by Hannah Emery
Chapter 5
Isobel: 2010
My Queen Victoria,
Sarah and I had a silly disagreement today, which culminated in her throwing an omelette at me, just like you did on that wonderful day that feels like so long ago. I should have been angry at Sarah, or at the least, shamed. Instead it made me think of you: your sweet, sweet kisses and your terrible cooking. I would rather eat a raw omelette every day than be without you.
Write to me.
H
On Friday, Isobel stays in her classroom for a while after the last class has gone. She marks practice exams, ticking and crossing deftly, until the pile on her desk is finished. She stands up and grabs her coat from the back of the chair, shivering as the cool air from the room snakes around her. As she glances out of the window, she sees something that makes her move closer to the glass. Tom’s Volkswagen Polo is parked outside and if she squints Isobel can see Tom sitting in the driver’s seat. He must be waiting for her, although they haven’t planned anything: Tom said he was working tonight and Isobel has plans for a night in with Iris.
Isobel takes her bag from the desk and rushes from her classroom and down the staircase. The side entrance is locked, so she flies through the main doors and round to where Tom waits.
‘What’s the matter?’ she says breathlessly as she pulls the passenger door open.
Tom leans over and grins. ‘It’s a good job Iris warned me you’d come out late, otherwise I might have thought you’d succumbed to the curse of the vanishing people of Silenshore!’
‘But what are you doing here? I thought you were working tonight.’
‘Nope. Get in.’
Iris throws her bag into the foot well and climbs into the car, still catching her breath. ‘When did you speak to Iris?’
‘When she was helping me plan this weekend. She told me what to pack for you. I didn’t have a clue.’
‘Pack? For what?’
‘Oh, I’m taking you away for a night. It’s been a crazy few weeks, what with our shock and everything. I think we need a treat. We’re driving to London tonight. It’ll be late when we get there but we’ll stay over, then spend the day there tomorrow. If you want to, that is.’
Isobel feels her heart rush at Tom, the way he’s packed the car – she sees her floral weekend bag squashed onto the backseat – the way he’s spoken to Iris and planned a surprise. ‘Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before,’ she says.
‘Well, I’m glad to be the one to do it, then,’ Tom says as he starts the car. He leans across and kisses her softly on the cheek. ‘Ready?’
‘You really have all my stuff?’ Isobel asks, incredulous.
‘Yep. Straighteners, shampoo and conditioner, your facewash in the green bottle, some blue dress that Iris picked, phone charger, makeup bag, toothbrush…I think that’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Pyjamas?’
Tom wiggles his eyebrows comically. ‘Not needed.’
Isobel laughs, excitement fizzing up inside her and spilling out. ‘Then let’s go!’
The next morning, after lying under the crisp, tight hotel sheets and sitting in a warm bath filled with chalky complimentary bath salts, Isobel kneels on the floor in front of a brightly lit mirror and puts on her makeup. Her skin has always been clear and pale, but pregnancy is doing strange things to her, sending chemicals soaring through her blood and out of her pores. Her face is rounder now, too. She brushes some translucent powder over her pink cheeks and sits back.
‘So are you still not going to tell me what we’re doing today?’ she asks Tom, who is lying on the bed reading the free newspaper.
He puts the paper down on the bed and sits forward. After staring at her own face in the mirror, Isobel feels a surge of pleasure from looking at Tom’s. His features are defined, but not sharp. His teeth are straight and white. She went out with a man before Tom whose teeth you couldn’t see because he never really smiled, so that every time she wasn’t with him, she couldn’t remember what his teeth looked like. With Tom, she can always picture his smile perfectly.
‘No, I’m not telling you anything yet’ he says. ‘You’ll find out where we’re going when we get there.’
‘Are you driving us there?’
‘No, we’ll leave the car parked here.’
‘Well, then, I’ll know what we’re doing when we get off the Tube.’
‘We’re not getting the Tube,’ Tom says, moving from the bed and sitting on the floor next to Isobel amongst lipstick and powder, eyeliner and blusher brushes.
‘Well, then I’ll know when you tell the cab driver.’
Tom shakes his head and laughs. ‘Smart arse.’
When they climb into the juddering black Hackney cab that smells of the cabbie’s leather jacket and yesterday’s cigarettes, Tom hands him a note that Isobel saw him scribble in the hotel reception just before they left. The driver rolls his eyes, gives a brief nod, then swings the cab out of the hotel’s grounds and onto the road carelessly.
When the taxi stops, Tom turns to Isobel and raises a dark eyebrow.
‘Portobello Road!’ she gasps.
‘Yeah. You’ve mentioned that you like vintage things a lot, so I thought we should do this kind of thing before our shopping consists only of Mothercare trips.’
Isobel squeals, and sees the taxi driver rolls his eyes again through the smeared rearview mirror. She takes out her bright-purple purse and pushes some money through the partition, waving away Tom’s money.
‘Can I have the note, please?’ she asks. The driver twists around, confusion blurring his unpleasantly roguish features. ‘The one that my partner gave you when we set off,’ she says, looking at him expectantly.
It’s pushed back through the glass, along with her change, creased and dented by pound coins. She looks down at the piece of paper as the cab rattles off down the road. Tom’s writing is block-like, square.
Please take us to Portobello Market, but don’t tell her – it’s a surprise!
Tom takes her hand. ‘What did you ask him to give you that for?’
Isobel clutches it to her chest. ‘I want to keep it. Today is perfect and I want to always remember it.’
It’s still early and the morning air is crisp and cold. They meander through the endless antiques, Isobel stopping at the brightly coloured jewellery stalls and gazing out over the amber brooches, mint-green bracelets, glittering black-stone rings.
‘Are you going to get something?’ Tom asks.
‘Yes. Definitely.’
They stop at a stall crammed with stock: elegant teapots, jewellery, gold-rimmed saucers, china animals, staring Victorian dolls.
‘Look! We could get the baby something,’ Isobel says, reaching for a small doll with china lips and stiff black curls.
Tom grimaces and backs away slightly. ‘I don’t know. Something about old things like that freaks me out. Especially dolls.’
Isobel nestles the doll back amongst the others. ‘I love them. But we can leave it if you want. It might even be a boy. If it’s a girl, we can get her a vintage doll when she’s a bit older. Look at this, though.’ She pulls a ring with a ruby-coloured stone from the mass of items. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Taking it, love?’ the female seller asks, not missing a beat. ‘Ruby is the stone of love and energy. It keeps you safe and makes you powerful. Warns you of danger too.’
Her voice is monotone: it’s as though the woman is reading from a prompt card for the hundredth time that week, and the stone in the ring obviously isn’t a real ruby, but there’s something about the words that Isobel likes. She slides the cool ring onto her middle finger and moves her head, watching the red stone twinkle in the weak light. ‘Yes. I will,’ she says. She picks up a turquoise compact mirror in the shape of a rose. ‘I’ll take this, too.’
‘You’ll be safe now,’ the woman says as she stuffs Isobel’s notes into her till.
A couple of weeks after their London trip, Isobel lies in Tom’s bed,
staring up at his cracked grey ceiling. He always wakes later than her. Every time she’s stayed over here, she has woken early and listened to Tom’s easy breaths and the sound of the thrashing sea.
It is Sunday. Exactly two months to the day that Isobel and Tom first met.
Isobel turns over onto her side, stares out of the curtainless window at the blank grey sky, and waits for Tom to wake up.
‘Happy anniversary,’ she says when he does. She leans across him, into the warmth of his sleep and kisses his forehead.
‘Anniversary? How long have I been asleep?’ Tom asks lazily, draping an arm over Isobel.
‘Oh, a hundred years.’
‘Then our baby is a hundred years old now?’
Isobel laughs and kisses Tom again. ‘It’s our two-month anniversary. I was just thinking, it’s two months since we met in September.’
‘Wow. It seems longer. I can’t imagine not knowing you.’
‘I know. I can’t imagine things any different, now. The baby, us.’
‘Let’s celebrate. I’m off today, so let’s go out for lunch somewhere, and then look for some things for the baby.’
Isobel imagines a shop full of married couples and bright toys and muted newborn clothes: lemon and white and beige. She feels the tug of excitement that has been bubbling inside her for the past few weeks, even stronger now.
‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
After lunch in Mayor’s, the high street’s biggest café, they drive to a nursery shop just outside Silenshore in a grey retail park with huge square chain stores lined with car parks and trolleys. The shop smells sweet, like talcum powder and fresh cotton. Isobel stares at the prams and cots and car seats. Tom leans over them, checking the straps and the mattresses, muttering things about regulations and price.
‘It’s bad luck to buy a pram before the baby’s born. We can’t get a pram today,’ Isobel says as she sees Tom checking the price dangling from a tight black hood.
‘I’m just looking,’ he murmurs, before wandering over to the cribs.
Isobel pushes one gently and it rocks. She moves along the aisle, through wooden and white cribs, until she reaches the last one. It’s mahogany: a dark, luscious colour that reminds Isobel of another place and time.
‘I like this one,’ she calls to Tom. He puts down a yellow blanket and walks over to her.
‘It’s very nice,’ he says as Isobel runs her fingers along the glossy wooden sides. ‘Do you prefer that to white?’
Isobel nods emphatically. ‘Yes, definitely. Why, do you prefer white?’
Tom laughs and puts his hands up in mock defense. ‘No, no. I was just checking that you were happy with your choice.’
‘Shall we go back to mine once we’ve paid for it?’ he asks. ‘I’ll put the crib together, and we can see how it looks. If we know we’re happy with it then we can take it down again and store it until the baby arrives.’
‘Okay.’ Isobel feels doubt niggling at her, but pushes it away impatiently. ‘Sounds great.’
Once Tom has carried the box up the stairs to his flat, and Isobel has made them a cup of tea each, and they have sat and sipped it, listening to the patter of the rain that soon turns into pelting shards of water against the glass and into the sea outside, Tom opens the box and peers inside.
About twenty minutes later the crib is made. Tom works methodically, taking the instructions seriously, frowning at the paper and the letter-coded parts and the minute screws that scatter from his hands and roll across the uneven floor.
Isobel knows as soon as he makes the frame. She knew it in the shop, really, but refused to succumb to the doubt. Now, there’s no avoiding it, no pushing it aside.
The crib is too big.
It won’t fit in the bedroom. It only just fits in the lounge, in front of the television, with the coffee table pushed up against the window.
They stare at it, their eyes glazing over. As soon as one of them says it, it’s real.
‘There’s no room for it, is there?’ Isobel says eventually.
Tom shrugs, but his face is ever so slightly pink with the stress of the tiny screws and the letters, and now the dimensions that mean all his efforts are wasted. ‘I’ll carry it to my bedroom, and we’ll see if there’s any way it’ll fit in there.’
Isobel follows him, watching as he sets the crib down at the door, watching as he shuffles it further into the room, until it won’t go in any more.
‘It won’t fit,’ he says eventually. ‘I’m not sure what we can do, other than perhaps get a smaller bed. Or a smaller crib. But the others were pretty much the same size, as far as I can remember.’
Isobel stares at the mahogany bars that are wedged between Tom’s bed and the door. If the crib is left there, she’ll have to vault over it to get to bed.
‘What about your flat?’ Tom asks.
‘My bedroom isn’t much bigger than yours. And anyway, that website I was looking at last night said that the baby will only be in our room for six months max. What will we do after that?’
Last night, when Isobel was reading an article on newborn sleep, six months had seemed like a lifetime. Now, it seems like an impossibly short time to adjust to another person with a mahogany crib and a need for a bedroom of its own.
Tom drops onto the bed. ‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘Did you find out how long you’re contracted to stay in your flat?’
‘Yes. Only another few months.’
Tom nods. ‘Okay. I suppose it’s irrelevant, really, because I have to pay rent for here for almost another year. I can’t afford more rent on top of that.’
‘And I won’t be able to afford much more once I’m on maternity pay,’ Isobel says. Her temples ache and she rubs them. ‘What are we going to do?’
Tom thinks, is silent. The wind cracks against the windows outside, whipping the sea and the sand up and slamming them against the panes. Eventually, he looks at Isobel and takes a deep breath.
‘I have an idea. But I’m not sure you’ll like it.’
Isobel nods. ‘Go on.’
Chapter 6
Evelyn: 1947
Evelyn dropped one more pair of stockings into the case that lay open on her bed. It was quite full, but then it was very difficult to know what to pack, and so she’d thrown in quite a lot. She stood up, excitement flooding through her as she looked out of her tall bedroom window at Silenshore.
Today was the day.
Today, from her position at the end of the elegant castle, Evelyn felt like she was on the very edge of the world, in control of everything. She was eighteen now, and she had waited, year after year, for her life to jolt into action, to somehow be catapulted into Hollywood as she’d planned. She’d read in her mother’s magazines about stars like Carole Lombard, who had been spotted by film directors in the street and offered film roles that changed everything. She imagined it happening to her: a frantic packing of her mother’s best suitcase, a tangle of necklaces being thrown in along with lipsticks and perfumes and furs, a tearful goodbye as Evelyn left for a sudden new life. But it hadn’t happened yet, because Evelyn barely left the castle. There was nowhere to go in Silenshore. There was nothing to do and nobody to meet. Years ago, Evelyn might have met someone useful at one of her parents’ parties. But since the war, there weren’t as many parties as Evelyn would have liked. In fact, there were hardly any.
Poor Mary, the evacuee, had been right when she’d said the war would change everything: it had. But it hadn’t changed enough for Evelyn. She would have to do that herself. And she couldn’t wait for life to come and claim her any longer. She needed to go and claim her life.
Throwing open the huge dark oak doors of her wardrobe, Evelyn was greeted by her own scent, as a stranger might be. It smelt of spring flowers and sugar. That would change. A new life had to have a new, more mature, scent. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a yellow crepe dress. Yellow was the perfect colour. There was, she was sure, a pair of yellow shoes at the back of her war
drobe that she hadn’t worn since last summer. She fell down to her hands and knees, and scrambled amongst her things until she found one of the shoes. The other was further back; she could see its heel sticking out from a mound of bags. As she pulled the bags out of the way, her fingers fell onto something cool and sharp: the mirror. She yanked it from the tangle of straps, and ran her hands over the cool glass.
She’d put the mirror back in her mother’s drawer all those years ago, after the game of dares with the evacuees. She’d never had a real reason to take it again: there were certainly no more games of dares after the children had returned to their homes in London a few months after they’d arrived. But still, Evelyn hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. It was as though, childish as it sounded when she thought about it now, the mirror wanted Evelyn to have it. She’d creep into her mother’s room to just touch it, to glance in it, to stare down at the beautiful blue sapphires that framed the glass. In the end, she’d hidden it in her own room, and if her mother had noticed it missing then she hadn’t said anything.
Her mother.
At the thought of Mrs du Rêve, Evelyn felt an immediate rush of guilt. It had been so easy for Evelyn to tell her the white lie: that she was going to stay with Mary in London for a while. Evelyn and Mary had scribbled out letter after letter to each other all through the war. Strong, brave Mary. Evelyn would have given anything for that to be true. But as bombs fell down on London like raindrops, Mary’s letters stopped. She’d written to Mary again and again but the lack of reply told her more than she needed to know. Evelyn’s mother didn’t know that Mary had stopped writing, didn’t know that Evelyn was actually rushing into London by herself, to claim the glittering life that belonged to her. Evelyn had expected Mrs du Rêve to scoff at the idea of going to stay with a common girl in the East End. But she hadn’t, which had made Evelyn feel even more guilty. But if she’d told her mother the truth, she wouldn’t have agreed to it. So there had simply been no choice.
Evelyn blinked at her reflection, then laid the mirror in her case, between the folds of a skirt. There was no way she could leave the castle without it.