The Dress Shop of Dreams

by Menna Van Praag

  Just then, a man hurrying out of the church brushes roughly past Etta, almost knocking her over. For a second, as she stumbles, Etta imagines it is Sebastian. But when she looks up into the face of the man who now holds her elbow she’s disappointed to see that he’s far too young and doesn’t look like Sebastian at all, though of course Etta has no idea what Sebastian looks like anymore.

  “Are you okay, madam?” he asks. He’s American, she notes, and looks not unlike Clark Gable.

  Etta nods and feels herself flush just a little. Of all the film stars she loves to watch, Gable is hands down her absolute favorite. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” the American says, smiling a charming smile, and hurries off along the street before she can say anything else.

  Taking a moment to collect herself, Etta turns back to the open door.

  Milly hasn’t had another letter from Walt since he wrote that he wouldn’t write again. She wonders if he’s purposefully avoiding the topic of children, since he didn’t mention the matter in his final letter, or punishing her for losing his mother’s notebook, withholding his written words while not admonishing her aloud. He hasn’t said anything about it since that night she cried. She hadn’t meant to cry, hadn’t done it on purpose to deflect his anger, hadn’t wanted to show him so much of her soul, but it all just came pouring out.

  They’ve seen each other every day since then. Nothing is different that Milly can put her finger on and point to and, at the same time, everything is different. A gap has opened up between them, tiny at first, barely big enough to slip a blade of grass through. Now though, less than a week later, Milly could wiggle two fingers through the gap and it’s only getting bigger and bigger. She’s aware of it when they sit together and she wonders how he’s feeling, when they talk and everything they say seems hollow and meaningless, when she tries to catch Walt’s eye and he doesn’t quite meet hers. Now Milly definitely doesn’t have the courage to ask him, face-to-face, about having a baby.

  So Milly has a plan. Sex. She’s going to seduce him. She’s going to bring them together again. It is time to wear the dress. The red dress of silk and lace has been hanging in Milly’s wardrobe since the day she bought it. Occasionally she will take it out and hold it close, stroking its soft, silky folds against her cheek, breathing in its beauty, burying her face in the lace and allowing the scent of delight and joy to soak into her skin. But she hasn’t worn it yet. She’s been saving it for a very special occasion, not knowing what, when or where that would be. Until today.

  Walt is coming over for dinner. She’s cooking him his favorite foods: fish, chips, mushy peas and flourless chocolate cake. She’s bought posh candles that smell of verbena and vanilla, a bottle of ten-year-old Merlot and a box of bitter mints to finish it all off. Of course, Milly knows that all this pales in comparison to the dress. It is the dress that will reunite them, the dress that’ll mean Walt, finally, won’t be able to keep his hands off her, the dress that’ll lead them to bed. Milly hopes, with such fervency she almost scares herself, that the particular powers of this undeniably magnificent and quite possibly enchanted dress will bring a particularly special magic to the bed when they finally fall into it.

  “I’ve been here before,” Cora admits as they step out of the car. “I mean, not just when I was a child, but recently.”

  Henry glances at her as they cross the road. “You have?”

  “The day I first met you.”

  They stand together on the pavement outside the house, both pausing in front of the steps and looking up at the door instead of at each other.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No. At least nothing you could call evidence. I just …” Cora remembers her vision—the fire, the screaming—and then running out of the house. It isn’t something she wants to relay to Henry, though she suspects somehow that he won’t judge her for it. Cora shifts her feet, now thinking of the lady of the house, flushing with embarrassment at the thought of seeing her again.

  “Right, then.” Henry starts walking up the steps. “Let’s go.”

  Cora follows behind him, holding back. “What are we hoping to find? It was twenty years ago. There won’t be evidence left of anything—”

  Henry stops on the top step and turns back to her. “You never know what you’ll find anywhere, even when you think you do. Solving mysteries is as much about having an open mind as keeping your eyes open. Isn’t it the same in science?”

  “Yes,” Cora admits, feeling chastised, even though she knows he doesn’t mean it that way. “I suppose it is.”

  Henry is knocking on the door when a ringing vibrates from his coat. He pulls the phone out of his pocket. “Hello?”

  Cora steps away to give him at least the illusion of privacy. She busies herself observing the environment: 16 parked cars on the street, 28 roses growing in the neighbor’s garden, 5 cigarette butts on the pavement.

  “Fran? I can’t hear you. Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Henry says. “Are you at home? I’ll be right there.” He turns to Cora, who’s gazing fixedly at her feet. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay,” Cora says, secretly rather relieved. “Well, we can come back another time.”

  “It looks like they aren’t in anyway,” Henry says. “So I’ll call you later.”

  She nods. “Okay.”

  Henry dashes across the road to his car. When he’s turned on the ignition and Cora has one foot on the pavement, the door to number 25 Walton Street opens. Judith sticks her head out to see the young woman she thought she’d never see again, the one who’d been screaming, who hadn’t been able to run out of her house fast enough.

  Henry parks illegally and sprints along his ex-wife’s driveway. When she opens the door, Francesca is red-eyed and white-faced, but Mateo is in her arms, reaching out to his daddy.

  “Papa, you’ve come home.”

  Francesca holds her son out for Henry to take. As the boy snuggles in his father’s arms, Henry buries his head in the soft black curls, breathes in his smell and tries not to squeeze too tight.

  “Mattie,” he whispers, “Matt-Matt. My little Matt-Matt.”

  Francesca turns and walks slowly back down the corridor. Henry follows her into the kitchen. Francesca slides into a chair and Mateo wriggles out of Henry’s arms. Henry waits for his ex-wife to speak. When it’s clear she isn’t about to, he starts making coffee. Francesca rests her head on the table, long black tangles of hair spread out like tentacles, as her son shifts magnets into new shapes on the fridge and her ex-husband pours steaming water into a French press, setting it down with two cups and a bowl of sugar between them.

  “I shouldn’t have called you,” Francesca says softly, from beneath her hair.

  “Why not?” He pushes down the plunger and pours the coffee, adding two sugars to each cup. He glances over at the wine rack—rather at the space by the fridge where it usually stood—wondering if she might prefer alcohol to caffeine. Francesca drinks grappa whenever she gets bad news.

  “Would you like something stronger?”

  Francesca shakes her head.

  “Well, I’m glad you called me. And whatever’s wrong, I’ll do everything in my power to help.” Henry sips his coffee and flinches. It’s far too strong for him, but it’s exactly how Francesca likes it.

  “It’s not really right,” she says, dragging the drink toward her. She sits and stares into it, both hands wrapped around the cup. “But thank you for coming.”

  “I told you I always would, if you needed me.”

  While Mateo slides magnets across the fridge, mercifully oblivious to his mother’s sorrow, Francesca stares into her coffee, and Henry wonders what dreadful thing has undone her. He’s never seen her like this before. She’s the sort of woman who always remains calm, even in the midst of situations that would cause other people to panic. Apart from the last time, he can’t remember ever seeing Francesca looking anything less than entirely gorgeous and glamorous,
even after giving birth to their son. So what’s happened? It’s nothing to do with Mattie, he’s certain, or she’d never have let him out of her arms.

  “What’s wrong, Fran?” he says gently. “What happened?”

  Francesca mumbles words into her coffee cup. Henry leans forward, trying to snatch up the echo of the words, but they evaporate too quickly into the air. Not daring to ask her again, Henry waits. When she starts to cry he pushes his chair back, skirts around the table in three steps and gives her a tentative hug, leaning his chest into her back, wrapping his arms around hers, resting his face against her head. As she cries Henry tightens his hug so she can sink her weight into him, dropping her head into his hold. As Mateo plays a few feet away, Henry stands in the kitchen he built, wondering what’s happening, while his ex-wife sobs into his arms.

  Henry holds Francesca for a long time. When she finally wipes her eyes she won’t look at him.

  “Thank you for everything,” she says. “You’ve been very kind.”

  Henry just nods. He senses she’s on the edge of telling him something of great significance, a secret, the secret perhaps, the reason she left him, and so he waits, saying nothing. When she finally speaks, it’s in a rush so fast he has to grab each word as it falls then play it back in his head.

  “I hurt Mattie.”

  “What?”

  “I slapped him, hard.” Tears slide down her cheeks. “It’s not the first time.”

  “What?” Henry says again. “I don’t understand.” His head is spinning as she speaks. He feels as if he’s slipped down the rabbit hole into an inverted universe where nothing makes sense anymore. Francesca loves Mateo, more than anything, he knows this for certain, so why would she hurt him?

  “What happened?” he asks.

  Francesca takes a deep breath. “I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hello again,” Judith says, rather wary. “Did you just knock on my door?”

  Cora looks up slowly, inwardly cursing Henry, while wishing she’d evaporate, seep quickly and silently into the air. Sadly, since to run away again would be unforgivably rude, she has no other choice but to look up.

  “Hello,” Cora says, trying to sound light and bright, quite the opposite from someone who breaks down screaming in strangers’ houses. “Yes, well, actually my friend did, but he’s—”

  “Your friend?”

  Cora can see Judith getting more suspicious by the second.

  “Well, sort of, but he’s a policeman.”

  “A policeman?”

  “Yes, but it’s nothing bad, we just—”

  “What did he want?” Judith asks, her voice getting a little high-pitched.

  “We just wanted to, um …” At this point Cora wonders what exactly they had been going to do in this woman’s house. “I guess, look around for clues.”

  “Clues to what?”

  “Um …” Cora can see her chances of getting back into the house, even accompanied by Henry, fading rapidly. There’s only one thing to do now: tell the truth. She walks slowly up the steps, smiling in a way she hopes suggests both sanity and friendliness. “My parents died in your house, twenty years ago,” Cora explains as she walks. “I had a bit of a … flashback last time I was here, that’s why I—anyway, I was talking to the police about it and the investigating officer, Detective Dixon, he thought it would be worth checking your house, to see if we might see anything.” Cora thinks it best to avoid words like blood samples and fire and police cover-ups. Stick as close to the facts as possible without causing undue alarm.

  Judith frowns. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” Cora admits.

  “But this happened twenty years ago?”

  “I know. It’s ridiculous, but he just thought—”

  “Okay, well …”

  Cora sees a tiny window of opportunity opening up. “It’d mean an awful lot to me. I wouldn’t take up too much of your time, I promise.”

  “All right,” Judith relents, “I suppose it won’t hurt for you to have a look. Unless …”

  “Don’t worry,” Cora says, offering another reassuring smile as she reaches the top step. “I absolutely promise I won’t scream again.”

  “Wow,” Walt says when Milly opens the door. “You look, you look … Wow.”

  “Thank you.” Milly smiles.

  Walt shrugs. “I’m at a loss for words.” And he really is; at the sight of this dress he’s forgotten everything he had been meaning to say (something about their relationship?) and can only see just how breathtakingly beautiful Milly looks.

  “Good.” Milly takes his hand and leads him into the living room. He’s early, she hasn’t even started dinner yet and had of course been planning on taking the dress off while she cooked. But now, seeing Walt’s face—his glazed eyes and open mouth, as if he’s been drugged or enchanted—Milly wonders if she might not need to bother with food after all.

  “Is that the dress you bought from Etta’s shop?”

  “Yes. Do you like it?”

  “Do I like it?” Walt laughs. Something snags at his subconscious, thoughts of Etta, of mystery and magic. But none of these thoughts forms a coherent sentence in his head. “No, I hate it. It’s hideous. Ugliest dress I’ve ever seen. Destroy it immediately.”

  “Why don’t you rip it off me?” Milly smiles. It’s a seductive little smile, a suggestive smile.

  For a second Milly almost stops. She shouldn’t be doing this, she should at least talk to him about it first. But it’s the right time of the month, her biological clock is ticking so loud it’s drowning out her rational mind and surges of hormones are making her dizzy. Gazing into Walt’s enchanted eyes, in this moment Milly has never been happier. Not in ten years. The gap between them has gone. Evaporated, disappeared, vanished in a flash of silk and lace. Now, when she looks into his eyes he is gazing back at her, when she touches him she feels him closer than he’s ever been. When they reach the sofa Milly stops walking. She draws Walt’s hand around her waist and, when he’s holding her tight with both hands, Milly stands on her tiptoes and kisses him.

  Cora is following Judith down the corridor of her childhood home when she stops. Hanging on the wall in a silver frame is something she has seen before, a long time ago. She must have missed it the first time—in the daze and the screaming—she’d visited the house.

  “What’s this?”

  Judith turns back. “What?”

  Cora points to the frame. Inside, mounted on a background of cream and gold, is a page ripped from a notebook. The page is covered with annotated equations drawn in a thick, black pen.

  “Where did you get this?”

  Judith walks back down the corridor until she reaches Cora.

  “We found it a few years ago,” she says, “well, my husband did. In a safe downstairs, hidden behind some hideous wallpaper. Anyway, we thought it was compelling somehow, not that we could understand it, being rather like hieroglyphics …”

  It’s then that Cora remembers where she has seen these same equations before.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When she steps inside the church Etta glances around, half expecting Sebastian to be hiding behind a pew or behind a statue. Not that he would be, since he has no idea that she is even coming. But how will Sebastian react when he sees her? Will he recognize her? Will he hold out his hand or will he hug her? And how will he react when she tells him her secret? Will he cry? Will he slap her? Will he hate her forevermore?

  Etta walks slowly along the aisle. This is the first time she’s walked down an aisle, or indeed been in a church, since she met Sebastian, because she married Joe in a registry office a few weeks before she started showing with Maggie. When Etta has peeked into every nook and cranny of the church but found neither priest nor parishioners, she sits on a pew and waits.

  It’s nearly an hour before Sebastian shuffles out of the vestry. He passes the votive candles and is almost at the pulpit when he sees Etta. Sebastian stops. He stares at her, bri
nging a hand slowly to his chest. For a moment she thinks he might be about to suffer a heart attack but then Sebastian slowly walks forward until he’s only a few feet from Etta.

  “It is you.”

  Etta nods.

  “Every day I’ve imagined you sitting there,” Sebastian says softly. “I wasn’t quite certain if you were real.”

  In one sentence he has brought Etta more joy than she ever imagined possible. She smiles. “I am.”

  “May I?” Sebastian nods at the pew and, when Etta nods in response, he sits down next to her. After a few moments he reaches out and slowly slips his hand over hers. He closes his eyes, drops his chin to his chest and breathes quietly as tears roll down his cheeks. Etta closes her eyes, too. For a full thirty minutes they sit together, not saying anything. There seems to be nothing to say. Until, at last, Etta remembers that there is, that she came here for a reason.

  “I have something to confess,” she whispers.

  “Then you’ve come to the right place.” Sebastian squeezes her hand and offers a little smile. “You are more beautiful than I’ve ever seen you,” he says.

  Etta laughs. “I can hardly imagine that’s true,” she says. “I was nineteen when you met me, I’m sixty-nine now, so—”

  “—so, you’ve lived a whole life,” Sebastian says. “I can see it on your face and it’s beautiful.”

  Etta smiles. “You always were a charmer.”

  “I’m a priest,” Sebastian says solemnly. “I never lie.”

  “Thank you, you’re very kind.”

  “I mean every word.”

  And Etta can tell he does, though she still can’t quite believe it. This reunion, the possibility that she has been thinking about nearly every day for fifty years is so easy and uneventful. She feared there might be drama, anger, rejection or, perhaps worst of all, that Sebastian simply wouldn’t be moved to any emotion at all, that he’d greet her as he might any old friend. But, incredibly, the reunion is surpassing all her happiest fantasies. Although, Etta realizes, that might be about to change.