She hangs around the shop now.
It used to be the Judge's house she haunted, the distant window of her daughter's gilded prison which drew her candle-weak attentions. But now it is the shop. Now it is Mrs Lovett she watches from the shadows . . . now it is Nellie she whispers goblin-stories about beneath her breath.
Nellie wipes her hands on her apron - a nervous habit she just can't seem to shake. She has been away from the pies for almost an hour, has scrubbed and scrubbed her hands . . . . but every now and then she half-feels it on her fingers. Something . . . . congealing.
The voice outside rises, an awful dreary wail, and Nellie scowls.
They were friends, once.
Lucy Barker felt sorry for her then, stuck with fat Albert, and pretended not to hear the gush in her friend's voice when Benjamin spoke to her - pretended not to notice the way Nellie's eyes shone at every careless compliment.
(She was a good friend, Lucy Barker.)
But not now. Now she's a raving loon - and that's putting it kindly. How she continues to evade the madhouse, Nellie will never know. Lucy's hair is matted and dull now, her eyes vacant. Even her voice has changed – it is a hoarse and poison-scalded gobble, no longer the sweet singing cadence which so bewitched Benjamin Barker. There is nothing of Lucy left in her now.
No, Nellie thinks, as she steps into the darkened street and seizes the tramp by the arm. Not Lucy. Not any more.
She's just another madwoman now – just another poor soul cast adrift on London's stinking, heartless streets. She doesn't know or care what she's doing to Nellie. She stands feet away from her former husband, on some days, and does not recognize him. She doesn't want him.
Even if she were the old Lucy again – she would look in this man's eyes and see only Sweeney, and she would not want him.
She doesn't want him.
She could ruin everything, and the irony is that she doesn't care.
The madwoman has no way of knowing the Emporium has become a charnel house - but she seems to suspect it. She hangs around the pie shop like a bad smell, like the foul fumes that belch from the chimney. She shrieks about the abomination, and whispers about the black thirst of the undead, the demon barber and the aberration . . .
" . . . the evil . . ."
Nelly slaps her, and watches her famished form fall to the ground.
"And stay out!" she snaps - as though the woman is an alley cat she's just caught prancing all over the pies.
Once she is satisfied the beggar isn't strong enough to rise and follow her home, Nellie leaves her. She picks her way through cobbled streets in the dark, and steals into the shop in silence.
Toby is fast asleep in the armchair by the fire, his bottle of gin nestled in the crook of his elbow. Nellie watches him frown in his sleep, like a puppy dreaming of chasing rabbits. She wipes her hand unconsciously on the hem of her apron.
He's a good boy.
Sweeney is nowhere to be seen, of course. He'll be upstairs, in his quarters.
(She likes to think of his rooms like that. 'His quarters.')
Like on a ship.
Nellie has never been on a ship, and Sweeney is not exactly brimming with briny sailor's tales and thrilling reminisces of life on the high seas – in fact, all he has ever imparted with regard to ships is : "Rats. Scurvy. Weevils."
But Mrs Lovett likes to think of him as a seafarer all the same.
(Well, sometimes. In certain . . . daydreams.)
She climbs the stairs without an aim in mind, her heart hammering in her throat, and pauses briefly before the attic door.
What if he's in there? What if he sits in there at night . . . brooding?
The thought chills and excites her, all at the same time.
But the attic, of course, is empty.
Nellie allows herself a pause, a little broken exhalation - and then she is pragmatic again. Practical again. She crosses the room with brusque footsteps, cracks open the floorboards without hesitation. And there they are, gleaming silver, like a set of shining fingers.
He keeps them here still, at night. When the day's work is done, he stores the case of razors safely beneath the floorboards, just where he left it, all those years ago.
He doesn't know she knows about this little habit.
(Didn't notice. Naturally.)
It is almost a ritual – almost as if he lays them to rest at night in the hope that when he collects them the following morning, he will descend to the kitchen to find the intervening years undone, and Lucy Barker sitting at the breakfast table, feeding porridge to the baby.
(Then again . . . they are silver, and such a shine must sing to a thief's fingers. Sweeney's razors would fetch a pretty penny, if stolen. Perhaps he just wants to keep 'em safe. )
Nellie feels her pulse quicken as she picks up the slim silver slicer, the cool sliver of metal that is almost a part of Sweeney's blackened heart, now.
Well that's just fine and dandy. She can live with that, because her own heart isn't in such great shape either – too many years of foolish yearning and hopeless drudgery, too much she wanted and will never have.
She curls in the chair, and runs her palm across the wooden seat. It smells of sweat and silver polish, of gentleman's starch and shaving powder . . . and of Sweeney.
Nellie cradles the blade to her chest.
She still remembers the day he was deported – the day they slung him in with rats and weevils and scurvy and packed him off to a new world.
She was rubbing lard into the pie-plate, when Lucy told her - in a half-dead whisper - that Benjamin was gone, that today was the day. That there was not a prison in the city Nellie could walk past now, and think of him.
She still remembers the way the breath caught in her chest, the snatched and stranded feeling she was left with as the air abandoned her lungs.
And then . . . .
She will always remember the day Sweeney Todd walked into her shop, and gave her breath enough to sing again.
(Just enough. )
Nellie hugs herself, cradled in the chair . . . until whalebone crushes her waist and once again, she can hardly breathe.
She strokes the silver blade in her hand, irritated by the cool surface. She wants to feel it warm, hot with rage and bloodlust.
So Nellie squeezes it, tighter and tighter still, trying to warm it . . . to create a little respite, to see her through the bloody dawning day.
Because he doesn't see her.
Doesn't look, doesn't notice, doesn't care.
He spends his days plotting vengeance, dreaming of it, and fills his nights with dreams of . . . of . . . of a ghost-girl in a gilded cage, a daughter he could not speak two fatherly words to in the waking world, anymore. And a wife who is cold comfort now . . . a deed-distorted doll he cannot picture clearly. (But she had yellow hair.)
He doesn't see Nellie. Doesn't know. Doesn't guess. Doesn't want her.
The blade nicks her fingertip, and she gasps. She watches the blood bead scarlet, and the sting seems to fill her stomach with some strange sense of purpose.
Nellie raises the blade again, almost dreaming herself . . . and presses it to her lips. When the salt tang floods her mouth, she sighs.
If he would only kiss her once.
If he would only use her . . . . once.
Just once.