Milly nods. “I know what you mean.”
“Exactly, right? He’s so strangely … enchanting. When he started reading Sense and Sensibility I turned from the tough, rugged specimen of a man I’ve always been”—Dylan gives a self-deprecating smile—“and became some sort of gooey little girl. When your letter arrived, I started reading it before I knew I shouldn’t. And by the time I finished it, well, I couldn’t help myself. I had to know you, I had to keep knowing you. So I sat down and wrote back.”
Milly closes her eyes and sighs.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan says. “I’m so sorry I ruined everything for you. Do you hate me for it?”
Milly opens her eyes and smiles. “How could I possibly hate someone who says something like that? And anyway, you didn’t ruin anything.”
Dylan stops pacing, overcome with relief. “Really?”
Milly nods. “Everything you wrote, your letters, I loved every word. I must have read them a million times over. I could quote them all to you, line for line, right now. Oh God,” Milly says, suddenly blushing, “I shouldn’t have just admitted that.”
“It’s okay.” Dylan smiles. He walks over to the sofa, then crosses his legs and sits on the floor in front of her. “I could do the same with yours. But I’d just be mortified with embarrassment if you reminded me what I wrote.”
He dips his head toward his lap and picks at the rug on the floor between his legs.
“Yes, of course,” Milly says, studying the thick dark curls of which she now has an unsullied view, “me too.”
“So, I was wondering …” Dylan looks up, the vanished curls replaced by his beautiful face and the gaze of his deep blue eyes.
Milly swallows.
“I was wondering if …” Dylan laughs. “Bloody hell, I never realized how much easier writing is than speaking—you don’t have to look at someone while you do it. It’s hard to find the words for—”
“Would you like to go for a walk,” Milly offers, “and see if, after all those letters, we still have anything to say to each other?”
“Those are the perfect words.” Dylan smiles. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”
I’d like you to meet my father. I’d like us to get married and have a million babies. These are the things Dylan wants to say next. But so as not to scare Milly off, he decides to save such sentiments for a while. At least until tomorrow.
Cora steps into the cemetery ahead of her grandparents. Reaching the pebbled path running alongside the medieval stone church, she turns back to see Etta and Sebastian walk through the wrought-iron gate. She watches her grandmother ambling across the grass and all of a sudden realizes that Etta is being slow on purpose, to give them more time alone.
Cora hurries along the path and ducks around the corner into a graveyard surrounded by ancient walls obscured by heavy ivy hanging to the ground. Cora steps carefully around the graves, 47 in total, most of them hundreds of years old, one from 1423: WALTER COOPER, DEAREST HUSBAND, REMEMBERED AND LOVED ALWAYS. Cora thinks of Walt, then shakes her head to dislodge the thought.
When Cora arrives at the two headstones at the farthest corner of the garden of graves she stops at the edge where the grass is scattered with wildflowers: 58 daisies, 23 cornflowers, 17 violets, 9 foxgloves …
“Hi, parents,” Cora says, slipping a small packet out of her coat pocket. “I’ve brought you something.” She opens her palm and tips out a handful of seeds. “Your legacy,” Cora explains, as she scatters them over the grass among the flowers.
She takes a step back, smiling, though tears fill her eyes. “This is a sample of that rather special wheat that will grow anywhere, though of course you already know that.” Cora hears her grandparents approaching through the grass. Etta gives a self-conscious cough from a few feet away.
“Everyone is talking about you,” Cora whispers. “Daddy, do you remember when you said to me: I couldn’t be more proud if you went out and saved the world. Well, I suppose, you and Mum sort of did that. And I couldn’t be more proud of you both, too.”
Etta’s hand rests lightly on Cora’s back and she turns to her grandmother with a smile, quickly wiping her eyes. Sebastian tentatively touches the edge of Cora’s arm and the three of them stand in a line, with Cora in the middle, each tucked inside their own thoughts.
“Hello, Maggie,” Sebastian says softly.
“Mags,” Etta says, “my darling girl.”
“Don’t forget Dad,” Cora adds.
“Yes, of course,” Etta says. “Your father was a good man, a great man. He and your mother were as happy as two people could possibly be. They met at university, they had ten years together,” Etta tells Sebastian. “It’s not an eternity, but it is more happiness than many get in a lifetime.”
“More than we got,” Sebastian says softly.
“We had, what?”
“Two months.”
As her grandparents talk Cora stands between them, feeling the sizzle in the air, wondering if she should sneak away and leave them alone, but feeling rooted to the spot.
“Speaking of lifetimes,” Sebastian begins. “I’ve been thinking …”
After a moment or two of silence Etta gives a little cough. “Yes?”
“Well, the thing is,” he says, “I’ve given most of my life to God. And I’ve been thinking I’d like to give the rest of it to you, if you’ll have me.”
After postponing the inevitable for as long as possible, Cora pushes open the door to Walt’s bookshop with his notebook in hand. Praying that she’ll find him alone this time, unencumbered by a cherry-pie-eating fiancée, Cora ambles along the entrance aisle of books, counting the totals on each shelf at eye-level as she walks: 33, 45, 28, 37, 41 …
Walt is standing at the counter alone with stacks of books laid out in front of him. One by one he lifts them off the piles and sticks bright white price labels on their back covers.
Cora creeps forward, half thinking she might just sneak the notebook onto the counter edge then dash off without him noticing her. But when she is within twenty feet of him, Walt looks up. A shadow of a frown sweeps over his face and he says nothing. Cora’s chest tightens as she walks slowly up to the counter, squeezing out her breath and all the words she’d prepared to say, leaving her mind blank so all she can say is “Hello.”
Walt nods.
Wanting to get out of there as soon as possible and bang her head hard against a wall, Cora holds out the notebook to him.
“I found this, it’s yours.”
“Bloody hell!” Walt’s stony face suddenly illuminates with joy. “Where on earth did you find it?”
“At Etta’s shop, in the changing room.”
“But I went there, I looked … Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Thank you. Thank you so much,” Walt says, though he doesn’t look at Cora as he speaks, just at the notebook, flipping the pages, tracing his fingers over the symbols, letters and numbers.
It’s the perfect moment for Cora to turn and leave. She can walk away now, she can crawl across the carpet, and Walt won’t notice. But something stops her. She isn’t sure what it is, or why, but Cora waits. She holds on to the counter to steady herself before speaking.
“That’s a pretty incredible code your mother wrote,” Cora says, thinking of the things she has read in its pages: prophecies and predictions made by a mother for her son. She frowns, wondering at the unscientific strangeness of it all.
“Yes,” Walt says, “and I’ve spent my whole life trying to decode it. I’m so happy to have it back, you have no idea.”
“You don’t know what it says?” Cora asks.
“No, it’s bloody impossible. I haven’t got the brain for it. I’m not sure I ever will, but of course I’ll never stop trying. I just don’t understand why she wrote it like this. What was the point? I don’t know.”
Cora just stares at him.
“What?”
“I’ve read it, I mean, I—”
Walt drops the notebook. It falls with a clat
ter to the counter. “Are you joking?”
“No.”
“So what does it say?”
A spark of hope flickers to life in Cora’s chest. “Shall I read it to you?”
“Yes, yes.” Walt nods. “Yes, please.”
“Okay,” Cora says and, with her blood pumping in her ears and her heart pounding in her chest, she reads him the first line. As the words float through the air between them Walt’s mouth drops open.
“Really?” he asks at last. “Is that really what it says?”
“Yes.” Cora smiles. “Yes, it is.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Indeed.”
“Do you think …? Could it …?” Walt ventures. “But it can’t be true.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve got a boyfriend.”
“What?” Cora asks, incredulous. “No, I haven’t. I’ve never—anyway, you’re engaged.”
“I’m not,” Walt says. “I was, for about a day.”
“Really?” Cora exclaims, trying to tone down her delight. “Really?”
Walt nods. And, without another word, he takes three steps around the counter to stand in front of the woman he has loved all his life.
“Really,” he says softly, inclining his face toward hers.
“Really,” she repeats, tipping her head up to him.
When their lips are only an inch apart Walt speaks again, in a whisper, postponing the moment he’s waited twenty years for, just a little longer. The little piece of velvet Etta gave him, the one he’s never taken out of his pocket, tugs at its tiny red threads. And then he kisses her for the first time, light and quick, a promise and prelude of what is to come.
“My goodness,” Cora says softly, “that’s amazing.”
“Why, thank you,” Walt says, with a little bow of his head.
Cora laughs. “Well, yes, the kiss too, but that wasn’t what I meant.”
“It wasn’t?” Walt feigns crestfallen features. “I’m crushed.”
“Hush,” Cora says. “I meant, it’s amazing how I never knew.”
“What?”
“That I loved you all my life.”
Walt grins. “How you could be so clever yet so dumb at the same time?”
“Hey!” Cora gives him a gentle slap.
Walt takes the hand that hit him and kisses her palm, holding it between both of his.
“Please,” he says, “read it to me again.”
Cora points to the first line, sliding her fingers across the symbols as she translates them. Walt watches her lips as she speaks.
“The woman who deciphers this notebook will be the love of your life.”
For Mum
with infinite love
& for Al, as ever,
with infinite thanks
Acknowledgments
Big, big thanks as ever to my magical agents, Andrea Cirillo and Christina Hogrebe, for always believing and being there. Gigantic thanks to Linda Marrow, for everything. You’re a beautiful soul and a brilliant editor. Enormous thanks to all at Random House—especially Jennifer Hershey, Anne Speyer, Kim Hovey, Lindsey Kennedy, Maggie Oberrender, and Kathleen Fridella—who helped shepherd this book from my hands and into the big, bright world. Colossal thanks, of course, to all my gorgeous readers—this book is for you, I hope you’ll take it into your hearts.
Huge thanks, as ever, to Alice Jago, who tirelessly read endless drafts of this book and still had something fantastic to say each and every time she did so. Massive amounts of gratitude to Laurence Gouldbourne, who—twice—gave me the great gift of plot and story inspiration when I’d hit a wall. Enormous thanks also to Penny Macleod, who contributed so very much.
Thank you, Mum, for first inspiring this story and for always inspiring me. Thanks to Andy and Leah, I look forward to seeing you play Cora and Walt. Thanks to Caitlin for the inspiration of her beautiful creations. Thanks to Lenore (aka Etta) for letting me into her miraculous den—and for the magic star. Thanks to Artur—for all the love and cake—and for making everything possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MENNA VAN PRAAG is a writer and creative writing consultant. She graduated from Oxford and lives in Cambridge, with her husband and young son. She’s also the author of Men, Money & Chocolate, Happier Than She’s Ever Been, and The House at the End of Hope Street. Her next book, The Witches of Cambridge, will be out next year.
www.mennavanpraag.com
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The Dress Shop of Dreams
A Novel
Menna van Praag
A Reader’s Guide
A Conversation with Menna van Praag
Random House Reader’s Circle: How did you become a published writer?
Menna van Praag: Just before I turned thirty, I wrote a little book called Men, Money, and Chocolate. I’d written numerous (unpublished) novels before that, but I had a special feeling about this one. It wasn’t a great work of literature, just a little fable, but it was true. I believed in it. I still didn’t fully believe in myself as a writer, but I believed in this book. So, full of confidence and excitement, I submitted it for publication … but it was rejected. So I self-published. I went all over London, Oxford and Cambridge, bribing independent bookstores with my homemade flapjacks and begging them to sell my book. Eventually people started reading it and loving it. About a year later, when I’d sold nearly a thousand copies, I submitted it again and this time it was picked up. It was subsequently translated into twenty-six languages. That was just the beginning.…
RHRC: Do you have a writing routine?
MVP: I don’t have a particular routine but write whenever I can. Before my son was born (three years ago), I’d often write for ten hours a day. Nowadays, if I get two hours in a row I consider myself lucky! I can write anywhere, but my favorite place is at my desk on a sunny day. I have a window that looks out onto my garden. Whenever I’m stuck for words, I go for a walk, and the next sentence will come to me soon enough. I adore notebooks and often scribble ideas, sentences and paragraphs down in them, but when it comes to writing the story, I always go to the computer.
RHRC: Where did the idea for The Dress Shop of Dreams come from?
MVP: I saw a TV spot about Cuban cigar rollers who pay a percentage of their wages to a reader who will read them stories while they work. They then name some of the cigars after their favorite tales. I thought how it would be if the reader had a magical voice, and I fell instantly in love with the character of the Night Reader.
RHRC: What do you love most about writing?
MVP: While I fall absolutely in love with my characters, losing myself in their stories (these are often as much a surprise to me as to anyone), most of all I love the words: the way a beautiful sentence feels on your tongue, the delightful surprise of a startling and lovely simile or metaphor. I simply love words.
RHRC: What are some of your favorite books and authors?
MVP: Magical realism has always been my favourite genre. I like to think there’s more to reality than our five senses show us. My favorite author, above all others, is probably Alice Hoffman. I love the magic in her tales, along with the acute realism of the worlds she creates. Other favorite mag
ical-realism authors include: Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Sarah Addison Allen and Barbara O’Neal. Other favorite authors, who don’t write specifically in that genre, include: Erica Bauermeister, Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Patchett, Tracy Chevalier, Carey Wallace, Anita Shreve, Kate Morton, Anne Lamott, Anne Tyler, Neil Gaiman and Sue Monk Kidd. I’ve just finished The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields, which I found to be a beautiful book. I’m always on the look out for new authors, so if we share similar tastes and you have any recommendations, please get in touch!
RHRC: Did reading a particular book inspire you to want to be a writer?
MVP: As a child I was a typical bookworm, reading everything I could get my hands on—aren’t all writers? The first book that had a significant impact on me was The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. It opened up the idea of magic hiding within the mundane. The book that made me want to be a writer was The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I read it as a young teenager, and it was so startling, so magnificent that it ignited within me a desire to write something like that. I didn’t believe I could (that came much, much later), but I desperately wanted to and was determined to try.
RHRC: What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
MVP: Write all the time—as often as you can—read nearly as much as you write. And, if you want to get published, simply never, ever, ever, give up. It’s simply a matter of deciding how much you want it (it can take years, decades even—it took me just over a decade), so determination is the most valuable trait you can employ. Oh, and if you’re just starting out and need a little help with inspiration, self-belief and all that, read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I read that book at age nineteen—I longed to be a writer, but I couldn’t write—when I started reading it, suddenly, there was light and possibility and hope.
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