by Karen Swan
‘I thought I’d see what was up here – there’s never going to be enough storage in the rooms to take all our things. Just look at this.’ And she sat back on her heels, holding up what looked – in silhouette – to be a fringed shawl. ‘My goodness, the quality.’
‘Whose is that? The Wheelers’?’
‘No, it’s all ours. They never had the key to get up here. Your dad only found it a few years ago by accident, but he didn’t want to disturb the Wheelers. They weren’t the easiest people to deal with. He said it could wait till they left.’
‘What else is there?’ Willow asked, turning her head left and right to see the size of the attic. The entire roof cavity was one space with just the stone chimney stacks interrupting the flow. She could make out dark, irregular lumps and bumps all over the place.
‘An old pram. Victorian, I think, although sadly it looks like the mice have got to it. And there’s a box of what looks like old wallpapers and a—’ She gasped, pulling out something large and rather . . . rustly. ‘Oh my goodness, Willow, just look at this!’
Reaching for the torch, she shone the beam on an emerald-green satin dress. It looked Edwardian, with puffs at the shoulder slimming into tight sleeves, a tiny waist and a long skirt. ‘It’s immaculate,’ she whispered, her hands skimming over the fabric, looking for tears, holes, stains, any blemishes at all. ‘Whoever packed this trousseau knew what they were doing – there’s layers and layers of acid-free tissue paper. Everything’s just perfectly preserved. Oh, what I would have done to have worn a dress like this. I wonder whose it was . . .?’
Willow watched her mother rummage like a child in a sweet shop through the long-forgotten family treasures. Was it a good omen that she should be delving so physically into their past like this, on the very day they let go of their ownership of Lorne? Was it a sign they weren’t losing everything after all, but just acreage and stones? That what remained of the lives of the people who’d lived here, they’d still have: the castle’s contents, this house, everything up here . . . She balled up her courage, knowing the moment was upon her. She couldn’t put it off any longer. ‘Mam, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’
‘Uh-huh?’ She reached into the chest again and gave another gasp as she pulled out a cotton chemise.
‘It’s important.’
‘Darling, can’t it wait? Can’t you see how thrilling this is for me? I always longed for a moment like this back home but there was nothing left to find. All your ancestors had already raided the castle’s secrets long before we ever got there. Oh, Daddy would have loved this so much. Just so much.’ She clasped the chemise to her chest, her voice wavering slightly as she lost herself in some old memory, cutting out the present. Willow herself.
Always that.
‘Sure. We can talk about it when you come down,’ Willow said quietly, going to climb back down the ladder.
‘Oh, but take this, darling.’ She looked up to find her mother carefully rolling the green dress into a ball and throwing it to her. ‘Now that the chest has been opened, I don’t want any dust getting into it. The colour is just sublime. Put it on my bed, would you?’
‘Sure.’ She descended the ladder with the dress draped over her shoulder, turning to find Ottie coming out of Pip’s room with the red dress over hers.
‘She’s sleeping,’ Ottie whispered, closing the door quietly behind her. ‘Pretty much dropped off mid-sentence.’
‘Oh.’ They stood together on the small landing for a moment, still somehow distant and apart, divided by secrets. Willow’s gaze fell to the red dress. ‘. . . So who is Ben?’
Ottie gave a careless shrug. ‘Just a guy I’ve been helping out. He was the runner in the Ultra who got injured.’
‘That one who got lost?’
‘Yes. He was supposed to be camping but he clearly couldn’t stay in a tent with a torn cruciate ligament, so I said he could . . .’ She shrugged.
Willow’s eyes widened as she remembered suddenly the other smell in the cottage when she had stopped by yesterday: it had been . . . male. ‘You let him stay in your house? A complete stranger?’
‘He was a nice guy – mellow. Professional. Injured.’
Willow stared at the dress again. ‘And he bought you a red dress?’
‘. . . Yeah. To say thanks, I guess.’
‘Yes. Because people often say thanks with exquisite red dresses.’
Ottie arched an eyebrow, not appreciating her sarcasm. ‘That isn’t what this is.’
‘No?’
‘No. It’s in response to a conversation we had about Red Dress lives.’
Willow blinked. ‘Okay, you’ve lost me. What’s a Red Dress life?’
Ottie stared at her with exasperation, as though she was willingly being obtuse and Willow saw suddenly how truly upset her sister looked. ‘It’s a life that’s bigger and bolder and better than this one. It’s a life where you get to travel and meet new people and do exciting things and go to glamorous parties and wear—’
‘Red dresses,’ Willow finished for her, seeing the tears shining in her sister’s eyes.
Ottie swallowed, staring down at her own feet. ‘You get that, right? You left and found yourself a Red Dress life in Dublin.’
‘I guess so,’ she said in a quiet voice. It just wasn’t why she’d left. ‘Ottie . . . are you okay?’
There was a long pause before she responded. ‘Yeah,’ Ottie nodded, pushing her lips together and composing herself, but it was a lie – her movements seemed unnatural. Forced. She gave a small sniff and looked back at her. ‘What’s that you’ve got, anyway?’ she asked, reaching out to take the green dress from her. ‘– Oh my god!’
‘I know. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘It’s sensational.’
‘Mam’s up in the loft on a treasure hunt, looking for more.’ Willow rolled her eyes. ‘I just went to find her to tell her about . . . tonight. But she’s too wrapped up in rummaging through old boxes to even listen.’
As if on cue, they heard another small shriek from the rafters.
‘Well, another few hours won’t make any difference, I guess. There’s no turning this tanker around now. And if it means she’s happy a little while longer . . .’ Ottie shrugged.
Willow sighed. ‘D’you want a cup of tea then?’
‘Could do,’ Ottie shrugged, walking a few steps before stopping and turning back to her. ‘Unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’
A conspiratorial smile crept onto Ottie’s face. ‘Unless you want to try on these dresses.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ottie stared at her reflection. The dress didn’t say thank you. It said ‘Hello!’, ‘Wahay!’, ‘Come closer’, ‘Take me off . . .’
The colour was a scarlet bloom against her skin, a blood-drop in the snow, the dress cinching her waist, skimming her hips, the low front making a discreet show of her décolletage. She’d never worn a red dress before for precisely this reason. It made a statement. It was a dress with intent. She couldn’t blend in in this, nor hide away.
But wasn’t that exactly what she wanted? Wasn’t that what Ben was saying to her in giving her this? It wasn’t an encouragement for her with Bertie, of course, but no more hiding in plain sight was what he meant. It was time to step out of the shadows. To be noticed. To be claimed. She had given everything to Bertie and done all that he’d asked. She had exacted her pound of flesh from Ben – excrutiating though it had been. Now it was his turn to act.
She had waited long enough. It was time to take matters into her own hands.
She stared at herself in the mirror and understood that the time had come: tonight was the night she was claiming her man.
Willow blinked, giving a little twist this way and then that. The green satin rustled like an autumn morning, her silhouette whittled and moulded as if carved from clay. She had never seen herself look like this before: womanly and sophisticated, and she’d certainly never foreseen a puff sleeve i
n her sartorial future.
The colour made her hair look even more raven-black and, for once, that didn’t seem like a bad thing. Beside her, Ottie was looking dumbstruck in red silk, and she sensed both of them were changelings, moving from what – or rather who – they had been, to someone new.
Ottie turned to face her with not so much as a glint of jokiness in her eyes. ‘I want to go to the party.’
‘. . . Okay. You make that sound like a scary thing.’
‘It is. Which means you’re coming with me.’
‘What? N—’
‘In that.’ She gestured towards Willow’s dress.
‘No! No way!’ Willow laughed.
But Ottie’s eyes were burning with the intensity that Willow knew only too well from her other sister, now placidly sleeping in the next room. She swallowed, knowing what it meant . . .
‘Okay, look, I need to go over there to sign the paperwork anyway so I’ll go with you but . . .’ She swallowed, thinking of Connor’s words last night, the promises in his eyes. The deal was almost done. There was nothing to stop them now. How easy it would be to fall for him, to let herself believe in love at first sight and Happy Endings . . . No. She shook the thought away. ‘I just need to do what has to be done and leave again. I can’t hang around.’
‘Exactly. Me neither.’ Ottie clutched her arm desperately. ‘Just say you’ll wait for me.’
‘What is it you’ve got to do?’
‘I . . . I can’t tell you yet. I will, I promise, but there’s something I have to do first. Please – safety in numbers?’ She held out her little finger in a crook. Pinky promise. Their girlhood game. ‘Sisters before misters.’
Willow stared at it. She could do with a back-up option too. Someone to make her go through with what had to be done. Someone to make her leave. She crooked her little finger too and linked the two of them together. ‘Sisters before misters,’ she smiled.
Pip lay in bed, listening to the murmur of her sisters’ voices coming up through the floorboards. It sounded like they were preparing to go out, shouts of ‘Come on!’ and ‘What now?’ drifting up the stairs.
From the crack between the curtains, she saw it was dark outside. Were they off to the party at the castle? She hoped not. There was something perverse, in her mind, to be visiting your own home as a guest.
Still, there had been enough damned buzz about it. Perhaps curiosity had got the better of them? It was all anyone had been talking about in the Hare for the past week: should they go? Why go? What would they wear anyway . . .?
She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, only that she had slept deeply. Her limbs felt shot through with lead, the blankets heavy upon her; someone had tucked her in again, she saw. The copy of Horse & Hound was now set on the bedside table and the empty doughnut bag carefully folded and placed in the waste-paper basket. Ottie, then.
Suddenly the front door slammed, the reverberations shaking the windows in their frames, her sisters’ voices just about audible as they walked down the overgrown path towards the car.
Alone again, Pip looked around the room – her room – with pensive eyes. She would never live here, of course; her home was at the stables now. But her mother had been at pains to get her to ‘choose her room’ as they’d come in from the hospital this morning, as though this detail of ownership would make all the difference. Willow had done a terrific job in cleaning everything up and getting a coat of paint on the ceiling and walls, but the room was still pretty bare – in fact, Pip had never seen such a dearth of ‘stuff’. It was a typical ‘spare’ room with a lamp on a table, a chair by the window, one or two books pulled from a box and set on the windowsill but which no one would ever read. It paid lip service to the idea of the life that would be lived in this room but the reality was, her mother would be alone in this house. A widow in her new home.
She thought back to Willow’s confession, the fear in her face as she’d revealed the sale was happening today. Or was it tonight? Perhaps it had already happened. Oh God, had she slept through it? Was Lorne lost to them already?
The thought of it was like a cold hand around her heart. She tried to turn under the covers but she was so tightly held down, like a moth on a pin, she fell back into the same position again, too feeble to argue for once.
She tried to submit to the inevitability of it all, to summon the laissez-faire vibe she had passed off to Willow as she’d looked into her scared eyes. The castle had to be sold, they all knew that – this was an inevitable reality that had had to be faced and she couldn’t continue trying to be like her father, fighting unwinnable battles. In her desire to have everything, she’d very nearly lost everything. She had to remember that.
Tread water, that was what she’d told herself when she’d won Shalimar back. Everything was simply back to how it had been to begin with and that was enough. Enough is as good as a feast. She had Shalimar and Fergus, her name on the deeds for the stables . . . So why, then, did she feel like something was still missing? She had a feeling she couldn’t shake, that something vital had changed. But what?
A sudden scream made her jump, loosening the blankets enough that she could scramble out of bed, but her blood pressure needed another moment or two to catch up with her and she stood, feeling woozy for a second, before staggering to the bedroom door just as the cry came again.
‘Mam! Mam! I’m here,’ she called, lurching into the hall and trying not to pass out as she reached for the ladder. ‘What is it?’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Oh my God!’ Ottie hollered as they turned onto the castle drive from the Dower House and abruptly stopped, their headlights facing directly into those of the trail of cars coming nose-to-tail through the main gates opposite. But it wasn’t the cars they were looking at.
‘It’s . . . pink,’ Willow replied, in case that fact had been missed by her sister.
They looked at each other in mutual shock horror.
‘The castle’s pink?’ Ottie spluttered, giggling, before throwing her head back against the headrest and beginning to laugh. Hard.
‘The castle’s pink,’ Willow echoed, joining in and belly-laughing too, convulsing ever harder as she thought of her father’s face had he ever seen his ancient, rugged, stoic castle draped in pink light. ‘B-b-bad enough he had three daughters,’ she gasped, having to clutch her sides. ‘But to have a pink castle too . . .’
‘It’s not . . . it’s not funny,’ Ottie howled, beginning to slide down the seat, only her seat belt keeping her up.
‘I’m not laughing,’ Willow roared, slumping in the driver’s seat too.
They hadn’t laughed like this since they’d been kids and Ottie had wet herself when Pip – in a riding lesson at Halloween – had dressed as a scarecrow and her horse had spent the class trying to snatch at the straw stuffed into her shirt and trousers.
A sharp rap at the window made them both jump and instantly stop laughing.
Slowly, Willow rolled down the window. ‘Yes, officer?’ she asked, setting Ottie off into another fit of hysterics. Willow had to dab her eyes to keep from following suit.
‘I’m afraid you can’t stop here,’ a young guy in a black Nehru jacket said to them, a torch in his hand.
‘I’m afraid we can. This is our castle.’
‘Our pink castle,’ Ottie blustered, completely unable to stop from laughing. She had lost the plot.
‘It is. It’s our pink castle,’ Willow giggled, turning her head to her sister. ‘Oh my God, I feel drunk and we’re not even in there yet!’ Her shoulders shook. ‘I’ve got paperwork to sign! I’ve got a pink castle to sell!’
‘And I’ve got a marriage to break up!’ Ottie wheezed.
The laughter died in Willow’s throat. ‘Huh?’
Ottie stared at her, not blinking, seeing the horror in her sister’s eyes. ‘Just kidding!’ she laughed, bursting into hysterics again.
‘Oh my God!’ Willow screeched, slapping her hand over her chest as if to sti
ll her heart. ‘I thought you were serious!’
The young guy looked between them both, completely baffled by their behaviour. ‘Um . . . well, if I could just ask you to park the car somewhere over there. We need to keep this access clear in the event of an emergency.’
‘Absolutely, officer,’ Willow agreed, still giggling, wiping her eyes dry and certain she must have rubbed all her make-up off. ‘Oh jeesht, Ottie, am I all streaky now?’
‘What? Streaky like bacon?’ Ottie asked, craning her neck to examine Willow’s face as she drove. ‘No, you’re not streaky like bacon,’ she chuckled, little pockets of laughter still making her shoulders shake as they drove up to the front and parked overlooking the lawn. The grandest of the specimen trees had been picked out with spotlights, fairy lights draped over new, perfectly half-domed bay trees that had been positioned around the edge of the parking area in smart black-painted containers.
They climbed out of the car together, seeing how the taxis kept on coming, extravagantly dressed guests spilling out in frothy dresses and smart tuxes.
‘Right . . .’ Willow sighed, feeling her laughter finally fade as she looked back at the castle she was about to sign away. Nerves had a funny way of showing themselves sometimes. ‘So then I guess this is it.’
‘Yeah,’ Ottie murmured, looking significantly less amused herself now. ‘You ready?’
‘. . . As I’ll ever be.’
They walked side by side – so close their hands brushed each other – along the drive, up the steps and into the great hall.
‘Oh my God,’ Ottie gasped in amazement again.
Was this still Lorne, Willow asked herself? Unlike Ottie, she had at least seen some of the transition from what it had been to this: she had seen the tatty stair carpet lifted, the million and one rugs rolled away, the stern ancestors no longer bearing down from the walls. She had helped pack away all the photos and vases, jugs and trinkets, shields and heraldic memorabilia, the hall tables and chairs, Rusty, their entire lives, so that all that remained was this basic framework – the imposing split staircase, coffered panelling, galleried landing . . .