Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  ‘You look beautiful, tesora.’

  Now Ella pushed open Billy’s door. Maybe he was on the phone? Or in a meeting? It would be just typical if he had some kind of lunch meeting today of all days.

  The office stood empty. The screensaver on Billy’s computer, a picture of Grace when she was first born, glowed softly and the desk lamp cast a pale circle on the book lying open on his desk.

  She looked at the chair placed carefully for visitors on the other side of his desk. Should she wait?

  And then she heard it, drifting from further down the corridor, the unmistakable sound of Billy’s laughter. Above it, husky and alluring, was the sound of a woman’s voice. Selena.

  Ella turned and began to follow the sound. The unfamiliar click-click of her heeled suede ankle boots seemed much too loud on the concrete floor.

  She stopped outside another door that stood slightly ajar. ‘Selena LaSalle’, the sign read, ‘Head of Department – Social History’. Beneath it someone – surely not Selena? – had pinned one of those jokey postcards. An image of a woman in a crinoline reclining on a chaise longue, a book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. The caption read: ‘Queen of F****ing Everything’.

  Through the chink in the doorway, Ella could see them standing together, Billy and Selena, their heads bent over the desk. Selena had her hand on Billy’s arm. And they were laughing, murmuring, laughing again.

  She felt sick. That cold, yellow feeling swelled in her stomach. She cleared her throat.

  ‘Hello?’

  They each turned towards her voice, Selena still laughing, Billy’s face changing in an instant from a wide grin to a look of confusion.

  ‘El. This is a surprise!’

  ‘My turn to spring something on you,’ she said quickly, holding up the brown paper bag in which she’d packed paninis and his favourite cookies studded with walnuts and chocolate chips. ‘Lunch. For two.’

  Under Selena’s steady gaze, the gesture was already beginning to feel stupid, unimaginative.

  ‘How wonderful,’ Selena said. ‘Your very own domestic goddess. Lucky you.’

  Ella refused to look in her direction.

  She could see Billy trying to cover his embarrassment.

  ‘El,’ he was saying. ‘May I introduce you to Selena, my colleague? I think you’ve heard me talk about our work together?’

  Selena nodded in her direction. ‘How lovely. I’ve heard so much about you.’

  Ella felt her throat close up. Her mouth was dry.

  ‘And the thing is, El,’ Billy was saying, ‘Selena and I have got a meeting at 1.30. With the Pro VC. It’s about the new Research Institute. We were just going over stuff.’ He pointed at the sheaf of papers on the table. ‘Sorry. This is awful. It’s so kind of you. I don’t mean to sound . . . God, I’m sounding really ungrateful, aren’t I? Let’s go to my office. We can have lunch together and then –’ He looked at Selena. ‘That’s OK, isn’t it? We’ve got time.’

  ‘Sure.’ Selena shrugged. She was already turning away from them, picking up a folder and beginning to leaf through it. She looked as if she couldn’t care less, but Ella could feel her Signals leaping around them – restless lines of red and orange. She was furious.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Ella handed Billy the bag. ‘I don’t want to keep you from your work. I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘No, it’s really lovely of you, El. I’m sorry. I –’ His hands dropped to his sides. He looked dismayed.

  Ella was already backing out of the door. ‘See you later,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Selena. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘See you tonight, then.’ Billy’s voice floated after her but she was already halfway down the corridor, tears pricking her eyes. Damn that woman. It was so obvious now. She really was interested in Billy, after all. Was he really too oblivious to see that?

  She remembered what Florence had said. Most men are pretty stupid . . . It only takes some silly woman to come along and flatter their ego at a moment when they’re feeling a bit lost, a bit underappreciated . . .

  A growing unease gnawed at her all the way home.

  ‘You’re back early.’ Mamma frowned. ‘Oh, tesora. It didn’t go well?’

  ‘Billy had a meeting.’ Ella tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Look, if you don’t mind, Mamma, I’ll just go over to the flat and do some tidying up whilst I have the chance.’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  The flat was weirdly empty. She couldn’t remember that last time she’d been here on her own, without Billy or Grace. She sat on the edge of the bed, taking deep breaths, trying to steady her hands, which were trembling in her lap. She found herself kneeling in front of the linen basket, her hands in the dirty laundry, pressing handfuls of Billy’s shirts to her face, sniffing them for unfamiliar perfume. But there was nothing. Only the musky scent of his aftershave and the smell of his warm skin. She breathed it in, swallowing tears.

  Why was she suddenly so afraid? The cold, yellow feeling crept from the bottom of her stomach up into her throat. It was suffocating. Something about the way he’d looked when he first turned around and saw her standing there. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  At a loss, she went back over to the shop and upstairs to the office. She could at least make a start on some of the orders. She sat at the computer, resisting the temptation to look at Billy’s emails. They’d never had any secrets from one another. She knew all his passwords, combinations of her own and Grace’s names and birthdates. She could just sneak a look now, reassure herself. But what could that possibly achieve? Was she really this desperate?

  Beneath the window, the courtyard was empty and silent. The last leaves of autumn skittered across the cobbles. She chewed on the end of her pen. She could be using this time to write, for God’s sake, instead of frittering it away. Why did she have to be so insecure? Why did she always have to spoil things? She remembered another time, years ago, she and Billy standing on the banks of the river, Billy kicking at a tussock of grass with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Try not to think, why don’t you.’ Billy was saying, his face white with anger. ‘How’s that for a new idea? If you ask me, maybe you do too much thinking . . . Always making up stories when there’s nothing there. Always scribbling things down in that little notebook of yours.’

  Is that what she was doing now? Making up stories?

  She stared at the opposite wall, the paraphernalia of their lives together pinned on the noticeboard, bills to be paid, Grace’s first crayoned scribbles, a photo of Billy standing in the courtyard, Grace in his arms, each of them grinning that same lopsided grin.

  But then, in front of it all swam the face of Selena LaSalle, her perfectly white teeth parted slightly as she shook her blonde hair from her face and laughed.

  Your very own domestic goddess. How lovely.

  Ella threw down her pen in irritation.

  ‘Hot chocolate, tesora?’ Mamma called up the stairs. ‘I’m making some for us.’

  ‘No, thanks, Mamma,’ she called back. She lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes.

  18

  To keep a lover faithful: If you suspect your love of straying, gather up his footprint and put it into a bag of red cloth. Be sure to gather all of the dirt. Sew the bag closed with blue or gold thread and sleep with it beneath your mattress.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  ‘So are you going to tell me?’ Mamma poured sugar into a white espresso cup, stirring it slowly anticlockwise, exactly seven times.

  Ella felt Mamma’s eyes scrutinising her face, those green eyes that could look right into you. She shrugged and tried to empty her mind of thoughts so that Mamma wouldn’t see. She put the last of the empty bottles from the party into the recycling box and wiped her hands.

  She watched Mamma raise an eyebrow expectantly. ‘You can’t avoid me forever, tesora.’

  ‘Can’t I?’ Ella spun the glass sugar shaker on the table. She dug her nails into her
palms and felt her face beginning to flush. It was so annoying, the way that Mamma could instantly make her feel like a teenager with something to hide.

  ‘Ella, please.’ Mamma laid a hand on her arm. Her bracelet – made of silver links in the shape of a snake with ruby chips for eyes – sent reflections skittering over the ceiling.

  ‘Is that new?’

  Mamma shrugged. ‘I once sold one very like it. To Katrina’s mother, in fact. Do you remember? I found this one in a house sale in San Diego. Funny, really, how these things come around. Anyway, don’t change the subject.’ Her green eyes flashed. ‘I want to know everything.’

  Ella sighed. She took a sip of coffee and let the hot liquid move over her tongue.

  ‘Well, basically, it’s Billy and me. Before the party, I got it into my head that he might be having an affair. You know, there were all these secret phone calls and other things . . . I put two and two together and made five. And so then, afterwards, I felt relieved. But now . . . well, I don’t know what to think. I wonder if he might be at least considering it. With someone at work.’

  Mamma’s breath made a sharp sound between her teeth. She frowned and laid a hand on Ella’s arm. Ella felt the familiar warmth travel up as far as her elbows.

  ‘Tesora? That doesn’t sound like Billy at all.’

  Ella swallowed another gulp of coffee. She felt that little red bead of anger rising in her. ‘And that’s precisely why I didn’t say anything before. I knew you’d think I was just being paranoid, that it’s me who’s the problem. After all, Billy’s so perfect, isn’t he? Everyone thinks he is. You probably all wonder what he’s doing with me, anyway.’

  Mamma raised an eyebrow again. ‘Tesora, that’s not what I meant. Not at all.’ She made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘I was just going to say that sometimes it’s easy to convince ourselves of these things. Jump to the wrong conclusions. And often there’s another perfectly innocent explanation. Tell me, carina, what’s happening between you two to make you think such a thing? What’s going on?’

  Ella dipped her finger in the dregs of her coffee and began to trace little circles on the table. ‘I don’t know, Mum. It feels as if we’re drifting apart. I can’t complain about anything, really. He’s helpful, he spends loads of time with Grace, he tries to give me time to write. He’s absorbed in his work, of course. But then, so would I be, if I was getting anything done. It seems like I’ve got nothing to moan about. But I just get irritated. I snap at him all the time. I’m fat and I’m boring and I’m so damn tired, and I can’t even write anymore . . . I wouldn’t blame him if he was seeing someone else. Or at least, thinking about it, anyway. And there’s this woman at work – a colleague. I’ve seen her. She’s clever and skinny and beautiful and he’s always talking about her. You know, Selena said this and Selena thinks that . . . And they’ve been working long hours on this project together.’

  ‘Is that what went wrong, then?’ Mamma leaned across the table. ‘When you went to see Billy. When you were supposed to have lunch together. Was she there? This Selena.’

  ‘Yes.’ Just thinking about it made Ella’s eyes fill with tears. ‘She was there. And seeing them together . . . it was –’ She bit her lip. ‘And then . . . well, there’s other stuff, too. I’m sort of embarrassed about it.’

  Again Mamma raised her perfectly groomed eyebrow.

  ‘OK, OK. I’ll tell you. It’s about the Signals. I know we hardly ever talk about them. I don’t really want to talk about them now . . . but it’s just that they’re getting stronger. I’m picking them up in other people. Bryony, for instance. That customer you met. It’s weird. Almost like I’ve known her for years. When, of course, I don’t. I hardly know her at all.’

  Mamma nodded. ‘Well, I think you’re right. She certainly has something about her.’

  ‘Really?’

  Mamma’s face gave nothing away.

  Ella felt the familiar anger pushing up inside her. ‘Well, I wish she didn’t. She’s nice. Lovely, in fact. But it’s just too much. And it’s not just colours and feelings anymore. It’s in the food I eat, the flavour of things. The other night, I swear I could taste Billy’s emotions in these mushrooms that he’d picked.’ She looked at Mamma. Her face felt hot with shame. ‘Please, Mum, tell me I’m not going completely mad –’

  ‘You’re not.’ Mamma waved a hand dismissively. ‘It’s true. This can happen. In fact, it happened to me when I was pregnant with you. I started tasting feelings everywhere.’ She laughed softly to herself. ‘It nearly drove your father crazy. But tell me, darling.’ Mamma leaned in closer. Her long fingers tapped the table for emphasis. ‘How can you be sure, tesora, that the feelings you’re tasting are not your own?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I mean,’ Fabia said slowly, ‘is that when I’m picking up those kinds of Signals in someone else, it’s usually because I too am feeling the same way.’

  Ella felt those green eyes look deeply into her.

  ‘Jealousy,’ Mamma said. ‘Anger. Fear . . . And especially longing. Oh, such longing. That can be particularly cruel. Longing for what we don’t have or for what we think that we need. Never feeling satisfied. Nothing ever quite being enough. When we want more, it’s almost always because we don’t think that we ourselves are enough. No?’

  Ella pushed back her chair and began to gather up the cups and spoons and saucers. She’d forgotten this about Mamma. How she had a way of reaching inside you, putting a finger on exactly what the problem was, the thing that you really didn’t want to think about. Suddenly, it felt as if she had to get up and move, as if her skin was crawling with it all.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum,’ she said. ‘But Billy will be back soon. With Grace. So I think we should stop talking about this now.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, tesora. You think I’m interfering. I don’t mean to. It’s just –’

  ‘I know. You want me to be happy. I get that. I know you want to help. I know that I’d feel exactly the same if Grace was unhappy.’

  Mamma smiled. ‘It changes you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Being a mum? Yep. It’s the hardest thing in the world. I don’t know how you did it all those years, on your own.’

  Mamma reached out a hand. ‘Because, carina, you were wonderful. Always. The best thing in the world for me. But I think, if you don’t mind me making a suggestion -–’

  ‘OK. Go on.’

  ‘I think you need more in your life than just Grace and Billy. I think you’re a bit frustrated. I think you need some help with this place.’ She waved an arm around the shop. ‘And I’m wondering if, since I’m here for the next little while, I could do that? I don’t mean take over. This is your shop now. But maybe I could help? And you might have more time to . . . well, write?’

  Ella came and sat down again, opposite Mamma. ‘I would be sooooo grateful,’ she said slowly. ‘That would be wonderful. But what about you, Mamma? I mean, I’ve been wanting to ask but I didn’t know how to say it exactly. Is everything OK? With you and David, I mean. How long are you thinking of staying?’

  Mamma smiled. ‘Everything is just fine, tesora. For goodness’ sake, don’t start worrying about that too. And I can stay for as long as you –’

  Outside, the wind threw a spattering of rain against the window and the shop bell jangled, making them both jump.

  Grace stood in the doorway, waving a piece of paper that was almost larger than her.

  ‘Look, Granmamma. I drew a picture at playgroup. It’s for YOU!’

  Behind her, Ella caught Billy’s eye. He grinned.

  ‘You see,’ he said to Mamma. ‘You’ve only been here a minute and you’re already stealing my daughter’s affections from me.’

  Ella moved to the coffee machine, began to add fresh beans to the grinder. She didn’t want to have to meet Fabia’s eye.

  ‘We were just catching up,’ Mamma was saying.

  Billy grinned again. ‘I can onl
y imagine.’

  *

  Ella watched the shadows lengthening from the corner of the room as the light filtered through the bedroom window. Since the arrival of Mamma and then Maadar-Bozorg, she’d found herself thinking more about her father, wondering again what he must have looked like. As a child, she’d asked Mamma to tell her, over and over, the story of how they’d met, in the garden at Les Oiseaux on one of those nights when the sky seemed to reach all the way down to the earth, warm and blue-black and thickly strewn with stars. ‘You could almost put up your hand and pull it around yourself like a magic cloak,’ Mamma had said. ‘That night, you could almost feel the garden breathing . . .’

  Ella knew that she had her father’s eyes and nose, or so Mamma had always told her. And when Grace had been born, she’d peered into her tiny face searching for other signs of a family likeness, things she might recognise from the black-and-white photo she’d pushed into the frame of her dressing table mirror. Her father, Enzo, in jeans and a white T-shirt, posed in front of the flat in Hastings where he and Mamma had first lived when they came to England. He was looking straight at the camera and sometimes Ella had the uncanny feeling that he was gazing right out of the photo and into her own eyes, as if he had something very important to tell her. She had scrutinised every inch of that image until she knew it by heart: her father’s dark hair, cut very short, his broad shoulders and muscular forearms. He was incredibly handsome. ‘Like a film star,’ Mamma had always said. Sometimes, even now, her whole body ached to think that she’d never feel those arms around her, or nuzzle into the crook of his neck in the way that she watched Grace do with Billy.

  She wondered if it was really true, what Bryony said, that people didn’t just disappear, that they always returned to the earth in one way or another; that you could find them when you knew where to look, in the creak of dry branches or the mist that rises from wet earth after days of rain or in a shadow passing across a bedroom floor. Ella wanted to believe this was true. But whenever she tried to conjure her father, she felt only a kind of gap where the feeling of him should have been. Whereas Mamma was everywhere, even when she wasn’t, her perfume lingering in the room, her lipstick on the rim of a white cup, her voice with its slow rich vowels so much a part of Ella’s own internal voice that at times when she’d been younger, she hadn’t known where Fabia’s thoughts ended and her own began.