The Dress Shop of Dreams Page 12

  “Hush!” Milly exclaims, glancing around the room.

  Walt laughs. “I don’t think she heard me.”

  “I don’t understand how you can read so, so beautifully, like you’re in love with every character, every word,” Milly says, dropping her voice to a whisper, “when you don’t even like the books.”

  It had been a huge disappointment to her when Walt had confessed he didn’t like Sense and Sensibility or, indeed, any of Austen or anything similar. She’s still trying to pretend he didn’t.

  “Hugh loved Jane Austen, you know,” Milly says. “He read them all, even Persuasion. Sometimes we’d read them aloud together, as if they were plays.”

  Walt is about to raise an eyebrow in mockery, before remembering they are talking about a deceased husband. Milly is a widow, he realizes. The word makes him think of wineglasses so delicate, so fragile you fear they might shatter in your grasp. She’s to be handled with extreme sensitivity and care. Walt glances down at his hands, probably too rough and clumsy for the task. Cora, the thicker-skinned sensible scientist, would probably be a perfect fit, though he mustn’t think of that.

  “That’s … sweet,” Walt says. “He must have loved you like crazy.”

  “Yes.” Milly smiles. “Yes, he did.”

  She falls silent and Walt wonders what to say next. A dozen platitudes about love, life and death pop into his mind but they all seem too cheap and silly to say now. Walt had thought that tonight might be the night he finally stayed over, but now he isn’t sure he’s ready. Milly turns to look at him then and before she even opens her mouth Walt can hear the words in the air. I love you. She wants to say it. He can feel it vibrating off her skin, evaporating in waves of cinnamon and nutmeg. He breathes it in. Then he sees the doubt in her eyes. He sees that she’s scared to say it; she probably wants him to say it first. But he can’t. Not yet. He cares for Milly. He could love her, he thinks, or at least something like love, if only he could give up the ghost of someone else. But these tentative, possible, maybe feelings pale in comparison so greatly to what Milly’s husband gave her that he can’t offer them now. However, he needs to give Milly something, to offer a piece of himself, a little slice of his heart. So Walt reaches into his back pocket and takes out his mother’s notebook.

  “What’s this?” Milly asks as he hands it to her.

  “It was my mother’s,” Walt says. “My father found it the night she died. She wrote it for me.”

  “Oh.” Milly touches the notebook as if it were the most precious thing she’s ever held, as if it might crumble to dust in her fingers. “Oh.”

  “Open it.”

  Very slowly, Milly turns the first page. She studies it for a few minutes, squinting and frowning at the letters and numbers streaked and swirling across the paper. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Walt says. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure it out.”

  “It’s like a code. Like Sudoku or something like that.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But I’ve never been good at those sorts of things.”

  “I’m okay,” she says. “I like doing The Times cryptic crossword.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty impressive,” Walt says.

  Milly shrugs. She wants to ask more about his mother, about his father, about his past. She wants to know everything about him, but she’ll wait.

  “Thank you,” Milly says.

  “For what?”

  “For showing me.”

  She leans forward and kisses him. She’ll save the confession for another day.

  They slept together for the first time that night. Just slept, in each other’s arms, on the light blue velvet sofa with the pink silk cushions, and everything unsaid circling in the air around them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Etta chews her Chelsea bun slowly, plucking off pinches of dough while she gazes out of the window. Every time she sits here Etta hopes to see him, though she knows that, if not impossible, it’s improbable. For, fifty years ago, when she and the Saint parted, they’d agreed never to see each other again. And since Cambridge is too small a place for two people not wanting to meet accidentally on its streets, they decided to split the city in half. Now Etta waits at the boundary line, wishing she’d never made that promise and wishing she had the courage now to break it. With a sigh, Etta sips her coffee. It’s an especially quiet Sunday morning so her memories can play out perfectly, unrolling in her mind without interruption.

  When Etta met the Saint, she’d only been engaged to Joe for six months though they’d known each other almost all their lives. She’d lived in the flat above the shop with her mother and he’d lived just around the corner from All Saints’ Passage on Portugal Place. They had grown up together, cycling their bikes and kicking balls and playing tag. He was a handsome boy, with dark hair, beautiful skin and a tiny triangular birthmark in his left iris. Most of her girlfriends had enormous crushes on him, but Etta had never felt the spark. She liked him very much, as a best friend or a brother, but catching a glance of the mark in his eye didn’t make her quiver like all the other girls. It was to everyone’s surprise then that, when it was time for childhood friends to start falling in love, Joe chose Etta.

  At first, she fobbed him off. She ignored the looks he gave her. She didn’t reply to his notes. She even encouraged him to give her girlfriends a chance. And then, one day, he did. On Valentine’s Day he showed up on her doorstep with a card but, before Etta could say anything, Joe opened it up.

  “I was going to give this to you,” he said. “Now I’m giving it to Alice Mychik instead.” And he pointed to the place where her name had been crossed out and replaced with Alice’s. His handwriting was surprisingly small and neat.

  Once Etta couldn’t have Joe anymore, she wanted him. She watched Joe holding hands with Alice and began to wonder if she hadn’t made a mistake. He became like the prettiest dresses in her mother’s shop, the ones that she wasn’t allowed to touch. Of course those were the ones she coveted most of all. When she tried on other dresses, ones not made with silk and lace, she’d only look in the mirror for a moment before turning to the prohibited racks and begging her mother. All her friends fancied Joe, after all, so he must be something special. With the forbidden dresses Etta didn’t even stop to consider whether they’d fit her figure or complement her coloring, and it was just the same with Joe.

  So Etta set about trying to win him back. She gazed at him during classes, she sent notes, she offered to hold his hand, to let him kiss her cheek. At first Joe wasn’t interested, at least he didn’t seem to be. He ignored her notes, pretended he didn’t see her staring at him, and continued to flirt with all the other girls but her. Then one day, perhaps after deciding she’d been punished enough, he offered to walk Etta home. She glided along, every step as light as lace and as smooth as silk, barely able to stop smiling, fueled by joy, triumph and delight. When they turned the corner onto her street, Joe offered his hand and she took it. Their fingers didn’t fit together, knuckles rubbing awkwardly. Without saying anything, they tried different positions but nothing quite worked. Finally, Joe let Etta’s hand go and offered the crook of his arm instead. When he walked her to her door, Etta thought he might try to kiss her, but he didn’t. And she thought that as the years passed the awkwardness between them would soften and relax but it didn’t, not really. Etta simply became used to it and better able to smooth out the rough edges.

  The Saint, on the other hand, was a perfect fit. From the first moment they touched, Etta knew it. The fact that she had to sit on her hands after that, to stop herself from reaching out and touching him again, confirmed it. And it wasn’t just that she wanted to touch, kiss and do all sorts of things she really shouldn’t be wanting, she wanted to talk with him as well. All the time. They met every Sunday afternoon at the candles under the Virgin Mary, said their prayers, then went for a long walk around the neighborhood. They talked about everything: flower power and feminism, their favorite Beat
les songs, faith, the state of the world and what they wanted to do to make it a better place. He told her about the theology degree he’d just earned and she told him about the dress shop, though not entirely everything about it.

  Etta told herself she wasn’t doing anything wrong. They were just friends who talked a lot and made each other laugh. She wasn’t being disloyal to Joe and, to prove it, she never took off her engagement ring. For his part, the Saint either didn’t notice or pretended not to.

  The first time the Saint told Etta she was beautiful, she knew they’d started skirting a dangerous line. It was fairly easy to tell yourself a friendship was innocent if nothing was ever said to indicate otherwise—what went on under the surface of things could be put down to imagination and fancy. But once an attraction was admitted, no matter how tentative, innocence was harder to feign.

  “You shouldn’t say that,” Etta had said at first.

  “Why not?” the Saint had asked. “If it’s the way I feel.”

  He looked at her with bright blue eyes. It was an earnest look, full of sweetness and hope. And when she looked back into his eyes for a little too long, Etta entirely forgot she even knew a boy named Joe.

  Henry waits a moment before knocking. When he tells Nick Fielding why he’s really here he’ll probably be chucked out on his ear. His superior officer, before retiring a decade ago, was known for having one of the worst tempers in the department—several times accused of assaulting suspects, though none of the charges ever stuck or held him back from promotion. He’d completed his career as chief superintendent probably because, Henry thought, the powers that be were as scared of him as the criminals were. And because he got results. Conviction rates went up 38 percent and crime fell by 23 percent while Nick Fielding headed the Oxfordshire Constabulary. Figures so good for publicity that no one asked exactly how he achieved it.

  Henry grips Cora’s case file tightly in one hand and reaches up to ring the bell. He waits for nearly a minute before he hears scuffling in the passageway and someone fumbling with the lock. When the door opens Henry tries hard not to show his shock. The man who’d scared the life out of him on several occasions has, in the last ten years, shriveled and shrunken into something rather resembling an overgrown goblin.

  “Get inside then,” Nick snaps, “or you need me to hold your hand?”

  Diminished in stature then, but not in spirit, Henry thinks.

  “Thank you,” he says, and follows the old man down the hallway. They step into a living room with frayed gray carpets underneath an orange-and-green-striped three-piece suite, still wearing its plastic protection, clustered around a glass coffee table. Nick eases himself onto the sofa and regards Henry, who lingers in the doorway, suspiciously.

  “Are you going to sit or stand there like a lemon?” Nick asks.

  Actually Henry would love a cup of tea, even a glass of water, to help take the edge off what he’s about to do, but since he’s clearly not going to be offered either, he sits gingerly on the edge of the nearest chair. They sit in silence for a moment. Henry studies the faded yellow wallpaper.

  “Well, what’s this about then? Get on with it. I haven’t got all day.”

  “Yes, of course,” Henry says, though he can’t imagine what other pressing engagements are pushing him out the door. “I came to see you about a case I’m working on—”

  “So you said on the phone,” Nick interrupts. “If you’re going to repeat yourself we’ll be here all day.”

  “Okay, well, it was an old case of yours,” Henry blurts out, “two Oxford academics died in a house fire: Maggie and Robert Carraway.”

  “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  Henry opens the file and slides it across the coffee table. “It was ruled accidental. But I have reason to believe it might have been arson.”

  “Do you now?” Nick says. “And what do you care about a twenty-year-old case?”

  “Their daughter came to me a few weeks ago. She wants to reopen it.”

  “Does she now?” Nick sits back into the sofa and the plastic covers scrunch slightly under him. “Pretty girl, was she?”

  Henry doesn’t like the way Nick looks at him, doesn’t appreciate the implication of the question. It makes him think of Francesca, who could stop the words in his throat with just one look, but for a different reason. Then he thinks of Cora.

  “No, not especially,” Henry says, perched on the edge of the plastic-coated chair, slightly afraid he might at any moment slide off onto the floor. “So, can you tell me what you remember about the case? Anything unusual, anything out of place?”

  Nick Fielding shakes his head and shrugs. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. There was nothing unusual about that case. Open and shut. I’ve nothing else to tell.”

  Oh, but you do, and you just did, Henry thinks. You just don’t know it.

  “They must have made a great scientific discovery,” Cora says. “I don’t know what it was, but the way they were talking … it could only be that.”

  Etta nods. They sit on the banks of the river on the lawns of Trinity College, snuggled in their coats. It’s a cold morning and the river is empty of punts, the paths empty of tourists. Etta persuaded her granddaughter to venture out for a walk, citing fresh air as good for the brain cells, knowing Cora forgets to exercise unless forced.

  “So that’s what Maggie was going to tell me.” Etta says, her breath puffs of clouds in the air. “If only I’d stopped long enough to listen.”

  “Unless it’s just a figment of my imagination,” Cora says.

  “No.” Etta takes her granddaughter’s cold fingers and rubs them between her palms. Cora looks up into her grandmother’s gray-blue eyes and, in that moment, she no longer thinks what she saw was true, she knows. It’s still a strange experience, having faith instead of facts. It’s odd the way her heart has been triumphing over her head lately. Having spent her whole life ignoring it, prizing facts over feelings, Cora’s surprised it still works at all.

  “But what will we do now?” she asks. “We’ve got no proof, no empirical evidence. I can’t go back to the police and tell them I’m having visions.”

  “Why not?”

  Cora can’t tell whether or not Etta is serious.

  “Well, for a start, I’d rather not lose my reputation as a scientist,” Cora says. “I still have hopes of doing something …” She trails off, too embarrassed to admit the full grandiosity of her desires to another person, even her adoring grandmother.

  “What about that nice chap you saw in Oxford, the policeman?” Etta asks. “The one who helped you before.”

  “He was probably just taking pity on me.” Cora shrugs. “And however nice he is, I doubt he believes in investigating cases based on intuitive whims without corroboration. And he shouldn’t, I wouldn’t. At least, not before …” She trails off, unable to articulate just what’s been happening to her lately.

  “I could never be a scientist. No imagination, no fiction, no magic.” Etta sighs. “I don’t know how you don’t die of boredom.”

  “How can you say that?” Cora exclaims. “There’s incredible imagination in science. It’s what matters most of all. Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ That’s how all the great leaps are made, when a scientist thinks of something she can’t yet prove, then dedicates her life to trying.”

  Etta regards her suddenly impassioned granddaughter curiously. “Are you speaking from experience? Because I always thought you were rather suspicious of imagination and all that is plucked out of the air, unmeasurable, untestable, unquantifiable.”

  “Maybe.” Cora smiles, realizing how much she’s changing. “I don’t believe in imagination that doesn’t undergo rigorous tests. At least I didn’t used to, before … Anyway, ‘unmeasurable’ isn’t a word.”

  “Come here.” Etta wraps her arms around Cora and they sit together, nestled up close in the cold, watching the ducks dipping their heads into the river as they drift. 7 ducks, Cora
notes, a prime number, the square root of 49.

  “I’d hate to be a duck in winter,” Etta says. “Their feet must freeze.”

  “Not really,” Cora says. “At zero degrees ducks lose only five percent of their body heat through their feet. They have a counter-current heat exchange system between the arteries and veins.”

  Etta laughs. “What are you talking about? Speak English.”

  “Their blood keeps their feet cool so they don’t lose heat in cold water,” Cora explains. “Because the smaller the temperature difference between two objects, the more slowly heat will be exchanged.”

  “You had me until ‘water,’ ” Etta says. “You lost me after that. How I, such a free-spirited artist, produced two mad scientists like you and Maggie, I really can’t think.”

  “I don’t know. But I’m glad you did.”

  “Me too.” Etta smiles. “Me too.”

  Cora finds her grandmother’s hand and holds it. She isn’t used to the way she feels. She doesn’t want to go back to the lab or stare into microscopes, she doesn’t want to think about policemen or anything else. She just wants to sit and hold the hand of the person she loves most in the world. The ice around her heart isn’t just thawing now, it’s melting fast. It’s a bit unnerving but rather lovely and she probably can’t do much to reverse it now. And so Etta and Cora sit by the river, until their fingers and toes are numb, and for a while the question of death and police investigations and what they are going to do next is forgotten.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Milly lies in Walt’s arms. She has to position herself just so in order not to slide off the sofa. But she doesn’t want to move, she doesn’t want to wake him. Walt snores softly, the tips of his ears wiggling with every exhalation. Milly smiles. She watches Walt while he sleeps, craning her neck back to get a better view. He sleeps so peacefully, so openly, so completely, like a child: arms and legs flung out, tummy exposed, open to the world. He shifts in his sleep and a little smile opens his mouth. Milly gazes at him and realizes then, clearly and absolutely, that she’s kidding herself. She will never tell him she loves him to his face. No. It’ll have to be done a different way. She could call him. But that wouldn’t be very elegant, and she’ll still be waiting to see whether he’ll say it back.