There are times when she regrets the lies she has told him. Whenever she sees a crazed beggar woman selling herself to some dirty old man on the street. Whenever a pale young face with pretty yellow hair peers from the window of carriage that rolls past the pie-shop. Usually whenever she sees the people she couldn't save.
But then again telling the truth was never Nellie Lovett's strong suit. She has even convinced herself that all the things she has told him are not lies.
Life outside of London had changed Mr. Barker. He wasn't the impressionable young man she had fallen in love with fifteen years ago. Now he was so much more. He had changed his name, his identity, his life goals based on what little she has told him. She has him wrapped around her finger and yet there is a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that tells her not to get as close as she'd like.
Nellie Lovett still loves him, but this unrequited love is different than the one she held for a young barber fifteen years ago. This new love is painful. But she still wants him. Yet for all her effort, her carefully worded love songs and desperate attempts to find her way into his bed are constantly thwarted by the ghosts that reside in both his room and in the back of her mind and out in the street before her.
These are the ghosts of those she couldn't save. Wouldn't save. Not for him.