February

"Eleanor?"

The auburn haired baker looked up from the book that she was reading, her eyes widening slightly when she saw Mr. Todd standing on the threshold of her parlour.

Even though he had remembered her first name, something that pleasantly surprised her, and even used that name to address her when there was no one else around, he had mostly been as distant towards her as he had always been, not speaking more to her than was necessary.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," she said, the familiar flutter in her stomach and her blushing cheeks making it hard for her to think properly.

Mr. Todd approached her, looking at an empty space of the couch she was already sitting on with a questioning look.

She nodded eagerly, nervousness and excitement battling for domination within her as she moved to the edge of the couch, clearing more than enough space for the barber and thus showing him that she would like him to sit next to her.

He approached her hesitantly and a little reluctantly, but he seated himself right next to her nonetheless.

Mrs. Lovett was glad that she had just lit a fire in the hearth, because it was nicely warm in the parlour now, something that he would hopefully appreciate, and the light that the flames produced made it easier for her to study his stern face. She was relieved because Toby wasn't with them; no matter how fond she was of the boy, she knew very well that the barber and he didn't like each other and whatever Mr. Todd was going to say to her, she didn't want the young boy to hear it. This was something between her and the barber and as long as Toby was cleaning tables in the now quiet pie shop, he couldn't disturb anything.

Sweeney cleared his throat, staring at the flames. It was obvious that he didn't know how to begin exactly. She wanted to encourage him, but resisted the urge. If there was one thing that she had learned, it was that she had to give him all the time and space he needed. So she just sat there, looking at him, waiting until he had sorted his thoughts and was ready to speak.

"When... when your husband died," he said at length, "how did you go on?"

"It was quite different for me," she said, choosing her words very carefully when she realized what he was asking exactly. She knew that anything she said would be placed in his own context, that was coloured almost completely by the memory of Lucy Barker. "Albert and I never... well, our marriage can't be really compared to Lucy's and yours."

"Why not?" he asked, looking up at her. The intensity of his eyes made it hard for her to think and she was somewhat relieved when he removed his gaze after a few moments, as if sensing her discomfort, continuing his staring contest with the fire.

"Albert and I didn't love each other."

"Did your parents force you to..."

He didn't even look at her this time, but his interest was enough to make her temperature rise in a way that had nothing to do with the fire.

"No, it wasn't like that. My parents died a few years earlier; I can hardly remember them. I grew up with my two brothers in the house of my aunt. It was horrible – the poor woman did all she could, but there wasn't enough money to feed her own children, let alone us. My brothers and I had to steal in order not to starve. One time, I was caught in the pie shop that I usually went to if I had to eat – by Albert. I thought that he was going to kill me – instead, he said that I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen."

She too was staring at the fire while she reminisced, blushing as she remembered the events as if they had taken place only a few weeks ago instead of more than two decades.

"A few weeks later we were married," she sighed. "Of course, it wasn't a good idea. He was ten years older than I was, I didn't even know him... I was hardly more than a girl. But I didn't have a choice, or did I? It was that, or ending up on the streets for the rest of my life sooner or later."

She trailed off as she remembered those days of confusion and fear.

"And?"

Flattered and rather surprised by his curiosity and attention, she continued, even though she wasn't fond of the part of her story that followed.

"Soon it was clear that we didn't suit each other at all. I think he was genuinely attracted to me at first, but this faded within the first year of our marriage. There were other girls that caught his eye... which actually was a relief because he began to leave me alone at night."

She sighed, smiling sadly as she recalled the pain and humiliation that she had initially experienced when she had found out that her husband slept with other women. But how pleasant it had been to be alone at night, instead of having to endure the urges his demanding body. After a while, she was actually quite happy with Albert's behaviour. She understood him, in a way. Marrying had been a foolish thing that couldn't be undone. She would've been unfaithful to her husband as well, if only the handsome man, who had began renting the room above her home a few months after she had married, wouldn't have been so loyal to his wife. Only when Albert's health began to fail, he stayed home again. She had accepted him once more, nursed him, sensing that he wouldn't live much longer and hoping that he would leave his shop and house to her. He had; in the end, he had been good to her.

"I never knew," Mr. Todd said quietly. "The two of you always seemed so... happy together."

Mrs. Lovett shook her head. Sometimes she truly couldn't understand how naïve the barber had been in the old days. Everything that had happened before his banishment had taken place in a world that was filled with his love for Lucy Barker and little else; he had never really looked beyond his own happiness.

"I'm sorry Mr. T," she said, suddenly quite eager to change the subject. If they would continue talking like that, she was afraid to tell him things that he shouldn't know, or at least, not yet. But it was easy to reveal deep secrets accidentally to a willing listener, especially if this person happened to be the one you had been in love with for two decades. "I really wish that I could help you with this, but I... I never lost someone the way you have."

It was extremely frustrating. Sweeney asked her help for something like this at last but she truly didn't know how she could lessen the pain that the absence of his wife caused. She was more than ready to replace Lucy personally, but the barber himself would probably never be. Hadn't she tried all she could already?

"You should be glad," he said after a long moment of silence. "The pain of not being with her, the knowledge that she is gone... it's unbearable."

He stared at the flames in the hearth with unseeing eyes and the baker's heart ached, and not only because of the barber's misery. She knew so much more about those unendurable feelings than he thought, having felt them herself in a way that was quite similar to the way Mr. Todd had.

But she didn't think of her own longing as she scrutinized Sweeney's face. Often it was hard to see him for what he really was, but now it was horribly clear. He was a murderer, yes, but he truly was something that was, in a way, equally terrible. He was a broken man with a tormented soul, who had lost everything that a human being could possibly lose.

Desperate to comfort him, she gently placed her hand on his upper leg, shivering as she felt the coldness and unexpected fragility of his limb. The poor man truly neglected himself.

"But try to see it this way," she said quickly, pulling her hand away as she saw the shocked expression on his face and felt his body freeze. "At least, the two of you have been together for several years."

"I can't remember them."

Mrs. Lovett flinched, both because of the harshness of his words and the meaning of them. For the first time, he admitted to her that he had forgotten what living with his wife had been like. And there was that little voice in the back of her head, screaming how happy she would be to have even one day with the barber like Lucy had month after month.

"But surely, you are grateful for the time that you lived together," she said tentatively, "you are glad that you have known her, aren't you?"

"I try to tell myself that," he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper, "but I can't believe it any longer. Sometimes I wonder if it hadn't been better for both of us if we'd never..."

The baker stared at him, not believing what she was hearing. He was totally oblivious to her and the way his words affected her. She tried to find something to say, but for once she found that she couldn't.

"I shouldn't have come here," he said suddenly, a slight hint of panic in his voice.

He stood up and before she could even open her mouth, he was gone.

But even when he had disappeared, some of his presence lingered, the words that he had spoken forming a lump in her throat and the quiet despair of his voice still hanging heavily in the air, causing her to shiver. Suddenly, the fire didn't seem to be spreading any warmth after all.