Chapter Text
Eva ran a slim finger around the edge of her glass absently. She stared somewhere off to her left as Sheila sat in front of her.
Neither of them had said anything since they had sat down, except for a quiet thanks for the drink and a single nervous glance from Eva. She was impossibly quiet and her gaze was permanently averted.
Sheila, on the other hand, had been staring attentively (and cautiously) at the girl for a little too long.
The first thing that had struck her was how put together Eva seemed. She had on a well pressed green dress, cut mid shin with crisply laid ruffles stacked at the hem and the base. It screamed of Milwards’ seamstresses. Her hair was bobbed like Sheila’s, but impossibly more well-behaved. Where Sheila’s seemed to fight against a curl and become straggly and wiry with an uncontainable wild temperament, Eva’s curved neatly at her chin with a shiny, organic sort of bobby-pin curl. Her makeup was scarce and poor quality, but she had used it well. A small dusting of rouge smattered her pale face and adorned her lips, and some black powder to the top of her eyes that made them look ridiculously huge and doe-like.
Sheila instantly felt a stab of something like jealousy to her heart. She couldn’t quite see how it was fair that a girl in some bar in the scummy, dirty back streets of Brumley, hidden underground behind a staircase and being passed between grotty hands of hundreds of contemptible men should be paler and thinner than her.
For a moment, it felt ever so much like Sheila was back in that dressing room, watching Eva try on that beautiful dress again.
She shook the thought from her head, and her motion drew the cautious eyes of the girl in front of her. Sheila thought she had better say something, for risk of simply sitting there in silence forever;
“Eva.”
This was all she managed before her mouth faltered and her words sputtered to a halt. Eva’s indelibly lost face fell with an almost comical slowness, to something resembling fear. Her shoulders seemed to curl slightly and her eyes narrowed for a moment.
“No…” she laughed quietly and breathily that spoke of anything but humour. “I…you’ve got the wrong girl.”
Sheila mulled through fifteen stages of confusion in a few seconds. It couldn’t be anyone but Eva, she knew that much. Gerald had described her as out of place in that bar, and she seemed to align so well with her own memory. Sheila realised the problem only as Eva began to speak again, voice now stricken with lilting and wavering fear,
“...I’m Daisy. Daisy Renton.”
Of course, Sheila cursed herself under her breath. She had been too hasty again, too confident in herself. She needed to slow down. To say what, she had no idea, but to sit here and threaten Eva by whispering her personal information at her probably wasn’t her best course of action. Sheila needed to start again.
“My name is Sheila.” She tried to speak slowly and clearly, but some wandering eyes had begun to latch onto her, and she desperately needed her father to not find out about this, not least from some perverted old man on the town council. Eva leaned in hesitantly to hear her better. She obviously understood too how dangerous it was to be a woman in a place like this, and she stayed perfectly silent as Sheila spoke:
“... Sheila Birling. I believe we…know each other?”
Eva’s eyes widened, and for the first time they met Sheila’s directly. Her glassy stare flitted across Sheila’s face momentarily, before she dragged in a slow and heavy breath through her nose,
“Yes… I… I recognise you.”
This gave Sheila a little too much confidence. She mentally restrained herself for a moment, and tried to funnel her increasingly tumultuous thoughts as best she could.
“Good, good.” She was trying to sound somewhat calming, but her jangled nerves carved a sinister and unwelcoming tone in her voice, “And… I think you might know my father, too?”
This made Eva lean back slightly, her eyes widened and pupils flickering with startled but knowing confusion.
“Aha… yes– No! No.. I… I’m not familiar with your father, I’m afraid.”
Sheila was now doing nothing but instilling pure and unbridled terror in Eva. To the poor girl, it probably sounded like a threat, she thought.
“I’m not here on behalf of him!” Sheila tried to comfort her, but the insistence of her voice spoke too many volumes, and only succeeded in scaring Eva a few centimeters back again, “Seriously,” she insisted, leaning closer to try to close the increasing gap between them, “I…”
Sheila paused to look Eva fully in the eye and desperately collect her thoughts,
“I have to tell you something.”
“Oh… okay? Did… did Julie send you?” Eva was not letting down her guard. This whole event was beginning to look futile for Sheila.
She decided to stop playing to placate Eva’s fear, and just talk. Talk about the past few months, that last night, pass on messages and regrets and maybe the small amount of money she had slid into her pocket just before she left.
Nothing could possibly have prepared Sheila for the next few hours of her life.
“Tonight…” she began, “An inspector called.”
Some semblance of recognition glinted in Eva’s eye for a moment. This meant something to her.
“Well… we thought he was an inspector anyway. He told us a lot of mad and confounding things about each other, and someone…else. My family seems not to believe him at all. But the things this inspector told us, Eva, and – yes, I know that’s your name – they were about you.
Eva’s face had been twisting between confusion, fear and fixated interest. She took a shuddery breath, and spoke in a low and earnest tone,
“Yes… I had some idea that he would. What did he… tell you?”
“Everything. Or so we thought.”
Sheila thought she had better be as honest as possible. This inspector, whoever he was, was apparently much more involved than her family had believed.
“He told us of how you were expelled from my father’s works a few years ago, and he had you blacklisted. He told me… about what I had done too. Although I already had some idea that what I was doing was silly and pretentious, I–”
Sheila broke off with the feel of a sob building at the back of her throat. She quelled it instantly for fear of simple self-absorption.
“I’m sorry, Eva. I mean that. I feel worse than I ever thought I could do about that. I know it’s no excuse, but god, if I had known you’d be sent here, I-”
“I know,” Sheila was surprised by the feel of Eva’s gentle hand coming to rest on her shoulder, “You were the silliest girl I had ever met in Milwards…”
Sheila could have sworn Eva’s whisperings contained just the tiniest breath of a laugh,
“But I had a feeling you’d change. Goole does that to people.”
Sheila was dumbstruck for a moment. How does she know?
Eva began to stare at her with a patient curiosity that begged to tear more information out of her, but Sheila silently vowed to ask her own questions after this.
“Yes…” Sheila was considerably more shaken now, and it showed in her breaking voice, “I was… a silly girl. I was silly to believe my fiance, too, when he told me he was only at the works. But it seems he was tangled up in all this too.”
Eva’s eyebrows scrunched in a mingling of dithering and disconcertion.
“Gerald Croft? I believe you know him.”
“Ah.” Eva’s tone seemed to harden somewhat. “I knew him.”
“And my brother?”
“Eric…” Eva nodded solemnly. “I knew him too.”
“And…” Sheila slid the final piece of their strange jigsaw into place, “My mother, too. Sybil Birling, Chair of the Brumley Women’s Charity.”
At this, a shaking breath fought its way out of Eva’s mouth, and she leaned forward to rest her head on her hands defeatedly.
“And they were all–” Sheila could hear the tears in Eva’s voice, though the girl’s eyes were covered, “ – They were all your family?”
Sheila nodded, though she didn’t see what it would do, considering Eva’s eyes were staring firmly at her knees, her hands now scrunched tightly into the folds of her dress.
“That’s what I came to tell you. I’m sorry, Eva.”
Sheila tried to place a comforting hand on Eva’s own, but the other recoiled slowly and seemed to fold into herself. She began to shake, slowly and subtly at first, but soon enough a few pairs of eyes began to land on her and Sheila, who was all but helpless in this situation.
“If it helps at all… although I can’t say much for my parents, Eric said he was sorry. I know that doesn’t make much difference to you, knowing what he did, but he’s sorry all the same, and he knows he was stupid. Gerald too,” Sheila had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t so much as mention his change in attitude out of sheer spite, but something told her now was not the time to uphold her petty grudges,
“He said he hoped you were okay. God, if I didn't know better I'd say you changed him more than I did.”
Eva sniffled. She wiped the back of a hand against her eyes, dragging the black makeup into streaks across her temple.
“I need to… go.”
She slid off her barstool and began to step away. Sheila grabbed her arm tightly.
Eva winced as Sheila's manicured nails dug into her skin.
“Eva,” Sheila pleaded, tugging slightly against Eva's resistance. Eva looked back with narrow and watery eyes.
“If you're going… let me go with you.”
Eva turned a fraction at this, but she kept herself at arm's length, and stayed silent.
“I don't like the idea of you just going back to that wall and waiting for some man to pick you up again, and going along with this miserable existence like nothing ever happened.”
“... What difference does it make to you?” Eva's tone was bitter and cold, “I never saw you in here before the inspector told you my sob story.”
“I thought you were dead, Eva.”
Sheila snapped. She instantly regretted it. Eva snapped round fully, her breath hitching and her eyes blown wide.
“That's the sob story the inspector told me.”
“I think…” Eva whispered, “I think you had better come with me.”
She wrapped a cold and trembling hand round Sheila's forearm, and the pair walked slowly and cautiously to the top of the stairs.