One Small Mistake(115)
‘It’s amazing to meet you,’ says the woman standing over me with perfect eyeliner. She’s excited maybe, or nervous; her fingers tremble around her battered copy.
‘You too.’ I smile as I take it from her. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Mel.’
‘I like your tattoo,’ I say, spotting the inked rose on her wrist.
‘Thank you.’
I sign the inside cover, trying to make the message as personal as possible.
Dear Mel,
May the wings of your eyeliner always be even.
Love,
Elodie x
I hand it back and watch as her eyes run over it. She grins. ‘Thanks. And’ – she clears her throat – ‘sorry for your loss.’
This hits hard, a well-meant sucker punch. I swallow and nod, unsure which loss she’s referring to – there have been so many – but she’s sincere so I thank her anyway. ‘If you wait a moment, my—’
‘How’re you doing?’ Josh, my publicist, crouches down beside my table. He’s tall and lean with dimples and stubble. ‘Do you need a break?’
‘I’m fine. Thank you though.’
‘Water? And where’s—’
‘Grabbing drinks.’ I shake my head in mock-reproof. ‘Too slow, Josh.’
‘Here we are,’ says Ada, placing two glasses of lemon ice water down on the table.
‘I could’ve got those for you,’ Josh reminds her.
‘You were busy and I’m perfectly capable,’ she replies, but her eyes are on Christopher who stands nearby, a copy of our book in one hand and a glass of something bubbly in the other. He smiles at her. Some people wait their entire lives to be smiled at like that. She takes her seat beside me and welcomes Mel, reaching out for her copy of One Small Mistake. ‘May I?’
As she signs it, Mel asks with so much hope, ‘Don’t mean to pry, but did you and Christopher get together?’
Ada blinks. ‘Well, you see—’
‘Yes,’ I answer. ‘They live together.’
Mel smiles widely.
Ada tries to glare at me, but there’s joy in her eyes, just as there always is when Christopher is mentioned.
‘What?’ I ask innocently. ‘Just being honest.’
They’ve been in their home for six months. They would’ve moved in sooner if it had been up to Christopher, but Ada wanted to live alone for a while and find her feet in her new career as an interior designer. Their house isn’t huge or grand, but it is filled with love and warmth, and every room is expertly decorated by my talented sister. Give it another year and she’ll leave Advent Interiors to start her own business.
Ada greets the next person in line. It is an older woman wearing too much perfume. ‘And just so you know,’ she whispers to Ada conspiratorially as her signed copy is handed back, ‘I can recommend some incredible oils to heal the scar on your back.’
‘Okay, thank you,’ says Josh, kindly but firmly moving her along.
I give him a grateful smile, reach under the table and take Ada’s hand, squeezing it in mine. She squeezes back, her smile fixed as she greets the next reader. I sign the book on autopilot, caught in the memory of paramedics dragging Ada from me the night Wisteria burned. Laying her out on the freezing January earth. Hearing one of them say there was a pulse, faint, so very, very faint, but there. The warm honey-sweet relief that she was alive, that I’d heaved her from the house. In the hospital, when she was finally awake, she thanked me for saving her.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘You saved me.’
She smiled weakly, my big sister so small in her bed, so pale and bruised. ‘We saved each other.’
A woman who is all sharp angles and a slash of red lipstick coolly hands her book to me and tells me her name is Stephanie. She turns to Ada. ‘Your letters to Elodie are beautiful.’
Ada’s letters, slipped between the pages of my prose, are the chapters most loved by our readers. Three years ago, that would’ve sent me into a tailspin of jealousy. Now, though, all I feel is pure, undiluted pride.
It wasn’t long after Wisteria burned that Ada’s car, along with Seefer and all the letters Ada had written to me, was found. In the days that followed, I sat beside her hospital bed, wires and tubes running in and out of her skin, and devoured every one of her penned entries. With each one I read, I unwrapped her, layer by layer like pass the parcel until I found my sister inside. The true her, not the too-shiny, perfect wife she pretended to be.
Ada smiles now, colour creeping into her cheeks. ‘Thank you, Stephanie.’
It’s moments like these I am glad Ada finally convinced me to write One Small Mistake. The media coverage of my disappearance meant I had my pick of publishers, just as Jack had predicted. Everything I thought I’d ever wanted was proffered to me on a silver platter, but it may as well have been a rotting, writhing dish of maggots. It had lost its appeal.
Until Ada.
‘I’ve been reading your work since you were a child. You’re talented, Ellie-Bee,’ she told me at the hospital. ‘For years, Jack manipulated you, isolated you from me, from our family. He took away Noah. Tried to take me too. Please, do not let Jack Westwood take this as well.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘If you can help just one woman recognise the red flags, maybe you can save her from her own Jack.’