Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  Ella arranged carrot sticks around the dollop on Grace’s plate.

  ‘C’mon, Grace,’ she said. ‘You love hummus.’

  Grace shook her head, holding her arms stiffly at her sides. ‘I don’t, Mummy. I don’t like it. Yuck.’ She screwed up her face.

  Ella sighed. ‘Well, it’s funny how, right up until this very moment, it’s always been your favourite.’ She handed Grace a breadstick. ‘C’mon,’ she coaxed, ‘and then you can have some pudding.’

  ‘Pudding?’ Grace’s eyes lit up. She pushed her plate away. ‘I want pudding, Mummy. Strawberry ice cream?’

  Ella shook her head. ‘Definitely not.’ She scooped hummus into her own mouth and chewed exaggeratedly, holding Grace’s gaze. ‘Not until you’ve eaten this.’

  Grace’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Daddy. I want my daddy,’ she said.

  Ella tried to stifle her exasperation. She sneaked a glance at the notebook lying open on the counter.

  Woods, clearing, moon . . . she’d written. Well, it was a start.

  Grace’s hummus-spattered hand reached for Ella’s face. ‘Sorry, Mummy. If I eat one breadstick and all my avocado, can I have ice cream?’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Ella pointed to Grace’s plate. ‘C’mon then.’

  Feeling of needing to find something. Feeling lost. Searching for a way out, she scribbled.

  ‘Mamma –’ Grace was waving her breadstick. ‘This one’s got funny bits on it.’

  Ella closed the notebook. It was hopeless.

  ‘Grace,’ she said. ‘What would you like to do this afternoon? We don’t have to go to the shop. Daddy’s doing his seminar thing there. We’ve got the afternoon off.’

  ‘Um, park?’ said Grace, hopefully.

  Ella smiled. ‘Eat up your hummus, OK? And then we’ll go to the park.’

  Ella crossed to the sink. From the kitchen window, she could see the group of people – students, mainly, plus a few of Billy’s colleagues – milling about in the courtyard below. The window was open and the sound of their voices drifted up to her. One voice in particular caught her attention. It was loud and cultured – what Billy’s mum would call posh – and it was coming from the striking-looking woman in the black wool dress, her blonde hair pulled back from her face so that Ella could admire the angle of her cheekbones.

  Jason, one of the lecturers in Billy’s department, turned to her, nodding. ‘Well, exactly, Selena. You’re bang on, there –’

  The woman turned her head, and her blonde hair blazed around her shoulders. Ella felt as if someone had stabbed her in the heart.

  So this was Selena? Billy’s colleague. The one who had called him the other night? The one he always seemed to be talking about, these days.

  My God. She was stunning.

  Even from up here, Ella could appreciate her slim outline. She was tall and elegant, with glossy, groomed hair that reached down past her shoulders.

  The shop door jangled as Billy propped it open. He stepped out into the courtyard and Ella instinctively drew back a little from the window.

  ‘Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming. We’re ready for you now.’

  He turned then and smiled in Selena’s direction. Ella saw him run his hand through his hair in that way he did when he was thinking about something. Her stomach lurched. She held on to the side of the sink. Look up, Billy, she willed him. Look up and see me.

  But then she saw Billy’s hand move to the small of Selena’s back, steering her inside the shop. Selena was laughing, saying something that Ella couldn’t quite catch.

  ‘Mamma.’ Behind her, Grace banged her fork on the edge of the table. ‘I’ve eaten four pieces. Ice cream, now?’

  *

  Fabia turned off the lights and took her handbag from under the counter. She stood for a moment in the centre of the shop, looking at the dim shapes of the dresses hanging on the rails, the shoes arranged in pairs on the little tables as if waiting for someone to ask them for the next dance, the velvet busts wearing their hats and headpieces at jaunty angles. She remembered how the teenage Ella had once confessed that she’d liked to lie in bed in the flat above their shop in York and think of the dresses and shoes and gloves and hats in the darkness below taking on a life of their own; how the satin prom skirts would whisper together in a corner and the little veiled and feathered hats would turn snootily away from their neighbours, the cloches and boaters and wool berets; how the sequinned evening shoes would click their heels together and the silk scarves would shake out their careful folds and flutter up to the ceiling like a flock of butterflies.

  Fabia smiled. Her San Diego shop would never feel the same as the little place in York, with its three small rooms above, where she and Ella had started out. But over the last few years, she’d filled this new shop with treasures, things she’d shipped over, things she’d found in private sales and markets and, of course, her own special vintage-inspired creations. She’d pinned silk kimonos from the ceiling, their sleeves outspread like the wings of exotic birds, folded lace handkerchiefs into fan shapes and dangled sparkling necklaces and earrings from specially painted branches. There was her sign above the door and a stack of her trademark bags in white card trimmed with simple black ribbon under the counter. This shop didn’t have a traditional window as such but wide sills that she could fill with flowers and candles, and the mild Californian weather meant that she could use the porch space to advertise, creating little arrangements of shoes and gloves and hats on a table draped with a silk piano shawl.

  This past year, thanks to her connections with Katrina Cushworth, now the star of Reputation and other box office hits, she’d dressed several actresses for red-carpet events in LA.

  Yes, Katrina had done well for herself, as Fabia had always thought she might. That girl had been given such an awful start in life but, after Jean Cushworth had fallen ill, Fabia had been able to take Katrina under her wing a little. And it turned out that Katrina’s father was very well connected, getting her all sorts of auditions before she was even out of drama school. It all made perfect sense now. Katrina, the actress, the consummate performer. But she was happy, with a very nice husband, very good-looking. And she’d never forgotten Fabia.

  David had grinned to see Fabia described by the San Diego Sun, when they photographed her behind her counter in one of her own polka dot tea dresses, as ‘a sought-after stylist and designer to the stars’.

  ‘You see? What goes around come around,’ he’d said.

  But would she miss any of this whilst she was away? The truth was, she didn’t know. She felt – how did Americans say it? – in two minds about it.

  America, as she’d always hoped, was a place where you could leave the past behind. Whilst York creaked under centuries of history, San Diego still felt mostly new, even in the Old Quarter among the Victorian street lights and Colonial-style buildings. And yet, on evenings like this one, when she stood on the shop’s porch or on the deck of her beautiful house in La Jolla with its perfect view of the ocean, Fabia could still feel the pull of the past. At night, she felt the shape of the ocean in the dark, shifting and rolling, whispering her name, just as the River Ouse had once flowed through her dreams, urging her on, stretching itself beneath her. Had it really been less than a decade ago that she’d heard the river’s voice reaching down inside her – run, Fabia, run, run – away from York and David? It felt like another lifetime. Back then, she’d thought that she’d known what she was running from. Those words, the cruel words that had always seemed to follow her everywhere: stranger, foreigner, who do you think you are?

  But now she lived in a place where almost everyone was a kind of stranger. It wasn’t just the tourists passing through the Old Town and the business people crowding the hotels, but the Mexicans making the journey every day across the border from Tijuana, some of them living illegally in the shadows, some of them, like Rosita, now settled here comfortably, opening restaurants and stores ful
l of handicrafts and souvenirs and fine jewellery. David’s colleagues at the hospital were from India and China and Poland and even Iran, as well as from far across the great expanse that was America. Yes, this was a place where anyone could reinvent themselves.

  And yet still, in her dreams, she felt the dark water rising again, floating her forwards into the lure of a different future. Perhaps, after all, she wasn’t running from anything. Perhaps she was simply not meant to settle down. Maybe a part of her would always be that girl in Tehran, begging Maadar-Bozorg for a pair of red ballet shoes, feeling this same rhythm tugging at her elbows and prodding her between the shoulder blades: Run, Fabia. Don’t look back. Keep moving . . .

  Tonight she could feel the darkness closing in again and the far-off sound of that old music. Was it simply that the Day of the Dead was drawing closer, that time when people here believed that the membrane between the worlds of the living and the lost ones grew thinner, when restless ghosts slipped through the gaps?

  Outside, she watched the strings of lights blink on, twining around the trunks of the palm trees and twinkling between the buildings. On the corner of the street, two small boys played with firecrackers, sending sparks jumping across the pavement.

  She scooped up the paper bag of gifts she’d bought to take back to England with her and tucked it under her arm. There were tin skulls decorated with roses from Rosita’s shop and papier mâché skeletons with long thigh bones and lopsided grins from the touristy general store. Grace would enjoy those – and Billy too. There were Mexican earrings in silver and turquoise for Billy’s mum and coral bracelets for old friends. And then finally there was a book of Amerindian creation myths for Ella, with exquisite woodcut illustrations.

  Fabia closed the door and turned the key in the lock. A movement in the shadows made her jump, her hand flying to her throat. A familiar figure leaned on the porch railing, his blond hair gleaming in the carnival lights.

  ‘David! You scared me half to death!’

  David grinned. ‘Sorry. But I wanted to surprise you. Come on. I’m taking you out for a celebratory dinner.’

  ‘Celebratory?’

  ‘Yep. We’re celebrating the fact that in just a little while, now, you’ll be with Ella and Grace – and Billy, of course – and having a wonderful time.’

  Fabia smiled.

  ‘But won’t you miss me?’ She pretended to look hurt.

  ‘Of course. Which is why I’m determined to make the most of you, whilst I’ve still got you all to myself.’ He looked at her in that way that he had, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. ‘I mean, I’m not even entirely sure that you’ll come back.’

  A scribble of green, a shimmer of yellow. David’s Signals darted around them in the dark. Sometimes it was as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Fabia knotted the arms of her little cashmere cardigan defensively around her shoulders.

  ‘What do you mean? Don’t be silly, David.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon. Isn’t it time you admitted it? You miss York like crazy.’ He was covering. His voice was playful but she could detect the serious note.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘I do not. Well, I miss Ella and Grace. That’s true, but –’

  ‘But you do miss the place too, if you’re really honest. The old shop, your old life, the one you’d built for you and Ella, before I came along to complicate it all.’ He grinned again.

  She smiled back. ‘David, don’t be silly. You know that’s not true. Not at all.’ But even as she said the words, she realised that he was at least partly right. ‘Of course, I’ll come back.’

  ‘Will you?’

  She couldn’t see his face properly in the darkness but she could hear the concern in his voice.

  He was holding her at arms’ length now under the street lamp. ‘Stay there a minute. I want to get a good look at you. So that I can remember.’

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘Tonight.’ He held up an imaginary camera. ‘Click. There. Captured for all time.’

  He turned away, opening the passenger door of his silver Corvette, parked illegally at the kerb. ‘Your carriage awaits,’ he said, making a little mock bow and then, as he tucked her into the seat, ‘So is there any place in particular you’d like to go?’

  ‘Eduardo’s,’ she said, without hesitation.

  He put back his head and laughed.

  ‘Good job I’ve made a reservation for us then, isn’t it?’

  The road to La Jolla curved white under the light of an almost full moon. Fabia let the scent of salt and pine and the end of summer blow through her. Later they sipped ice-cold margaritas on Eduardo’s terrace and talked their way through platters of shellfish and fresh green salads, watching the ocean glittering beneath them.

  ‘Fancy a stroll?’ David’s face was boyish with eagerness. They walked down through the town to the cove and took off their shoes and walked barefoot over the damp sand.

  ‘Fabia, can I ask you something? I’ve wanted to say this for so long. Never really managed to pluck up the courage. But now that you’re going, well, something tells me that I’m a fool not to have said it before.’

  She hadn’t seen it coming. A blur of black and silver, the rasp of the pine trees, the sound of the ocean calling her again: Fabia, Fabia, it’s time . . .

  She watched David fumble in the folds of the jacket he was carrying slung over his arm.

  He stopped and took her hand. ‘It’s just that, Fabia, I’ve always wanted you to be happy. That’s all I want. To make you happy, I mean. Because that’s what you deserve. I haven’t ever wanted to . . . well, press you, I suppose. I haven’t ever really been sure how you felt about it all. But I’d hate you to go without knowing . . . really knowing how important you are to me.’

  Fabia reached up to touch the side of his face. His cheek was smooth and pale in the moonlight.

  ‘David, I know. And you do make me happy –’

  That was when he dropped onto one knee in the sand and looked up at her, holding a small red box on his open palm. ‘Fabia, you don’t have to answer now. You can take your time. But I want to ask you if you’d possibly . . . that is, if you’d consider at all at some point . . . well, marrying me?’

  *

  Ella shifted her position on the imitation velvet upholstery and watched as, on the other side of the room, Laura beckoned the barman to lean in closer.

  Friday night and the place was heaving. Laura was already tipsy after her first glass of wine and Ella felt nervy and irritable.

  ‘You promised,’ she hissed at Florence. ‘You bloody promised.’

  Florence shrugged. But it was true. She’d been insistent.

  ‘I’m organising a night out,’ she’d said. ‘You, me and Laura and I’m not taking “no” for an answer. Don’t worry. It’ll all be very sedate. That new place, Cafe What’s-It. And I promise I’ll get you home before you turn into a pumpkin.’

  ‘Carriage,’ Ella had said. ‘It’s the carriage that . . . Look, can’t we just get a couple of bottles of wine or something, round at your place?’

  ‘No.’ Florence had almost shouted down the phone. ‘Steve’s actually going to be at home for an entire week. We are DEFINITELY going out.’

  Now Laura was weaving towards them with three more glasses of wine.

  ‘Oops,’ she said, giggling and launching herself in the direction of their booth.

  Florence rescued two of the glasses from her hands. ‘The wine! Don’t waste the wine, Laura!’

  Ella took a sip of her Sauvignon. She shot another look at Florence and pulled at the strap of her top. She’d borrowed it – from Florence, of course – and it was slightly too loose at the front, made of some slippery, silky stuff that kept sliding off her shoulder.

  The bar was full of women. They were beautiful, she thought. Beautiful and young. This one, just coming in through the glass double doors, looked like something out of a ma
gazine: long, bare legs in one of those short all-in-one things. What were they called? A playsuit? Hair and make-up perfect. A group of more young girls at the bar smiled and waved her over.

  I don’t belong here, thought Ella. I never did. Not even when I was that age.

  She looked up at the cluster of enormous, red Japanese-style lanterns suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Then she looked down at the mirrored floor, edged with tiny blue-white lights. It all made her feel slightly dizzy.

  Next to her, Laura nudged her arm and said something that was impossible to make out over the music. Florence thrust a menu in a blue leatherette case into her hands and jabbed at it with a glittery gold fingernail.

  But Ella had already looked. It wasn’t real food. Nibbles, the menu announced. Sharing plates.

  What she really fancied was a proper meal. One of Billy’s curries. A big bowl of pasta with lemon and basil and parmesan.

  For possibly the fiftieth time this evening she looked at her phone, checked that she had reception. What was wrong with her? She knew that Grace would be more than fine. She’d left her racing a wind-up mermaid and a penguin around the bath, Billy adjudicating, beer in hand. They probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone.

  As she looked up again she met the eye of a man leaning by the bar. He smiled. She smiled back. And then she caught herself. It was the customer from last weekend. The one buying the present for his girlfriend. But there was no sign of a woman with him. He was surrounded by guys, all clinking beer glasses and toasting something. And now this man was raising his glass in her direction. She couldn’t see properly from here. The lights were making her eyes go blurry. But it looked a bit like he was winking at her. What did you do in this kind of situation? Had she given him the wrong idea?

  She clutched wildly at Florence’s arm. ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ she mouthed.

  Florence screwed up her face. ‘What? Can’t hear you?’

  There was a flurry of activity from outside, the bouncers parting to allow someone up the steps, and then a woman swept through the glass doors. Ella swallowed hard. Her heart thudded in her throat. It couldn’t be, could it?