‘The furniture was very good.’ Margot sounds unconvinced even to herself.
‘Yes, it was. But notthatgood.’
‘So … what were his reasons?’
Now Lavinia laughs, and Margot thinks it’s been a long time since she’s heard that sound.
‘You don’t know?’ her aunt says.
Margot shakes her head.
‘He’s sweet on you.’
For a few seconds Margot doesn’t understand what she means. Sweet on her? What is that? She shakes her head again, but this time it clears something and she grasps what Lavinia is saying.
‘No!’ is her response.
‘Noyou don’t think he is, ornoyou don’t like the idea?’
‘I …’
Margot gazes across the water. They are rounding Pinchgut – Fort Denison – so close she can see the texture of the stone. How many years has it been since she even thought about this place, and it’s here, so close to home? How appropriate that she is passing what used to be a prison to remind her that she’s been in a prison of sorts. She doesn’t want to believe that it’s only taken money to break her out of it, but she can’t ignore the fact. Or that Mr Williams is the reason she has the money. He could have been uninterested in the furniture. And she doesn’t want to think that he was only interested in it because he’s interested in her, but she doesn’t mind the idea. Except …
‘No, I don’t think he is,’ she says to Lavinia.
‘Why?’
‘Because …’ She hasn’t thought this part through; she just feels it to be true. ‘What would he see in me?’
It’s said limply, not because she wants Lavinia to rebut it, but because it’s true and she wishes it weren’t.
Lavinia grips her forearm and almost tugs her so they’re looking eye to eye. ‘What would he see in you?’ she says fiercely. ‘Yourheart, Margot. Your heart.’ Her grip relaxes. ‘It’s there for all to see. Always has been.’
This is something else Margot doesn’t understand. Her heart? That tiny little thing she keeps shut up in a cave, too scared to let it emerge because the world is too bright and too harsh?
‘I don’t think I have much of one,’ she says.
‘Because you don’t see yourself clearly,’ Lavinia says. ‘Isee you.Iknow you. And if you don’t believe what I say I’ll be offended.’ She huffs a little and pulls her handbag closer.
She looks so indignant that Margot laughs and something in her chest loosens. When didshelast laugh?
‘Please don’t be offended,’ she says.
‘I want you to think about it.’
‘About offending you?’
‘About Mr Williams.’
‘What?’ Margot can’t imagine why she needs to consider the antiques dealer she hardly knows, even if he is sweet on her.
‘Or if not him …’ Lavinia stops and looks away, and Margot thinks her chin is trembling, except Lavinia doesn’t cry.
Except she is, in fact, crying as she turns back to look at Margot. ‘I am old,’ she says. ‘I will die soon.’
‘You won’t!’ It’s impossible to think Lavinia won’t be here.
‘I will. We all do, my darling. And I don’t want you to be alone when it happens.’