Fruitful said. Forcefully. Gray looked startled, but she went on, “No, we don’t want to keep them. I’m never wearing an apron again. I may be covered in flour and tomato sauce, I may have to wash my clothes every day, but I’m not wearing an apron again.”
Oh, no. I was going to have to talk to her about that. Also about how you could wash your clothes every day, because you’d have more than two dresses.
Gray just nodded, then asked Obedience, “What do you think?” Gently, the way he talked to Obedience.
She said, tentatively as always, “It’s wasteful to get rid of them, though, isn’t it? We could make something else out of them. Handkerchiefs, or muslin bags for jam or cheese.”
“We’re not making jam,” Fruitful said. “Or handkerchiefs. Or cheese.”
“I like jam, though,” Obedience objected. She was a bit rounder than Fruitful. I didn’t know about pizza, but she’d definitely suspected, last night, in some sneaky corner of her mind, that tiramisu was the food of the gods. Witness the fact that she’d eaten her own and half of Fruitful’s.
Fruitful sighed. “You buy jam, Outside. You buy everything. You don’t have to make things anymore.”
Obedience looked stricken, and Honor said, “People do make jam, love. Tastes better if you’ve grown the fruit yourself and it’s that fresh, not that I’ve ever done it. Always sounded too hot, and I’m not much of a gardener anyway. I’d rather go to the shops. Gray would know more about it, though.”
Obedience and Fruitful both looked at Gray. Absolutely doubtfully. He raised his hands and said, “No idea about making jam, sorry.”
I said, “You do not have to recycle your cap and apron. If you need a muslin bag to make jam, we’ll buy a muslin bag. I was going to ask Honor, actually, if we could leave the aprons and caps here, put them in the rubbish. You won’t be needing them again.”
“Good,” Gray said. “Then when you’re ready to leave, go get them. We’ll stop outside and get rid of them.”
It didn’t take us five minutes to get ready. It didn’t take us two. We had nothing. The girls because they owned nothing, and me because I’d lost everything. When I picked up the folded aprons and caps that I’d set on the coffee table, not knowing what I’d do with them, Gray asked, “Ready to go, Fruitful?”
“Yes,” she said, and let him pick her up again, as she’d let him carry her downstairs. She didn’t put an arm around his shoulders, but I thought she wanted to.
Oh, no.
Gray said, “Bring the torch, will you, Daisy? Light my path.”
All of us, including Honor and the brown dog, followed the light out to the back garden, where it picked out a round stone firepit surrounded by semicircular stone benches. “Yes?” Gray asked. “Or no?”
I wanted to say it myself. I forced myself to wait for the girls to do it.
Fruitful said, “Yes.”
Obedience said, “We’re going to burn them?”
“Only if you want to,” Gray said.
She took a breath from the bottom of her lungs and said, “I want to. Please.”
It was an hour before dawn, the same time they’d escaped. The witching hour. Too dark to see the mountains. Too dark to see anything but the light in the kitchen window, the odd yellow rectangle among the houses below, showing where another early riser was starting their day. It was cold out here, none of us girls had jackets, and we were all shivering. Gray set Fruitful on her feet, and I handed her a cap and apron, then did the same for Obedience. After that, I took a step back. This wasn’t my moment.
Fruitful laid her garments in the firepit, and Obedience hesitated a moment, then did the same.
Gray picked up a long cylinder, the kind that held barbecue matches, and asked, “Who wants to light them?”
“We both will,” Fruitful said. “Because they’re ours.” Gray handed over the box, and Fruitful shook out two matches and handed one to her sister.
I was still cold. I had my arms wrapped around myself, but I wouldn’t have been anywhere else as Fruitful struck her match with a rasp and a burst of yellow flame, and then Obedience did the same. They held them up, shining like sparklers in the blackness, and then Obedience lowered hers and touched it to an edge of white muslin.
A flare, and it went up. Fruitful laid her own match to the opposite side, and the yellow flame grew.