Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Emily

Jo stood at my gate.
Jo.
Not on a red carpet.
Not beside Hero beneath studio lights.
Not smiling in interviews with her hand too close to his arm while people wrote captions about chemistry and fate and whatever other nonsense sold tickets.
She stood outside Clara-Bellas in a hooded coat, rain on her shoulders, face pale through the intercom camera.
And she said, "Ava's coming."
Eleanora cried against my neck.
Hero went still beside me.
Not surprised.
Not angry yet.
Still.
That was worse.
His mother's voice came through the phone in my hand. "Hero? Who is there?"
Jo pressed the buzzer again.
The sound tore through the hallway.
Eleanora's cry sharpened.
I bounced her automatically.
Small movement.
Side to side.
Side to side.
I didn't even think.
Hero noticed.
Of course he did.
But for once, he didn't look proud.
He looked murderous.
"Don't answer," I said.
His jaw tightened.
"I'm not letting her in."
"Good."
The intercom crackled.
"Hero, please," Jo said. "Please, I know you can hear me. I'm not here to hurt anyone."
A laugh left me.
Cold.
Ugly.
Eleanora flinched at the sound.
I immediately softened, pressing my cheek to her hair.
"Sorry. Sorry, Nora."
Hero's eyes flicked to me.
Then back to the screen.
Jo looked directly into the camera.
"I know I don't deserve to be here. I know. But Ava called me. She said she was going to finish it."
My stomach hollowed.
Finish it.
What did that even mean?
Ava had already leaked my daughter.
Sent threats.
Dragged up the nursery.
Sent photographs from hospital days and court days and old wounds like grief was something she had spent years sharpening.
What did finish it look like?
Hero reached for the intercom button.
I grabbed his wrist.
"No."
He looked at me.
"She says Ava's coming."
"And we should trust her?"
"No."
"Then don't."
His mother's voice came again, sharper now. "Hero, answer me. Is that Jo?"
Hero didn't look away from me.
"Yes," he said to the phone. "It's Jo."
"Oh, for God's sake."
Even through fear, even with my daughter crying in my arms, I nearly laughed.
Hero's mum sounded exactly like the universe had gone too far and she was personally offended by it.
"Do not let her in," she said.
"I'm not," Hero replied.
Jo pressed both hands together in front of her mouth on the screen.
"Please. I walked here. I don't know the flat. I've never been inside. I swear. But Ava knows Clara-Bellas. She knows the building. She said she knew another way in."
My blood turned cold.
Another way in.
The garage.
The back.
The old access.
Things Hayden should not have known.
Things Ava should not have known now.
Except Ava had been here once.
Not properly.
Not in a way I liked to remember.
Years ago, when I had left Hero and he'd ended up with a traumatic brain injury, Ava had turned up at Clara-Bellas like grief gave her rights. Like knowing Hero before me meant she could sit in my building, breathe my air, touch the edges of the life we had built and call it concern.
Titan had thrown her out before she could get comfortable.
Hero's big brother, all broad shoulders and ice-cold fury, had stood between Ava and the stairs to the flat and told her to get out.
She had left humiliated.
I had forgotten that humiliation.
Ava clearly hadn't.
Hero pressed the talk button before I could stop him.
He didn't open the gate.
Just the speaker.
"What did you tell her?"
His voice was low.
Terrifyingly calm.
Jo flinched.
"Hero-"
"What did you tell her?"
"Not anything about inside. I don't know anything about inside."
"What did you tell her?"
Jo's face crumpled.
"I told her you were here. That you brought Emily and Eleanora here."
My grip tightened around Eleanora.
Hero's wrist went rigid beneath my hand.
Jo hurried on, words spilling out.
"I didn't give her access codes. I don't know any. I didn't know she'd use Hayden. I didn't know about the petrol. I swear, Hero, I swear."
"You told Ava where my daughter was," Hero said.
Jo closed her eyes.
Rain moved down her face.
Maybe tears too.
I didn't care.
"I panicked," she whispered.
Eleanora sobbed against me.
Panicked.
Jealous.
Lonely.
Whatever word Jo wanted to use, it still ended in my baby crying in my arms while strangers stood at my gate.
Something hot and steady moved through my chest.
Not panic.
Not shame.
Rage.
I reached past Hero and pressed the talk button myself.
Jo's eyes widened when she heard my voice.
"Do you know her name?"
Jo blinked.
"What?"
"My daughter. Do you know her name?"
Hero turned his head towards me.
I didn't look at him.
Jo swallowed. "Yes."
"Say it."
"Emily-"
"Say it."
Jo's mouth trembled.
"Eleanora."
The sound of my daughter's name in her mouth made my skin crawl.
I adjusted Eleanora higher on my shoulder.
"She is one," I said. "She cannot read headlines. She cannot understand why people shout. She cannot protect herself from women who are sad that a man doesn't love them back."
Jo flinched like I had slapped her.
Good.
"You knew that," I said.
"Yes."
"You knew she was a baby."
"Yes."
"And you still helped."
Jo's face broke.
"I'm sorry."
"No," I said, voice low. "You're frightened. There's a difference."
Hero's hand came gently to my back.
Not stopping me.
Anchoring me.
The intercom crackled with rain and static.
Jo looked smaller on the screen.
For a second, I could almost see what Hero had seen in her.
Not love.
Never love.
But loneliness.
Need.
Someone clinging to a story because reality had been unkind.
Then Eleanora's cry hitched in my ear, and sympathy died.
"You don't come inside," I said.
Jo nodded quickly. "I know."
"You don't see her."
"I know."
"You don't say her name again."
Jo's mouth closed.
Hero's mother was silent on the phone.
Hero's hand stayed against my back.
"Tell us what Ava said," I continued. "Everything. Now."
Jo wiped at her face.
"She called from another number. She was furious. She said the messages weren't working fast enough. She said Emily was still there, still playing house."
My stomach twisted.
Playing house.
Eleanora's small fingers gripped my jumper.
I rocked her.
Side to side.
Side to side.
"She said Hero would cave if she showed proof about the baby. That he always did when she mentioned it."
Hero went very still.
I felt it behind me.
I did not turn.
Not because it didn't hurt.
Because Jo wasn't allowed to watch me bleed.
"She said she had one last thing," Jo went on. "Something from court. Something that would make Emily run before lunchtime."
Court.
My blood chilled.
"What from court?" Hero asked.
Jo shook her head. "I don't know. She wouldn't say."
"You expect us to believe that?"
"I don't care if you believe me," Jo said, and for the first time her voice had something solid in it. "I'm telling you because I saw the news about Hayden. I didn't know about the petrol. I didn't know he'd go there. Ava said he was useful because men like him always are. I should have come sooner."
"Yes," Hero said. "You should have."
Jo closed her eyes again.
A police officer appeared on the intercom screen, stepping into frame.
He spoke to Jo first, then looked up towards the camera.
"Mr Tiffin? Ms Dean? Is everything all right?"
Hero pressed the button. "No. She says Ava is on her way here."
The officer's posture changed.
I saw the exact moment he took it seriously.
Good.
Jo turned quickly. "She might not come to the front. Ava said she knew another way in."
Hero's jaw flexed.
"She knows this building," he said.
I felt the memory move through him too.
The old one.
The awful one.
Ava in Clara-Bellas after Hero's accident, hovering in the doorway downstairs with that wounded look she wore like perfume.
Titan's voice cutting through the room.
Out.
Ava pretending not to understand.
Titan not raising his voice, which somehow made it worse.
I said out. He doesn't need you here.
Ava looking at me like I had stolen even his injuries from her.
Then leaving.
Not because she wanted to.
Because Titan gave her no choice.
That had been years ago.
One visit.
One humiliation.
Apparently enough.
"She's been here before," I said into the speaker, more to the officer than Jo. "Years ago. She didn't get inside the flat properly. Titan made her leave."
The officer looked up sharply.
"Who is Titan?"
"Hero's brother," I said.
Hero added, "He removed her from the building after a previous incident. She may know the layout downstairs. She may remember the rear access exists."
The officer nodded once and spoke into his radio.
Another officer moved behind Jo, heading towards the side of the property.
Hero pressed the button again.
"Jo, stay with the police. Give them your phone. All of it."
Jo nodded.
"I will."
"Not to me. Not to the studio. Not your manager. Police."
"Yes."
Her eyes lifted.
Not to Hero.
To me.
"I didn't know about the nursery until Ava showed me the photos."
The hallway went cold.
Hero's hand tightened on my back.
I stared at the screen.
Jo looked horrified by her own words, like they had slipped out before she could decide whether she was brave enough to say them.
"Ava had them already," she said quickly. "Before the article. Before I sent anything. I didn't know where they were from at first. I didn't know it was inside your home."
My whole body went numb.
"What photos?" I asked.
Jo swallowed.
"The cot. The green walls. The mobile. Some of Hero's things in the room." Her face twisted. "Baby clothes. Little shoes. A photo of you pregnant, standing near the window."
Eleanora's crying faded into a distant sound.
Everything did.
The cot.
The green walls.
The mobile.
Hero's things.
Me pregnant.
In the nursery.
Photos from inside the flat.
Not because Jo had visited.
Not because Jo knew the layout.
Ava had them before.
Ava had seen the room before we opened it.
Before the article.
Before Hayden.
Before Hero stood in that doorway and looked at the cot like it had broken him.
"Who took them?" Hero asked.
His voice was no longer calm.
Jo shook her head, crying harder now. "I don't know."
"Think."
"I don't know!" Jo cried. "Ava just had them. She sent them to me weeks ago."
Weeks.
The word cracked through the hallway.
Weeks ago.
Someone had been inside the flat before.
Long before today.
Not Jo.
Maybe not Ava herself.
But someone.
Hero understood at the same moment I did.
His face went white.
The officer below looked up sharply. "Weeks ago?"
Jo nodded. "Yes."
"I don't post my nursery," I said.
Jo flinched.
"I know that now."
Hero pressed the intercom hard enough that his knuckles whitened.
"Send everything to the officer. Now."
"I will."
The officer at the gate guided Jo out of the frame.
For a moment, the screen showed only rain on the driveway and the closed gate.
Then the intercom went silent.
The hallway felt too small.
Eleanora's cries had softened into tired little hiccups against my neck, but my heart was hammering.
Weeks ago.
Photos.
Inside the nursery.
Ava had seen the room before we opened it.
My home had been invaded while I was upstairs, downstairs, asleep, teaching classes, trying not to think about the baby I had left.
And Ava had known enough about Clara-Bellas to circle back years later and find the weakest door.
A sound came from the phone in my hand.
Hero's mum.
"Emily?"
I had forgotten she was there.
I lifted the phone slightly.
"Yes."
Her voice was steady now.
Too steady.
The way mothers sounded when fear had nowhere to go because children needed them practical.
"Put the chain on the flat door."
I blinked.
"What?"
"The flat door. Chain. Bolt. Whatever you have. Do it now."
Hero moved immediately.
I followed him with my eyes as he crossed the hallway and checked the locks.
Top lock.
Bottom lock.
Chain.
His movements were stiff with pain, but precise.
"Done," he said.
"Check windows," his mum continued.
I almost laughed.
Then realised she was right.
I handed Eleanora to Hero before either of us thought too much about it.
His eyes flicked to mine.
"Take her," I said.
He did.
Carefully, wincing as her weight settled against his ribs but not complaining.
Eleanora calmed almost instantly against him.
That hurt.
Less than before.
More than I wanted.
"I'm checking the windows," I said, because doing something was better than feeling everything.
I moved through the flat.
Bedroom window locked.
Nursery window locked.
Bathroom window locked.
Kitchen window locked.
Living room curtains drawn, window latched.
I checked them twice.
At the kitchen counter, our phones lay side by side. Mine lit up again.
Unknown number.
I froze.
No.
Not another message.
A call.
The phone vibrated against the worktop, loud in the silent kitchen.
Hero appeared in the doorway with Eleanora on his hip.
"Don't answer."
I looked at the screen.
Unknown.
Could be Ava.
Could be press.
Could be Jo from another number.
Could be Hayden somehow.
Could be the hospital, court, hell itself.
I didn't answer.
The call stopped.
A voicemail appeared.
Hero's mum's voice came from the phone in the hallway, faint but still on speaker. "What was that?"
"My phone," I called back.
Hero's eyes were on the voicemail notification.
"Send it to Jen."
"No."
"Emily."
"No." My voice was thin. "Not without listening."
"It could be designed to hurt you."
"Everything is designed to hurt me today."
He flinched.
I hated that.
But I didn't take it back.
I pressed play before courage could leave.
The voicemail began with breathing.
Shaky.
Close to the microphone.
Then Ava's voice.
Not triumphant.
Not smooth.
Broken in a way that made it worse.
"Emily."
Hero went rigid.
Eleanora shifted, sensing something, her tiny hand catching the collar of his T-shirt.
Ava laughed once.
A terrible sound.
"I suppose Jo has arrived by now. She always did like being seen doing the right thing five minutes too late."
My skin crawled.
"I'm not coming to the front," Ava continued. "I'm not stupid."
Hero moved towards the intercom.
I lifted a hand to stop him, still listening.
"I've spent years watching him choose you, even when he hated you. Do you know what that feels like? To be in someone's bed and still know they're thinking about the girl who doesn't even want him properly?"
My stomach twisted.
Hero's face went hard.
Ava's breathing crackled through the speaker.
"He told you I lost a baby, didn't he? Did he cry? Did he do the wounded eyes? He's very good at those."
I looked at Hero.
He didn't look away.
Good.
Let her words hit the room and fail to split it.
Ava's voice sharpened.
"I did lose one. Since you'll be wondering. Since you'll all make me the liar because it's easier. I lost it before he ever knew. Before I could show him. Before I could decide if telling him would make him mine."
My throat tightened despite myself.
If it was true, it was awful.
If it was a lie, it was awful.
Ava seemed to know that.
"But that's not the point, is it? The point is, when I lost his baby, I got silence. When you tried to give his away, you got him on his knees in court."
The words landed like a slap.
Hero's voice was immediate.
"Turn it off."
I didn't.
My hands shook, but I didn't.
Because I was done letting everyone else decide when I had heard enough.
Ava went on.
"You think you're different because you kept a nursery? Because you whispered Boo to your stomach and painted walls and played little mother when no one could see?"
My blood turned to ice.
Hero's face changed.
Not anger.
Fear.
Because Ava shouldn't have known that.
Not Boo.
Not that.
Only a handful of people knew.
Me.
Brandon.
Mimi.
Hero later.
His mum, maybe.
Not Ava.
Never Ava.
The voicemail crackled.
"I've seen the room. I've seen the cot. I've seen the stupid mobile. Do you know how easy it was to get close? You kept his old things like a museum and thought no one would notice. You left pieces of him everywhere."
Hero whispered, "Fuck."
I could not move.
Eleanora gave a soft whine in his arms.
He pressed a kiss to her hair automatically, eyes still on me.
Ava's voice dropped.
"Anyway. You won't have to worry about the room much longer."
The message ended.
Silence.
Complete.
Dead.
Then Eleanora began to cry.
Hero turned instantly, trying to soothe her, but his eyes stayed on me.
"Emily."
The kitchen swayed.
You won't have to worry about the room much longer.
The nursery.
The cot.
The room where my daughter had slept for the first time.
My body moved before thought.
I ran.
"Emily!"
Hero followed, slower because of his ribs, Eleanora crying against him.
I reached the nursery and stopped so abruptly he nearly collided with me.
Everything looked normal.
Green walls.
Cot.
Mobile.
Clean sheet.
Rabbit absent because Eleanora had been chewing it earlier.
Morning light.
Nothing burning.
Nothing broken.
But the room felt wrong now.
Again.
Touched.
Watched.
Known.
I stepped inside, breathing too fast.
"She was here," I whispered.
Hero came up beside me.
"She might be lying."
"She knew Boo."
His jaw tightened.
"I know."
"She knew about the mobile. She knew about your things."
"I know."
"How?"
"I don't know."
I turned on him.
Not angry at him.
Not exactly.
Just desperate for a target that wasn't my own fear.
"How does she know that?"
"I don't know," he repeated, voice raw.
Eleanora cried harder.
The sound cut through me.
I looked at her in Hero's arms, red-faced and frightened, and something settled.
Not calm.
No.
Something colder.
Clearer.
Ava wanted me panicked.
Ava wanted me running from room to room, imagining cameras, imagining fires, imagining my daughter unsafe in every place I had failed to make ready for her.
Fine.
She could have my panic.
But she wasn't getting my daughter.
"Give her to me," I said.
Hero's eyes widened slightly.
"What?"
"Give her to me."
He hesitated.
I hated that he hesitated.
Then I saw why.
His ribs.
His instinct.
My shaking hands.
I softened my voice.
"Hero. Give me our daughter."
That did it.
He handed Eleanora over.
The second her weight hit my arms, she wailed against my chest.
I flinched.
Then held firmer.
"I know," I whispered, voice trembling. "I know, Boo. I know."
Hero's face broke at the name.
I didn't have time for his heart.
Mine was busy trying not to explode.
I turned in a slow circle, looking at every corner of the nursery.
Curtains.
Shelf.
Cot.
Mobile.
Books.
The old chair.
Hero's jacket.
The photograph frame.
The tiny shoes.
If Ava had been here, or if someone had come for her, they had stood where I stood.
They had looked at the room I couldn't.
They had taken my shame and made it evidence.
No.
Not anymore.
I walked to the cot and pulled the mobile down.
Hero stepped forward. "Emily?"
I clutched it in one hand, Eleanora in the other arm.
"She doesn't get this."
"Who?"
"Ava." My voice shook. "She doesn't get to make me afraid of this room. She doesn't get to make me afraid of the mobile. She doesn't get Boo."
Hero stared at me.
Then he nodded.
"What do you want to do?"
I looked around.
The answer came from somewhere deeper than fear.
"Move it."
His brows drew together.
"The nursery?"
"No." I looked at the cot. "Everything she touched. Everything anyone touched for her."
Understanding shifted across his face.
"She doesn't get to decide what stays sacred," I said.
My voice sounded strange.
Stronger than I felt.
"I want the room checked. Police. Properly. Cameras, whatever. If she's had someone in here, I want to know how. Then I want it cleaned again. Properly. And then..." I swallowed, holding Eleanora closer. "Then I want to put it back myself."
Hero's eyes shone.
He didn't say he was proud.
Good man.
He reached for his phone.
"I'll call the officer."
"Not from here."
He paused.
I looked down at Eleanora.
"She doesn't cry in here while Ava's voice is still in it."
Hero's face changed.
He nodded.
We moved out of the nursery together.
Into the hallway.
Then the living room.
I sat on the sofa with Eleanora against me, still crying but softer now, her face buried in my jumper. Hero called the officer. His mother stayed on the phone, silent until she knew we were safe enough to hear her again.
Then she said, "Emily?"
I lifted the phone with my free hand.
"Yes."
Her voice was fierce.
"Good girl."
I almost fell apart.
Not because the words were enough.
Because they were too much.
Because I was thirty seconds from breaking and Hero's mother somehow sounded like she had seen the crack and put her hand over it from her house in London.
"I'm not," I whispered.
"You are this morning."
I closed my eyes.
Eleanora hiccuped against me.
Hero spoke low to the police in the hallway, telling them about Ava's voicemail, about the nursery, about the threat.
His voice broke once.
On Boo.
I heard it.
I didn't look.
Some mercies deserved privacy.
The television flashed another lockdown headline on mute.
Outside, Winchester stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
A town holding its breath while my private nightmare learned new ways in.
A few minutes later, the officer's voice came through the intercom downstairs. They were checking the rear access. Another unit was heading towards the lanes behind Clara-Bellas. Jo was being taken for a formal statement. Ava had not been seen at the front.
Not comforting.
Not enough.
But movement.
Action.
The flat door remained locked and chained.
Hero came back into the living room, phone in hand, face pale with pain and fury.
"They're going to check the nursery."
I nodded.
"Okay."
"They said we need to stay out of it for now."
"Okay."
His eyes moved to the mobile in my hand.
I looked down.
I hadn't realised how tightly I was holding it.
The little clouds were crushed against my palm.
My throat tightened.
Eleanora's crying had faded into tired snuffles, her warm weight pressed into me.
"She liked it," I whispered.
"She'll like it again."
I looked up at him.
He was certain.
Not because he knew.
Because he was choosing to believe it.
For once, I borrowed it.
"She'll like it again," I repeated.
Hero sat slowly on the armchair opposite, wincing as he lowered himself down.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Eleanora dozed fitfully against me, not fully asleep, one hand clamped around the edge of my jumper. Every time I shifted, she whimpered, so I stayed still.
Hero watched her hand.
Then mine.
Then my face.
"What?" I whispered.
"You said our daughter."
I looked away.
Of course he had heard that.
Of course, out of everything - Jo at the gate, Ava's threat, the nursery violation - he had caught those two words like they were a lifeline.
"Don't make it a thing."
His eyes softened.
"I won't."
"You are making it a thing internally."
"Very loudly."
Despite everything, a laugh cracked out of me.
Eleanora stirred.
I froze.
She settled.
Hero smiled carefully.
No wince this time.
Small victory.
The buzzer sounded again.
I flinched so hard Eleanora woke and started crying.
Hero was on his feet in an instant, one hand pressed to his ribs, jaw clenched against the pain.
"Stay there."
"For once, gladly."
He went to the intercom.
I held Eleanora tighter, heart pounding.
Hero looked at the screen.
Then his entire body changed.
Not fear.
Shock.
"What?" I called.
He didn't answer.
I stood, Eleanora in my arms, and moved carefully to the hallway despite every sensible instinct telling me to stay put.
The intercom screen showed the gate.
A police officer stood there.
Beside him was a woman.
Not Ava.
Not Jo.
Mimi.
My sister stood in the rain outside Clara-Bellas, hair shoved under a hood, face blotchy from crying, one hand gripping the strap of a bag like she had run here with half her life in it.
My breath left me.
Hero looked at me.
The officer spoke through the intercom.
"Ms Dean? She says she's your sister. She says she has information about Ava."
Mimi looked straight up at the camera.
Her voice came through, shaking.
"Em, I'm sorry. I didn't know she'd use it. I swear I didn't know."
The hallway tilted.
My grip tightened around Eleanora.
Hero's face went cold.
"Mimi," I whispered.
My sister started crying harder.
"I told her about Boo."