Chapter Text
The office at Venturer smelled of old dust, ambition, and today, of something worse: other people’s euphoria. Cameron stopped at the entrance to the main corridor, her body frozen by a wave of melancholy so dense it almost made her step back. There they were. All of them.
A golden, noisy circle had formed around Taggie and Rupert. Taggie, in her denim jumpsuit and carefree smile, looked like a delicate flower plucked from a hothouse. And Rupert… was smiling. A wide, unguarded smile that reached his eyes — a smile he had never, never worn when he was with her. Beside Taggie O’Hara, he looked like a man freed from a burden. The burden called Cameron.
She watched, her face a mask of polished stone, as the spectacle of domestic happiness unfolded. Charles raised champagne flutes in an animated toast, his voice echoing confidently through the hall. Enid, with her endless planner, spoke enthusiastically about music for the reception. Freddie, ever practical, questioned the catering with an air of comic seriousness. Even Sebastian was there, folded into the circle, drinking and listening to the wedding plans.
And what hurt her with surgical precision, what fermented her sense of not belonging, turning it into bitter vinegar in her chest, was the presence of Declan O’Hara. The old wolf, who should have been snarling with fury at seeing his precious daughter marry a promiscuous libertine, was there. Talking to Rupert and Taggie with an expression that bordered on calm resignation. He seemed… almost happy. Integrated.
She — Cameron — production director, the architect behind half of those recent successes, was a ghost. A shadow watching from outside the warm, illuminated glass of a party to which she would never truly be invited.
The past few months had been filled with hard battles and hard-won victories. They had worked tirelessly. She had worked tirelessly. She had secured a new work visa, a Herculean feat. She had bought a house, put down roots in English soil, tenuous and fragile as they were. She was facing the arduous and humiliating process of British citizenship. She had led the team to secure the IBA license and, in an almost epic move, they had expelled Tony Baddingham from Rutshire. They were victories. And yet, in that moment, she felt hollow and distant.
She could feel the vibration of their joy, a foreign language her body did not know how to speak. They were all from the same tribe. Rutshire, with its secret codes, its intertwined families, its shared history. She was the American. The Black woman. The boss. The outsider. Nothing she did, no achievement, no merit, would erase that.
With a silent sigh that seemed to rise from the foundations of her soul, Cameron moved. Not through the center, but along the edges, close to the walls, like a cat trying to slip by unnoticed. Her posture was rigid, her fingers tightening around the handle of her leather briefcase. She looked at no one, and no one seemed to see her. It was a solitary crossing.
The door to her office closed with a soft click, the sweetest sound she had heard all day. The silence of the room was a balm after the deafening noise of other people’s happiness.
She wished Taggie and Rupert would leave soon. That they would take that crap — the expensive, stylized-cardstock invitations — far away from there. So everyone could finally return to work in peace. So she would not, at the very least, have to listen to all that damned euphoria.
Because, in the end, it didn’t matter how many battles she won, how many houses she bought, how many visas she secured. She would always be the foreigner. And that scene in the corridor was just another cruel reminder that some borders simply cannot be crossed.
Why the hell had she worked so hard to belong in Rutshire? It was obvious she would never be part of it. She had worked too hard to get where she was; she couldn’t waste time on niceties and easy smiles. As a Black woman, she knew that if she didn’t keep a firm front, no one would respect her.
Cameron sank into the leather chair, closing her eyes for a moment, trying to banish the image of that collective happiness that felt like a personal insult. Her breathing was still a little fast, blood throbbing at her temples with the contained anger from that humiliating trek through the corridor.
Then, someone knocked on the door.
A tentative knock, almost timid. Cameron ignored it, hoping it was just one of the secretaries with a roll of tape or an urgent document that would force her to maintain a professional posture, but would not make her swallow yet another piece of her pride.
But the knock came again. A little firmer.
With a sigh of exasperation, she answered, “Come in.”
And there she was. Taggie O’Hara. Looking like a startled pony, with her wide blue eyes and her hands clasped together, holding an envelope. Cameron felt a surge of fury so intense that her vision blurred for a second. She fixed her with best death glare, a visual bolt loaded with all her bitterness and disdain, a clear message: Swallow that invitation, go to hell, and leave me alone.
To her supreme irritation, Taggie didn’t run away. Instead, she seemed to steel herself even more in place, her shoulders straightening almost imperceptibly.
“I hope that isn’t a wedding invitation,” Cameron spat. Her mind filled in the rest, echoing the venom boiling in her veins: …after he traded me in for you, after I played the fool while you two laughed behind my back.
To her credit, Taggie had the decency to look embarrassed. Her blue eyes dropped to the floor for a moment before meeting Cameron’s again. “Uh… no, it isn’t. We figured you wouldn’t want to attend. Although, of course, if you want to, you can come…” she added quickly, a peace offering that felt like a charity.
Of course, Cameron thought, with a bitterness that embarrassed her a little. The biggest problem with Taggie O’Hara was that she was too good. Truly, genuinely good. It was like trying to strike sunlight with a sword. What kind of person would that make her, to hater forever a twenty-year-old girl who went around smiling and cooking for everyone? For fuck’s sake.
That was what made her so unbearably irritating. Cameron wanted Taggie to be a self-centered bitch. A schemer, a spoiled girl who had snatched Rupert on a whim. That would have given her a clear and justifiable target for her hatred. But reality was nowhere near that, and all Cameron could do was become even more frustrated with herself, feeling all the hostility she had always nurtured toward the girl slip away like sand through her fingers.
The fact that she was almost… angelic, a stark opposite to Cameron’s own rough and cynical nature, was a form of torture. A living reminder of Rupert calling her an “angel” all over Rutshire.
“Honestly, Cameron, we don’t have anything personally against you. We don’t—” Taggie began, her voice gentle, but Cameron couldn’t stand the idea of this girl, years younger, pitying her.
“Did you come here to offer me your opinion on me?” Cameron cut her off, her voice icy and firm. “I don’t give a damn what you and Rupert think of me, Agatha. If that’s all, you can leave now.”
Taggie sighed, a sound of resignation, not defeat. “No, I didn’t come for that, you’re right.” She stepped forward, placing the envelope on Cameron’s desk, on top of a stack of IBA reports. “Actually, I came to deliver this. It’s from my brother.”
Cameron blinked, surprise piercing her armor of indifference for a fraction of a second. Patrick?
“Patrick sent it. It’s the invitation to the preview of his play,” Taggie finished.
Cameron’s eyes dropped to the thick paper envelope, untouched, without any sign of being opened. Curiosity was an insistent insect buzzing at her mind, but she refused to acknowledge it. She kept her hands crossed on the desk, her body reclined in the chair, in a pose of absolute disinterest. She would not do her the favor of picking it up in front of his sister.
Taggie seemed to understand the message and moved toward the door. “I’ll leave you alone now.”
Her hand was already on the handle, the door half open, when she stopped. She looked back over her shoulder, and her blue eyes shone with a strange light — not pity, but something that looked like… urgency.
“Cameron…” she said, her soft voice carrying a new weight. “I think you should go. I really believe you should see this play.”
And then, before Cameron could fire back some caustic remark, she left, closing the door with a soft click.
Cameron was left alone, her fury now mixed with a deep unease. Her eyes were magnetically, drawn to the envelope resting on her desk. Patrick O’Hara.
What the hell did he want now? And why did Taggie, with her solemn warning, seem to believe that this play was something she needed to see?
Cameron remained motionless for a long moment after the door closed, the silence now heavy with the echo of those last words. Her gaze finally dropped to the envelope. It was simple paper, but of undeniable quality, an elegant weight between her fingers when, with an almost reluctant gesture, she lifted it. Her name was handwritten, in a decisive, slanted script she did not recognize: Cameron.
She opened it without ceremony. A matte black card, silver embossed text. Patrick O’Hara has the honor of inviting you to the preview of his new play, The Blacksmith’s Daughter. Theatre Royal Haymarket. 7:30 p.m. The Blacksmith’s Daughter. It sounded grandiose.
With a sharp movement, she shoved the card back into the envelope and opened the top right drawer of her desk — the drawer for things to be forgotten, where filed reports, empty pens, and notifications of canceled appointments went. She tossed the invitation inside and shut the drawer with a dry click. No. She wasn’t going.
She sat back again, trying to reclaim the fury that sustained her. But the fury was draining away, leaving behind a melancholic weariness and an irritating truth.
Because in the end, the fact was undeniable: Rupert and Taggie were happier than ever. And maybe… maybe she didn’t care that much about Rupert, not really. Not about the man himself. What gnawed at her was the idea he represented now. The envy she felt was for that. For that easy happiness, that genuine connection and the love they seemed to overflow for one another, so visible in his idiotic smile in the corridor. For the unshakable certainty that, no matter how bad things got, they would still have each other.
What would that be like?
The question echoed in her mind. To have someone who truly cared, not about her position, her efficiency, or her ability to win battles, but about… her. To have someone who stayed with her at the end of the day, when everything boiled down to exhaustion and chaos, and shared silence was comfortable instead of heavy.
She had no idea what that was like. But deep down, buried beneath layers of cynicism and harsh words, in the most intimate part of her soul, she wanted to know. That was the most painful part of it all.
As if to emphasize her exclusion from that world of emotional certainties, the sounds of celebration in the corridor seeped in beneath her door. Taggie’s clear laughter, Bas’s animated voice proposing another toast, the contented murmur of the others. They were celebrating the delivery of the invitations to what would undoubtedly be the Wedding of the Year in Rutshire. Taggie O’Hara and Rupert Campbell-Black. A social event, a triumph of love, a consecration of everything that would never be hers.
She rested her head against the cold leather of the chair, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, trying to drown out the noise with the force of her own resignation. The drawer was closed.
The invitation, buried. Life, with other people’s sweetness and its own solitudes, went on. And she would go on with it, alone, as she had always known how to do. It was the only certainty she had left.
***\|/***
Three weeks was enough. Three weeks after she had consigned the thick paper invitation to the oblivion of a drawer, and Cameron could no longer escape the resounding echo of Patrick O’Hara’s success.
She hadn’t gone looking for it. That was a conscious decision. But in Rutshire — especially within that peculiar circle orbiting the O’Haras — news of a London artistic triumph was like an earthquake whose aftershocks inevitably reached the Venturer coffee room. For a brief moment, she even felt a perverse relief: the furor around The Blacksmith’s Daughter finally eclipsed the last echoes of the Wedding of the Year. People were no longer talking only about buffets and gift lists, but about literary criticism and tickets sold out for months.
Declan, of course, was unbearable. Half the time he spent in the building was devoted to wandering the corridors, his voice booming for anyone — willing or not — to hear, reciting a rosary of London critics’ praise for the “incomparable talent” of his firstborn. “The Times called it a masterpiece, did you know? A modern masterpiece!” Satisfaction roared in his tone, a pride he would never bestow on his own work, however crucial it might be.
The headlines pursued her. Smiling faces of actors and that one particular face — brighter, with eyes that seemed to see through the camera — filled the covers of the newspapers she tried to read at breakfast. “Patrick O’Hara: the voice of a generation.” “The blacksmith forges an unexpected success.” She cut short her morning ritual, tired of seeing the name and the ghost of the play she refused to see.
The ghost, however, grew more insistent on a Saturday. The one day she allowed the world of Rutshire to remain completely outside. Wearing silk pajamas, a wine glass in hand, she turned on the television hoping to find a silly film, anything that would numb her.
Instead, she stumbled upon a West End interview. A young blonde actress, American like her, but with a plastic sweetness Cameron would never possess, spoke with a wide smile and shining eyes. She was part of the cast. “Oh, Patrick is simply a genius,” she said, with a little laugh that screamed flirtation and a syrupy voice. “So young, so intelligent, and so kind. Working with him has been a transformative experience.” Cameron rolled her eyes, taking a longer swallow of wine. Of course, she thought with a stab of jealousy. Of course someone like Patrick wouldn’t stay alone for long.
Break the news, you're walking out
To be a good man for someone else
Sorry I was never good like you
Kind. Young. Genius. The script was always the same. But beneath the disdain, a flicker of resignation struck her. The girl was right. Patrick was all of that. Handsome in his disheveled, intellectual way. Young — so much younger than she was. Intelligent in a way that made words dance. And kind… she remembered flashes of that kindness from the moment she met him.
She sat down on the sofa, staring at the screen without really seeing it. The differences between her and Patrick seemed, in that moment, abyssal. He, with his youthful idealism transformed into acclaimed art. She, with her practical cynicism, forged through fire and iron in a constant fight for a space that never quite felt like her own. He belonged to that world of lights and praise, to the future. She belonged to the backstage, to victories won at a cost, to the perpetual, exhausting present.
But then, unexpectedly, a strange, calm feeling bloomed in her chest. Patrick deserved it. He deserved all that attention, all that admiration. He had worked, hammering his truth onto the stage, and the world was responding. He was achieving what he had always wanted.
And, in a clear insight that surprised her, Cameron realized that among all the faces and names in that place, Patrick O’Hara was the only one for whom she could feel genuine happiness at a victory. There was no rivalry there. Only the quiet recognition of another’s merit, of someone she couldn’t help thinking of with a certain affection.
The smile that appeared on her lips was small, almost imperceptible, but real. Contented. For a second, the noise of the world — the actress’s giggles on TV, the echo of London applause, the buzz of a wedding that wasn’t hers — fell silent. There was only that strange peace, born of admitting that someone, in all that circus, deserved to shine.
She turned off the television. The silence of the room wrapped around her, now comforting. She picked up her glass and went to the window, looking out over the green landscape of Rutshire. Patrick was happy. That, at least, was good. And for now, it was enough.
***\|/***
The Rutshire market was a small, predictable place, where the neatly lined shelves of jam and packets of biscuits seemed to whisper gossip. Cameron was in the wine aisle, holding a case of Malbec when she heard it.
Two girls, too young to have worry lines on their faces, were chattering near the cheese section. Cameron was already preparing for a quick retreat, assuming the inevitable topic: wedding dresses, bouquets, the cloying happiness of Taggie and Rupert. But the words that caught her ear were different, sharp and unexpected, like needles of ice.
“…and it’s incredible how he captured all the nuances of this woman! And her whole story is so interesting and original. The fact that she’s American, a Black woman, her parents’ divorce, the mother being a feminist yet getting involved with a jerk of a man, the father who abandoned her after the divorce… there are so many layers, aren’t there?”
Cameron stopped. The case of wine suddenly felt heavy in her arms. Why did that sound so disturbingly familiar?
“Yes,” the other voice agreed, animated. “And the way she’s tough but at the same time hides this enormous vulnerability inside, how she’s competent and successful at work, but her love life is a total disaster built on questionable choices…”
A chill ran down Cameron’s spine. It wasn’t a feeling of familiarity. It was recognition. Direct, brutal, and intimate.
“I’m honestly surprised, I’ve never seen a man write a female character this well!”
“It’s a miracle when they manage it, isn’t it? It’s definitely the triumph of the play, that it’s been such a huge success!”
Cameron moved away from the voices as if they were emitting radiation. Her movements became mechanical, precise. She paid for the wine without exchanging a single word with the cashier, the po notes coming out of her wallet like foreign objects. She drove home with fierce concentration, her knucleks white on the steering wheel, the girls’ sentences echoing on a loop inside her skull.
The feminist mother. The father who abandoned her. American. Her love life, a disaster of bad choices.
It was too much. It was far too specific.
When she got home, the case of wine was abandoned on the kitchen table. She went straight to the pile of old newspapers stacked from the past week. Her hands, usually so steady, trembled slightly as she flipped through the pages, the rustle of paper cutting through the silence of the room. The afternoon light, weak and gray, filtered through the window, illuminating the dust she stirred up.
And then she found it. In the culture section, beneath a photo of the cast onstage, was the synopsis of The Blacksmith’s Daughter she had so carefully avoided reading.
Her eyes scanned the lines, at first quickly, then slowing, fixing on each word as if they were landmines.
“…the story of Camille Vance, an American inventor who moves to the English countryside in the 1960s, seeking refuge from a fractured family past and a series of failed relationships. With a shell of cynicism and fierce competence, she struggles to assert herself in a hostile, classist environment, while the wounds left by a mother and an absent father haunt each of her choices. O’Hara weaves a raw and lyrical portrait of the modern woman’s loneliness, of fury as armor, and of an agonizing desire for belonging…”
The newspaper slipped from her hands, drifting down to the floor. The synopsis was exactly that, disguised in metaphor. But the doubt was now a burning coal in Cameron’s chest. The buzz of familiarity was far too loud to be ignored, yet still too hazy to be confirmed.
She could no longer pretend that it didn’t exist. She couldn’t keep hiding behind work, wine, exhaustion. She picked up another newspaper, searching for all those reviews — she desperately needed to know more. And it was in a review from The Observer that she found something that made her stop. The critic wrote:
“O’Hara constructs in Camille a tragicomic figure of isolated genius. Her inventions are brilliant, yet always slightly out of joint, as if they operate on a frequency the rest of the Court cannot tune into. There is a particularly poignant scene in which she presents to the Council a mechanism to capture and solidify moonlight — an obvious metaphor for her desire to imprison something intangible and distant, perhaps love, perhaps belonging. The courtiers’ reaction is one of disdain disguised as confusion. It is the loneliness of intellectual exile, and also emotional exile, captured with rare sensitivity.”
Loneliness of intellectual exile. Cameron closed her eyes for a second. She remembered countless meetings at Venturer, presenting bold ideas to others, seeing the hesitation in their eyes, the underlying incomprehension. She operated on a different frequency. She always had.
In another review, from The Standard, she read:
“Camille’s relationship with her ghost-parents is the emotional engine of the play. The mother, seen only in ethereal flashbacks, is a figure who seeks alchemical transmutation not only of metals, but of herself, through a series of disastrous passions that leave her daughter adrift. The father, the Blacksmith, is an absent presence — a man who shapes the world but cannot forge a connection with his own flesh and blood. The inheritance Camille carries is not of gold or steel, but of abandonment and an obsessive search for a utility that might justify her existence.”
The memory surfaced involuntarily, bitter on her tongue. Fourteen years old. The age when everything changed. Her father, the soft-spoken professor, packing books into a cardboard box. Her mother, the activist for noble causes, who had no time for the family, already with her gaze drifting elsewhere, fixed on a new man — one of those loud, empty-opinion types, who treated her like an intellectual trophy. Cameron had stood there, in the doorway, learning the hardest lesson of all: you can only rely on yourself. Loneliness was not a visitor; it was a permanent resident.
Her eyes returned to the newspaper. Obsessive search for a utility that justifies her existence. How many times had she clung to work, to her competence, as the only proof of her worth?
She gathered the magazines and newspapers strewn around her. The next step was inevitable. She could no longer rely solely on fragments written by others.
She needed to see it with her own eyes.
She went to the living room phone and dialed the theater’s number listed at the end of the newspaper article. A receptionist informed her politely that the show was completely sold out for the foreseeable future, but that there was a waiting list for returned tickets, especially for weekday performances, if she called on the day of the show. And they were also planning to extend the run soon and open new dates for sale.
Cameron thanked her without identifying herself. Hung up.
She didn’t have a ticket. But she had a need. And she now had something close to certainty. Because Cameron felt, deep in her soul, that Patrick’s play was a distorted mirror — but still a mirror — of who she was.
She didn’t know how, but she would see that play. And then, she would have her answer. She didn’t know what frightened her more: the possibility that it was all a delusion, or the certainty that it was real.
***\|/***
The next two weeks were an exercise in dogged patience and absolute secrecy. Cameron activated her most discreet assistant at Venturer, a young man named Simon whose loyalty was secured by a generous salary and by her authority, which made him tremble just a little. The instruction was simple, methodical, and obsessive: call the Theatre Royal Haymarket box office twice a day, at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., and ask, with impeccable politeness, whether there were any returned tickets for The Blacksmith’s Daughter. “Any performance, any seat in the house. We’ll take whatever comes up.”
She herself mentioned the matter to no one. Life in Rutshire went on, with the wedding preparations entering a quieter, more practical phase, and the buzz about Patrick’s play becoming part of the place’s soundscape, like the tolling of the local cathedral bells.
It was on a grey Thursday that Simon appeared at her office door, closed it carefully, and, with a slight affirmative nod, placed a discreet envelope on her desk. Inside, a single ticket. Friday’s 7:30 p.m. performance. Stalls, row M, seat 19. Not too close, not too far back. Perfect.
On Friday, Cameron left Venturer early, under the pretext of a medical appointment in London. She drove home with her heart beating at a rhythm she refused to name as anxiety.
Her armor was carefully chosen: an impeccably cut charcoal Armani suit that molded to her like a second, powerful skin. High, slender heels that would drive her path forward with authority. Her usual red lipstick. She was going to watch, and she would be an imposing figure in the shadows, deciphering the riddle that had been stolen from her.
She calculated the route with military precision. She arrived at the theatre exactly fifteen minutes before curtain up. Enough time to enter, pick up the program, and find her seat without having to endure a long wait in the foyer, where she might be seen. The timing was deliberate. If anyone from Rutshire was there—and it was possible—the chances of an encounter would drop drastically.
As she entered the elegant, illuminated auditorium, a cool wave of relief washed over her. The seat she had secured was ideal: in the middle of the audience, surrounded by a sea of unfamiliar faces. No one would be looking for her there. She could be just another anonymous spectator, a businesswoman enjoying a night of culture. Blending into the crowd was her best camouflage.
She sat down, posture erect, hands resting on the leather bag in her lap. Holding the program, she leafed through it with an apparent nonchalance that consumed all her willpower.
The first thing that struck her was the name. Printed on the cover, in elegant letters. Camille. It sounded like an insult whispered directly into her ear. An intimate derivation—he had taken the first syllable of her name, the phonetic essence of her identity, and dressed it onto a fictional character.
The second thing was the photograph of the lead actress. A Black woman with delicate features, dark hair pulled into a familiar bun, eyes that even in the still image conveyed sharp intelligence and contained ferocity. The resemblance wasn’t perfect, but it was too much. The posture, the expression, the energy emanating from the image… it was as if Patrick had chosen a double.
The third thing to leap out at her was, of course, the name Maud O’Hara in the principal cast. Cameron rolled her eyes, bored. Of course. Naturally, Patrick would cast his own mother in the play.
The theatre lights dimmed in a gradual fade. A collective whisper passed through the audience before turning into an expectant silence. Cameron closed the program and set it aside on her lap, her hands now firmly clasped together. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a private war drum.
The heavy curtains trembled and began to open, revealing a set that looked torn from a steampunk, melancholic dream: an inventor’s workshop of glass, copper, and shadows.
Cameron’s breath caught.
The play began.