Chapter Text
He’s smiling at her.
Just as he did when she was a child. Just as he did when he pinned her down to the bed. Just as he did when he would make a remark about how much she was growing. Sickening. Twisted. Poisonous. The smile of a yellow warning sign. Danger ahead! Get out! Get away!
Run!
Johanna does.
She hears people stand. People call out. Someone shouts her name. Whispers will follow. Rumors will, too. Don’t they know? They need to get away, too.
Doors fly past her. Warnings to stop echo. A few concerned glances are tossed her away.
She throws the door open to reveal the bustling London street in front of her. It isn’t enough. She has to get away.
Johanna doesn’t know where she’s going or whether to turn left or right. She doesn’t know if she’s going to be sick or become a meal or if a social worker will show up at her side. To the flat? To pack her things? Or should she not even waste her time?
Before she makes a decision, there’s a voice.
“Johanna.”
That’s all he says.
Johanna looks up into the eyes of her father. All the worry and all the fierceness in them. His are brown. Her mother’s were green. They hardly look anything alike.
“Johanna,” he says again. The gentle tone of rocking an infant to sleep.
The judge isn’t going to prison. He’s going to find her and take her away. Even if her adoption was ruled as illegal and unethical, he’ll find some loophole. He always does. Then she’ll be back in that flat. Underneath the judge.
Hot tears spike her eyes. Trembling overtakes her and she finds herself landing her forehead on Benjamin Barker. It is not a loud cry. It’s hardly even a cry at all. Just a complete collapse.
She has liked this life. It hasn’t been perfect. Benjamin Barker hasn’t been perfect but then, neither has she. She likes the fire escape that Anthony crawls up to see her. She likes the books. She likes the freedom.
How can they just rip that away from her?
“Miss Barker, over here please!”
“Johanna, would you say that this ruling…?”
“Miss–!”
“Johanna!”
There are people flooding out of the courthouse, trailing down the steps to her. At the sight of them, she freezes, suddenly unable to cry. Only able to stare at them with red-rimmed eyes.
“Johanna,” that was Benjamin Barker. She looks back to him. He lets go of her (she hadn’t realized he had a hand on her back) and shrugs his coat off. Thank goodness he brought it with him despite the sun. “Here.”
He yields it as a shield, pushing past the crowd. “No comment, no comment,” he says on occasion. Otherwise he ignores them.
There is part of her taunting. Why is she hiding? She shouldn’t show the judge that she’s scared of him! He should be made to believe that she doesn’t fear any longer. Perhaps then he won’t hurt her anymore.
But she only will end up hurt, won’t she?
There isn’t any way she’ll remember this, she thinks as they make their way back to the flat. It all happens in the flash. One moment they’ve stepped onto the train, the next they are on the right street. She does not know if she has taken a single breath in that time. The sun was only setting when they went underground. As they enter the flat, it is completely dark out.
She sits on the sofa.
He sits next to her.
She stares.
He doesn’t speak.
How much longer does she have? A few days? A few weeks? Hours? Minutes? Seconds?
Should she grab a few things, stuff them into her pockets? That picture of the Barker family, her mother’s wedding ring, a sweater she has an attachment to? She may never see those things again once he comes storming in.
It disgusts her, the way she grabs for the phone. Her fingers are too quick to type to fully comprehend what she’s doing. There are so many unread messages, so many missed calls from Anthony. Later. She’ll call him later, once she has a plan.
plane tickets from london
train tickets from london
boat tickets from london
Does it matter where she ends up? Perhaps, they should leave for Plymouth now. Or England might be too close, still. What about Wales? No, the entire continent isn’t enough. Paris? New York?
Now she truly sounds like a runaway.
“What are you doing?” she barely hears Benjamin Barker’s voice over the sound of her nails clicking against the screen. “Are you messaging Anthony?”
She doesn’t bother to nod or shake her head.
tickets from london
tickets to nyc
tickets to australia
She doesn’t look at the results when she presses search, just makes a new tab with a new idea.
“Hey? Hey, hey.”
Eyes burn with unshed tears. There’s no time for that now. Her finger flips through the options. When’s the earliest she can leave?
“Hey, Johanna, look at me.”
Benjamin Barker puts a gentle hand over the screen. She obeys, then, if only to get back to her hunt as soon as she can.
“We can’t just leave.”
“Why?”
It’s a pathetic, little word that she chokes on as it sounds out. Wide eyes stare up at Benjamin Barker, pleading like a wounded deer. Doesn’t he know that he isn’t safe either? The judge will have them both taken away. He, to concrete blocks. She, to gilded bars.
“You’ve got school. I have work. We have our flat… We can’t go.”
School? How can he think of something so meaningless right now? What is school to life?
“I’ll pay for it,” Johanna says, not having a pence to her name. “I will. I’ll–”
“That’s not the only thing, Johanna.”
“Then what!” She jumps up from the sofa. “Do you want him to take you away? Do you want him to take me away? I won’t go! I won’t go back!”
It dissolves into sobs. I won’t go back, I won’t go back, I won’t go back…! Johanna crumples into herself on the floor, forehead resting against the sofa as her tears sink into the fabric. Both hands are a fist, as if the judge is about to walk in at any moment. As if she had been successful in any of her prior attempts to fight him off of her.
“Johanna–”
Blotchy-tired face jerks up at the sound of her name. “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? For him to walk free?”
The words hang in the air, neither one of them not quite knowing how to react. This was a protest she would have made back in February. These months later, she has come to a better understanding of him. They had adjusted to each other. He has learned how to best work with her. Did it all unravel in those two sentences?
Johanna comes crashing back down. Her limbs ache from all these tears, throat dry from sobs. All she wants is to fall into a nest and forget about all these troubles. Birds don’t have judges looming over them. Birds can leave at a moment’s danger.
Why can’t she have that freedom?
Why can’t she chirp and sing instead of… whatever hurtful thing she just said.
Benjamin Barker sinks onto the floor next to her. He does not touch her. Does not speak.
He leans close to her. She can feel his hands hovering about her back, unsure if he is allowed to comfort her or not.
“I will keep you safe, I promise.”
She wants to protest. She wants to say that he couldn’t keep her mother safe, why should she trust that he’ll be able to do that for her? The judge is still in London with all of his powerful connections, how will he–who is just a man?–keep her away from that? She is just a pale girl with a scared heart, how will he help her become more than that? In the past a “father” has never done that for her.
Yet, Johanna wants to cling onto that promise. She wants to sink her teeth into it until her body has ingested it and it trickles through her veins. She wants her heart to pump out that promise to the rest of her organs so they don’t have to quiver anymore. She wants to sigh and nod and rest right here.
Benjamin Barker has kept her safe so far.
He held his coat in front of her.
Cold fingers trace over gooseflesh-covered arms. Johanna sits up, slowly like a swan. She breaths in a shaking breath, allowing her lungs to fill with oxygen for the first time all day.
Perhaps, he will be able to keep her safe again.
Johanna does not look back at him. She does not rise from the ground.
“Some tea?” Benjamin Barker asks. It nearly makes her jump. That isn’t the question one expects to hear after making grave accusations at another.
She nods. He stands. Though, he doesn’t go into the kitchen. He returns to wrap a blanket around her shoulders before getting water to boil.
Eyelids are terribly heavy. Everything is still and running too fast at the same time.
She hopes he can keep this promise.
As the water boils, he feels he is behind the stand again. Words spill from his lips that he doesn’t mean to say. His mind is focused on one thing: Protect. That is the duty of a father. Of a husband. A duty he had neglected too much all those years ago.
It was something he promised his own father before his wedding.
“I’ll look out for her,” Benjamin had said, smiling. He chuckled. “I’ll protect her, Dad, I promise. Her and our children.”
How had he laughed back then? How did he smile? Jovial, hardly taking such a promise seriously. In the end, he failed not only his wife.
His phone rings.
Why he hasn’t just blocked the number… he can’t.
Hand on Bible, he promised not to lie. To tell the full and complete truth. But he hadn’t. So many details of Lucy’s story, they were not for the general public to hear.
There was the day Mrs. Lovett visited him in prison. Where she spilled everything out. He spent the next fifteen years laying on a hard cot, realizing everything that hadn’t made sense about that story. (The two days it took for her to notice, the judge getting his daughter instead of family…) That wasn’t a story for everyone. That isn’t even a story he’s found the courage to tell his daughter yet.
Benjamin pours the boiling water into two mugs. A teabag in each. Lucy’s favorite blend.
He wished she could have been as surprised as his daughter when they announced the verdict.
He carries the tray to the living room, but she isn’t in front of the sofa anymore. Or on it.
Heart pounds faster. Was she right? Had the judge swept into their flat and taken her away already? Has he already failed her again?
But he turns, shoulders relax.
She is sitting by the doors, hands pressed over her ears. The blanket still covers her. From here, he can still tell she’s shaking. The tea will be good for her. Between the dehydrating tears and the chill of shock, the beverage will act as medicine.
Benjamin gets down on her level, offers the mug. She accepts.
He sits against the opposite wall.
He sips.
So does she.
That’s the first thing she’s consumed all day. (And it’s a part of her mother.)
In the traditional sense, that is what mothers do: comfort. They prepare the warm drinks and they rock to sleep. They know what smoothing words to use and the best way to fend off nightmares. Benjamin remembers watching his wife cradle their girl before taking over for her. They never got to the years of night terrors and spraying water underneath the bed. He wished they had. Maybe, he as the father, would have some idea of what to do now.
These aren’t boogiemen or creatures that shriek in the night. This is real. All of it.
They continue to sit in these positions even after the tea is gone. Johanna clings onto her mug as if it’s a sword. Benjamin sets his next to him. He can’t leave her to wash it. (Part of him fears she’ll throw the door open now and run.)
(He can’t protect her if she runs.)
The sun begins to rise. Still, neither of them move.
This may be the time. He’s still in London. He’ll be too proud of the fact that he’s gotten away with his crimes and too hopped up on arrogance to believe he is anything but indestructible. He’ll doubt that anyone can get him now.
How will he do it? It’s not as if Benjamin can go down to the poison store to pick up some poison. It’s not the Victorian Era. There’s no apothecary shop down the street waiting to sell him unsuspecting arsenic. No. It will be brutal. It will be bloody. A knife can be discreetly shoved into one’s sleeve. Benjamin knows where he lives. It will be swift. It will be horrible.
And Johanna won’t have to worry anymore.
For his daughter. For his wife.
Benjamin rises. Johanna’s neck nearly snaps at how fast she looks at him.
“Don’t go,” she whispers.
And he obeys.
Soon. But another night.
For now, he needs to stay by his girl.
Muscles protest and sigh in relief at the same time as she stretches out. Waiting by the door all night makes one sore.
She moves slowly. First, washing the mug. Then a visit to the bathroom. She’ll have to shower later. When she emerges, Benjamin Barker is holding her phone. Screen black, he hadn’t been looking through it.
“You need to say something to that boy.” He hands the device to her. “I think he believes you’re dead.”
Numbly, she accepts it. She is exhausted as she begins, but her eyes widen as she reads on.
How is the trial going?
Johanna?
How are you doing?
Just wanting to check in!
Johanna???
I just heard–are you alright??
Johanna?????
JOHANNA????
Please pick up the phone
Do you have your phone on you?
Where are you?
Would it be alright if I came over?
What do you need?
Johanna???
JOHANNA
When you can, please call me
Are you alright?
Hey, are you okay?
Where are you?
Johanna??
Jo?
Johanna?
And that didn’t account for all of the missed phone calls.
“He was calling,” Benjamin Barker says. “That’s why I picked the phone up. It went to voicemail.”
She nods. Oh, poor Anthony.
“Johanna!” His voice is a mix of shock and relief and gooey, hot caramel when she calls back. “Jo, are you alright? I haven’t–”
“I’m okay.” Though her voice is hoarse. Exhausted. “It’s just… well, you know.”
“Yeah.”
Pause.
“Are you at home?” he asks.
“In the flat,” she confirms.
She can practically hear him nodding on the other end. “Can I… can I come?”
“Always.”
It’s not even seven a.m. when he calls her again. She’s dressed and her hair is in a braid. Washing it will have to come later. Benjamin Barker has offered breakfast, she is struggling to come up with a reply when the phone rings.
“I’m on the fire escape… could you let me in?”
It almost makes her laugh. “You’ll have to learn the flat number someday.”
She hangs up and goes to the window. As she opens it, Anthony’s arms reach out for her. It is second nature to fall into them.
But not here. She can’t… What if he sees her?
Instead, Johanna beckons him in. Anthony shuts the window behind him. Just in case he interpreted it as refusal to hold him, she opens her arms. He wraps around her.
Kisses in her hair, to her neck. Sweet quiet comfort.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me,” Anthony whispers.
He does. She loses track of time. One moment it is seven in the morning and the next Benjamin Barker taps on the door announcing lunch. She picks at a piece of toast. Occasionally, she squeezes a morsel between her lips. Dry. No flavor. How can she eat now?
Fortunately, no one points it out. A mercy, perhaps. Or they just figured it wasn't the right time.
They settle back in the room, backs against the bed. Head against shoulder. She taps at her collarbone, twists at her hair.
“I just don’t understand,” Johanna says in an empty voice.
“Understand what?”
She looks up at him. “I won’t ever be free like this. As long as he’s able to go wherever he wants, I’m trapped. How could I ever be… free?”
It sounds silly. It feels silly. And stupid. But when Anthony grabs her hand, it doesn’t feel like it too much anymore.
“With me, Jo. I’ll make sure you’re free.” He kisses her knuckles. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
She buries her face against his shoulder. “Please.”
He stays until the dark. His mother calls and Benjamin Barker says he should get his rest, too. Johanna sees him to the door. When he leaves, she’s frozen there. Looking down the long hallway and at the ugly carpet and how everything seems so vast. But a neighbor passes–too close–and she slams the door.
She scrubs until her skin is bright pink in the shower. The water doesn’t get hot enough anymore.
Johanna shuts the window all the way. But what if the judge comes through the door and she has to make an escape? If it’s all the way closed, she’ll struggle and he’ll get her. Johanna cracks it open. But what if he does come through the window? She’s practically inviting him in!
She closes the window.
No, somehow closing the window makes the walls feel tighter.
Johanna cracks the window open.
She’ll have to be on alert tonight.
As Johanna sits on the bed, Benjamin Barker comes into the dark room. Arms cross over his chest and he leans against the doorframe. She looks up at him.
“You don’t have to go to bed now,” he says, knowing that she doesn’t sleep well.
She nods.
“Do you… need anything?” Benjamin Barker seems to realize how pointless that question is even as he says it.
“I’m alright.”
Lies.
What is she supposed to tell him that she needs? A sense of comfort, a safety, a long breath she can get off her lungs–he cannot bring it to her.
(But isn’t that what fathers do?)
(She does not know fathers.)
“Are you sure?” Benjamin Barker asks.
“Yes.”
He lingers–just a moment. “Goodnight. Sleep… sleep well.”
Johanna nods.
He closes the door after him.
It is Sunday. Grey skies and rain. Johanna holds her rosary at her chest, thumb trailing along each bead. She prays in a whisper, stops, thinks, then resumes the prayer. She has been sitting like this for ages. She does not know when to stop or how to. God can hear her, that is something she is certain of. But today, she whispers everything to him for the first time in her life.
“It’s only an hour,” Benjamin Barker is saying. He has knelt in front of her, elbow balancing on his knee. Rag in hand. She can smell shaving cream on him. “It will do us both good to get outside for a little while. He can’t find you in an hour.”
God, keep the judge far, far away from me.
“I can’t.” Johanna cannot remember how many times she has told him this since she woke up this morning. He was already awake, fixing pomegranate seeds and oatmeal on the table. A good breakfast before church, he had said. She told him she wasn’t going. Can’t go. He has paced back and forth, trying everything to convince her. It has proved to be an impossible task.
Johanna doesn’t mean to be stubborn. She’s afraid.
She does not like how fear paints her. But what else can she do? Make herself prey? The judge is out for her blood.
“He won’t find you, I pr–”
Her gaze shoots up to meet his. “It’s Sunday. He knows exactly where to look.”
“But will he find you at this specific congregation?”
“He found you.” Johanna looks back at her knees in front of her. At the rosary between her fingers. “He found my mother. I don’t want him to find me.”
At that argument, Benjamin Barker freezes. He sits there for a moment between rising. She doesn’t know where he goes.
Was that argument too cruel? She hadn’t known that story until the trial.
She doesn’t want to turn into her mother.
She can’t turn into her mother.
Oh, God, why did you let him go free?
“Oh! Good morning, Mr. Barker!”
She perks at the sound. It is a few moments before he’s there, but soon enough Anthony is at her side. He extends a hand that she takes. However, she doesn’t allow him to lift her to her feet.
“Let’s get to church, Jo,” Anthony says. His thumb glides over her knuckles. “I decided to come with you today.”
He is all dressed for worship. However, Johanna does not move.
“Anthony,” his name is a warning, a quivering, shaken warning. “I can’t.”
“Jo, both of us will be there. Mr. Barker and I. We’ll be with you the whole time. Even if, he is there, he won’t be able to take you.”
Anthony wasn’t at the trial. He hadn’t heard her mother’s story.
She isn’t even sure if that was the entire tale.
“It doesn’t matter.” Johanna can feel the beads. She can feel his hand. Yet, it feels like nothing at all. “He can still take me from behind you. While we’re all distracted, he can… Or he’ll sit next to us…” Wide eyes meet his. “Anthony, I cannot give up my life!”
“No one is asking you to.” He sits next to her, arm around her shoulders. “No one ever will. You’ll be safe. I promise.” He moves a few stray hairs out of the way. “You know I have never broken a promise before. I don’t intend to now. I love you.”
“Anthony…”
Why is this so difficult to explain?
Her hair is in a braid, yet her hands still grab onto any stray locks. She is not her prettiest self this morning. (She can’t be seen in church like this anyway!) The mirror in the morning confronted her with dark lines and horrible paleness. She looks like a madwoman. Like the cover of The Woman in White she found while browsing the library. All she has to do is don one of the ivory dresses the judge always gifted to her.
She hated them. Hated white.
White made her look like a bride too-young. Johanna is not the blushing virgin on her wedding morning. She is seventeen years old. Her heart has a boy’s name inscribed on it and she has already vowed to him. Wears the pin promise ring he gave to her. Not a wedding ring. Not yet. She is still so young.
White does not make sense for a girl like her. White is virgin, pure and holy. Johanna is… along the lines of her life, she was robbed of that.
And he knew he was the thief. He still bought her white dresses. Perhaps, to try to make himself forget. Perhaps, to run away from the guilt.
Did he ever face that guilt?
Johanna squeezes Anthony’s hand. She shakes her head again.
Benjamin Barker enters. He is also dressed for worship.
She is not.
Still, she adjusts herself to her knees. She holds Anthony’s fingers and the rosary between her hands.
And she prays.
Again and again and again.
They do not hear the prayer. They can only hear the quiet whimpers from her throat.
She thanks the Lord above for Anthony. She prays for her dead mother’s soul. She hopes that she is in Heaven and that she can still see her husband from the skies. She prays for Benjamin Barker. She does not fully understand what she prays for him, only that his name runs through her mind and she knows she has to pour it into her pleading.
Mostly, she prays for freedom.
Anthony holds her when she has finished. Benjamin Barker leans against a wall, arms crossed. She does not cry anymore but her eyes are closed.
She cannot become her mother.
Hopefully, He understands.
He cannot convince her to go to school. His daughter prays and sits and looks at the window as if she is expecting someone.
He does not make her go. She had no exams. He, himself, does not have the energy after failing to convince her to go to church the previous day.
And for that, he had Anthony.
She has not eaten in days. Benjamin puts things in front of her that she would eat before. He provides glasses of water that she hardly sips at. He does not pressure her. He tries to be gentle, tries to be the man and father he once was. He is forgetting how to be that man and father. That was when he still had his Lucy.
Lucy would have a way of convincing her to eat. She would tell a story and somehow make their daughter calm enough to take a bite or two.
But if he still had Lucy, they wouldn’t have this mess at all.
(In another life, is Lucy able to visit him in prison? Is he able to convince her to keep going? Or was she doomed from the moment she took her first breath?)
He wishes she could sing from the stars to tell him what to do.
(He hasn’t even been able to tell their daughter that he loves her to her face… With his own mouth.)
Benjamin stays home from work, too. He does not know how to spend his time. He does not know if his presence does Johanna any good. He makes up meals that she doesn’t eat and tries reading words on a page that suddenly have no meaning.
He wants to hold her. As he did when she was an infant. He wants her to lean her head against him again.
That was the first time she ever reached for him. The first time she ever touched him.
Was it comforting? Would it help if he reached out for her? Would she ever reach out for him again?
He touched her hand on that day so long ago. When she was tugging at her scalp, he hadn’t thought but to make her stop. How could she hurt herself so? Now, he knows her better. Every time he’s caught her pulling at her hair since, he’s reminded her to stop. Usually, she obeys. At the beginning, perhaps it was out of the fear he would grab her hand away again. But now, it feels like there is a respect there. A knowledge that he is simply trying to take care of her. To be her father.
He doesn’t know if that’s true. It’s mainly a hope.
The first time he ever touched her was when she was running. He reached for her wrist, desperate to keep his daughter now that he finally found her. Her hand turned into a fist. Ready to strike? He towers above her, has seen the cement of prison walls. But it didn’t seem to matter to the stubborn, afraid girl. He blocked her path to escape. He had lost his wife already. He couldn’t lose his daughter again.
And now, Benjamin is trying to get her to leave the flat. A few months ago, she spent as much time away from it as possible. A few months ago, she tried running.
She’s practically locking herself up now.
The judge is on the streets. He can’t possibly know where they are now.
Leaving London is impossible now, that much was true. But Benjamin did not tell his daughter part of the reason they have to stay is so he can make sure the judge won’t touch her again.
Should he go tonight?
Knife at the ready? Scouted and positioned?
The judge will hardly even realize when the blade hits him.
But Benjamin won’t let him die that easily. He will make him look him in the eye. Force him to admit who he is with his dying breath. He will see the life leave the judge’s face. His bloody will be a testament to his daughter that Turpin will never hurt her again.
He wanders into the kitchen. That is where the right tools are.
A butcher’s knife. A smaller blade. A rolling pin. A cleaver.
But in his pursuit of the perfect weapon, he stops. There is a noise coming from Johanna’s room.
He runs to the doorway. The door was already open to reveal his daughter on her bed, body shaking and horrible noises from her throat.
She is alone.
(Relief. But not for long.)
Benjamin approaches her side. His first cellmate told him he had night terrors during the first few months of his imprisonment. His mother told him he suffered from them as a child. Did he somehow pass those through his DNA to his daughter?
“You’re alright, you’re alright.”
It doesn’t sound like his own voice at first. It sounds like his wife’s.
“Johanna–hey, hey, Jo…”
Her hand narrowly misses his face.
“Come on, dove, you’re alright. You’re safe.”
With the utmost fear and tenderness, he strokes his thumb along her face.
“You’re with me.”
(Would that work? Does she feel safe enough with him?)
“Dad’s here, lamb.”
He said those words to her long ago. Comforting a crying newborn seems to have a few similarities. In those moments, those moments long ago, he never thought they would be here.
A hum. A gentle pet name. Slowly, she begins to calm down.
“Yeah, you’re alright, Jo.”
Benjamin waits with her until she has fully calmed down. Then for a few moments more. He used to wait by his sleeping daughter’s side. That was when she was in a crib and he was a much younger man.
Selfishly, he takes her hand. He holds it there for a second. Pretending that she is still a child and he is still innocent.
“Sleep well, little dove.”
There are tears trapped in his throat when he lets go and leaves the room. She must have passed out from exhaustion. Hopefully, she won’t remember whatever dream haunted her just now. She may never let herself rest again if she does.
Benjamin does not allow himself to cry, as much as he wants the tears to run his down face. He is a father. The provider.
He is a father.
Father first. That is what he always told himself.
He looks back at Johanna’s door. He can’t leave her again. As much as he fantasies about the judge’s death, he does not think of the aftermath. Of how he may very well get caught and that they may take his daughter away from him again.
Even if she never says it, she needs him.
And he needs her.
He has to stay. Has to protect her in any way that he can now, without bloodshed.
One day, he will avenge his family. But for now, his daughter needs her father.
“See! See! Look! Look!”
Relief has relaxed her shoulders. Her muscles stiffen less and less as her eyes scan the article on Anthony’s phone. From the corner of her eye, she can see Anthony looking at Benjamin Barker and grinning. She cannot see Benjamin Barker’s reaction.
“He’s gone,” Johanna whispers. She hands the phone back. “He’s gone.”
Anthony nods. He wraps his arms around her and squeezes. It isn’t a feeling she likes but she knows Anthony can’t help himself. His relief makes her smile. It’s a testament to how much he cares.
“Out of London! Out of England!” Anthony grabs onto her hands. “You’re okay now, Jo.”
When Johanna tilts her head, she can see Benjamin Barker still in denial. She turns back. “It is very good timing,” she says, beaming again. “I have two exams tomorrow!”
Anthony laughs and kisses her head.
“I think he will be gone for a while,” he says, “that’s what the articles have made it sound like. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in being in London when… well, the protests and everything.”
The protests were something Anthony had messaged her about earlier. She hasn’t left the flat in days now. The sky could be green and she would be none the wiser.
“I am glad,” Benjamin Barker says. They both face him. He hasn’t spoken since Anthony arrived. He parts his lips to say more but only nods.
Johanna looks back to Anthony. “Will you walk with me to school tomorrow?”
“Of course! Of course!”
Benjamin Barker rises from the table to begin clearing it. Anthony had burst in during dinner–not that Johanna ate much (or anything at all)–but his giddiness and news brought an end to it. She only missed one day of school and she’ll be able to go to church on Sunday. She can live.
Of course, it’s only until the judge returns. But Anthony’s optimism spreads like an illness.
She’ll be a little free.
“Here, let me help you with that, sir!” Anthony picks up a plate from the table, always eager despite the fact he hadn’t partaken in the meal.
Benjamin Barker waves him off. “It’s alright, son. You two get some fresh air.”
They run to the room as if they’d never run before. They wave their arms over their heads. For a moment here, they are free.
They make plans to go to the park. Johanna will drop by Waterstone’s tomorrow while he’s on his shift. He’ll sneak her into the breakroom. They talk as if the trial still has yet to happen. They talk like teenagers in love.
Oh, how she’s missed this!
In the coming days, there is mixed emotion. When Anthony announced to them that the judge had left the country, his first thought was relief. His daughter can carry on as normal now. She’ll go to church and school. He’ll go to work. They’ll come home. He’ll have dinner. She’ll pick at her food. Homework, then goodnight. She’ll stay up… he will, too.
He really should do something about how unnormal their normal seems.
But on the other hand, has Benjamin lost his chance at getting the judge? Was that it? Turpin flees the country and never comes back? It’s not as if Benjamin has a traveling (or better aptly named: Chasing-After-The-Judge-In-Order-To-Get-His-Revenge) fund. Will Johanna have to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder?
No. One day, the judge will die.
Oh, but Benjamin wants to be there.
Johanna goes to school. She takes her exams. The summer break is right around the corner.
Benjamin goes to work. He starts looking for new jobs when he comes home. Something that will pay him a little more. He has extra experience now that he’s out of prison. The resume gap is something he can explain. It might be nice to take Johanna on a little holiday while she’s on break.
As he hikes up the stairs to his flat, he’s thinking of what he needs to add to his resume. Maybe, in time, he can work in the medical field. Not the dream he had when he was young, but it’s something closer to it. Indoors, not breaking his back, a little extra money to spend on his daughter.
When he gets to the door, it is unlocked. Nothing out of the ordinary.
When he opens it, there is someone inside.
Benjamin shoves a key between his fingers, makeshift weapons until he can find something better. He makes his way into the dim flat, careful not to make a sound.
Is Johanna at home? Is Johanna alright?
He needs to get her and get her out.
“Why, Mr. B, seems you haven’t changed at all.”
Mr. B?
There was only one person who ever called him that.
Mrs. Lovett sits with her legs crossed at the ankles, on the kitchen table. The sun peeks in through the blinds–she hadn’t flipped a lightswitch on. In the dimness, he can tell she’s hardly changed at all.
Coarse red hair piled on top of her head, unable to keep the frizz down. Tall but slightly stouter now. Freckled and mischievous. There are wrinkles. Some old and some new, on her forehand and her hands.
“How’ve the razors been, Mr. B?”
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
She is an apparition. Something so far from his past. She should not be here. He is letting that past go.
“Well, the door was unlocked.” Mrs. Lovett smiles. He still had that look memorized. “Seems like an invitation to pop in and check on an old friend to me.”
When they lived on Fleet Street, Lovett never came into their flat unexpected. She always knocked, always scanned around the room… She never seemed to want to bump into Lucy. That was a story he never fully understood. When they were engaged and he found that place for them, she told him that she and her “Nellie” were good friends as children. But when they moved in, everything was frigid. No warm embrace for an old friend. Mrs. Lovett seemed more interested in talking to him if anything.
“I bought your razors back to you,” Mrs. Lovett continues. She leaps down from the table. “Did you see? Precious things those were. I was waiting for you to come home and get them but those beauties weren’t doing any good gathering dust in my shop. I was hoping I’d see you here.” She steps closer to him. “Come on, love. No visit to see an old friend? I was waiting for you.”
Benjamin doesn’t reply. He doesn’t relax his posture.
“Come on, Ben.” Mrs. Lovett wraps her fingers around a button of his shirt. “When’re you coming home?”
“I am home.”
Mrs. Lovett glances around. “This isn’t your home. Not your home in London, dearie. I’ve got the flat all ready for you. There’s space for you and your girl. We’ll…” She sighs. “You’ll be a family again.” She puts her hands on his shoulders. “Won’t that be nice.”
Benjamin dodges the touch. He goes around her, into the kitchen to put his bag down on the counter.
“I’ve got a little boy now,” Nellie says, following after him. “Recently turned fifteen. He’s a good lad. Well, he’s not exactly my boy but I like to think of him as such. He’s in the foster system, got no one else but me. Little slow in the head. But sweet. A good worker, too. Won’t that be nice? Can come back home and raise your little girl with a brother-type. Didn’t you and your Lucy wish you had more?”
At the mention of his wife, he bristles. Benjamin turns, finding Mrs. Lovett too close to him. He scowls, drags his bag off the counter and moves towards the living room.
“In fact, they already were siblings in a way. Foster siblings. She was in the same house as him for a moment there, ‘fore she was put back with you. They’ll love it, Mr. B.” Her hand extends, touches his back. “And a seventeen-year-old girl really should have a mother, too.”
Benjamin turns, deflecting the hand. “And what happened to her mother, Nellie?”
Mrs. Lovett goes silent. Only a moment before a sly smile appears on her face.
“These things happen, Benjamin. Life don’t always work out the way you expect, that’s what my Aunt Nettie always told me. Life ain’t working out the way you expected but there are other–”
“You told me what happened to her.” His tone is cold, the sound representation of what he felt that day when it wasn’t his wife coming in to visit him but his neighbor. “About the judge and the party and how…” How his wife had been raped in front of everyone. And they all just laughed. “You told me that she had…” Pills. Pills for insomniacs, which he was. “But you know what I’ve found strange about that story ever since?”
His expression is dark. Mrs. Lovett tilts her head to the side, nervous smile still decorating her features. Always one for talking her way out of accusations. That’s the way her pie stand has still made it throughout all these years. A charmer. A rat.
“You know Lucy’s family. At least, you knew them.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t know them anymore!” Her smile is fading. She already knows what he is accusing her of. “It’s been years, Ben! It had been years!”
“But you had her phone! You knew their names to tell to the police!”
“What did it matter!” she yells. Then, she chuckles softly. “What did it matter, Mr. B? It–”
“That was my daughter’s life!” Benjamin points in the direction of her room. Not that Mrs. Lovett knows what’s behind that door. “She could have been with her family! Not the same judge that raped my wife and threw me away! She could have been happy! She could have been safe!”
Mrs. Lovett is shaking her head. “No, no, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong! He was going to… It didn’t matter what I did…”
“How long?” Benjamin asks. His fist draws his curls up over his forehead. “How long did it take you to go into the flat and find Lucy?”
She purses her lips.
“How. Long?”
Mrs. Lovett releases a sigh. “Two days. But that–”
“When did you realize you hadn’t seen Lucy since she came back from the party?”
Another pause. This time, he lets her think. Dare lie to me.
“The morning after.”
“It took you two days to find her? When you realized you hadn’t seen her? When you could hear our daughter crying?”
Lovett is stone-faced. “Yes.”
Benjamin shakes his head.
“Lucy could still be alive. Couldn’t she be? If you had gone up and seen her in the morning. Why didn’t you, Mrs. Lovett?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Was it because of your feud with my wife?”
Again, no answer.
“You left my wife to die.”
Mrs. Lovett shakes her head. “No. I didn’t, Mr. B.” She arches closer. “It’s in the past now. It’s all in the past. Your Lucy was destined–”
“To what! Lovett! To die!”
“–But why throw a life you could have away, Ben? I’m right here. I’ve got my shop. I’ve got place for you… and your girl. We could be a family–”
“We are never–”
The door opens.
Johanna steps inside.
Green eyes widen as she walks into the tense air. She glances between her father and Mrs. Lovett. He can see her knuckles turn white with how tightly she grips the book she has in hand.
No one speaks for a moment. They are caught in front of her room. Clearly, she feels like she can’t slip inside while they’re posed like this.
“Hello, dear.” Lovett has deemed herself ready to speak first. “We’ve met before. Remember? I’m one of your dad’s old friends.”
“She’s an old neighbor,” Benjamin cuts in. “She was just on her way.”
Johanna nods, still darting between the two of them. She doesn’t need to know the conversation that just occurred. Benjamin is haunted enough by what he figured out a long time ago. He doesn’t need to force his daughter to carry that burden.
Lovett stands still for a moment. But then she smiles.
“Always feel welcome to pop by.” She heads to the door. “Both of you are always welcome on Fleet Street!”
She shuts the door behind her.
Johanna looks at him with lips slightly parted, ready to ask questions. Though, she doesn’t. She turns towards her room. Benjamin raises a hand to stop her.
“Why was the door unlocked?”
She looks up at him. “Hmm?”
“The door. To the flat. It was unlocked. Why?”
Johanna blinks a few times. Clearly, he’s noticed it a long time ago. Why hasn’t he said anything about it until now?
“I…” She shakes her head slightly. “I, um…”
Benjamin marches to the door to lock it. Just a flip and a turn. Is that too difficult for her?
He doesn’t notice how she flinches.
“I know that you’re afraid,” he says. “I know you’re afraid of the judge and afraid… Then why do you leave the door unlocked? Anyone can get in! This is only the second time she’s gotten in! Do you realize how much danger we’re in when you don’t lock the door! This is London, Johanna! I know you realize that you don’t live in Kearney’s Lane anymore where you may not have to lock the doors, but you do now. What if the judge had found us! He could have gotten inside!”
His voice raises with every sentence until he doesn’t realize he’s yelling at his daughter. When he looks back at her, she’s shaking.
Benjamin never wanted to yell at his children, yet he presses on.
“We cannot be exposed like this! You cannot put yourself in danger!”
With that, Johanna runs into her room. He cannot hear sobs on the other side of the door. Only panicked little noises.
He runs a hand through his curls. Regret already spills into his chest.
He promised himself he wouldn’t yell.
Now look at what he’s done. He hadn’t even yelled at Mrs. Lovett.
Benjamin wanders into his bedroom. He still hasn’t taken his work boots off. He stomps off the laces and then sits on his bed. Hands bury his head.
He never wanted to see that woman again. Not after the day she came to the prison to tell him what had happened. At first, there was shock. There was grief. There was anger. But he was there for sixteen years. He had time to think. The story didn’t all align. The missing parts and pieces troubled him for ages. Mrs. Lovett told him that Lucy had been dying for two days. Why hadn’t she known sooner?
And the fact that she hadn’t alerted his or her family to come get Johanna…
There is still something strange about the story. He can’t put his finger on it now.
But just because he is confused and hurt is no excuse for yelling at his daughter.
Hours pass before Benjamin gathers the courage to approach her. He doesn’t make supper and call her in as he tends to after a fight. He knows she won’t want it. Why stress her out now? This is still something they have to work through, he still has to keep her alive, but for this moment… it isn’t the right time.
He wanders to her room. Taps at the door. No answer.
She’s sitting on the fire escape.
It’s been a long time since she’s done that.
Benjamin goes to the window, praying that he doesn’t make it worse. He doesn’t join her on the metal, but he sits at the window. Waiting. Waiting for the right words to come to him. Waiting for her to snap or cry.
Clueless father.
Johanna doesn’t look at him. Though, from the shift in her expression, he can tell that she knows he’s there.
“I’m sorry,” Benjamin eventually says. Seems like the best thing to say now. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
A hesitation. Then, she nods.
She stays quiet for sometime more. Benjamin stays at the window.
“He always locked the door.” Johanna pulls at a curl, twirling it over and over around her finger. “To the room, usually.”
Benjamin says nothing. If he listens, she tends to say more.
Johanna sighs. Looks at him for a moment, looks away.
“Always at night. So that way he could…”
Benjamin nods. It’s still a guess at this point. One day, that is a secret she will tell him. (He hopes.) This is the closest she's ever come.
“Now that I’m away… I can’t bring myself to lock the door.” She lets go of the hair, wrapping both arms around her knees. “I finally… the door finally isn’t locked. And I don’t want it to be anymore.”
He nods. Bites his tongue.
Johanna finds another stray curl. She studies it in front of her. Benjamin wonders what she sees.
“I know… I know that’s no way of thinking. I know that’s not safe.” A pause. “I’ll try. I’ll try to lock the door again.”
She looks at him.
He doesn’t quite know what to say. But he tries.
“I’m not particularly fond of the sound of a lock either,” Benjamin says. “I… understand. There feels like there is no safety in locks.”
Johanna nods.
“Would it help if I teach you how to pick a lock? Or how to take the hinges off the door? That way you can get out if you ever need to?”
He doesn’t really know what he’s promising. Benjamin can’t quite remember how to pick a lock anymore (those days are long behind him), but he’ll remember. He’ll learn again for his girl.
When Johanna nods, it’s already somewhat coming back to him.
“I don’t want to ever be… locked in again.” She glances at him. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I do.” Benjamin doesn’t want to be locked in again either.
Johanna twirls the curl around again. “Thank you.”
He nods. He takes a breath.
“I promise you, Johanna, you won’t be locked up ever again.”
He is her father. He will make certain that happens.
Johanna looks at him, disbelief and relief swimming in her eyes all the same. He will have to prove to her that he is serious but that is something he is more than willing to do. He made promises he wasn’t able to keep when she was a baby but this is a promise he will keep.
“I promise. I promise.”