Chapter 25

Although Mrs. Lovett didn't have to work all night long anymore because she didn't have to clean shirts and bake corpses into pies, she didn't sleep that night, not at all.

The events from only a few hours ago were repeated in her head over again and over again.

The realization that the barber had hit her echoed in her head all night as if it were some kind of bizarre song. She could still feel the barber's cold fist on her jaw. How ironic it was. Finally he had touched her and it had been like this.

A desperate sob went through her entire body and she hid her face in her pillow so she wouldn't wake Toby with her crying.

Minutes turned into hours, but the baker didn't calm down. She didn't want to believe that the barber had actually hurt her. She had told herself all this time that Sweeney Todd was a good man, but now she realized she had been lying to herself; he had only used her to get what he wanted: a free room and a free worker.

Suddenly, she hated him and she loathed herself because she had always believed so strongly that things would change and here she was, alone, crying, the red imprints of his knuckles on her face.

The night seemed to last for an eternity, but finally the dawn broke. Mrs. Lovett had no idea what she would do if she saw Sweeney, but she presumed she would run away if he came near to her again.

She went to Toby, who was awake already, and asked him to prepare breakfast. She tried to behave as she always did, but the boy noticed that something was wrong with her.

"Mum?" he asked, concerned, when he saw her eyes, which were still red from crying, and the dark circles around them. "What has happened to you?"

"Nothing," she lied, not in a convincing way.

"It has to do with Mr. Todd, hasn't it?"

"No of course not, how can you even think that…"

When the baker saw Toby's rolling eyes, she sighed.

"Well, alright… Mr. T and I had a quarrel and I'm quite upset because of that."

"Is that the reason that Mr. Todd left?"

"What did you say?" she asked, thinking she misheard his question.

"I asked: 'Is that the reason that Mr. Todd left?'"

"Did he leave," she asked, bewildered, ignoring the boy's question.

"I think so."

"How do you know that… how, and when?"

"Half an hour ago. He tried to open the door of the shop, but it was still closed. The sound woke me, but I pretended to be still asleep, to find out what he was doing. I could just see him from the couch. Mr. Todd turned around and walked away, but not in the direction of his room. I thought it was all very odd. So I went to the pie shop to check if he was really leaving, because it looked like that. When he was at the end of the street, or at least at the corner, he looked back once. I hid myself behind the curtains so he wouldn't see me and when I looked up again, he was gone."

Mrs. Lovett's stared through the window where Toby had seen Sweeney leaving only half an hour ago. She was relieved and actually hoped that the barber wouldn't come back but at the same time, it felt like he had taken a huge part of her heart with him when he went away.

"It's alright boy," she said, to her own surprise managing to feign a smile. "Can you make me some breakfast?"

"Of course Mum," he replied and, after casting one more worried glance on her, he disappeared into the kitchen to get bread and butter there.

Mrs. Lovett unlocked the door of her shop and went to the room where Sweeney Todd had lived until very recently. With mixed feelings she opened the door of the barber shop.

To her surprise, it was completely empty. She had expected it to be such a mess as it had been last night, or maybe even worse.

It would've been easier for her if he just would've gone away without bothering to clean; now it was impossible for her to hate him as she wanted to do and she felt a tiny bit of sympathy for him.

She walked towards the middle of the room and sat down next to the loose piece of the floor. For a few seconds she closed her eyes, imaging it was still one of those days

before the barber's return from his banishment, when she had sat there so often, pretending that Benjamin would come home one day to declare his love for her. The barber had come home, but how different it had been from her dreams.

Just like then, she carefully opened the hidden space beneath the floor, as if she thus could recall clearer those days in which she still had felt some hope.

To her bewilderment, the box with the razors was still there, as if it had never been from its place. She didn't really dare to take it from the secret space; only when she realized the barber wasn't there anymore to kill her for touching his razors, she carefully opened the box and peeked inside.

Two of the razors were missing; if she remembered correctly, this were his favorite ones which he had always carried with him, wherever he went.

When she was about to place the box back, Mrs. Lovett noticed something else. On the bottom of the space beneath the floor, lay the pictures of the barber's wife and child, one of his most beloved possessions and basically the only thing that was left of his stolen family.

The baker wondered what it meant that Mr. Todd hadn't taken those with him and for a few seconds she considered the situation.

Then Toby called to her to announce that breakfast was ready and she returned to her living room while she was trying to figure out what she was exactly feeling for the barber. She couldn't even tell if she 'just' hated Sweeney Todd or that there was still something more than that.

During breakfast it became clear that Toby would do everything he could to cheer Mrs. Lovett up and distract her from worrying about the barber. The young boy was even nicer and more polite to the baker than usual. Mrs. Lovett first disliked this attempt to happiness, but Toby's cheerfulness did make her feel better and after a while, she didn't think about Sweeney as much anymore as before.

For some reason she was rather sure that he wouldn't return and that he wouldn't threaten her anymore. The fact that he had cleaned his room thoroughly made her believe that it was his last gesture of kindness to her and maybe even an apologize for his behavior or a way of telling her that he wouldn't hurt her again and that she didn't have to be afraid of him anymore.