by Hannah Emery
Daphne nods and stirs some more. Tom gestures for Isobel to sit down at the worn pine table that sprawls out in the corner of the large room.
‘It’s a nice spacious house,’ Isobel says. Words rattle out of her about the house and Silenshore and Tom, and Daphne responds to them quietly and calmly. Tom makes some tea and tells them about some customers who left the restaurant without paying this afternoon.
After they have eaten the enormous red pan of chicken casserole that Daphne places on the table and had another cup of tea each, Tom clears his throat. The food that Isobel has eaten for fear of appearing rude suddenly feels like dough in her stomach, rising and swelling and making her feel frightened and sick. Don’t tell her yet, she says with a glance at Tom. He gives an almost imperceptible nod and tells Daphne that Isobel works at Silenshore Castle High School.
‘Ah. Do you like it? I imagine it’s hard work.’ Daphne says as she stands and clears the table.
‘I do like it. I love teaching English, and obviously it’s quite special to be able to work in the castle. It’s a beautiful building, and I love all its mystery and secrets. It makes it a cool place to work.’
Daphne busies herself with the dishes, clanking cutlery and scraping grey chicken bones into the burnt casserole dish. ‘I’ve never heard of any secrets to do with the castle. I think they’re all myths.’
Isobel thinks of the gothic turrets and the cool, dark corridors. It was built for secrets. ‘I suppose I just think of it as secretive because of the people who’ve gone missing from there.’
Daphne sweeps the dishes from the table. ‘I’ll get us all some apple cake’ she says as she crashes the dishes into the sink.
Isobel stares down at the slice of cake that Daphne places down in front of her, trying to block the strong smell of cinnamon and sugar from her mind.
‘Mum?’ Tom says, after setting aside the tiny cake fork that Daphne laid on the plate, and eating a crumbling slice with his fingers. ‘We’ve actually got some news.’
Isobel wants to moan. Perhaps she does. She feels somehow dissociated from herself, as though she’s not really there. Her insides feel hot and melting. It’s as though she’s regressed to how she felt when she first took the pregnancy test. Or maybe she’s never moved on from those first fearful moments. Maybe she’s just made herself think she has.
Daphne looks up from her cake, her own fork poised over it.
‘Oh?’
‘Isobel’s pregnant.’
Daphne puts her fork back down on her plate. Isobel tenses, waiting for a storm of words or an excited shriek, waiting for something that shakes her and makes her feel relieved or worried or anything other than nervous and taut with anticipation.
But there is very little discernable response on Daphne’s face. Her steel-grey eyebrows raise, but her eyes and mouth betray nothing.
‘We know it’s very soon. It wasn’t planned,’ Isobel says, feeling the heat from her body rise to her face. ‘I’m very lucky that Tom is so pleased, though, and we’re so happy together, so I – we, I should say, feel as though we will be okay. We’re really excited.’
Daphne nods and looks at Tom. ‘You’re a grown man, Tom. It’s certainly a shock, but I’ve no doubt you’ll rise to the occasion.’
Her words are clipped, cool. Isobel steals a glance at Tom. Is Daphne furious, or is she always like this?
Tom bites into his cake again. ‘We both will. Already, the shock is starting to sink in a bit. We’re trying to focus on practical things now.’
Isobel nods and pushes her untouched cake along the pine table. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t eat that. I feel a bit sick.’
Daphne reaches out for Isobel’s hand and squeezes it. Her fingers are rough and dry, her skin cold. ‘I can imagine you’re frightened. But honestly, this is a gift for you both.’
The sentiment of the words are all Isobel could have hoped for. The way Daphne grips her hand should make Isobel feel supported and safe. Tom grins when he sees them holding hands across the table, as though everything is as it should be, as though he couldn’t have wanted better. Obviously, he’s used to Daphne’s strange mannerisms.
‘When are you due?’ Daphne asks, retracting her cool hand as suddenly as she offered it.
‘I haven’t had my first scan yet. But I think it’ll be June.’
Daphne is quiet for a moment, then eyes Tom. Something seems to be exchanged between them, between their glances. Then Daphne clears her throat.
‘Tom’s probably told you that I’ve often been on at him to move in here. I know he likes his flat, but it’s not big enough to raise a baby in, as I’m sure you both realise. I’d be more than happy to have you here, you know. Just until you’ve found your feet.’
Tom nods. ‘Thanks, Mum. We appreciate that. It’s a big decision for us, though, to give up our homes. Are we okay to get back to you on it?’
Daphne dips her cake into the neat pool of cream on the side of her plate and eats it delicately. ‘Of course you are. Take all the time you need.’
Chapter 8
Victoria: 1964
After the Robert Bell talk, Victoria and Harry walked off campus and down the hill, past Clover’s, past the crooked rows of shops, through the sloping park towards the bottom of the hill and then meandered through the narrow cobbled road that led to West Street.
‘What are they digging for?’ Victoria asked as they walked away from the bustle of Silenshore’s main street. The spare ground ahead of them that had always been boggy and overgrown, hilly and neglected, was now being bulldozed into grey, flat land. Aggressive vehicles vibrated and roared around them, making Harry lean closer to Victoria when he replied so that she would hear him.
‘They’re building houses,’ he said, the air around her electric as he came closer.
Victoria gazed at the juddering machines, the shouting men, the foundations of what would be people’s homes, and suddenly she felt very strange. Something inside her sank and her legs trembled. Without thinking, she clutched Harry’s hand. His fingers entwined with hers.
‘I feel like I need to sit down,’ she said, turning away from the digging and grinding and grey dust that clouded the air ahead of them.
‘Of course. Are you alright?’ Harry asked, frowning in concern.
Victoria nodded, the odd feeling of weakness vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared. As she clutched Harry’s hand, her legs regained their strength. ‘I’m fine now. Let’s keep walking.’
They wandered past an ice-cream van and Harry bought them ice creams. Victoria breathed in the salty, golden air. The hot afternoon was beginning to give way to a cool, gentle evening that was the colour of honey.
‘I’ll be quite sad to return home after today,’ she said as they edged their way down to the beach. The sand at Silenshore wasn’t smooth and never-ending like a real beach, but grey and uneven with pebbles. The tide crashed in the distance, dark and frothing like witch’s brew. People were scattered across the sand, eating fish and chips from Wheels’ Fisheries, throwing balls that blew sideways in the wind. Their scents of sweet perfumes saved for their holiday and sharp vinegar floated in the air, mingling with the salty fragrances of the sea and shells that crunched beneath their feet.
Harry licked his ice cream. ‘I feel the same. I’m glad you enjoyed the talk. I’ve never met anyone who enjoys mystery books as much as I do. I’m so glad to have met you that day, Victoria.’
‘I’m glad too.’ Victoria looked at her ice cream and suddenly felt quite sick.
Lovesick, she heard Sally say in her head. Was she? Was there such a thing? Staring at the insurmountable vanilla hump in her hand, it seemed there was.
Harry stopped walking and turned to her. He had finished his ice cream, and there was a hint of pale cream on his top lip.
‘Victoria, I’m sorry that I didn’t come to visit you at the shop like I said I would. I wanted to, more than anything. I knew straight away that you were special.’
Harry
stopped and Victoria waited. Sometimes, people had plenty more to say, even if they had stopped talking. Especially if they had stopped talking.
‘I wanted to see more of you,’ Harry continued eventually, ‘but I’m a little older than you, and I-‘
‘That doesn’t matter at all,’ Victoria interrupted. ‘My father is much older than my mother.’
She didn’t add that her father was a vile bully, because that wasn’t to do with his age. Jack could be precisely the same age as his wife and he would still beat her and boss her and make her weep and sleep for days on end. Victoria pushed her parents out of her mind.
‘I don’t want to get you involved in something that’s no good for you,’ Harry was saying, ‘But if I’m honest, there’s something about you I can’t shake off.’
‘I don’t care whether you’re good for me or not. I can’t shake you off either,’ Victoria said, Harry’s words sweet in her mouth.
Harry had moved closer to Victoria and as she finished her speech she moved her foot and slipped on an uneven rock. Harry’s arms flew out to steady her and she held on to them tightly, because even though she knew she wouldn’t fall without them, it was nice to have them there just in case. His arms were strong and hard. Victoria had danced with a boy called Peter Cooper at Sally’s birthday party last year, and his arms had been floppy and thin.
‘Victoria. I’m twenty-eight, and you-’
‘No, Harry, listen. I’m eighteen,’ Victoria said, even though she wasn’t, even though she was only just sixteen, because she never wanted to dance with Peter Cooper or anybody like him ever again, because she only ever wanted to dance with Harry and she could see him teetering on the brink of her life, about to be lost forever. ‘I’m eighteen, and you don’t need to worry about what’s good for me, because I know what I want and what I need, and it’s not to be left standing alone on this beach. Please, don’t say anything else, otherwise today will be ruined in my mind.’
She wanted to kiss him then, but even though she was in love with him, kissing him seemed too frightening, so she fell into him instead, flopping against him, her head against his broad chest. She felt his arm close in around her and she breathed in his scent of books and Harry, and she thanked the universe for making it rain last Monday.
After their little outbursts, they picked their way across the beach, then when it seemed like the tide was closing in, turned back and returned up the slope, onto the promenade. The shops along the promenade were beginning to close. People wandered back to their hotels for teatime, sandals swinging in their hands, faces pink with freedom and sun and happy memories. For the first time that day, there was a little chill in the air that worked its way through Victoria’s white cardigan and onto her skin.
‘My parents are away today. They’ve gone to London,’ she said. ‘You can come to the shop, if you like.’ Would Harry like whisky? There was a bottle under the sink that Victoria wasn’t meant to know about, and up until now had never been altogether interested in.
Harry looked at his watch and nodded. ‘I’d love to.’
Lace Antiques was towards the middle of Castle Street, a few minutes’ walk from the promenade. When they reached the shop, Victoria remembered the sign that was in the window and blushed as Harry read it, his features scrunched in confusion.
‘Fallen ill?’
‘Oh, my father wouldn’t have let me come to the University if I’d asked him. So I made my own mind up. He’ll never know.’
Harry raised an eyebrow as Victoria unlocked the door and swung it open for the musty scent of other people’s old possessions to greet them. ‘You really are intriguing, Victoria Lace,’ he said.
Victoria locked the door behind them and tore down the sign. She crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into an open chest filled with antique dolls and bears. ‘The shop is officially closed now, anyway. And it’s been such a sunny day that nobody would have wanted to come in a musty old shop anyway. I’ll bet nobody even saw it.’
‘Something tells me you’re not too interested in whether they did or not,’ Harry said with a smile.
‘I’m not. Today has made it clear to me. I don’t want to work in my parents’ shop selling dead people’s things,’ she said, motioning around the dingy shop. ‘I want to be a writer. I want to write mysteries like Robert Bell. Listening to him today and meeting you has made me realise that I want to be a writer, and that I need to go to university to be any good at it.’
‘University?’
‘Yes. I want to study English Literature. Robert Bell said to write about what you know, but I don’t feel like I know anything, or anyone. So I don’t think what I’ve written must be any good.’
‘I didn’t know you’d already written some pieces. I’d love to read them, if you’d let me.’
Victoria thought of her box of writing upstairs in her bedroom. She’d never imagined that anybody would actually read any of it. She’d never imagined she’d meet anybody who wanted to.
‘Maybe,’ Victoria said, wandering behind the counter and sifting through some receipts.
‘I will help you, Victoria, if you’re serious about coming to read English. How did you do in your exams? And have you just been working here since?’
‘I did quite well in my O levels,’ Victoria said, her cheeks turning crimson. She thought she’d done well. She hadn’t had her results yet, though, but if she told Harry that then he wouldn’t think she was eighteen any more, and he wouldn’t continue leaning towards her over the counter, his breath on her skin, his eyes burning into hers.
‘And you’ve done your A levels, have you?’
Victoria looked down, said nothing.
‘You haven’t got A levels?’
‘Well, I’ve been working here since I left school. My father doesn’t agree with university.’
Harry laughed. ‘I’m often stuck for what to say when I hear people don’t agree with it. It’s not a decision, it’s an institution.’
‘I know, I know. He’s very opinionated.’
‘Most people who don’t agree with university are. Still, never mind about that. You read often, don’t you?’
‘Oh, I read anything I can get my hands on.’
‘Then I’m sure you’ll get there, Victoria. I certainly hope you do. You should contact your old school and ask about A levels.’
Victoria nodded and mixed images flitted into her mind: Sally pushing notes into Victoria’s fingers when they were at school, their battered wooden desks, her father’s stormy face whenever Victoria mentioned university or books, her pages and pages of essays about Shakespeare and poetry, the rows of majestic red seats in the lecture theatre earlier that day and the hairsprayed students with their swinging bags and carefree conversations.
‘If you want any help, do let me know,’ Harry said, his voice breaking into her thoughts. ‘I don’t think you should stand in this shop for the rest of your life, Victoria. Not if there’s so much more you want to do.’
There was a stillness between them then, a magical stillness, where all Victoria could hear was their slow, steady breathing and the ticking of clocks, and the distant rumblings of cars and people outside, and all she could see was Harry’s face next to hers. When he leaned forward and kissed her, properly kissed her, she tried hard to think of how she would describe it to Sally when she told her all about it, but she couldn’t think of anything, anything at all.
And as Harry spoke to her and listened to her and looked at her as if he’d never seen anyone like her before, Victoria still tried to find the words to describe the kiss. If she was to be a writer, she’d have to find words to describe things like that. But the kiss seemed too precious for words, too divine to pin down. She thought of it again and again, long after Harry had said goodbye and turned from her, towards the shop door; long after she had stared after him and realised that she hadn’t offered him whisky or got him her copy of The Blue Door from upstairs or talked to him about a thousand things that she wanted to.
But, she reasoned, as the golden day finally gave way to a pale-blue evening, there would be plenty of time for all that.
The night of Robert Bell’s talk and the ice cream with Harry, Victoria dreamed of Harry all night: of his skin and his voice and his kiss that tasted of vanilla and a new world. She dreamed of walking next to him on the rocky sands, feeling cool ice cream slide down her throat. She dreamed of the day when she would marry him.
When Victoria woke up, it was to a car door slamming outside and a shout.
Her parents were home: the spell was broken.
Despite the shout that Victoria had heard from the car below, the auction that her parents had been to had actually gone very well: the clock that her father had travelled all that way for was now safely in the window of Lace Antiques, with a price tag of triple what he’d paid for it the day before. Mrs Lace appeared exhausted by the bustle of London, and the journeying to and fro. She gave Victoria an affectionate pat on the shoulder before sighing and disappearing up to bed for the day. Jack brooded in the shop, impatient for the clock to sell.
‘You can go out somewhere, if you want,’ he said to Victoria, waving his hand dismissively. He did that sometimes. Although Victoria was usually expected to run the shop alone for weeks on end, after Jack had bought something he thought might fetch a fortune, he sat tight behind the counter, like a fat cat waiting for a mouse to run out from under a cupboard. Victoria’s very existence seemed to irritate him on these occasions, so that after she had done things like speak to him and breathe near him and perhaps cough she was told to leave him to it for the day.
Victoria went upstairs to her bedroom, squirted lacquer onto her hair, dabbed some of her mother’s red lipstick on her lips and flew out of the back door of their house. When she arrived at Harry’s office, she knocked gently. There was no answer. Everywhere seemed still and deserted. But Harry had said he still worked in his office marking exam scripts over the summer, even when there were no lectures, so he must be here. Perhaps she had knocked too gently on the door. She pushed it open, tentatively at first, then more firmly.