Chapter Text
It would be easier if it wasn’t beautiful. Beatrice’s father presented her with the Rolls-Royce that morning, parked out on the curve of the gravel driveway where every visitor could see it as they approached. She doesn’t have much inclination towards cars - this is the first she has ever owned - but even she can admit to the allure of its sweeping charcoal exterior, the soft burgundy leather and wood panelling inside. It cost, if she had to guess, perhaps half a million.
When her parents bought the land twenty years ago, they tore down the original Tudor manor that had sat here and built a cube instead, open-plan with floor-to-ceiling windows in every room. It’s impossible not to see the car; she catches glimpses of it all day as she moves through the house, a different angle from every window, its sleek silhouette or its vast behind. It brings sickly-sweet bile to the back of her throat, as if she has been force-fed expensive chocolates. Every time she sees that beautiful car she thinks: good Lord, what a waste.
Her twenty-first birthday party washes over her like flood water and she is caught up in the current, tossed between the driftwood of distant relatives and the debris of vague acquaintances. The guests flow down the driveway in Ferraris and Aston Martins then submerge the house in clashing perfumes and raucous laughter. They are delighted by the tinkling four-piece orchestra playing in the corner, by the catering staff swirling around them with trays of champagne and canapes hefted above their heads.
Beatrice greets her father's old business cronies and asks after their children by name before the current picks her up again, pushes her against her two older half-brothers from her father's first marriages, both permanently surprised to discover she's no longer twelve. What a car, they all tell her, equal parts jealous and impressed. What a beautiful car.
She runs aground next to her uncle - not related by blood but awarded the title for the honour of working as her father’s lawyer for three decades - who kisses both of her cheeks and tells her, “I hear you’ll be in another picture soon.”
“Oh no, Uncle David, graduate school,” she tells him, and is grateful when someone else clutches her arm, pulls her away.
She finds sanctuary with Lilith who tears herself away from making eyes at her new fiancé to push champagne into her hand. The engagement ring is a huge and unruly thing and clinks awkwardly against the glass when she does.
“Having fun?” Lilith asks with a smirk on her face that says she already knows the answer.
Beatrice’s real birthday party was three days ago in her London flat with Lilith and a select handful of her other friends. She longs to be back there now, basking in the warmth of wine and good conversation.
“Your father seems to think I’m making another film.”
Lilith snorts, “Did you tell him you'd rather be run over by that monstrosity in the driveway?”
Count on Lilith not to bother with the social norms that typically guard against insulting your best friend’s twenty-first birthday present. “You don't like it?”
The look of sardonic disbelief Beatrice receives in response to this could knock a weaker woman dead. “I can't imagine you driving it.”
But Beatrice is prevented from agreeing that she can't imagine driving it either by another swirl of the party that tugs them away from each other.
She is surrounded by a battalion of her mother's friends who ask after her love life and coo over the shirt she’s wearing as if she were a child dressed by her parents. It’s almost a relief to be bounced away to a matching pair of board members drinking whiskey and discussing stock prices. A former co-star makes an unexpected appearance, her hair is stroked by a great aunt she hasn’t seen since childhood, Lilith puts more wine in her hands and then Beatrice reaches her parents.
Her father, turning from handsome to stately in his mid-seventies, treats parties like a business opportunity, while for her mother, blooming in her early forties, parties are a retread of her days on movie sets. They arranged the whole affair and now they are the vortex at the centre of the whirlpool to which all guests are inexorably pulled. Beatrice is no exception.
“Darling,” her mother says, pulling her in to kiss her cheek and pick at a spot on her shirt, “You have so many dresses upstairs that you look lovely in.”
“Your car is quite the hit, isn’t it?” Her father never looks at anyone when he speaks to them but scans the room instead, as if he can’t afford to miss a single detail of what’s happening around him. “The talk of the party, I’d say.”
Beatrice doesn’t bother to respond to either comment and they don’t expect her to: most conversations her parents have are less a back and forth than they are a series of isolated statements that no one listens to except the speaker. She sometimes wonders if the last thing they said directly to each other was their wedding vows.
“Uncle David seems to think I’m still acting,” she says.
“David understands the business,” her father answers, taking a fresh glass of scotch from a waiter almost the moment he finishes his last.
To anyone else, the comment might be meaningless, even nonsensical, but Beatrice understands it perfectly: like her father, David understands the money that is involved, the millions of dollars her name earns at the box office.
“I’m going to graduate school,” she reminds him, although she knows he hasn’t forgotten. He won’t say it outright - there are very few things he will say outright - but his assumptions about her are so carelessly dropped in between words that they almost trail after him wherever he goes.
He has been in business for almost sixty years and sees life now in terms of maximum profit and minimum risk. Beatrice might have grandiose dreams about study and education, but the guaranteed investment is a hefty salary, a husband and family, a curve towards the norm. Even headstrong children like her will eventually see sense: in his mind, this is not a prediction but a definite fact.
“I know you are,” he tells her, an adult indulging a child in a make-believe game.
It makes her itchy with irritation, overcome with the urge to argue until she can force him to realise the logic of her position. She fought them to go to college when she was eighteen, and even now, three years later, it feels like she’s still drawing battle lines. Before she can open her mouth to speak though, her mother says, “Have you seen Lilith’s engagement ring, darling? I expect you’re dying with jealousy.”
“Adriel seems a decent sort,” her father adds.
The conversation moves on, not so much involving Beatrice as surrounding her, like the guests, like the party. She digs her nails into her thigh to distract herself from the hot irritation bubbling in her chest and looks away from them both, out through the vast windows and over the driveway.
There’s a girl out there. This isn’t surprising: there are other people huddled in tiny groups close to the house, given away by the flickering orange tips of their cigarettes, but this girl is alone and a long way from the building. She’s walking over the grass towards the car, although there’s nowhere she really could have come from in that direction, only the boundaries of the property hidden now in the darkness.
A party guest, certainly, judging by her dress and heels, although from this distance Beatrice doesn’t recognise her. As she watches, the girl reaches the car and touches the hood with her fingers, trailing them reverently over the metal. Then she moves to the driver’s side window and peers inside, leaning so close that her breath must be fogging on the glass.
“Darling?” her mother prompts, and Beatrice flicks her head around, realising she missed some comment directed to her.
Her mother is breezy and unaffected and takes rather a lot of Xanax though, so she only repeats herself easily, “I think your friend may have overindulged a little. Perhaps you should take her to lie down.”
Beatrice follows the direction of her gaze to where Camila is flushed and a little unsteady on her feet, the stem of her wine glass almost cracking under the ferocity of her clenched fingers.
Detaching herself from her parents with no small amount of relief, she threads her way through the crowd, ducking attempts at conversation from well-wishers as she goes. Camila’s shoulder is hot under her hand when she reaches her and her usually easy features are tense and close.
“He’s an arsehole,” she tells Beatrice miserably. Several feet away, Lilith’s palm is flat on Adriel’s chest and their heads are bent close together.
“I know.” Beatrice sighs, because Adriel is an arsehole, “But she agreed to marry him.”
Camila slumps bodily and Beatrice winds an arm around her shoulders to keep her steady. “Sorry,” she says tiredly, “Happy birthday.”
“You already told me that,” Beatrice reminds her, because Camila had been one of the few attendees at her real birthday party a few days earlier, “Come on, let’s get you some water.”
Together, they turn their back on the guests and the party and Beatrice guides them gently away.
*
Even after she has settled Camila in a guest room to sleep off the worst of the alcohol, Beatrice doesn’t return immediately to the party. It’s a relief to be in the cool empty rooms upstairs, only whisps of conversation and music reaching her from below. She lingers in the shadowed rooms, a private thrill running through her at the thought of hiding here, out of sight of everyone who wants to see her, speak to her, touch her.
A brief temptation passes through her to retreat to her bedroom, lock the door and stay there, but she knows someone would ferret her out eventually and there’d only be questions to answer. Still, she takes her time, moving slowly back through the hallways toward the staircase, listening to the noise of the party grow from a burble to a torrent the closer she gets, her footsteps heavy and slow.
A girl steps out of a doorway in front of her. Not a girl - the girl, the same one she saw earlier looking at her car. She turns her head towards Beatrice and her eyes are dark and round and wide, glinting in the scant light escaping from downstairs.
“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” the girl laughs, self-conscious and surprised, “I was just looking for a bathroom. There was a line downstairs.”
She speaks with a clipped English accent but there is something else underneath it - a slight friction on her ‘s’ sounds and an emphasis on syllables a first-language speaker might not choose.
“Did you try the bathroom at the back of the house?” Beatrice asks. A blade of grass is still clinging to the bottom of the girl’s shoe.
“I didn’t even think,” she admits, “It’s kind of a labyrinth.”
“I’ll show you.” Beatrice gestures towards the staircase where the pulse of light and music beckons them downwards, and she tries not to cast sidelong glances at her as they descend, tries not to notice the way her dress clings to her hips, the slit in the side revealing toned thigh and tan skin.
There are plenty of people here she doesn’t know - she certainly wasn’t given dominion over the guest list at her own birthday party - but something about this woman, her looks, her voice, nag at her.
“Through the doorway over there and take a left. You can’t miss it,” Beatrice tells her when they reach the bottom of the stairs.
“You’re a lifesaver,” the girl says, but she ambles away with much less urgency than someone frantically searching for a bathroom might usually employ.
The party is packed now and warm, guests' faces flushed with heat and alcohol, and the music has gone from polite to lively, the notes clashing with the clamour of conversation, the screeches of laughter. A few people turn towards Beatrice, beckoning her to join them, holding out wine glasses like offerings that might tempt her in. In one corner of the room, Beatrice can see her mother talking at length with a few other women, her hands moving as fast as her mouth, and in an armchair close by her father is engaged in a straight-faced discussion with a few of his business partners. She can’t see Lilith at all.
Beatrice glances back towards the door she just directed the girl through. Call it curiosity, or a desire to flee, or even just a hunch, but she follows.
*
Every wall in this house is white, all high ceilings and vast swathes of negative space. The only sign of change at all is how the crowd thins as Beatrice moves away from the main rooms towards the back of the building, although there are still a few stragglers with their heads dipped in conversation, standing a little too close, one man with his hand on the hip of a woman who isn’t his wife.
A couple of them call out to her as she passes but she resists their attempts at conversation, insists, “I just need to check on something,” which seems as good an excuse as any.
She passes by the bathroom she directed the girl to, empty with the door slightly ajar, the light switched off, and keeps going, ducking her head into the second living room, which is empty, and the kitchen, where there are only tired staff who jerk to attention when they see her.
“Sorry, just looking for someone.”
Eventually, she reaches the gallery, a long, narrow room where her father’s most valued art pieces are kept, away from the prying eyes of anyone but his favourite guests.
The girl is there, of course, and she jumps when Beatrice enters, away from the edge of the frame she had been examining a half-second before.
“Lost again?” Beatrice asks politely, clasping her hands behind her back.
When the girl smiles this time it’s more guarded, some anxiety lingering around her eyes, as if she knows she’s been caught.
“Are guests not allowed in here? I just wanted to look at the art.” Her teeth, brilliantly white, sink into the soft pink of her lower lip. “I’m so sorry, I don’t think I introduced myself. Ava Salvius - and you’re the birthday girl, aren’t you? Happy birthday.”
Jillian Salvius hovers somewhere between business partner and rival for her father, and it is quite likely that she was invited tonight, but she and her son are in the Netherlands visiting family this weekend. Michael fancies himself a photographer and has posted the trip prolifically on his Instagram page, alongside introspective captions about the importance of self-reflection and family.
“Yes, I’m Beatrice.” Something about this story sits uneasy with her, that a relative would be here when her family members aren’t. “I should apologise as well - I had no idea there was another Salvius.”
“Cousin,” Ava says easily, gesturing at her own dark hair, “Which is why I don’t look much like them. I know they’re sad they couldn’t be here.”
It is an unfortunate fact that even the most disinterested of fathers tend to pass on certain traits to their children, and Beatrice is no exception. She has inherited her father’s eye for detail and his ability to form it into a wider picture, and she sees this: a woman who has wandered away from the party three times professing to be a mysterious relative of two people who are publicly not in attendance. Ava is a good liar, it must be said, but Beatrice is quite certain that she is lying.
Maybe she’s wrong - she has been wrong before - but she doesn’t think so.
“It’s not one of my favourites,” Ava says before any further questions can be asked, nodding towards the painting she had been admiring earlier - Steps in Algiers by Renoir. “I prefer his paintings of people. Is it real?”
“Real?” Beatrice blinks, taken aback to be pulled from her thoughts with such a sudden change in direction, “Yes, it’s real. My father is something of a collector.”
Ava nods as if she had expected as much, “I like the Impressionists. They always make you feel as if you’re in a dream, don’t they? Everything is almost real but not quite the same, more colourful and vivid. You almost imagine those stairs could go anywhere.”
For a long moment, Beatrice gazes at the painting, at the flowers growing lush on the hillside, the series of steps leading up to white buildings against brilliant blue. “Perhaps not quite anywhere.”
“Why not?” Ava fixes those dark eyes intently on her, and Beatrice has the strange feeling that whatever she says next will be listened to carefully and stored somewhere inside Ava’s mind.
“We can see where the steps lead.” Beatrice clears her throat awkwardly, feeling, suddenly, as if a spotlight is on her. “And it’s a real place.”
“Real places,” Ava scoffs, “Are boring. I’d rather imagine. What’s your favourite painting, if you don’t love the Impressionists like you should?”
“I never said I didn’t like the Impressionists.”
“You implied it.”
“Did I?”
“Sure. Do you like them?”
Beatrice purses her lips, trying to determine the exact point at which this discussion got away from her. “I like them fine. My favourite painting is Nighthawks.”
“I knew it.” Ava grins, wide and toothy and triumphant, as if she had just performed a successful card trick, “You look like a Nighthawks kind of girl.”
Unable to stop herself, Beatrice smiles too, her lips curving upwards involuntarily, “I have no idea what that means.”
Ava shrugs, a movement filled with faux innocence, and Beatrice watches the rise and fall of her shoulders like it’s something fascinating. “You look like a girl who’d sit in that diner with her back to the world, drinking some awful black coffee and thinking about a novel she once read that was set on a street just like that one.”
Beatrice laughs, both startled and a little irritated to be read so devastatingly accurately by a perfect stranger. “Are you insulting me?”
“Oh God, no.” Ava’s eyes widen as if she is genuinely horrified by the thought, “I’m trying to flirt with you.”
Even here, in her parents’ house, Beatrice can admit that Ava is beautiful. She is striking in a way that catches the eye, that makes Beatrice feel as if she could spend years studying her and still find new details that catch her by surprise.
It’s this, her own fascination, that makes her flinch.
“Who are you?” she asks.
There’s a moment of quiet where only the muffled sounds of the party, rooms away, can be heard. Ava’s eyebrows furrow. “Ava Salvius.”
“No.” Beatrice shakes her head, “I don’t think that you are. I’ve found you wandering around parts of the house no one else is in three times now.”
Ava is tense, frozen, her spine a rigid line. “Three?”
“I saw you out by the car earlier. You came across the grass.” And now Beatrice thinks on it, there is a gate out there, one that servants would use to come and go when this was still a manor house. “I’ll apologise if I’m wrong but I think, maybe, you weren’t invited to be here at all.”
For a moment, nothing changes in Ava’s face. Her eyes flicker over Beatrice’s as if a calculation is happening in her mind and then -
“Alright.” She shrugs one shoulder, “You caught me.”
Her accent drops from English into something else - part Portuguese, part Spanish, maybe a splash of Californian. “Look, I’m just a party crasher. I come to these big houses for the food and the booze. Don’t call the cops, I’ll leave.”
Years later, Beatrice will look back on this moment and wonder what she might have done - whether she would have told Ava to leave or not - if her mother hadn’t walked into the room at just that moment.
But her mother does walk in, with the same air she always carries, as if she’s frightfully busy and whatever she’s doing now is only stopping her from getting to something much more important.
“Beatrice, your guests have been looking for you.” She looks from Beatrice to Ava then back again, with a slight widening of the eyes that serves as a question.
“I was just showing Ava the art, Mum,” Beatrice tells her, the words out of her mouth before she even has a chance to think about them. “You remember Ava Salvius, don’t you? Michael Salvius’ cousin.”
“Of course,” her mother answers, as though there had never been a moment of confusion, “Didn’t we meet at the fundraiser Jillian threw last year?”
Ava’s gaze slides from Beatrice to her mother, but she recovers herself admirably. “We did.” Her English accent slips back into place as if it had never left, “I’ll never forget it, you wore the most wonderful dress.”
Horrible, Beatrice thinks. She’s introduced two people who both possess the ability to reminisce about an event that never happened.
“You’re a sweetheart,” Beatrice’s mother says. “But look at what you’re wearing, it’s gorgeous. Perhaps you could lend it to Beatrice sometime.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” One corner of Ava’s lips turns upwards and her gaze flickers down over Beatrice’s tightly buttoned shirt and slacks, “I like how she dresses now.”
Beatrice feels herself turning red and is so busy trying to school her face that she barely hears her mother's non-committal noise in response.
“Let’s go back to the party, shall we?” Her mother breezes from the room with clear expectation that they’ll follow.
“So, your mom,” Ava whispers as the two of them trail back through the hallways behind her.
“Don’t.” Beatrice’s mother was something of a sex symbol back in the early 2000s, before she gave up acting to get married, and Beatrice has heard more variations on ‘your mother is hot’ than any one person should suffer in a lifetime.
But Ava says, “She’s kind of an asshole.”
“Oh.” Beatrice frowns at her, surprised, “Yes, I suppose she is.”
All at once, they’re in the deep end of the party again but made much worse by the fact her mother seems to have asked just about everyone where she was before she found them. It means half the people they pass want to speak to her, shout “Mystery solved!” and “We were about to send out a search party!” Even worse, when her mother disappears into the crowd ahead of them, they start asking if she’s spoken to her - “She’s looking for you, you know, she’s worried sick.”
Beatrice doubts that. It helps that Ava sticks by her side throughout it though, because she can say, “I was just showing Ava some of my father’s art pieces,” which makes her feel less ungrateful than “I never wanted this party in the first place and I’d rather not be here.”
Ava sometimes even chimes in with a lie like, “Bea was giving me a tour of the place.” She says Bea so easily, like they’ve known each other forever and not for fifteen minutes.
Eventually, they claw their way to the other side of the room where Lilith and Adriel have commandeered an uncomfortable leather couch to sit wrapped up in each other, despite its vast size making that entirely unnecessary.
“You know your mother is looking for you,” she says as soon as Beatrice emerges, sweaty and bad-tempered next to her.
“So I’ve heard.” Beatrice scowls.
Already, though, Lilith’s attention has drifted to Ava, eyeing her with the kind of calculated curiosity that makes Beatrice nervous. “So, you disappeared off with a friend ?”
The way she says the word friend makes it sound like something that would be bleeped on daytime television.
“Not a friend,” Beatrice insists.
“We’re not friends?” Ava asks.
Beatrice frowns at her, “What’s the criteria for friendship?”
“I’ve met your mother,” Ava points out, “That’s a good start.”
“She doesn’t have friends and she definitely doesn’t introduce them to her mother,” Lilith offers with unbridled delight.
“Lilith.” Beatrice purses her lips. “You make it sound like I’m sort of lonely old maid.” That might be closer to the truth than the alternative. She’d rather Ava didn’t know that though.
“You seem like someone who’d have a lot of friends,” Ava says, grinning in a way that suggests she knows exactly what the coded meaning of friends is.
“Well, we’re all friends here,” Adriel suggests cheerily, unaware of the horrific mental image he’s conjuring in doing so. He holds out a hand for Ava to shake, “I don’t think we’ve met. Adriel, Lilith’s fiancé, of course. What is it you do?”
Ava looks faintly bemused by this but she shakes his hand, “Ava. I’m in acquisitions. What do you do?”
For all Beatrice knows Ava really might work in acquisitions. She somehow doubts that party crashing is a full-time salaried position.
“I’m a lawyer at the firm.” Nobody around here bothers to specify which firm - it’s Beatrice’s father’s and could be more other - and Adriel says it with all the gravity he feels such a lofty position deserves, a tiny, pleased smile playing on his lips. “Working under Lilith’s father, actually. Quite the family affair. And you’ll join us once you’ve graduated, won’t you, Lilith, darling?”
Thankfully, they are all saved from a discussion on corporate law as a career path by Lilith looking around the room with a frown.
“Where’s Camila?” she asks, “I haven’t seen her all night.”
Beatrice shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Had a little too much to drink. She’s sleeping it off upstairs.”
Lilith’s eyes dart away towards the stairs, “Should I go and check on her?”
“She’ll be fine,” Adriel tells her, just a touch too quickly to be natural.
“She will be,” Beatrice adds more gently, “And she has her phone if she needs one of us.”
“Still…” Lilith sits forward, already halfway to getting up.
“She’s a big girl.” There is an edge of irritation in Adriel’s voice now that wasn’t there before. He puts a hand on her arm. “She doesn’t need a babysitter.”
Lilith crosses her arms over her chest and slumps back against the couch but doesn’t say anything else. Adriel looks away, out over the rest of the party. There is a heavy, uncomfortable silence, and finally, Ava suggests, “Hey, Bea, maybe we should get another drink.”
“Alright,” Beatrice agrees uncertainly. She glances back but Lilith doesn’t meet her eyes, her jaw clenched in anger, an argument already brimming between her and Adriel.
“Cute couple,” Ava says as they move away. “Are they always so…”
“There’s history there,” Beatrice tells her. “It’s a sore subject.”
For close to a year, Lilith and Camila had twisted around each other in a confusing double helix, holding hands in bars then going weeks without speaking, watching movies in bed together but never fully touching. Beatrice heard all of it from one or the other of them and assumed she knew where it would all end. Then, very suddenly, there was Adriel. She still doesn’t know why.
Ava’s lips turn into a round ‘o’ shape and she says, “Okay, we need more drinks and then you need to tell me the whole story.”
*
There is a broken paving stone halfway down the drive that Ava stumbles over in her heels. Beatrice lurches forward to catch her before she can hit the ground, and Ava laughs like this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to anyone.
“Hey,” she says, “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”
“You were the one who fell,” Beatrice points out. Her hands hover near Ava’s waist for a moment, waiting to make sure she isn’t going to fall again, before she lets them retreat reluctantly back to her sides.
Behind them, the party has begun to thin, and those that remain are too exhausted or intoxicated to notice Beatrice’s disappearance for a second time that night. She and Ava had spent the last two hours together, fending off her parent’s guests as they took a slow tour of the artwork in the main room and Ava offered her opinion on everything.
“I hate abstract art,” she had said at one point.
“That seems reductive,” Beatrice told her.
“I like paintings of people and things,” she complained. They had been standing in front of a Reinhardt which Ava gazed at with a curled lip. “What am I supposed to learn from rectangles?”
“What are you supposed to learn from steps?” Beatrice countered.
“How to climb,” Ava retorted with such affected melodrama that Beatrice could do nothing else but laugh. God help her - she was having fun at a party her parents had thrown.
It was Ava’s suggestion to go and look at the car, and outside, Beatrice is vaguely aware that there’s a cold pinch to the air, but she hardly seems to feel it with the wine that she and Ava have consumed between them. The lights of the house behind her blur into one orange mass, and ahead is the blue-black night and, somewhere in the darkness, the gates that lead off the property.
“Did it hurt when I fell from heaven?” Ava muses, “That doesn’t make sense as a pick-up line.”
“Are you trying to pick me up?” Beatrice asks.
Ava snorts, “Obviously.”
Beatrice doesn’t quite know what to say to that and she’s relieved when they reach the car a moment later. Ava presses a hand to its side, partly to touch it and partly to steady herself.
“Let me sit in the driver’s seat.”
“It’s illegal to have control of a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.”
“I’m not going to drive it, I just want to sit in it.”
Beatrice glances back towards the house, far enough away that the crowd still inside aren’t much more than a murmur. Even the musicians have packed up and gone home now.
“Alright,” she agrees finally, “But I’m keeping the keys.”
She presses the button to unlock the car doors and Ava stumbles then half falls into the driver’s seat. Over the course of the evening, she has learned that Ava used to be a bartender and that’s why she can hold her booze so well, that she once robbed a bank, and that she speaks four languages - five on a good day. Beatrice is beginning to suspect that absolutely none of that is true.
Still, she walks around the car and sits down in the passenger’s seat, because she’s found she doesn’t much care if what Ava says is true as long as she keeps saying it with a laugh in her voice and a look in her eye like she wants very badly for Beatrice to believe her.
It’s quiet in the car with the doors closed, and the leather is cold even through Beatrice’s clothes. Ava must be colder, with her legs bare the way they are, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She runs her fingers over the wood panelling instead, pushes the buttons that do nothing with the engine switched off, then puts both hands on the wheel and gazes out of the window like she’s driving. There is a quiet contemplation in her movements, as if she’s thinking very deeply about something, and Beatrice watches her with an odd mixture of lust and trepidation.
“You’re lucky,” Ava says in the end. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” Beatrice agrees after a moment.
Ava turns to look at her, one hand still resting on the wheel like she isn’t quite ready to let go. “You don’t think so?”
“I do.” Beatrice winces, unsure how to explain the layers of meaning behind the gift. “It’s just that I live in a flat in the middle of London, so the car will have to stay here. He has a garage - he collects cars as well as paintings.”
Pursing her lips, Ava asks, “So it’s a gift for him, not you?”
“I suppose, in a sense. He wants me to like it.” He thinks, in fact, that it’s inevitable that she will like it. All roads lead back here, to this house. “But I am lucky. I know that.”
Ava takes her hand away from the steering wheel at last and moves it to Beatrice’s arm instead, her thumb brushing over her bicep through her shirt. “There are different kinds of luck.”
Torn between wanting to push the conversation away from herself and not wanting Ava to move her hand, Beatrice asks, “Is this where you make a joke about getting lucky?”
A wicked grin erupts on Ava’s face. “I was probably going to try for ‘driving you wild’, but I like yours better.”
She slides closer in her seat, the warmth of her feeling hot and heavy inside the vast interior of the cold car. There are goosebumps on her chest, just above the place where her dress dips between her breasts. “What gift did you want? If you could have asked for anything.”
Most of Beatrice’s attention is on the press of Ava’s palm, and even if she wasn’t she isn’t sure she could answer. Sometimes, when she thinks about the railroad tracks her life was placed on before she was old enough to even form an opinion, it makes her want to scream until her lungs give out. “Asking for something doesn’t mean you’ll get it.”
Somewhere far away, there’s a shriek of laughter, and the music rises and falls like a crashing wave. Something is glinting inside Ava’s dark eyes, a puzzle close enough that Beatrice feels with a little more time, she might just figure out the solution.
Ava says, “Why not? I think anyone can have anything if they want it enough.”
Beatrice’s eyes flicker down to Ava’s lips, full and pink, and her tongue darts out to wet her own. She can imagine already the pleasure of kissing her, how Ava might gasp underneath the pressure, how she’d lean her whole body into it.
There is a flush of red in Ava’s cheeks but her fingertips are cold against Beatrice’s neck when she slides her hand up to toy at the edge of her starched collar. Beatrice leans forward, infinitesimally, just enough to make her intentions clear, but Ava’s hand turns from pliant to hard against her shoulder and stops her where she is.
“I can’t - “ She swallows awkwardly, “We probably shouldn’t do this right now. Maybe another time - I could take you out to dinner, or…”
Beatrice is already sitting back though, hot with embarrassment. “No, you’re right.” Her voice sounds strange and forced in the quiet of the car, “We should go back to the party.”
“Bea.” Ava’s mouth turns down, her eyes heavy with something - regret, maybe. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“It’s alright,” Beatrice says, too high-pitched. “Let’s go back.”
She scrabbles for the door handle and steps out with relief into the cold night air. It takes a moment, but eventually Ava climbs out of the car too.
*
Waking up hungover in her childhood bedroom is, perhaps, the worst way Beatrice could conceive of to begin a day. She forgot to close the curtains before she went to sleep last night, stumbling from the cocktails she drank with Lilith and Adriel after she escaped from Ava, and now the sun is blinding, needling at her aching head.
She rolls over and pulls the covers back over her, refusing to contemplate wakefulness for another hour at least.
It’s for this reason that she doesn’t notice the car keys missing from her nightstand until almost midday. When she drags herself out of bed at long last, the car is long gone from the driveway, and her father is shouting downstairs.
*
Bea,
I guess you’ve probably figured out by now that it was me who stole your car. Normally I don’t write to people who I steal from because that’s sort of considered to be a bad idea in the criminal world, but then I got to thinking how you probably figured I hung out with you all night just so I could steal from you.
That is DEFINITELY NOT WHAT HAPPENED. You’re cool and hot and if I wasn’t only in your house on a mission of stealing your stuff, then I’d have definitely kissed you about 1000 times over.
I know this is probably a long shot but… maybe we could still have dinner sometime?
Ava
*
The postcard arrives at Beatrice’s London flat, a photograph of picturesque medieval buildings and cobbled streets printed on the front. Beatrice doesn’t know how Ava got her home address, whether she really is in Bruges, or… much of anything, really.
She keeps the postcard propped up against the salt shaker on her kitchen table, and she reads it again and again until she can almost recite it by heart.
“You didn’t give it to the police?” Lilith asks when she sees it, turning it over in her hands curiously.
There had been police, of course, and lawyers and insurance agents: Beatrice’s father had been furious: the car was gone and there was an empty frame hanging in the gallery. Not the Renoir, not the Steps - and Beatrice had assumed at first that it would be - but something lesser known. Easier to sell, if she had to guess.
The security footage showed a blurry, indistinct figure climbing into the Rolls Royce carrying a flat package and disappearing away through the gates. Nothing else had been found, and it was starting to look like it never would be.
“I’m sure she isn’t actually in Belgium.” Beatrice shrugs, “Or if she was then she isn’t anymore. What good would it do?”
Lilith looks at her for a long time, her face flat and unreadable, “Did you know that she wasn’t who she said she was?”
“No.” Beatrice turns away towards the coffee maker, “Of course I didn’t.”
For a moment, they listen to the rushing sounds of the coffee percolating and Beatrice feels the weight of Lilith’s eyes on the side of her head. They have known each other since they were children, both attending the same exclusive girls’ private primary school and later studying under the same exacting, expensive private tutor. Lilith joined her on film sets, a companion for the long hours in between scenes, has seen the worst of it and the best along with her.
When she was fifteen, Beatrice kissed a girl for the first time in the dark street behind her hotel, and then she leaned against the brick and struggled to breathe through a panic attack for half an hour. When she finally sneaked back inside, Lilith took one look at her and dragged out the vodka she kept hidden in the bottom of a drawer. Maybe it’s because of that - because Lilith can read her thoughts just from the set of her jaw - that they don’t talk anymore about it.
Still, for days afterwards, Beatrice half-expects a call from Adriel or her father asking about the postcard. None comes, she doesn’t have to explain herself, which is a relief. She’s worried if anyone asked her - asked - then she might forget to lie.
She’s glad Ava took the car. That’s the truth of it. She’s glad.
***
After she steals the car, Ava drives for almost sixteen hours straight. The Rolls-Royce is absorbed into the black night and she is through the Channel Tunnel and out of England before dawn, almost certainly before anyone can report the car as stolen. The passport she uses to move into France has the name Martha Lamb, although she doesn’t think she looks like much of a Martha.
She stops only twice more to use the bathroom and buy energy drinks in out of the way, dirty rest stops. By the time she gets to Hanover, she’s been awake for close to thirty hours and her body feels like it’s made from chewing gum and nausea. She leaves the car with JC in his auto shop then takes the train to the rest of the way to Berlin.
On the narrow sofa in Mary’s tiny one-bedroom, she passes out and doesn’t wake up again until the following afternoon.
“Martha,” Mary says when she wakes up. There’s a wad of paper stuffed under one leg of the tiny kitchen table she’s sitting at and a cigarette hanging from her lips as uses tweezers to apply a photograph to a fake passport.
“You said you were quitting.” Ava throws one arm over her face to block out the sun and the smell of smoke. It always makes her cough - she needs her inhaler.
“I am quitting. Down to one a day.” Mary uses a magnifying glass to inspect the edges of the photograph, the name, the dates, and frowns in displeasure at what she sees. “How was the party?”
The two-hundred-year-old painting Ava cut out of its frame is still in the flat package leaning against Mary’s living room wall, in between the vacuum cleaner and the photograph of Mary’s ex they’re both pretending isn’t still hanging there.
“Took a Rolls Royce.” Ava tries and fails to keep the pride out of her voice.
“Stupid.” With her arm over her face, Ava can’t see Mary, but she can hear the scold. “Risky for no good reason.”
“You should see it.” Ava sighs, “Beautiful. It was the birthday girl’s gift.”
There is a creaking and rustling, and when Ava turns her head she sees Mary has twisted in her chair to look at her. “Why’d you say it like that?”
“Say what like what?”
“‘ Birthday girl ’ - all high-pitched. I thought you said she was definitely going to be some rich, arrogant actress with a silver spoon stuck up her ass.”
“Well.” Ava hedges.
“Well?” Mary asks.
“She was rich.”
“And?”
“I didn’t get the chance to check her ass for any silver spoons.”
Mary squints at her, “But you’d have liked to.”
God, Ava does the correct, ethical thing and doesn’t have sex with the person she’s about to steal a half-mill car from and she still gets shit about it. Like it’s her fault for having fantasies. “She wasn’t what I expected, okay?”
“Hm,” Mary hums, unimpressed, and turns back to her forgeries and her total lack of romantic spirit.
Ava decides it might be smart not to mention the postcard she mailed from Bruges. She doesn’t know why she did it - certainly has never written to anyone she’s stolen from before - and the only explanation she can come up with is that she feels a little guilty.
Not for the stealing, since she sees no reason why the car or the painting should belong to Beatrice and her family any more than it should belong to Ava, but for everything else. For making Beatrice think she wanted to kiss her, although she did want to kiss her, and for creeping into her bedroom, past the king-sized bed where Beatrice was face down and snoring, and lifting the car keys from her nightstand.
She rolls onto her side on the lumpy couch and flails until she grabs the TV remote, then flips through the channels - past sitcom reruns and daytime quiz shows - until finally Mary grunts, “Would you just fucking pick something?”
They have landed on a movie halfway through, and Ava watches without watching, the characters on screen turning to flickering shapes and colours.
She’s half asleep again, her eyes mostly closed, when Mary says, “Isn’t that her? Your birthday girl?”
Blinking away the fog, Ava squints at the screen and sees - yes - Beatrice, but a younger Beatrice. She’s maybe eleven or twelve, her hair scraped back in a tight ballet bun, fresh-faced and wide-eyed.
“I remember this one. She’s the murderer’s daughter.” Mary has turned away from the table and is leaning against the back of her chair, watching Beatrice’s tearful face. “You got it so bad we have to watch her old movies now?”
“I didn’t know,” Ava protests.
Mary snorts, “Sure.”
They watch the rest of the movie anyway.
***
The only empty chair in the place is right next to Beatrice. Otherwise, the restaurant is packed shoulder to shoulder at the countertop seating, the air choked with heat and the charcoal smoke from the grills. Around her, the other customers’ faces are glistening pink with perspiration as they talk over each other in layers, louder and louder to be heard in the tiny, echoing restaurant. Although she’s been out of the spotlight for close to four years, she’s still infrequently recognised, and she’s glad to be in the corner against a wall, where only a few prying eyes dart back to her in recognition. In front of Beatrice, yakitori is growing colder and less appetising by the second.
She doesn’t know why she’s here.
It’s been over a year since she last saw Ava - the insurance company paid out, her twenty-second birthday crept by with much less fanfare than the last - and she had been ready to consign that night to the past, one strange event never to be repeated.
But a postcard arrived a week ago, written in the same scrawled handwriting as the one she’d kept in her kitchen for four months before finally filing it away. It didn’t say much, no greeting or sign-off, only the address of this restaurant, a date and time, and a question mark.
She could have ignored it. It would have been sensible, logical, rational to ignore it. But here she is, and here - it must be noted - Ava decidedly isn’t.
Beatrice has been waiting for twenty minutes and is beginning to have the nagging, itchy feeling that she’s been stood up. The people sitting nearby are starting to cast her sidelong, pitiful glances, like they know exactly what’s happened to her, and she keeps checking her phone just to broadcast the idea that she’s not a lonely, friendless idiot.
Twenty-five minutes in, just as she’s decided that when it hits the thirty-minute mark she’ll leave, the door to the restaurant opens, and there is a bluster of cold air and traffic noise and then, craning her neck to look for Beatrice, there’s Ava.
She has a scarf looped around her neck and her nose is pink and shiny above it, her hair in disarray from the wind outside. Instead of the sultry dress she wore the last time Beatrice saw her, she’s in jeans and a wool sweater, warm and easy.
“God, I’m so sorry I’m late,” she says when she bustles over, like they’re friends who saw each other a few weeks ago. She leans in to kiss Beatrice’s cheek, bringing the smell of fresh air and perfume with her, and says, “Had to make sure you didn’t bring the cops with you.”
She’s grinning when she pulls back, settling herself on the stool and leaning over to figure out how to order a drink.
Beatrice purses her lips though, irritated. “A warning might have been nice,” she says, hating the note of private school primness in her voice when she does.
Ava pauses halfway through taking her coat off, startled, “You’re right,” she tells her immediately, “I’m sorry, that was rude of me. I would have called but…” She waves her hand to indicate the multitude of reasons why she can’t just call Beatrice, not least of all being that she doesn’t have her number - or at least, Beatrice assumes she doesn’t.
“It’s alright,” she says, although it isn’t alright.
“You look good,” Ava offers tentatively. “I’m really glad you came.”
The knot of nerves and annoyance in Beatrice’s stomach really does loosen though, as she looks down at herself with a tiny laugh - button-up and slacks, almost the exact same thing she wore the last time they saw each other.
“I look the same,” she answers. “I like your sweater.”
“Thanks.” Ava gives a lop-sided, pleased grin, and then a waiter puts a beer down in front of her, “I heard this place did incredible food. Like all the reviews online said it was so good, so - “
“You haven’t been before?” For some reason, Beatrice expected Ava to know this place well - for it to be some kind of underground criminal hangout or something. Instead, everyone here looks largely like they would like to have a drink and some good chicken on a Friday night after work.
“Don’t spend a lot of time in London. And I wanted somewhere that - “ Ava winces, embarrassed, “Uh, the sound would suck if you showed up wearing a wire or something.”
Beatrice considers this for a moment, drumming her nails against the stem of her wine glass. The restaurant is loud, packed tight as it is, with sound bouncing off the walls. She hadn’t considered going to the police. “Why did you ask me here if you were so worried?”
“My friend Mary told me it was a really stupid idea,” Ava admits. “But I guess I wanted to.”
The still-full plate that was in front of Beatrice is taken away and two new dishes are put down in front of both of them. Ava picks up the chicken skewer with relish but Beatrice ignores it. “You wanted to?”
“Yeah.” Ava swallows an unhealthily large piece of chicken and Beatrice waits for her to explain more but nothing comes. “You have to try this, holy shit, it’s so good.”
It isn’t in Beatrice’s nature to let something go, not something like this that seems foreign and incomprehensible to her - a decision she can’t imagine ever making.
“But why?” She persists, “Wanting to isn’t worth the risk, surely.”
“Why did you come here?” Ava asks, shrugging one shoulder.
Beatrice falls silent, unable to answer that. She would like to argue that it isn’t the same - coming here doesn’t present nearly the same risks for her - but there isn’t any real reason for her to be here other than… Well. Other than Ava. Ava, who had been beautiful and interesting and funny. Ava, who had done the most surprising thing anyone in Beatrice’s life ever had - maybe the only surprising thing.
Ava, who is even now looking at her with mixed contemplation and curiosity, one thumb drawing absent-minded circles on her beer glass.
Beatrice says, “Maybe I want my stuff back.”
For a moment they stare at each other, static and silent as other customers babble and laugh around them, as the chefs toss sizzling chicken onto the grills.
Then a smile breaks out on Beatrice’s lips and a beat later, Ava realises the joke, throws her head back and laughs in relief. She really is so incredibly lovely when she laughs that any remaining tension or irritation evaporates.
“You know, I don’t normally talk about work on dates.”
Ava’s eyebrow is slightly cocked and instead of faltering at the word date, Beatrice finds she wants to rise to meet her where she’s at - not stammering and unsure or private school prim, but someone Ava would really want to be on a date with.
She picks up her chicken skewer at last and pops a piece into her mouth, rolling it over her tongue and savouring the flavour. Ava’s eyes fall to her flexing jaw as she does.
Finally, she swallows and says, “Alright. Tell me something about yourself then. Something true.”
Ava’s eyes flicker back upwards. “What do you want to know?”
“Where are you from?” Beatrice asks. “I can’t quite tell from your accent.”
“Portugal,” Ava pulls a face, “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Uh, it’s complicated.”
“I won’t push.”
“I like a girl who pushes.”
Beatrice blushes and has to distract herself with another piece of chicken before she can answer, “Then I will push. I don’t quite understand.”
“It’s uh - “ Ava inhales deeply and lifts her glass to her lips, takes a steadying sip of beer.
“Complicated?” Beatrice offers with a small smile.
“Yeah.” Ava laughs, “I travelled a lot as a kid so I don’t know exactly where I was born, but my mom spoke Portuguese so that’s kind of my best guess. She died when I was too young to question that stuff and she’s been pretty rudely uncommunicative about it since.”
Beatrice isn’t quite sure whether this is a joke and if so, whether she’s allowed to laugh, so she just asks, “You don’t have a birth certificate?”
“My mom was kind of…” Ava waves a vague hand in the air, “Out there. Didn’t really believe in that stuff. Probably didn’t register that I was born and if she did, I don’t know where.”
It’s in Beatrice’s nature to problem solve and her first instinct is to wonder how that could be overcome - whether a decent and well-paid private investigator might be able to track something down - but it’s not an avenue to be pursued here, with Ava waiting for a response and another diner casting sidelong glances at her like she wants to ask for an autograph.
“Is your name really Ava?”
Ava looks away but her smile is very real, “Is this the stuff you normally ask on a first date?”
Beatrice shrugs, “I don’t go on a lot of first dates.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Of the two of us, I find myself to be more trustworthy.”
“You steal somebody’s twenty-first birthday present one time and suddenly you’re not trustworthy.” Ava has turned towards her now, their knees almost close enough to touch, and she smooths a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yes, my name is really Ava. That’s - “
Beatrice knows it’s going to happen before it does. She feels the presence at her shoulder, someone standing awkwardly close, and then the woman she had seen earlier is bending down in between the two of them.
“I’m so sorry,” she says to Ava first, waving a placatory hand too close to her, “I just had to say hi to her.”
Then it’s Beatrice’s turn, the woman a little too close and smiling a little too wide, and she’s saying, “I bet you get this all the time, but I grew up watching your movies. I’m such a big fan.”
“Thank you.” Beatrice is frozen in her seat, her palms pressed flat and hard against her thighs, and over the woman’s shoulder she can see Ava’s frowning face.
“Can I get a picture do you think?” The woman asks, “To show my friends. I know you hate social media and stuff - I’m not one of those fans.”
“I don’t take pictures,” Beatrice says stiffly. She stopped bringing security with her, found it drew attention more than it helped. Sometimes she wishes she still did. “I can sign something for you.”
“Oh.” The woman’s face falls but then she nods, “Yeah, of course. Totally. Let me - “ She rummages in her clutch for a pen and when she can’t find one turns to Ava, then a few other diners who start turning to look too, to understand the commotion. Finally, she collars a passing waiter to hand over theirs, and Beatrice scrawls her name on a napkin with a trembling hand.
“I really hope you’ll get back into acting soon,” the woman says, stuffing the napkin into her purse alongside the waiter’s pen. “You’re so talented.”
“Thank you.” The words are stilted in her mouth, strange and sticky.
The woman starts to say something else, but before she can Ava puts a delicate hand on her shoulder and says with a smile, “I think your friend is waiting for you over there.”
“Oh, he doesn’t mind - “
“Lady.” Ava’s smile turns harder and there’s an edge in her voice, “Your friend is waiting for you.”
Thankfully, she takes the hint - sometimes they don’t and never will - and when she’s gone Beatrice is left itching inside her clothes, glancing around to see who else is looking at her.
“I don’t know why you don’t tell them to fuck off.” Ava shoots a venomous glare at the woman’s retreating back.
“That would be worse. Stories about what an ungrateful bitch I am.” Beatrice lifts her wine glass and takes a long drink.
“You wanna get out of here?” Ava asks.
“God, yes.”
*
Beatrice waits on the street outside while Ava pays the bill (“I invited you” “Yes, but - “ “You can pay next time”) and then they walk with their heads bent against the wind to a bar Ava knows nearby.
“You can ask me about it,” Beatrice says when the considerate silence becomes too much to bear. “It’s normally the first thing people ask me.”
“Ask what?” Ava glances at her, her collar turned up against the cold. “Hey Beatrice, isn’t it weird how you’ve been super fucking famous since the moment you could talk and everyone wants to get up in your face about it?”
“Before I could talk,” Beatrice tells her. “My mother sold my newborn pictures to People magazine.” She had been in a sitcom when she was a toddler, her first movie when she was six. When she held a boy's hand at age twelve, the long-lens pictures were sold to TMZ, and a few years later a British tabloid published a countdown to her eighteenth birthday.
“Okay, well. I have more questions for your mom about that than you.”
Ava says it with such casual ease, as if there’s nothing strange or discomfiting about it - but then maybe, for someone like Ava, there isn’t.
“What if they took your photo? While you were with me, I mean.”
“They’re not interested in me.” Ava shrugs, “And even if they did and someone recognised me, it wouldn’t make any difference. You’d tell them you had no idea who I was, and the credit card I just paid with is under one of my spare names.”
Spare names deserves a conversation, Beatrice thinks, but she’s not sure she has the mental energy to embark on that just now. Instead, she asks, “You’re so sure I’d lie for you?”
“You’d have called the cops on me by now if you wanted to.” Ava gives her a lop-sided grin.
There’s no way to respond to that except to admit it’s true, but Beatrice is saved from answering as they duck inside the bar and are enveloped by the darkness and the live singer’s acoustic guitar.
They start at opposite ends of the corner booth they sit in, but after two drinks and then another, they’ve slid closer, enough that their shoulders are touching, Ava’s skin perilously close through the fabric. By then, Beatrice can’t tell if she’s drunk or just caught up in the heady intoxication of Ava’s perfume, the rumble of her voice when she leans close to say something in her ear.
But when Ava’s palm slides over Beatrice’s knee and her head dips towards her lips, Beatrice has to slide back - only a little - in her seat.
“I can’t,” she says, and then, quickly, when Ava’s face falls. “Not here. Too public.” It’s a shadowed corner and a half-empty bar, but the memory of the woman leaning over her is still crawling on her skin, and she can’t - just can’t.
She suspects from the flicker of a smirk on Ava’s face that she’s about to be invited back to her hotel, so she adds, “Ask me out again. And don’t wait a year this time.”
“Alright.” Ava’s laugh is a funny mix of disappointed and pleased, “I will.”