didn’t let go entirely.
“I ruined everything,” she whispered. “The shopping. Your blouse. The—” She looked at her hands, at the blood. “The roses. I think I hurt the roses.”
“The roses will recover. So will the blouse. So will you.”
“How do you know?”
Evelyn drew back just enough to look at her—this woman she loved, bloodied, dirt-streaked and tear-stained, who had been taken to Hell and had clawed her way back out again.
“Because you’re still here,” she said. “Because when everything in you wanted to run, you ran here, to this house and this garden. You ran—to me. You didn’t know you were doing it, but you did it anyway. Some part of you—the deepest part, the truest part—knew where you were safest.”
“I don’t feel strong. I feel—I feel like I broke again. I feel like I’m still broken.”
“You are the strongest person I know.” Evelyn cupped her face, tilted it up, and when she spoke again there was iron in it, her father’s Edinburgh granite beneath the words. “And broken things can be mended. You’ve proved that already. You’ll prove it again.”
Dove stared at her for a long moment. Then, very quietly:
“Tá mé i ngrá leat.”
Evelyn’s breath caught. She had not heard those words spoken to her in Irish since her mother died. Had not expected to hear them again.
“Agus mise leatsa, a stór,” she said softly. And then, because Dove deserved to hear it plainly: “I love you too. Now let’s get you inside.”
Chapter Nine: Edinburgh Steel
The next few days were quiet.
Evelyn tended to Dove’s hands—cleaned the punctures, applied antiseptic, wrapped them in gauze that Dove stared at as though she couldn’t quite believe someone was taking this much care over something so small. She made soup, and tea, and sat with Dove in the evenings while Dove stared at nothing and Evelyn pretended to read.
They did not speak of what had happened. Not yet. Dove was not ready, and Evelyn would not push.
On the third day, Dove returned to the garden.
Evelyn watched from the kitchen window as she moved among the roses, checking the canes she had gripped so desperately, murmuring apologies to the plants she feared she had damaged. Her hands were still bandaged. She moved slowly, carefully, as though the world had become fragile and might shatter if she stepped too hard.
On the fifth day, she spoke.
They were in the sitting room. Evening light slanted through the windows, turning everything gold. Dove was curled in her usual chair, a cup of tea cooling untouched on the table beside her. Evelyn was in the armchair opposite, a book open in her lap that she had not turned a page of in twenty minutes.
“He called me something,” Dove said.
Evelyn looked up. Dove’s gaze was fixed on her hands, on the gauze wrapped around her palms.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I think I need to.” Dove’s voice was barely above a whisper. “I think if I don’t say it, it will stay inside me forever, festering, rotting.”
Evelyn set the book aside. “Then tell me.”
Dove was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, the word came out flat, dead, as though she had detached herself from it in order to say it at all.
“Fucktoy.”
The word hung in the air between them.
“He said—” Dove’s voice cracked, then steadied again. “He said the Boss always wondered what happened to me; that I was one of his favourites. His perfect little—” She couldn’t say it again. “That’s what he used to call me. When he—every time he—” She pressed her bandaged hands against her eyes. “That’s what I was.”
Evelyn did not move.
Something had shifted in her. Something had gone very still, very cold, in the place where her heart should be. She was aware of her own breathing, slow and measured. Aware of the quality of light in the room. Aware that if she spoke too soon, her voice would betray her, and Dove would think the fury was directed at her.
“Dove,” she said at last. Her voice was calm. Terribly calm. “Look at me.”
Dove lowered her hands. Her eyes were wet and her face was blotched with grief and shame.
“That is not what you are,” Evelyn said. “That is not what you have ever been. That is a word a small and vicious man used to make himself feel powerful. It says everything about him and nothing about you. Ye ken?”
“I, I know that, I do, but when he said it, I was there again, I was back in that room, and I couldn’t—”
“I ken.” Evelyn rose from her chair, crossed to Dove, and knelt before her. She took Dove’s bandaged hands in her own, gently, and held them. “I ken, me colm. And I am so sorry that happened to you. All of it. Everything he did, everything everybody else did.”
Dove’s tears spilled over. “I thought I was past it. I thought I was better.”
“You are better. You are so much better. But healing isn’t a straight line. It circles back. It ambushes you. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means… it means, mo stór, that you’re human.”
They stayed like that for a long moment, Evelyn kneeling on the carpet, Dove’s hands in hers. Then Evelyn rose, pressed a kiss to Dove’s forehead, and said, “I need to make a phone call. Will you be all right for a few minutes?”
Dove nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good girl.”
Evelyn went to her study and left the door slightly ajar behind her.
She did not notice the shadow slipping in from the hallway. It was Dove, who had risen from her chair and followed, who stood now just inside the door that had not quite latched and left just enough space for her to squeeze through.
Evelyn stood for a moment in the quiet, breathing slowly, letting the mask settle into place. Then she crossed to her desk, opened a drawer, and retrieved a mobile phone—not her usual one, but an older model, pay-as-you-go, the kind that left no trace.
She dialled a number from memory.
It rang twice before a male voice answered. “Oi!”
“It’s Ashworth.”
A pause. “Bin a while, Missus.”
“I expect it has.” Evelyn paused, then she said, “I need you to find me a lad.” Her voice had gone soft. Anyone who knew Evelyn Ashworth knew that when her voice dropped to a murmur, when the Rs began to roll and the vowels shortened to nothing, someone was in very deep trouble indeed. “Prowled Hampstead High Street, Tuesday morning, sometime between eleven and noon. Mid-height, sandy hair going grey, possibly wearing a delivery uniform. He approached a lass outside the fishmonger’s.”
Dove pressed her bandaged hand to her mouth.
“And when I find ‘im, guv? Give ‘im some Barney? Bit of claret on the cobbles?”
“No. He’s small fry. He’ll be more useful as a messenger.” Soft, so soft. Almost gentle. “Tuig this—he’s connected, ye ken? He’s got hooks in the underground, with the kind of bastairdean who do things to young lasses against their will.” Evelyn paused, letting the meaning of what she had said steep fur just the right amount of time. The next words came out precise, deliberate, each consonant carved from ice. “I want to know tae whom this lad reports. I want to know how he recognised the girl he approached—my lass. And I want him to know gu soilleir that if he or any of his cronies so much as breathes in her direction again, the consequences will be… significant.”
My lass. Dove’s eyes filled with tears.
“Understood.”
“Glè mhath. You keep me apprised now, and soon. You tuig me?”
She ended the call, returned the phone to the drawer, and stood for a moment with her hands flat on the desk, breathing slowly. The anger was still there, quiet and patient, coiled like a black mamba ready to strike. It would stay with her for a long time, she suspected.
There was a rustle.
Evelyn looked around. Dove stood in the doorway, her bandaged hands clasped in front of her, her face wet with tears—but she was smiling a wobbly, wondering smile.
“Shall I light the fire, Ma’am?” she said. “Just now, the room felt as cold as the Highlands.”
Evelyn stared at her.
For a moment, she could not process what she had heard. Dove had been listening. Dove had heard everything—and instead of being frightened, instead of shrinking away from this glimpse of what Evelyn could become, she had made a joke.
A dry, quiet, brave joke. At Evelyn’s expense.
The corner of Evelyn’s mouth twitched. She fought it, but it was no use. “Did you just make a joke at my expense, lass?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Ma’am.” Dove’s expression was carefully innocent—too carefully innocent. “I was merely expressing concern for the heating.”
The heating—in June. Unlikely—and disarming.
Evelyn looked at her—really looked—and saw something she had never seen before. A glint in those pale blue eyes. A spark. The faintest echo of a girl who had once been clever, and quick, and brave, before the world had tried to beat it out of her.
“Come here,” Evelyn said.
Dove crossed the room and stopped before her. Evelyn stood, reached out, cupped her face, and tilted it up.
“There you are,” she said softly. The Irish was creeping back into her voice, warming it. “I wondered when you’d start to show yourself.”
“I heard you,” Dove whispered. “I heard what you—” She couldn’t finish. Fresh tears spilled over. “No one has ever—”
“Hush.” Evelyn brushed the tears away with her thumbs. “You are my lass. That means something. It means I will protect you, by whatever means necessary. Do you understand?”
Dove nodded, wordless.
“Good.” Evelyn kissed her forehead. “And for the record—the Highlands are beautiful. The cold is bracing.”
“Is that so, Ma’am?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
But she was smiling when she said it. And so was Dove.
Chapter Ten: Recovery
The days after were quiet.
Evelyn did not press Dove to speak of what had happened, and Dove did not offer. They existed in a careful, gentle space—Evelyn tending the wounds on Dove’s hands, changing bandages, applying salve. Dove submitted to Evelyn’s ministrations with a calm that, whilst not quite peace, no longer was teetering on the brink of panic.
On the second afternoon after the incident, while Dove slept upstairs, Evelyn’s untraceable phone buzzed.
She answered on the first ring. “Yes?”
“Go’ ‘im.” The Cockney voice was matter of fact. “Name’s Terry Whelan. Small-time runner for a crew out of Sahfwark—the kind whot moves brass, if you catch me drift. ‘E weren’t using no delivery clobber, that was just a whistle he half-inched off a van. Clocked your lass from before, he says. From when she was… in circulation. Said he weren’t gonna do nuffin’. Just wanted to see if she remembered ‘im. Thought maybe she’d be amenable like, for old times’ sake.” There was a pause and a slight crack of knuckles on the other end. “I ‘splained ‘im that she wern’t. ‘E’s go’ t’ drum now.”
“Did he?”
“Clear as day, guv.”
“And his employers?”
“Tha’s the interestin’ bit. Crew he runs wiv? They thought she was brown, official like. Someone paid good bees to ‘ave ‘er disappeared, donkey’s ago. When Whelan told ‘em ‘e’d clocked ‘er alive and well in ‘Ampstead, buyin’ fish like a proper lady, they wos… surprised, like.”
Evelyn’s blood ran cold. “They know where she is.”
“Yeh, tha’ they do, guv. I give ‘em the drum like you asked, but knowin’ these geezers, might take a bit for it to sink in, if you catch me meanin’.”
Evelyn was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “You’ve done well. Thank you.”
“Always a pleasure, guv. You need anyfin’ else, you know where to find me.”
She ended the call and stood in the quiet of her study, looking out at the garden where Dove had bled and prayed and broken open.
They thought she was dead.
Someone had paid to have her disappeared. Someone had trafficked Dove, used her until they got bored of her, and ordered her erased. Somehow, through whatever miracle of cruelty and chance, she survived—passing from hand to hand until she ended up on an auction block in a posh London auction house, where Evelyn had found her.
They know she’s alive now.
Evelyn’s jaw tightened. Let them know. Let them come, if they dared. She had spent twenty years building a reputation, a network, a quiet empire of favours owed and secrets kept. She had never used it for violence… but this time she would, if she had to.
On the third night, Dove woke to silence.
She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling. Sleep had been difficult since the incident—her mind would not quiet, replaying the man’s voice, his grip, the word he had called her. But this was different. Something had woken her.
She rose, pulled on the robe Evelyn had given her, and padded to the connecting door. It was ajar, as it always was now. Evelyn’s room beyond was empty, the bed undisturbed.
Somewhere in the house, faintly, she could hear a voice. Not speaking. Murmuring. A rhythm she almost recognised.
She padded barefoot down the hall.
The door to Evelyn’s study was ajar. Lamplight spilled through the gap, warm and golden. Dove pressed her hand to the frame and looked through.
Evelyn knelt on a small cushion beside her desk, head bowed, hands clasped before her, rosary beads threaded through her fingers. Her lips moved, and the words that emerged were low, measured, ancient—a language Dove did not recognise.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus…”
Dove’s breath caught.
She had heard the Hail Mary a thousand times, both in English and Irish; she had mumbled it by rote—and screamed it in despair. But she had never heard it like this. Evelyn’s voice was steady, almost severe, each syllable precise. This was not the soft Irish of her mother’s prayers. This was something older, deeper.
“…Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”
Evelyn’s hands stilled on the beads. She did not turn, but her voice came, quiet in the lamplight:
“You can come in, little colm. I know you’re there.”
Dove stepped into the room. Evelyn did not rise from the kneeler, but she turned her head, watching as Dove crossed the carpet and stopped beside her.
“What language is that?” Dove asked softly. “I didn’t recognise the words.”
“I was reciting the Rosary in Latin, Dove.” Evelyn’s thumb moved to the next bead.
Dove was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I haven’t been to Mass in… I don’t know how long. Since before… everything.”
Evelyn waited.
“I thought my faith was gone,” Dove continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “I thought they’d beaten it out of me, along with everything else. But in the garden, when I was—” She stopped and swallowed. “I… I was praying, Ma’am. I didn’t decide to. It just… came.”
“The soul remembers what the mind forgets.”
Dove looked at her. “Do you believe that?”
“I do.”
Another silence. The lamp flickered. Dove’s hands twisted in the fabric of her robe.
“Would you—” She stopped, started again. “Would it be permitted, Ma’am, if I… if I asked to go to Mass?”
Evelyn set down the rosary. She rose from the kneeler, slowly, and took Dove’s hands in her own.
“You don’t need my permission to speak to God, little colm. But if you’re asking whether I’ll take you—” She smiled, soft and warm. “I would be honoured.”
Dove’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “I… I don’t even know whether I believe in God anymore. I don’t think I do, at least not the way I did when I was a girl.”
“Faith isn’t a light switch, pet. It flickers, dims, and sometimes it goes out entirely and you think it’s gone forever.” Evelyn squeezed her hands gently. “And then one day, in a garden, in a crisis, it comes back, because it was never really gone.”
“Will you teach me to pray in Latin, Ma’am?” Dove asked. “I… I only ever learned to pray in English or Irish.”
Evelyn looked at her and her expression softened.
“We can start tomorrow, mo stór”
Chapter Eleven: Consequences
Strangers started showing up in the quiet streets of Hampstead. A van was spotted circling the high street and its vicinities several times. People unknown in the neighbourhood started asking inappropriate questions, especially from the fishmonger’s and the florist. This went on for days.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
Evelyn got a call about two days after the van’s last appearance in Hampstead.
“Oi, guv.”
“It’s good to hear your voice. I take it the message was received?”
“Oh, loud and clear, Ma’m. I don’t fink that crew will bother your bird. Proper delivery, extra careful, like, if you get my meaning, Missus.”
“As always, you prove your value and reliability. You’ll be properly compensated.”
“Always a pleasure, guv.”
Days later, Evelyn and Dove were kneeling together in prayer. Evelyn was teaching Dove how to pray in Latin.
She started with the Gloria. She would say the prayer, and Dove would repeat it, stumbling over the unfamiliar syllables as her tongue tripped on the vowels and the consonants landed in the wrong places. Dove grew frustrated, apologised, and tried again.
“It’s not Irish,” she said one night. “The sounds don’t fit in my mouth the same way.”
“It’s not meant to be comfortable,” Evelyn said. “It’s meant to be deliberate. Each word considered, each syllable placed. Irish is the language of the heart. Latin is the language of the mind.”
“Then why pray in both?”
“Because our faith has both heart and mind, my colm.”
Weeks passed. Dove’s pronunciation improved. She learned the Gloria, then the Pater Noster, then the Ave Maria.
One evening, she made it through an entire decade of the rosary without error, and when she looked up, Evelyn was smiling.
“Well done, little colm.”
Dove flushed with pleasure. It was such a small thing—memorising words, reciting them in order—but it felt like proof that her mind still worked, that she could still learn, that she was capable of growth.
Summer turned to late summer. Dove’s hands healed, leaving faint scars that would fade with time. She returned to the garden, more carefully now, wearing gloves. The roses bloomed in riots of colour, and she tended them with joy.
One evening, Evelyn called Dove into the study.
“Come in, Dove; please, sit,” she said, indicating the chair across from her desk.
Dove sat, her heart suddenly pounding.
Evelyn was quiet for a long moment. With hands folded on the desk before her, she spoke, with a measured, careful voice.
“Dove, you have been with me for a bit under a year now. You have healed in ways I was not certain you could. You have found your faith again, discovered your voice, and—” she paused a moment before saying, “and you’ve found yourself, or you’re beginning to, I think.”
Dove said nothing. She could feel something coming, something enormous, and she did not know if she wanted to hear it.
“When I brought you into my household,” Evelyn continued, “you had no choice. You were property, sold at auction. Whatever you felt for me in those early months—gratitude, fear, dependency—none of it was freely given. You were surviving. That is not the same as choosing.”
“Ma’am—”
“Please let me finish.” Evelyn’s voice was gentle but firm. “I need you to understand what I am offering you. I have contacts and resources. I can provide you with a new identity, clean and untraceable. I can give you enough resources to start over. I can arrange passage to Ireland, if you wish to go home, or anywhere else in the world. You would be truly free, with no obligation whatsoever, to me or anyone else in the world. You could walk out that door tomorrow and never look back, and I would not stop you.”
The silence stretched between them.
“And if I don’t want to leave?” Dove’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Then you stay; but not as you have been thus far. If you choose to stay, you do so fully and willingly, with your eyes open and your consent freely given.”
Evelyn paused a moment and said, “I will not keep anyone who does not wish to be kept, and I will not offer my collar to someone who has not chosen me as freely as I have chosen her.”
Dove’s eyes filled with tears.
“You’re asking me to choose.”
“I am telling you to that you are free to choose. It’s not the same thing.”
Dove was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “May I… may I have time to think about it?”
“Take all the time you need.” Evelyn’s voice was soft. “There is no deadline, and there is no wrong answer. Whatever you decide, I will respect and honour it.”
“And whilst I’m deciding?”
“You are my cherished guest.” Evelyn rose from behind the desk, crossed to where Dove sat, and took her hands in her own. “I will not touch you without your invitation. I will not command you. You will sleep where you wish, eat what you wish, come and go as you please. The doors are not locked. They never have been.”
Dove looked up at her. “I don’t know who I am without you.”
“Then perhaps,” Evelyn said gently, “it is time to find out.”
Chapter Twelve: Ireland
The idea came to Dove three days later.
She was sitting in the garden, watching the roses sway in the summer breeze, when she realised what she needed.
She needed to know her roots.
She needed to know where she had come from before she could decide where she was going to.
That evening, over dinner—they still ate together, though the dynamic had shifted, grown more careful, more equal—Dove said, “I want to go to Ireland.”
Evelyn set down her fork. “To stay?”
“To visit. To… to find out.” Dove hesitated. “I don’t remember much. I know I was born in Kildare; I know my mother’s name was Mary, and I know she died when I was young, but I don’t know anything else. I don’t even know my father’s name. It was all—” She gestured vaguely as she waved a hand around her head. “It was all lost in what came after.”
“And you want to find it.”
“Yes. I want to try finding it.”
Evelyn was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I have family in Galway. My mother’s people. I haven’t visited in years.” She paused. “We could go together, if you would like some company.”
Dove’s breath caught. “You would do that?”
“I would.” Evelyn smiled, soft and warm. “Besides, I’ve been meaning to visit my grandmother’s grave. This seems as good a time as any.”
They flew to Dublin on a grey morning in late July.
Evelyn had arranged everything from flights to rental car, and accommodations. She had also, provided Dove with a passport in a name that was not quite her own, but close enough to feel familiar: Aoife Byrne.
Dove had stared at it for a long time before tucking it into her bag.
The drive to Kildare took an hour. Dove sat in the passenger seat, watching the green fields roll past, and felt something strange stirring in her chest. She had not been back to Ireland since—since she could not remember when.
“Are you all right?” Evelyn asked.
“I don’t know.” Dove pressed her hand to the window, feeling the cool glass beneath her palm. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”
“You’re not supposed to feel anything. You feel what you feel. That’s enough.”
The records office in Kildare was a small, grey building on a quiet street. Dove went in alone. Evelyn waited outside, reading The Heart of Darkness for the umpteenth time, and, once again, she found no redeeming qualities in that bleak, depressing book.
The woman behind the counter was helpful, patient, and did not ask questions Dove could not answer.
It took two hours. But at the end of it, Dove held a copy of her birth certificate, which told her who she really was.
Aoife Mary O’Brien. Born 12 June 1985, Naas, County Kildare. Father: Patrick Joseph O’Brien. Mother: Mary Catherine O’Brien, née Dunne.
Beneath that, there were two death certificates she had not asked for, but the clerk had found anyway.
Patrick Joseph O’Brien. Born 22 July 1958, Maynooth, County Kildare. Died 17 February 1989, Dublin.
Mary Catherine O’Brien, née Dunne. Born 15 March 1962, Naas, County Kildare. Died 3 September 1991, Dublin.
Those were her parents, both gone before she was ten years old.
There was more—a Naas address, now demolished; a parish now merged with another; and grandparents, all deceased. It wasn’t much, but it was something: it proved that she had existed before; it said that she had been someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter. Someone’s niece, before she became no one’s anything.
Aoife.
Her name was Aoife.
She had not known that. She had not remembered.
She walked back to the car with the papers folded carefully in her pocket. Evelyn took one look at her face and said nothing, only reached over and squeezed her hand.
They drove west.
Galway was different.
Where Kildare had been grey and quiet, Galway was alive with music spilling from pubs, the smell of the sea brought in by the breeze, and the sound of Irish spoken fluently on street corners.
Evelyn relaxed in a way Dove had never seen before. Her posture softened, and her accent shifted toward the musical lilt that filled the streets.
“My mother grew up here,” she said, as they walked along the bay. “She used to bring me in the summers, when I was a girl. Before she died.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.” Evelyn’s gaze was distant. “Old enough to remember, and young enough that it still felt like the end of the world.”
Dove slipped her hand into Evelyn’s. It was the first time she had initiated touch since the choice had been offered. Evelyn glanced at her but said nothing, only tightened her grip.
They visited the grave of Evelyn’s grandparents the next morning.
It was in a small cemetery on a hill overlooking the bay, its stones weathered by salt and wind. Evelyn’s grandmother was buried beside her husband, and both of their names were carved in Irish: Máire Uí Conchúir and Seán Ó Conchúir.
Evelyn knelt on the grass and prayed the soft, lilting prayers of her childhood, the ones she had learned at her mother’s knee. Dove stood a little apart, watching, and felt something shift inside her.
This was where Evelyn came from. This was the soil that had made her. The Irish lilt in her voice when emotion filled her, the warmth beneath the Edinburgh steel—it had roots here, in this salt air, in this green hillside, in these worn stones.
And Dove had roots too, now. A name. A parish. Parents who had loved her once, before they died.
She was not nothing. She had never been nothing.
That evening, they sat in a pub near the harbour, nursing pints of Guinness. The music was loud, the crowd cheerful, and for a while they simply sat together quietly, watching the world go by.
Then Dove said, “I’ve decided.”
Evelyn set down her glass. Her face was carefully neutral, but Dove could see the tension in her shoulders and the stillness in her hands.
“And?”
Dove took a breath. Then another. When she spoke, it was in Irish—the language of her mother, the language of this place, the language she had thought she had forgotten.
<“I want to stay,”> she said. <“I want to be yours, but not because I have nowhere else to go or because I don’t know who I am.”>
She reached across the table and took Evelyn’s hand.
<“I know who I am now. I’m Aoife O’Brien, born in Kildare, daughter of Mary and Patrick, and I choose you, freely and willingly, with my eyes open.”>
Evelyn’s breath caught. For a moment, her composure cracked—and beneath it, Dove saw something raw and vulnerable, something that had been waiting for this answer without daring to hope for it.
<“You’re certain.”> It was not quite a question.
<“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”>
Evelyn lifted Dove’s hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles, once, softly.
<“Then let’s go home, my heartbeat,”> she said.
Chapter Thirteen: The Collar
They returned to London on a Sunday evening.
The house in Hampstead felt different now. It was the same walls, furniture, and garden—but something had shifted. Dove walked through the rooms and felt, for the first time, that she belonged here as someone who had chosen to stay.
Evelyn gave her space. They slept in separate rooms that first week—Dove’s choice, though Evelyn did not press. There was a strange, careful formality between them now. They had made their declarations in that Galway pub, but the shape of what came next was still unformed.
It was Dove who broke the silence.
“I want to see that surgeon you called about my body,” she said one morning over breakfast.
Evelyn looked up from her tea. “Oh?”
Dove’s hands were steady, but her voice wavered slightly. “I want… I want my body back, at least what can be gotten back.”
Doctor Weisz had come once before, in those early weeks when Dove was still more like a ghost than a person. He had examined her with clinical detachment, given Evelyn a list of options, and then Evelyn had asked Dove what she wanted changed. Dove remembered the panic, incomprehension, and despair in her words: It isn’t my body Ma’am; it belongs to you. Evelyn had thanked the doctor, told him she’d be in touch, and nothing more had been said.
Now, nearly a year later, Dove understood why Evelyn had waited.
“Tell me.”
Dove took a breath. “My breasts are too large—they were made that way to attract a certain kind of attention. I… I want them natural; and—”
She hesitated, colour rising in her cheeks. “The other surgery. What was done to me down there… I want that undone, if it can be.”
Evelyn was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I’ll make the call today.”
Doctor Weisz came to the house three days later. He examined Dove with the same clinical professionalism as before, and when he was finished, he sat with both of them in the study.
“The breast reduction is straightforward,” he said. “We’ll remove the implants entirely and reshape what remains. You’ll be a natural B cup, perhaps a small C. The scarring will be minimal.”
“And the other thing?” Dove asked.
Weisz hesitated. “The hip implants are also straightforward, and I can work with the adipose tissue around the area to mould it into something real and aesthetically pleasing. The genital reconstruction is going to be more complex. Whoever performed the original surgery was skilled, in a perverse way—the tissue is healthy and there’s no damage. Reverting it…” He made an uncertain shrug. “I can see if it was done with implants or adipose tissue; if it was implants, it will be straightforward, and between myself and my colleague Gail Rosenberg who specialises in genital reconstruction I am confident the result will be very satisfactory. If it was done with adipose tissue… Gail and I can reduce the prominence and restore some of the natural appearance. But I cannot guarantee that it will be exactly as you were before. What I can assure you of is that you will have a proportionate, pleasing result. That’s the best I can offer.”
Dove looked at Evelyn, then back at the doctor. “Yes. Please do it.”
The surgeries took place over two months. Dove healed in the small bedroom that had been hers since the beginning—though now, more often than not, Evelyn joined her there, sitting beside the bed, reading aloud, or simply holding her hand while she slept.
When the bandages came off for the last time, Dove stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself.
She was not the girl who had been taken. That girl was gone, and would never return. But she was not the thing they had made her into, either. She was something new. Something rebuilt. Something that was, finally, her own.
She wept. And Evelyn held her, and said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
Autumn came to Hampstead.
The roses had finished blooming, but Dove still tended the garden, cutting back the dead growth and preparing the beds for the coming winter. She worked in silence, her hands steady, her mind elsewhere.
She had been thinking about the collar for weeks, but not in the way she had thought of it before. This was different. This was a choice she was making, freely, with her eyes open.
She knew what it meant to Evelyn. She had seen the grave on a few occasions when she visited the graveyard with Evelyn:
Vera Thomson, 1960–2019
She had heard the name spoken in moments of quiet grief. Not Crystal, the slave. Vera, the woman. She understood that what she was going to ask for was not small.
That evening, after dinner, Dove knelt in the sitting room, where the fire was burning low and Evelyn sat reading with a glass of wine at her elbow.
Evelyn looked up from her book. Her expression shifted from an initial surprise to tenderness.
“Dove?”
“I want to ask you something,” Dove said. Her voice was steady, but her heart was pounding. “And I want you to know that I’m not asking because I’m broken, afraid, or because I don’t know what else to do. I’m asking because I know exactly what I want.”
Evelyn set down her book and did not speak. Dove had her undivided attention.
“I want your collar,” Dove said. “I want everyone who sees me to know that I belong to you because I chose you. I want to be yours, fully and completely, for as long as you’ll have me.”
The silence stretched between them.
“You understand what you’re asking,” Evelyn said. Her voice trembled with emotion.
“I do.”
“You understand that a collar is not a game. It’s a commitment—a promise that cannot be easily unmade.”
“I know.” Dove reached up and took Evelyn’s hand. “I’m not asking for easy. I’m asking for you.”
Evelyn’s breath caught. For a long moment, she simply looked at Dove—at the woman kneeling before her, whole and healed and choosing this, choosing her.
Then she said, “Wait here.”
She rose and left the room. Dove remained where she was, kneeling, her heart in her throat. The fire crackled and the clock ticked. Then, Evelyn returned, carrying a small wooden box. She knelt in front of Dove, meeting her as an equal in this moment, and opened it.
Inside, there was a silver collar, slim and elegant. It was something made with care and beautiful to behold.
“I had this made after we returned from Ireland,” Evelyn said. “I didn’t know if you would ask, so… I hoped.”
She lifted the collar from the box. On the outside, Dove could see the delicate letters of an inscription, etched into the metal:
Aoife — Mo Chuisle — E.A.
“Your name,” Evelyn said. “Your true name, and what you are to me.”
Dove’s eyes filled with tears. She bowed her head, and Evelyn placed the collar around her neck. It was cool against her skin, and lighter than she had expected. The clasp clicked shut.
“It doesn’t lock,” she said.
“No.” Evelyn cupped Dove’s face in her hands. “You are not my prisoner, mo chuisle. You are my heart. You stay because you choose to stay. The collar is a symbol of that choice—nothing more, nothing less.”
Dove leaned forward and kissed her. It was a kiss between two people who had found each other and chosen to build something new together.
When they parted, Dove was smiling, and both were crying.
“There’s one more thing,” Dove said, dabbing her eyes.
“Oh?”
“I want a holy water font by the front door.” She touched the collar at her throat. “This is my home now. I want it to be blessed.”
Evelyn laughed—a real laugh, warm and surprised and full of joy.
“Then you shall have one, mo chuisle. You shall have whatever you want.”
Epilogue
Two years later, the garden was in full bloom.
Aoife stood at the edge of the rose beds, watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and pink. The collar gleamed at her throat, as bright as the day it had been placed there.
Behind her, she heard footsteps on the gravel path.
“You’ll catch a cold,” Evelyn said, draping a shawl over Aoife’s shoulders.
“I was just thinking,” she said.
“About?”
“About how far we’ve come.” She leaned back into Evelyn’s embrace. “Do you remember what I was like, when you first brought me here?”
“I remember.” Evelyn’s arms tightened around her. “I remember a girl who flinched at kindness, expected cruelty at every turn and had forgotten what it meant to be loved.”
“And now?”
“Now…” Evelyn pressed a kiss to Aoife’s temple. “Now I have a wife who tends my garden, argues with me about politics, and insists on blessings before going out and saying the rosary every night before bed.”
“The rosary is important.”
“You keep telling me.”
They stood together in the fading light, watching the colours shift and change. The holy water font by the door caught the last rays of the sun, glinting softly.
“I never thanked you properly for saving me,” Dove said quietly.
“You saved yourself, Aoife. I just gave you a place to do it.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“No,” Evelyn agreed. “It’s not.”
The sun slipped below the horizon, and the garden fell into shadow. But the warmth between them remained—steady, enduring, unbroken.
<“I love you,”> Aoife said, in Irish. <“My Evelyn. My heart. My home.”>
<“And I love you,”> Evelyn replied. <“My Aoife. My heartbeat. My life.”>
Hand in hand, they walked back to the house together. The door closed behind them, and the night settled over Hampstead.