Chapter Four

Meg.

I leant against my dressing room door and pressed my hands over my face so hard that I impeded my own efforts to breathe deeply.

He doesn't know. He can never know.

I could imagine Erik staring at the other side of the door with that rarest of expressions on his face: perplexity. As observant as he could be, he had no knowledge of the time I had spent selling my body so that I could keep up the income needed to cover our expenses. Or that is what I had believed, at the time.

On my eighteenth birthday, I had been attacked on the way home from my twelve-hour shift at a textiles factory, resulting in concussion, several broken bones and almost a month in a Brooklyn hospital. Mother, Erik and I had lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the district then, struggling to cover our bills even though all three of us had full-time employment. The hundreds of dollars my hospital stay cost weighed heavily on my shoulders in layers of guilt, only exacerbated by returning to my factory job to find that I had been replaced, and that only a morning shift there was available.

I had not lied to Erik when I told him that some of my colleagues had worked as prostitutes to supplement their income. I had just neglected to add that I had been one of them. I jumped when Erik knocked on the door, and lowered my hands.

"Yes?"

"Vocal warmup onstage in thirty minutes."

"Yes!"

I listened to his footsteps as he went along the corridor, knocking on dressing room doors and repeating the direction, then gave myself a little shake and went to the vanity table to begin applying my makeup. The woman in the mirror still looked conflicted, burdened by her secrets. There was no use in dwelling on the past; I had tried to believe that for a long time. It did not change what had been and gone. I could only try to atone for my wrongdoings, even if one of them faced me almost every day with smiling blue eyes, a ready laugh and a hand always willing to reach into his pocket for the money to keep funding Erik's Imaginarium. It was hardly a one-sided exchange. I did not know much about the Imaginarium's finances but I did know that it was making a profit, and some of that profit was returned to the investors, like Mr Thomas Seymour.

Once made up and dressed, I went to Lucy Phelps' dressing room and knocked.

"Who is it?"

"Meg Giry."

"Come in, I'm decent."

All the dressing rooms in the Imaginarium's concert hall were more or less the same with windows high in the walls and little furniture. The majority had room for between four and six people, but this one, like mine, was private. The vanity table, armchair and rack of clothing took up most of the space. On the vanity table was a vase of flowers, beginning to wilt, and pinned to the wall were the cards Lucy had received from her colleagues, family and friends for her birthday the week before. She was sitting at the vanity in full costume, applying her makeup with a steady hand. She smiled at me in the mirror, a mascara wand raised.

"Hello, Meg. Give me a moment. If I try to talk and apply mascara at the same time, I'll poke myself in the eye."

I sat down in the armchair and waited until she had completed her eye makeup, and she turned on the vanity stool to look at me.

"What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to make sure that you are alright. Mr Danton said you were attacked by a group of ruffians last night."

"I'm alright. I was a bit shaken up, but they didn't hurt me and Mr Seymour and Mr Danton saw them off. It's sweet of you to check."

"Mr Danton has seen fit to deal with the issue of harassment with his usual efficiency." Even to my own ears my tone sounded bitter.

"What do you mean?"

"He's hired prostitutes to hang around the concert hall, as a distraction from us. So that any men who want women can have them without pawing at us."

Lucy's expression was a mixture of surprise, confusion and unease. Eventually, she said:

"At least he has done something about the situation. No other boss I've had has even given a thought to the wellbeing of his female employees. At least in that regard."

I sighed and nodded, looking down at my hands.

"Thank you for telling me," she added. "I was going to come and speak to you later, about those fabric scraps. Do you still want them?"

"Yes please," I could not help but smile. "If you're sure you don't need them."

"I'm sure. But do you think you're going to have enough time? It's a large project to take on alone, and I thought that I might be able to help. Only if you want me too. We could do it at my place, and then there's no chance of your mother seeing it before it is complete."

"Oh, Lucy," my smile became a beam. "That is incredibly kind of you, thank you. Yes, I would love your help."

"I'll go to the wardrobe department as well and see about getting scraps from there too. It would look suspicious if you did, given that Madame Giry works there now."

Mother's move from choreographer to head of the wardrobe department had been just one of many changes that had taken place over the last few months. Dr Wilhelm Gotreich, the German doctor who was as thin as a rake and approaching seven feet tall, had withdrawn from his role as a performer. Instead, he had shadowed Erik for weeks, learning even more deeply how he wanted the concert hall to be run, and become its stage manager, relieving Erik of that duty. He was also able to get help with the paperwork and his administrative duties by hiring a secretary. Mrs Johnson was a mature-looking woman with long grey hair usually wound in a single thick braid around her head, and eyes such a pale brown that they were almost gold. She had worked as a typist for the last decade, and lived in the apartment next to mine at the Grand Circle, where we occasionally met in the hallways. Erik had divided the huge space at the top of the building into an inner office and an outer office, where Mrs Johnson worked, accompanying the clattering of typewriter keys with her own soft humming. According to her, she would get a song or piece of music in her head, and spend the day humming it to herself without even knowing that she was doing it.

"Thank you." I reached out to give her hand an impulsive squeeze. I did not know Lucy very well yet, but I did know that she lived in an all-female boarding house close to the Imaginarium, that she had taught herself to dance without any formal training, and that there was a line of pale skin on the ring finger of her left hand. At some point, she had been married or engaged. I assumed that the relationship must have broken down, since in my experience a woman whose partner had died still wore her wedding or engagement ring, as Mother and I did.

As I returned to my own dressing room, I wondered if any of my other friends might be interested in helping with my project. In November, only a few weeks after I turned twenty-two, Mother would have her forty-eighth birthday. My poor, mad father had been only thirty-three when he had shot himself. I had decided to make Mother a quilt for her birthday, made of diamond-shaped pieces of fabric, like those on a playing card. I had designed it with long strips of plain light-coloured fabric between, so that the bright diamond shapes would stand out. It would be a modest gift for such an occasion, but given that Mother knew how much sewing bored me, I hoped she would appreciate it. With Lucy now offering to help, it might not be the struggle I had anticipated.

I changed into my costume, reapplied my makeup, stretched my muscles, and joined my colleagues on the stage. Erik was sitting at the piano in the orchestra pit and took us through the vocal warmup, before wishing us well and leaving to attend to his other duties. I let the others leave the stage and closed my eyes, breathing in the atmosphere. A stage holds a very distinctive feeling for me, even when there is no one else in the auditorium. There is the smell of dust and canvas, sackcloth and makeup. This stage held the hum of the electric lighting, which was still such a novelty to me. And there was a whisper in the air, the faint sound of applause that never quite faded away, as though it seeped into the fabric of the heavy red curtains that now separated me from the rows and rows of seats soon to be filled with patrons.

I wished I was wearing my ballet slippers instead of the dancing shoes that bit into my feet if I wore them for too long. Nevertheless I moved to put myself in centre stage, took another deep breath, and began the steps of the black swan's dance from Swan Lake. It was a role I had never played, but once I had seen so many times when I was a child. I did not remember seeing Mother dance it when she was the prima ballerina of the Paris Opera House; but had watched her successor, Fabienne Moineau, with the rapt attention of a disciple. Fabienne had not been good with children, but she had allowed me to watch her dancing on the condition that I did it in silence. I had memorised the routine, and it had never even crossed my mind that perhaps Mother was saddened that I idealised her replacement so much.

"I knew you were a dancer from the first moment I saw you."

I jumped, and turned towards the familiar voice. Thomas Seymour was in the upstage left wings, leaning against the flats, running the chain of his pocket watch between his fingers. He had hardly changed in the years we had been apart, except that his black hair was longer, brushing his shoulders. High cheekbones set off a pale face and bright blue eyes; maybe he had lost a little weight in his face and body. And since his wife had died, he had stopped wearing a wedding ring.

"I remember. You told me that I had a dancer's body."

"And such a beautiful one."

He took my hand as I entered the wings to stand before him. "You flatter me, Mr Seymour."

"Should I not?" He raised the hand he held and kissed the back of it, a gentlemanly, formal gesture.

"You always did flatter me."

"I told you the truth. No more and no less." His warm blue eyes seemed to drink me in, as if he were seeing something beautiful and precious. "I want to kiss you."

"You may."

Thomas wrapped his arms around me; then his right hand slid up my back, over the fine hairs on the back of my neck, and he cupped the back of my head as his lips met mine. I returned his kiss, and thought of the first time he had kissed me, haven given me my first orgasm ever. I kissed him back and I felt… nothing. There had been a time when this man's eyes alone, his wickedly hungry glance that seemed to drink me in like wine, had been enough to double my heartbeat, flip my stomach and steal the breath from my lungs. There had been a time when I thought I was in love with him. It was untrue of course. The shining, childish impression of a girl who had only been used and abused by the others who bedded her. Who believed that a display of human consideration, of compassion, must be an act of true love. How naïve I had been then. How stupid. Even after I met Benedict Adair, the Irish carpenter who stole my heart completely and asked me to become his wife, I had found that Thomas Seymour had the power to rouse lust within me, even as I still grieved Benedict's loss. Today, however, Thomas' kiss failed to ignite that sinful fire within my soul. In the last hour or so, there had been shame and lust, and both emotions pricked against my mind like the scrape of a careless sewing needle on skin. My heart remained locked in a cage of ice, numbed from the world.

"God," Thomas' voice had dropped an octave in his throat. "My muse, my inspiration." The kiss broke and his eyes fixed on mine. "I want to make love to you."

"You may not," I could hear the smile in my tone as I placed my palm against his waistcoat and gently pushed him away. He growled in response.

"Meg Giry…"

"I am a performer, Mr Seymour. An artist. I am not what I once was. Odette is no more."

He sighed, and ran his fingers over the single lock of hair that had escaped from my bun.

"Will I be denied forever?"

"For the foreseeable future. Thomas, you know how I have changed. I can only hope you value my friendship as much as I value yours."

"In friendship," he agreed, taking a step back, still holding my hand and kissing the back of it. "But you do not seem happy, Meg."

"I do well enough," I assured him, knowing instinctively that I could not tell him about my numbness. I could not tell anyone. I was the Imaginarium's leading lady and it was my duty to smile and sparkle for those who came to see Erik's shows, from the moment I put on my costume. Out of the costume, I had to support Mother, who needed me to look after her now more than ever.

Now, Thomas brushed his fingers against my cheek.

"Have a good show," he told me with a smile. "You know where I am."

He departed from my sight, and I was left in the half light of the wings, watching the line of brighter light as he went through the door into the backstage corridor. For a heartbeat I felt complete solitude, but then the other dancers were at my side and it was time to launch the show.

It was not until June of 1900 that I managed to get my life set into a routine. My days had been rigidly structured since I was a little girl, and knowing what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to be at any given time of the week, made me feel comfortable.

It was a fact now that I spent more of my time at the Imaginarium than I did in my own apartment. Five days a week, I arrived at the Imaginarium at eight thirty in the morning, and left it by eleven o'clock at night. Mondays and Wednesdays were rehearsal days, when the Imaginarium was closed to the public. Mondays saw the entire company rehearsing their acts from nine a.m. until six p.m., with an hour for lunch. While most people returned home for the evening, Erik and I took time for supper, and then spent two and a half hours in private rehearsal. On Wednesdays, the two of us spent six hours together as he strived to polish and improve his leading lady's performance. Those days were the most challenging of my week, as Erik was more demanding of me than any audience member. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays encompassed four shows in the concert hall over the fourteen and a half hours we spent there. Even then, Erik usually remained an hour or more longer to oversee the myriad of tasks that closed every working day.

I could never be a business owner like him, would never have the eloquence, money management or the energy required. It was hard enough finding time to do my chores and meal preparation, for those days when I did not eat two of my three meals at the Imaginarium itself. Its kitchen had been taken over by an American woman who had been second-in-command to Mrs Chang when she had been alive and in charge of the Galley. With my working hours set in stone, I allowed my free time to be more fluid. I spent time with Mother, socialising with my colleagues, playing my piano, and working with Lucy on Mother's quilt.

With summer burning into Coney Island from dawn to dusk and the beach only a few minutes' walk away, I found that I could take up a hobby that I had long neglected. I had learned to swim at the de Chagny chateaux in Paris in 1893, having almost drowned a couple of months previously. Now, I started four days a week wearing a bathing costume beneath my clothing, going down to the waterfront, and taking a swim of about thirty minutes. In the cooling water, I felt surprisingly at peace, stretching all my muscles and therefore beginning my day with my body already warmed up for dancing and my emotions energised for the work ahead.

"We have a problem," Erik told me one Wednesday morning in mid-July as I came into the Imaginarium through the stage door. I was wearing a white summer dress with vertical blue stripes, the colour matching the band around my white sunhat, and carrying my towel and bathing costume, along with my underpinnings, in a canvas shoulder bag.

"What problem is that?" I asked breezily, inviting him to follow me to my dressing room with a jerk of my head. I put my bag down next to the vanity table, removed my hat and turned to him.

"Your new hobby." He tugged at the end of my French braid which had swung over my left shoulder, still damp from the seawater. "I do not approve."

"You do not approve of me taking healthy exercise?" I started to undo the braid.

"I do not approve of you going to the beach in the early morning by yourself, turning up here with your hair full of salt, and I certainly don't approve of your wandering around Brooklyn without a corset on."

I blushed. "You should not be looking closely enough to notice, if you call yourself a gentleman."

"Meg, you dislike the measures I have taken to keep you girls safe, do you not?"

"I do."

"Then why do you lay yourself open to attack by being unescorted in the early hours and leaving your charms practically laid bare?"

"Do you think so little of your gender? No one has approached me while I have been swimming; I chose the hour because the beach is sparsely populated, and there is no-one around to see my journey to the Imaginarium. Likewise no-one but yourself has noticed that I am making the ten-minute walk from the beach to the stage door without my corset." I picked up the bag, took my corset from it, and laid it out flat on the surface of my vanity table so that I could make sure that the garment was the right way around and easy to get on, and looked back at the masked man. "Just because you are obsessed with my breasts, Erik, does not mean that the rest of the world is."

"Do not mock me, girl." He replied, his fingers flexing. "You are the leading lady of the Imaginarium. On the stage or off it, you are representing the Imaginarium, and you are representing me."

"I still don't see the problem. I mean, look at this." I moved to the clothing rail and pulled out the hanger with my main costume hanging from it. "It is very close to a ballerina's outfit, yes? That was your aim?"

"It was."

"It shows a girl's legs, and in my case, her cleavage."

"It is a costume, a fantasy."

"Does everyone know that? You want me to go out on stage five days a week dressed in little more than my underwear for the titillation of others, and yet you are disgusted by me being without a corset for a mere ten minutes out of my fifteen-hour day." I crossed the distance between us, the costume held up to my shoulders. "Maybe it is you who has the problem, Erik." His eyes widen and he opened his mouth to speak, but I cut in first. "If a man did notice that I was not wearing a corset and recognised me from the Imaginarium, it might reflect upon you. It might reflect well, Erik, since you call my costume a fantasy. You are selling a fantasy, are you not? What is seduction, if not a fantasy?"

"I am concerned for you."

"You are controlling of me." I rubbed my temples. "And of course you want to be in control of your business and your brand. But I am not your property, Erik. I am my own woman with my own feelings and my own agency."

"Do you forget how we met?"

"I remember full well. I remember being a naïve sixteen-year-old who went out alone in Paris in the dead of night, and practically invited a predator to take advantage of her. I have not forgotten that you saved me, Erik. But I am no longer that girl. I walk to the Imaginarium by residential streets, so that I am always within call of other people, in case something were to happen. Christ, what sort of world do we live in that a woman must take precautions again the opposite gender attacking her for no reason?" I focussed on him again. "I am taking care to protect myself, Erik, and no one has noticed me in the streets. Please trust me. I know that you're worried, especially after what happened to Lucy a few weeks ago, but I swear that if I were assaulted in any way, I would tell you."

A lie, I realised too late. I would never tell Erik that I had been forced to relinquish my virginity for his sake.

"I am adjusting to my life here on Coney Island. Please don't take away one of the few pleasures I have found here."

He rocked on his feet, studying me, and I felt the uncomfortable prickle of his attention against my skin.

"On your own head be it," he said at last.

"I will be careful," I promised. "I know what you expect of your leading lady, I do. I won't let you down. Please trust me."

"I do," he nodded. "Now, get properly dressed. We have a lot of work to do today."

I had annoyed him, I knew, because although he kept his voice calm as he coached me, his posture was tense and he pushed me especially hard.

"He's really quite fond you, isn't he?" Lucy commented with a smile when I told her of our argument later that day. "In his own way."

"I do think he means well," I agreed as I threaded my needle. "But he has his own rules for how people do or should behave."

"Don't we all."

We were sitting on either side of her dining room table, working on the quilt for Mother's birthday. Irene Norbury and the Roylott twins had also volunteered to help, and had cut out the patches so that Lucy and I could sew them together. I knew that it would be an ambitious project, but with the limited amount of leisure time I had, could not believe that I had started out thinking that I could do this alone.

"My mother has ideas about the proper decorum of a woman too," Lucy continued. "She doesn't like that I do this."

"Sewing?"

She giggled and threw a scrap of fabric that was formerly a corset cover at my head. "Dancing. Especially in a freak show like this. She might have preferred it if I had danced in a 'real' theatre, like you used to, but even then I don't think so. She wanted me to be a governess."

"Why a governess?"

"Because she thinks it is a respectable position. She doesn't understand that dancing is… is essential to me, like food and drink. She won't come to the shows. My father won't either." She looked down at the fabric strips in her hands. "Phelps isn't really my surname. When I told my parents what I was going to do, that I was going to become a dancer, my father told me that I couldn't do so under the family name. My mother would find it too shameful."

"So why did you choose the name Phelps for yourself?"

She let out a huff of laughter. "I picked it out of a newspaper. I opened the paper, stuck a pin in a page and chose the name closest to that pin." She sighed and began to sew the fabric strips together. "I just wish that my parents could be proud of me. The way your mother is proud of you."

"Mother and I, we have an unusual relationship," I explained. "For years, we only had each other. Her family disowned her when she married my father, because he was a musician and they thought he was beneath her. She was my inspiration, and when Papa died, the last thing he said to me was 'Look after Mama'. So I try."

Lucy reached over and patted my hand.

"I think family is a subjective thing," she said. "I think your real family is the one you create for yourself. So I have a family here now. And I am pleased that you and Madame Giry are a part of it."

I found that I could relax in Lucy's company in a way that I had not been able to since Christine Daaé had been my bosom friend. We had a similar sense of humour, tastes in books and music, and had both been engaged but never married.

"I guess people who grew up in French theatres don't have arranged marriages? My parents chose him when we were both children. He was a good man, honestly. He would have made a good husband, and maybe we could have had a good life together. But he knew that it wasn't what I wanted, so he called off the marriage. That's when I moved to Brooklyn. That's why I came here."

As carefully as we constructed the quilt, we stitched together our friendship. I told her about my relationship with Benedict, about my childhood aspirations, and about growing up in Paris. I wished I could be completely honest with her, but I was still aware that giving too many details would link myself, Mother and Erik back to the Paris Opera House, and to the crimes that we had committed there. I could not tell her that my father had committed suicide, instead giving Lucy the impression that he had died of influenza, and that I had found his body. I lied to her, and wished that I could tell her the truth.

I also knew that Lucy had secrets of her own. Whether those included prostitution and murder, I did not know, but I was certain that Lucy Phelps was made of money. Her apartment was huge and the landlady, Mrs Warren, spoke to her with a deference that I never heard her use with the other tenants. The fabric scraps Lucy provided for the quilt were of the highest quality cottons, satins and velvets, and her own wardrobe contained a surprising amount of silks and lace.

I wondered why, if Lucy had her own income, as I suspected she did, she had made the choice to join a new freak show on Coney Island. Why she had chosen to align herself with the disfigured, the outcast and the odd. There were clues; Lucy was not quite like the other dancers I knew. She had immense knowledge of many forms of dance without the technical expertise that came from a lifetime of training, like mine. Indeed, she mentioned in conversation that she had not developed a serious interest in dance until her parents had taken her to see a production of Tristan and Isolde in Germany as a treat for her ninth birthday. My treat for that birthday had been a visit to the circus that had set up in one of Paris's green parks the week before.

Lucy may have known a lot about dance, but her knowledge of other subjects like science, geography and literature was patchy.

"My tutors gave up on me," she told me once. "Words just don't work for me."

Lots of people struggled with literacy, but the news that Lucy had tutors and had still not mastered basic reading and writing seemed strange to me.

The other trait I found odd was Lucy's lack of eye contact. Erik had a gaze that could command one's stare the way a fox could transfix a rabbit. Lucy could not hold anyone's eyes for more than a few seconds. Feeling treacherous, I tried a few times to maintain eye contact, but it was impossible. Her gaze flitted around my face as we talked like a bee buzzing from flower to flower, and I could tell that I was making her uncomfortable.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She burst out eventually.

"I'm sorry. I was trying to work out what colour your eyes are."

"Green," she replied. "My eyes are green."

They flitted around my face, like a moth around a candle flame, and suddenly I saw that tears were forming.

"Lucy," I put down my sewing and reached across the table for her hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

"Don't," she shook her head, dashing away the moisture with the back of her fingers. "I know you think I'm weird."

"I don't—"

"Yes, you do, everyone does. Even I do. I know I'm not like other people. Different things matter to you—to them—then they do to me. I'm not normal and I never will be."

"If that is what you think, then you are in excellent company," I replied gently, passing her a handkerchief from the ironing pile beside me. "Mr Danton doesn't employ anyone 'normal'."

"But you all go together in your little groups," Lucy wept. "I don't fit in anywhere, even in a freak show. I'm always on the outside, looking in. That's how it feels, like there is no real place for me. And I try, Meg, I really do, but whenever I contribute to a conversation or attempt to join in a group gossiping session at work, I always find myself pushed to the side. Look at Irene's birthday last week. You all went to Angelo's for drinks, but no one invited me. I didn't even know if there was a cake."

I could feel the blush heating my cheeks; I hadn't realised that Lucy had not been invited to Irene's birthday drinks. I assumed that someone else had invited her and that she had declined the invitation. Maybe everyone had thought the same, so no-one had done it.

"I thought you decided not to join us."

"I couldn't go without an invitation."

I almost said that of course she could have, but then remembered her likely upper-class education. She probably thought that it would be an unforgivable breach of etiquette to attend an event uninvited.

"I am truly sorry, Lucy," I told her. "No one means to make you feel excluded. You are a talented dancer, a valuable member of the Imaginarium and my friend. And look at this," I gestured to the quilt, almost completed, across the table between us. "This would never have been possible without you. Lucy, you are a beautiful, talented woman. You are more precious than you know."

Lucy sniffled and smiled at me with watery eyes.

"Do you really think that?"

"I do," I told her honestly. "You might feel left out, but you're always a part of my group."

I wanted to tell her then that I also found it difficult to make and secure friendships, that my thoughts and worries wrapped around me so tightly that I believed I could never truly connect to another human being. But I couldn't. I was too afraid that the truth with drive her away.

From then on I made sure that Lucy was invited to any of the social occasions that I was. Some she accepted, others she declined, but those she did attend saw her making an effort to participate rather than hide in a corner.

We completed the quilt long before Mother's birthday, and it was lovelier than I had imagined. Lucy and I, unwilling to relinquish the newly crafted friendship, had dinner together a couple of times a month, alternating between her apartment and mine.

I approached Erik with the idea of a party first, anticipating his disinterest, albeit for parties in general.

"It's important," I insisted, and eventually he relented.

The celebration of Mother's birthday was more difficult to arrange than I had anticipated. I eventually persuaded Erik to find a reason to keep her back after a day's work, even as the summer seasoned ended and our work shifts more than halved to six hours a day from over thirteen. Unlike other shops and attractions on Coney Island, the Imaginarium did not close for the winter season that began in October.

On the day itself, Erik engineered a wardrobe-related crisis to keep her back after the final curtain fell, white our friends and colleagues squeezed into her apartment, more than I had been prepared for. I had tried my best, feeling that I was exploiting my friends, as Julie made the birthday cake, Helen spread word of the party, Erik's secretary and typist Mrs Johnson created official invitation on her typewriter, and Lucy helped me make bunting from the fabric scraps that had not been suitable for the quilt. I had, I thought as the small apartment filled up, underestimated Mother's popularity.

I insisted on keeping the lights turned off, and was so sensitive to noise that I recognised the sound of the key in the lock the moment Erik opened the main door to the Grand Circle apartment block.

"Hush! Everybody, she's here!"

It took another few seconds for the buzz of conversation to quiet. I could hear the timbre of Erik's voice on the other side of the door, even though I could not hear the words. My breath felt tight in my chest, as though there was an iron bar around my lungs.

The moment the door opened and noise exploded around us, I felt the pressure relax. Mother was more than surprised by the party in her apartment, she was delighted. I held back, grinning like the cat in the Alice story, allowing my friends and colleagues to wish her many happy returns of the day. Many had brought gifts.

Erik had played his part too. Stamford, one of the violinists who also played guitar, and Beddoes, a flutist, had brought their instruments with that at his instruction. Erik himself put his violin under his chin.

I dragged Lucy with me when I presented Mother's gift and did not let her squirm free when Mother unwrapped the quilt, explaining that Lucy had helped me make it. Lucy was embarrassed, blushing from the roots of her hair, but I could not let Mother think that I had made it all on my own.

"I love it," Mother exclaimed. "Both of you, together you've made this amazing quilt for me, and it is a perfect gift. Thank you."

As the evening wore on, the friends and co-workers dispersed to their own homes, and we ended the night with Mother and I seated side-by-side on the sofa, her hand in mine. She turned her head and pressed a kiss to my temple.

"Thank you, my darling. This has been wonderful."

"It has been no more than you deserve," I murmured. "I love you."

"I love you too, Meg."

Erik, a spiral of energy, played his violin for us, melodies that moved my soul and took my breath. Mother rested her head on my shoulder as his long, talented fingers danced over the violin's strings, and when she grew cold, I wrapped the diamond patterned quilt around us both, and turned my head to kiss her as she had kissed me.

I did not have the heart to interrupt this private performance, but after what could have been minutes or hours, Erik lowered the instrument.

"It is late, little dancer. We should let your mother sleep."

"She's not asleep."

I heard my own voice as if it were ten feet away from my ears. All I was aware of was my fingers intertwined with hers, the pulse in my wrist pounding against her cool arm.

"What?" Erik was suddenly on his knees in front of the sofa, and I had not seen him move. The violin and bow were on the carpet six feet behind him. "What?!"

His eyes pierced blue and green out of a face that was as white as his mask. The fingers that had been conjuring music from wood and catgut were pressed to the side of Mother's throat, searching for a pulse that could only be found in my own wrist.

"What do we do now?" I asked the universe in general. "What do we do?"