Chapter Text
Estella had tried to leave the past behind her. She fled all that was old and familiar, for she felt that every part of the landscape could testify to the Estellas that once had been: the frightened little orphan girl enthralled by her strange new mother, the lonely girl that absorbed her every hateful teaching, the cruel and scornful woman that rejected everything wholesome and earnest that came her way. Her past, her self, was her shame and her curse, and Estella tried to run from it.
And there was Pip. Just as she prepared to sever the last cord connecting her to Satis House, there he was to remind her. It seemed like Providence that they should be brought together one last time so unexpectedly, eleven years after such a dreadful parting.
He was much changed in those years—a gentler, hardworking man of thirty-two is strikingly different from a romantic, conceited man of twenty-one, after all—yet Estella would have known him anywhere. There were still traces of that wide-eyed boy from the forge; she caught a glimpse of him when their eyes briefly met and he gave her a wistful half-smile. How he could look on her without loathing or contempt, she couldn’t fathom. He was just as foolishly openhearted toward her as the day they parted, only this time she didn’t pity him for it—her own shrived and long-neglected heart ached with gratitude.
Night had properly fallen now, moonlight filtering dully through the mist. Pip had insisted on staying with her at the station until the stagecoach arrived and loath though she was to admit it, she appreciated the warmth of his arm linked through hers. The backs of his hands, she noticed, were still rough with scars: scorched when he tried to rescue Miss Havisham from the burning manor house. How many more unseen scars remained that she and her mother dealt him?
Noticing her scrutiny, he withdrew slightly from her touch. With a pang, she realized how her own words must be echoing in his ears. Coarse hands. Dirty hands. Blacksmith’s hands.
“So, back to London for you, then?” he asked briskly, interrupting her guilty reverie.
“Yes, I have a townhouse there.” It was a shabby place compared to everywhere else she had lived. Frugality had been a painful lesson for her. Her husband’s death had brought nothing but quiet relief. What was left of her dwindling fortune would not be gambled and drank away. “I live alone. We widows are entitled to our independence, you see, and I find it rather liberating.”
“You are not remarried, then?” His tone was light, offhand.
“No. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes.”
He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it. A soft flush crept into his cheeks, visible even in the dim moonlight, leaving Estella to earnestly hope he believed her.
The rattling sound of carriage wheels approached, cutting their conversation much too short, so she reached into her coat pocket and drew out a card.
“This is my London address,” she said, pressing it into his hand. “Please say you’ll write to me, Pip. As an old friend.”
The driver began loading Estella’s luggage into the coach before Pip eventually nodded and tucked the card away.
“My letters may take some time to arrive, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically. “I still live out East with Herbert and Clara, and I’ll be returning there in a few weeks.”
Did she imagine the note of regret in his voice? She had no right to hope. She forced a convivial smile and replied, “Well, that will make the letters that much dearer, given how far away their author has sent them.”
Again, that wistful half-smile from him that twisted her heart into grudging fondness. He helped her up into the coach—a shiver ran through her at the tenderness of his touch—and kissed her hand in farewell.
“I’ll write, Estella,” he promised. “Take care of yourself.”
Afraid she would cry again if she spoke, she could only smile and wave goodbye as the coach pulled away from the station. Eventually, the swirling mists enveloped his silhouette and he disappeared utterly from her view.
Satis House was demolished, every last brick and stone turned to dust—yet its presence seemed to follow her like a restless spirit. Sometimes Estella caught herself staring at clock face, which seemed to pause interminably at twenty minutes to nine; she would hold her breath until the minute hand finally ticked to eight forty-one, and then release it with a sigh and a laugh. She had a horror of lacy cobwebs and dry rot and any hint of decay, and although childish fancies had never been encouraged in her, she secretly cherished the belief that if one were to dig up her adoptive mother’s grave, one would find her unchanged in her bridal shroud, no more ghostly in death than she had been in life.
Estella’s London house was dreary and small, but she contented herself with the fact that it was new—not a cobweb or ghost story to be found within its walls—and most importantly, the rent was cheap. Marriage had given her a new appreciation for living within her means, even a slight anxiety about money. She had watched helplessly as her dowry was squandered by a brute that regarded her as yet another trinket to display in his house. As she was resolved to never marry again, the remainder of her inheritance (which Miss Havisham had had the cunning to legally tie up in such a way that none but Estella could touch the capital) would have to sustain her for the rest of her miserable life.
She was tired. So very, very tired and worn, and she felt much older than her thirty-four years. She couldn’t imagine her life stretching on decades longer, and yet her black, warped heart continued beating and she kept wandering through life like a sleepwalker.
There had been a few times during those dark, lonely years of marriage that the sluggish waters of the Thames had more resembled the River Styx, and the notion of joining the hordes of anonymous dead was an inviting one. Then her husband could no longer follow her every move and hurt her for his own amusement. A decent, God-fearing person wouldn’t risk dying with a mortal sin like self-destruction, but Estella had already caused so much harm that her death would be an act of penance. No longer imposing on a world that she had only damaged. Who, after all, would actually miss her? What good had she ever done, to deserve being missed?
But Pip, of all people, had stopped her. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him since they parted, hadn’t dwelled on his grief or his foolish declarations of love, because if she allowed guilt and regret into her mind it would crush her with its magnitude. Now on the precipice of life and death, he came unbidden into her thoughts, as clearly as if he stood beside her.
Part of the little good in me, part of the evil, he had called her. You must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
His words had only confused her at the time, not moved her. So why did she now cling to those words, weeping as if she had a heart to break?
Pip would miss me if I died, she realized. Undeserving and ungrateful though she might be of it, he loved her, forgave her, wished her well. She crumpled on the docks, near enough to the dark water to see her wretched, sobbing reflection in the moonlight. She was a pathetic sight indeed. Her pride and scorn had always been her armor—to protect her, as Miss Havisham promised, from betrayal and disappointment and pain—so where was it now to shield her?
After that night, she could no longer keep the memory of Pip at arm’s length. Without knowing it, he had saved her life, and given her a reason to keep trudging onward. Thus began a gradual and prickly process of introspection: trying to untangle her disordered priorities and unlearn the lessons of Miss Havisham.
Now she lived a quiet, unassuming life in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood. She mended stockings and embroidered handkerchiefs for her neighbors to earn a little money, though she mainly did it to keep herself occupied, so that her thoughts couldn’t wander to those dark places again. She kept to herself, employed only a cook and a charwoman, and tried not to mourn the loss of her beauty. This humble life was to be her penance.
Estella did not expect Pip to write, at least not so soon. But only two days after their meeting at the ruins of Satis House, she received a few lines from him—his handwriting was still the same, after all these years—informing her that his return to the Cairo office had been postpone another week, and could he take the liberty of calling on his old friend while he was in town?
Her hands fairly shook as she sent back a hurried acceptance.