The Dress Shop of Dreams Page 7

  “Believe it, my dear.” Etta leans forward. “Sometimes a painting just needs the right frame to reveal its true beauty.”

  Milly takes another slow turn in front of the mirror, unable to pull her eyes away, unable to stop smiling. “I feel like I’m falling in love.”

  It’s then that Milly’s greatest wish shimmers onto the mirror. And, when Etta meets her sweet customer’s eyes again, her smile is tainted with sadness so subtle and soft that Milly couldn’t possibly see it. Etta doesn’t want to say what she’s about to say, but knows she must.

  “Love is a glorious thing, my dear. And you have two loves in your life now, do you not?”

  “Yes.” Milly nods, shocked. “But how did you know?”

  Etta smiles again. “I know something else too, from personal experience: don’t give your heart to someone who can’t return it with their own.”

  Milly’s smile drops. “Why would you say that?”

  “So you can have your greatest chance at happiness,” Etta says. “Because it hurts less if you walk away now.”

  “You don’t know,” Milly protests, “you don’t understand.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Etta places a soft feathery hand lightly on Milly’s arm. “I know about love, especially the unrequited kind. And I really don’t recommend it as a subject of study.”

  Milly glances down at the hem of her dress and squeezes her eyes tight shut. When she opens them again she won’t look in the mirror or at Etta.

  “This dress doesn’t really suit me, and I’d never have a chance to wear it. I don’t go to parties,” she mumbles, hurrying back into the changing room, pulling the curtain closed behind her. A few minutes later she runs out of the dress shop, clutching her bag to her chest, leaving the crimson ball gown in a puffed-up heap of silk and lace on the dressing room floor.

  Etta gazes after her as the door falls shut. This is the first time a customer has rejected her magic, has discarded a dress that was meant for her. It’s a troubling turn of events. Could it be that she’s losing her touch?

  “Wait!”

  Cora turns at the bottom step to see Henry running down toward her.

  He stops on the step above her, not out of breath, but still confused by what he’s doing and why. Cora can’t look him in the eye.

  “I’ve got something for you, just in case.” Henry hands Cora a single sheet of white paper folded in half. She takes it and unfolds the page, expecting the telephone number of a good psychiatrist.

  “A coroner?” Cora frowns. “Why are you giving me this?”

  “I’m not sure,” Henry admits. “But if you’re suspicious about your parents’ deaths then you need to see the coroner’s report. It can give you more answers than I can. And, if you find something particularly revelatory, conflicting evidence or something that was overlooked before then you petition to reopen the case.”

  “I, I …” Cora is so touched by the police officer’s generosity that she can’t bear to tell him he was right in the first place, that her grandmother was wrong. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They stand together on the steps in silence. Cora is the first to tip into embarrassment. She shifts from the step onto the pavement, gives him a wave, then walks away without looking back.

  Cora doesn’t go to the bus stop. Instead she drifts aimlessly around Oxford, turning the piece of folded paper over and over in her pocket. She isn’t at all sure what to do next. Calling Etta should be the first step but, strangely, she doesn’t feel like talking with her grandmother right now. She just wants to be alone. Contacting a coroner feels like a slightly scary prospect, too startlingly sharp and bleak to face.

  Cora wanders along Woodstock Road, counting windows: 148 by the time she reaches Jack & Jim’s, a twenty-four-hour café on the edge of Little Clarendon Street perpetually populated by students who stake out tables while writing essays and drinking endless cups of coffee and tea. Suddenly missing Walt’s cherry pie, Cora stops to buy a chocolate-pistachio cookie before she turns right at the end of the street and heads toward the art house cinema.

  With a vague idea of losing a few hours in fiction, Cora continues to count windows as she walks. Then, halfway down Walton Street, she stops. She’s standing in front of a house: a house with six steps leading up to a bright yellow door, with seven windows including one in the attic and one in the basement, and walls of brick painted white. The color on the door is new—it used to be dark blue—and she doesn’t remember an attic. But there is no mistaking the house now that she’s seen it. She can feel it vibrating with a shiver into her bones. This is the house she lived in as a girl. This is the house where her parents died.

  Chapter Nine

  Cora stands on the steps of the house for a long time. So long, in fact, that she begins to feel strangers staring as they pass by. She doesn’t know what to do. She wants to move, but she can’t leave any more than she can knock on the door. Slowly, she studies the building, scrutinizing the thousands of bricks surrounding her, for once too overwhelmed by emotion to count them, imagining the flames rushing greedily across the bricks, the black smoke staining stone and cement. Cora is almost surprised that no marks remain, no scars, no testament to the trauma of her childhood. How can such an event simply have been painted over and forgotten?

  A surge of anger rises up and catches in her throat. Tears blur her vision. The dead are so easily replaced. Some other family lives in the house now, utterly oblivious to those who preceded them. Cora glares at the bright yellow door: the color of sunflowers and bright summer days. It’s not right. It ought to be dark blue, it ought to be black with soot and sorrow.

  Suddenly all Cora’s reticence and nervousness are swallowed up in another surge of anger, one that propels her up the steps to the frightful door, where she curls her fingers into a fist and raps her knuckles on the wood.

  If the door hadn’t opened so immediately, Cora probably would have fled as soon as the fury subsided. But a moment later she’s staring into the face of a middle-aged woman who regards her with a surprised but polite smile.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, “I thought you were the postman. I’m expecting …”

  She trails off as Cora glares up at her.

  “… Anyway, never mind. May I help you?”

  Cora opens her mouth. Silence stretches between them until the woman starts to inch back behind the threshold.

  “I used to live here,” Cora blurts out. “When I was a girl.”

  “Did you?” the woman brightens. “How lovely. It must have been a long time ago, we’ve been here nearly twenty years, but you don’t look—”

  “We left when I was five years old,” Cora says, thinking now that the woman seems sweet and slightly posh, and that such people probably don’t take well to being told that strangers died in their homes. “I was walking … It’s the first time I’ve been back.”

  “Oh.” The woman’s smile deepens. “Well then, would you like to come in? You must have some lovely memories, if you can remember that far back.” She chuckles. “By lunchtime I can barely remember what I had for breakfast.”

  When Cora doesn’t answer, the woman reaches out her hand. “I’m Judith Dowes.”

  Cora reaches out her hand in return. “Cora Carraway.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Judith says. “Do come in.”

  She steps aside, holding the door open, and before Cora quite realizes what she’s doing she’s stepped into the house to join her.

  Walt sits in the bookshop, half-reading The Inimitable Jeeves, his feet up on the counter. He glances at the phone next to the till. He wants to call Milly but isn’t sure he should. He really likes her but, simply due to the fact that she isn’t Cora, Walt worries that he just won’t be able to love her. And Milly, he senses quite strongly, is a woman for whom liking won’t be enough. She needs to be loved: deeply, utterly and completely. And this troubles him.

  Walt snaps the book shut. Perhaps he should back o
ff, let her go, spare her any possible pain. For the last thing Walt wants to do is cause Milly any suffering. He probably wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did. A vegetarian for the last fifteen years (after watching a particularly gruesome video at school about nonorganic farming), Walt can’t even bring himself to kill wasps or flies. As a child he was once stung by a hornet and, though it hurt like hell, he’d let the perpetrator live.

  Walt is staring at the phone again when it rings. His feet fall off the counter as he lunges forward to pick it up. He knows, with a deep certainty down in his bones, who it is. And it’s not some silly customer enquiring whether or not the new John Grisham is out.

  “Hello,” he says, forgetting even to add Blue Water Books.

  “Hi, Walt,” Milly says. He can hear the smile in her voice. “It’s me.”

  “Yes, I know.” He’s ridiculously pleased to hear from her. And realizing that makes Walt think that perhaps he’s wrong, perhaps he really can get over Cora, perhaps he can love someone else after all, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …

  “How did you know?” Milly asks.

  Walt shrugs before realizing she can’t see him. “I suppose I just wanted it to be you,” he says. Which certainly isn’t a lie. “What are you up to?”

  “Actually, I’m outside,” Milly says. She takes a quick breath. “I wondered if you fancied lunch?”

  Walt and Milly get a little lost on their way to lunch. They walk through town, taking a right turn toward the river when they probably should have taken a left, until they’re wandering along The Backs, following a gravel path that runs behind Trinity College, King’s College and Clare College. They watch students pushing punts along the river, zigzagging and crashing into the banks while tour guides with clutches of tourists glide effortlessly past.

  They stroll under willow trees dipping their leaves into the water, sneaking glances at each other, listening to tourists being told about Lord Byron keeping a pet bear at Trinity College, followed 150 years later by Prince Charles, who only kept fish.

  “Did you do your degree here?” Milly asks.

  They stop to study the Bridge of Sighs: its intricate stone latticework and delicate spires reaching into the sky. It’s Cora’s favorite bridge. At least that’s what she told Walt when she was fifteen. She liked to sit on the bench in Silver Street that overlooked it, admiring the architecture while pondering important thoughts. Words from a passing punt drift up, telling them this was one of Queen Victoria’s most beloved places in the world.

  “No,” Walt says, shaking himself free of the memory. “I didn’t go to university. Did you?”

  “No,” Milly says. “I was never very good at lessons. I couldn’t get my head around spelling and sums. My teachers thought I was stupid. But I just wasn’t really interested. I daydreamed too much.”

  “What did you dream about?”

  “Silly things,” Milly says. “Getting married, having kids.”

  “That’s not silly.”

  “Makes me sound like a 1950s housewife.”

  “Well then, so was I.” Walt smiles. “I never wanted a big life either. I just wanted to own Blue Water Books and be a husband and a father.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes,” Walt assures her, though he stops short of telling Milly exactly whose husband he’d wanted to be. “And I agree with Queen Victoria, Cambridge is one of the loveliest places in the world. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.” He knows, of course, that he isn’t really qualified to say, since he’s never actually been any other place in the world than this, but he believes it anyway.

  “I think so too. My husband was from New York, but we met in Cambridge. Whenever we visited his family, I was always so scared by how big and fast everything was. I couldn’t wait to come home.”

  For a moment Walt is thrown, then he remembers her letter. Of course. She’s a widow, her husband died a decade ago.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. They’re standing together beside a tiny stone wall, viewing the bridge, their fingers only a few inches apart. Walt wants to slide his thumb over to touch her skin.

  “I wasn’t,” Milly says softly, “not for a long time.” Not before you. The words sit on her tongue but she doesn’t say them. “I am now.”

  “I’m glad,” Walt says. “I mean, I’m glad you’re okay now, not …”

  Milly shifts her hand slightly so her little finger sits on his thumb.

  “I know what you mean,” she says softly. “Thank you.”

  They return to the bookshop, where Walt leaves a note on the door apologizing for early closure, then spend the rest of the day walking around the city, hand in hand. Walt manages to focus most of the time, to refrain from pointing out places that Cora likes and memories he has of them as kids together. And, most of the time at least, Walt manages not to think of Cora too often and to remember who he’s with and why.

  They say good-bye when the sun sets, promising to speak soon. And, as Walt ambles back in the direction of his flat, his only regret, the only piece missing from a rather perfect day, is that he hadn’t kissed her.

  Cora stands in her old bedroom. At some point in the last twenty years it has been transformed into Judith’s office. A long wooden table, painted white and entirely covered with piles of paper, is pushed against the back wall; two other walls are lined with fitted bookshelves (containing 987 books); into the fourth wall is cut a large window overlooking the garden. Cora presses her nose against the glass, her eyes misted over as she remembers her dream. It’s the same garden, though of course there are no fireworks, no champagne, no jazz and, most important of all, no parents. And she’s not five years old anymore. She’s twenty-five and all alone.

  A surge of sadness pulls Cora away from the window and back to the door. As she steps into the corridor Cora turns to take one last look back, placing her hand on the wall. She sniffs the air. It’s as if a bonfire has been lit in the next room and smoke is drifting down the hall. It’s the sweet, woody scent of camping and marshmallows crisping under a night sky scattered with stars. Then it shifts, suddenly bitter and sharp, threatening to flood into Cora’s lungs and choke her.

  Cora swallows and blinks. She steps forward, stumbling along the corridor toward the stairs, but now it’s dark and she can’t see farther than a few feet. She gets down on her hands and knees and crawls to the stairs but when she peeks down the tunnel of steps her face burns as if she’s stuck it into a bonfire. At the bottom of the stairs the air has turned the color of a sunset after a storm. And then she hears the screams.

  The next thing Cora feels is a hand on her shoulder, fingers pinching into her skin, shaking her hard. She blinks again and looks up. The light in the hallway is bright and clear again. Judith is standing over her, eyes wide with fear. Cora is on her hands and knees, white-hot with embarrassment.

  “Are you all right?” Judith asks, her voice high and sharp.

  Cora stands quickly, pulling herself up against the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m so sorry.”

  “You were screaming,” Judith says. “You were screaming for your mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cora says again, already halfway down the stairs. “I’m sorry.”

  She jumps the last few steps and as she hurries along the corridor, something on the wall catches her eye—a framed faded page of annotated equations—but mortification pushes her onward out of the house and onto the street. Cora knows without any doubt at all that, whatever the police report may claim, her parents’ death was not a plain and simple accident. It’s not just a fault of fate. It might not have been murder, exactly, but it’s certainly more than a candle falling against some papers. Much more. She has no proof, no evidence. But, in a life dictated by scientific certainty, she has never been more certain of anything.

  Etta sits at her sewing table, a skirt of moss green silk half-covered in sequins between her fingers. She rubs the fabric, squeezing comfort out of it like juice from an orange
. Every few minutes she thinks of Cora and hopes she’s okay. Etta should have gone with her granddaughter; she should have followed her even when Cora refused the company. It’s too much to bear, investigating the death of her parents alone. There’s no knowing what she might discover, how the shock of it will affect her.

  Etta has spent a good deal of the last twenty years wondering exactly what happened to her daughter and son-in-law. What had Maggie been going to tell her before she died? She wanted to know but had never tried to have the case reopened once the police ruled it as accidental. Etta had just waited patiently, privately mourning, knowing that it wouldn’t make any difference; that nothing could alter the past, nothing could change what happened.

  Occasionally she wonders whether she’d undo the past if she could. Then she’d still be the light, bright woman she was born to be, a tranquil pond without a drop of sadness. But then she’d never have known her daughter; Maggie wouldn’t have blessed her life and Etta isn’t sure she could undo that. However, when it comes to Maggie’s father, it’s another story altogether.

  Etta met the love of her life when she was nineteen. They had sat together in church, back in the days when Etta attended every Sunday afternoon. Her mother sat between them but Etta felt his eyes flit to her during the service, the warmth of his gaze on her skin. The following week she found herself, almost accidentally, next to him in front of the rows of candles being watched over by a painted wooden statue of the Virgin Mary.

  “You again.” He smiled.

  “Me again.” Etta bent forward to light her candle, hiding her own smile. “Who are you praying for?” she whispered.

  “Isn’t it impolite to ask?” he said, but his tone was playful.

  “I’m afraid politeness isn’t one of my virtues,” Etta said, thinking he had the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen, one that went right through his body from his head to his toes.

  “No?” he asked. “Then what are?”

  Etta laughed. An old woman sitting in the pew behind them shushed under her breath. “Oops. See, I told you so. I even offend people in church.”