It started, as so many things do, with something so ordinary, so insignificant that no one could ever have guessed where it would all lead. In this particular case, it was a ribbon.
Mavis was aware, in the vague sort of way children understand such things, that they were poor. But so were nearly all of the other people she knew, which meant that there was nothing out of the ordinary about her life. Poor but respectable, that was the key. Most of the children in the neighborhood wore hand-me-downs and made-over dresses, the fabric turned and patched and re-pieced within an inch of its life, but always scrupulously clean, and every rent neatly mended almost as soon as it appeared. And she was far from the only one who wore ill-fitting shoes. When times were good, you got them big, to grow into. When times were bad, you grit your teeth and ignored the way they pinched. She was no different from anyone else, at least not in that respect.
Of course, all of the other children had mothers, or at least an aunt or a grandmother somewhere about. And she didn't. And most of the other children had a father, who generally came home at least once in a while. She didn't have one of those, either, and in a twisted way, although she remembered enough about the man to be devoutly grateful for his continued absence, she also resented it.
But, worst of all, she was just beginning, at twelve, to recognize a certain expression in the faces of the neighbors when they spoke to her- or, rather, to be more exact, when they mentioned her brother. The odd mixture of pity and disapproval, the small headshakes and the tightness around the lips, the few disconnected bits she managed to overhear before they remembered that little pitchers had big ears—all of them were beginning to coalesce, somewhere in her gut, into a disturbing certainty that something was very wrong with her. And she resented that, too.
It was a beautiful spring day—far too beautiful to be wasted running dull errands, and Mavis glared at Peter's back as she trudged along behind him from baker (two loaves of bread,) to greengrocer (potatoes and carrots,) to cobbler (resoled shoes,) to haberdasher.
Peter had finished selecting overcoat buttons and was communing with the selection of thread, holding each new candidate up against a scrap of fabric in an attempt to find the best match possible, a task which interested Mavis not at all. Bored, cross, and frustrated, she wandered around the shop, looking at the various items on display without really seeing them. Until she came to the display of hair ribbons.
One set in particular caught her attention; a rich, glossy sky blue. How they shone in their silky, virginal newness. She knew immediately that they would be stunning against her dark hair, and whisper-soft against her skin, and utterly perfect in every other way. Perfect in the way nothing ever quite is after adulthood dulls our capacity for wonder. She wanted them—no, she needed them. Everything else in her life was difficult, or makeshift, or somehow wrong. Surely she deserved one thing—just one—that was simply and purely beautiful.
Casually, she looked around; no one was paying her the slightest attention. Impulsively, before she quite knew that she was going to do it, the ribbons were in her pocket. Consciously, she decided that she was not going to put them back.
"Mave?" Peter came up behind her; she ever-so-barely managed not to jump. "Which do you think, luv? This, or this?" He held out two nearly identical spools of thread.
She pointed, mostly at random. "That one," she said.
He put an arm around her shoulder in a sort of half-hug. "That one it is, then. You've been very patient, and I'm nearly done; after this, we can be on our way back home. All right?"
"…All right," she said, still trying to sound casual and failing miserably.
"That's settled, then. Just a few minutes longer," he said, with a rather forced smile, walking back towards the thread display.
"Not so fast," said the shopkeeper, her voice cold. She stalked over to Mavis, seized her roughly by the arm. "First I'll have those back, and then we'll see what the constable has to say about it."
Peter wheeled back around to face them. "What are you playing at? Let go of her!"
The shopkeeper gave Mavis a little shake. "I just saw this little limb pinch one of my ribbons. I don't much care for thieves in my shop."
"Ribbons, is it? You mean these?" He brandished them like a weapon, then threw them, along with the nearly forgotten spools of thread, onto the counter. He looked furious. "I told her she could choose her own; I'd no idea you'd object to making another sale, but that's my fault, not hers. Now get your bloody hands off my sister before I call the constables myself."
The woman blinked, taken aback, but she recovered. "That's all well and good, but you having one doesn't mean she hasn't another. I saw her pocket them."
"Get your eyesight checked, then, you sodding cow," Peter snapped. "Mave, turn out your pockets, show her how wrong she is, and then we're leaving."
Trembling, Mavis did. Sure enough, they were empty.
Peter glared at the shopkeeper. "If you're quite satisfied…?"
She had the grace to look embarrassed. "I am sorry. I saw her take them off the shelf…"
"No, you saw a girl from the bad part of town having the cheek to look at your merchandise and immediately assumed the worst. Very nice." Peter's voice was icy. "Just bloody charming, that is. Keep your rubbish. We'll go and find a shop that doesn't treat its customers like dirt."
With that, Peter swept out of the shop, and stalked down the street in ominous silence, one hand clamped firmly on Mavis's arm.
"…Peter?" she said in a tiny voice, some three blocks later.
"When we get home," he bit out, and he didn't say another word until he'd slammed their flat door shut behind them.
By which point, Mavis had had enough time to stop feeling frightened and begin feeling defensive. Angry and embarrassed, she folded her arms tightly across her chest, and waited for him to say whatever he was going to.
Peter let the silence go on a bit longer, then shook his head. His voice was low, almost conversational. "Luv, if you ever try a stunt like that again, if the mere thought so much as crosses your mind, you'd best hope the peelers catch up with you before I do. What the bloody blue hell were you thinking?" His voice got louder. "Do you have any idea what could have happened if I hadn't been there to save your hide? Do you, Mave? And for a bleeding hair ribbon, of all things?"
He slammed a hand on the table, and his voice edged up a bit more. "Of all the stupid—I thought I taught you better than that, Mave! Stealing? Are you bloody mad? How could you do something like that?"
Her lip quivered a trifle, but she didn't back down. She matched him glare for glare. "Why shouldn't I?" she spat. "You do!"
"Yes, damn it! I do! And just where do you fancy that's going to land me, some fine day?"
That knocked the wind out of her, and the defiance went with it. She stared at him, aghast, and her eyes began to well up.
And that, in turn, took the fight out of him. He rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. "Oh, bloody hell," he muttered. "Right, Mave—this doesn't strike me as the sort of conversation that's going to improve any, so let's not have it just now. I'm going for a bit of a walk to clear my head. You stay here and settle yourself down a bit; we can finish talking about this later."
He turned abruptly away, walked to the door. His hand was actually on the latch when a tiny voice, scarcely more than a penitent whisper, said "…Peter?"
He didn't turn around, and his voice was brusque. "Yeah? What do you want, Mave?"
"I…I'm sorry, Peter. I'm so sorry. I promise, I'll never do it again."
He closed his eyes for a moment. "Good, then. I'll hold you to that."
Her voice got, if anything, smaller. "…Are you going to come back?"
Now he turned to face her, looked her directly in the eye. "Mavis, I will always come back. Don't you know that by now?"
Peter was, not to put too fine a point on it, still reeling from the strain of his impromptu performance in the haberdashery, and he was so angry that he could scarcely breathe. He was angry at her. He was angrier with himself. But he wasn't angry enough—could never be angry enough—to answer that question in any other way.
He waited for her nod. When it came, he met it with one of his own. "Right. So that's settled. I'll have that walk now. You do your homework if you have any; if you don't, then the flat could use some dusting. Everything else can wait for later… but you'd best believe we will be talking about it. Ta ra, luv."
He opened the door, let himself out, and started briskly down the dark stairwell, which, as always, smelled of mildew and mice. Under normal circumstances, it wasn't a place where anyone would want to linger longer than necessary, but then again, nothing else about that day had been normal, either. By the time he'd made it down all four flights of stairs, he'd mostly gotten his composure back. Mostly.