The Secrets of Castle Du Rêve

by Hannah Emery

  ‘Is that what you keep sneaking up here to do? Are you writing a story?’ Nurse Hammond asked, nodding towards the letter Victoria had just written to Harry.

  Victoria thought of her Queen Victoria postcard, of the curving words on the back that formed her very own romance, her very own mystery that had no ending, as though the very last pages were torn out. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  Chapter 19

  Isobel: 2011

  My poor Victoria,

  Sally told me everything, all about our secret baby. Did you tell her? She says that you didn’t tell her anything, that she heard it from the baker’s son at Blythe’s, but I don’t want to think that you’ve gone through this all alone, and I don’t like to think that news is travelling around the town about you. So I hope that this isn’t true, and I hope you did tell Sally and she comforted you and held you like I should have been able to do.

  The worst of it all is that I confessed to Sarah that I was worried for you, and it turns out she knew about the baby too. She admitted that you visited a month or so ago, and begged her to tell me you’d been. But she didn’t, until now. And now I’m worried, so worried, that it’s too late.

  Sally says it’s worthless knowing the reason why you’ve disappeared because we don’t know where you’ve been sent. Your mother daren’t tell her, and Sally daren’t ask your father. Sarah insists she doesn’t know, and even if she did then I doubt she would tell me.

  I am going to find you somehow. And when I do, I won’t tell anybody that I’m coming.

  The man who is following me…I think it’s your father. But it wasn’t Sally who told him. She was the one who wrote me the anonymous letter warning me to leave Silenshore. She tells me he’s a frightening man. I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you from him.

  I want to be with you. I would leave this town in an instant if I knew where to find you.

  Times are changing, Victoria. There may be a way around all this. We just have to find it.

  Wait for me.

  H.

  As Isobel walks, she feels rain begin to tap onto her shoulders, which are still tingling from the hours on the beach that seemed so long ago now. She’s almost reached the shore when she sees Daphne in the distance with Hugh.

  Isobel came for a walk with Beatrice in the pram to clear her mind, to escape the feeling of being suffocated in a cloud of secrets. She doesn’t want to walk with Daphne. She turns around and heads back towards Broadsands. The rain slaps onto the pavements and the scent of hot, damp concrete rises in the air. She takes long strides, her eyes fixed on the house. But before she reaches it, her gaze is interrupted by the figure who loiters in the street. Isobel casts her eyes downwards, looks at Beatrice instead. But as she nears Broadsands, the presence of the old lady from across the road becomes more and more difficult to ignore.

  ‘Isobel?’

  The rasping sound of her own name on the woman’s cracked lips is startling. Isobel looks up and sees that the woman is standing in her path, gazing down at the pram.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ the woman says. She reaches out a crooked finger as if she’s going to touch Beatrice, but at the last moment, whips her hand away. ‘I won’t touch her. She doesn’t know me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have minded,’ Isobel hears herself say, although she would have minded; she minds being there in the rain speaking to the woman, because there’s a crawling feeling in her blood and bones that she won’t be rid of until she steps inside the house and locks the door behind her.

  The woman stares, her pale eyes scoring into Isobel. ‘Are you well?’

  Isobel has tried not to think about this woman and her strange words about Tom so many months ago. She’d mentioned it to Tom and he’d brushed it off as nonsense. It had been enough for Isobel at the time. She’d thought little of it, only that the old woman had made her feel uncomfortable. But that was before she’d had Beatrice, before everything seemed strange and off-colour. Now that Isobel is breathing the same spring air as the woman, close enough to touch her shrivelled frame, the words haunt her.

  I wouldn’t want to share him.

  Why did Isobel ignore it?

  Isobel nods, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She’s been so stupid. She should have taken notice.

  The woman reaches out again, but this time touches Isobel on the shoulder. The smell of her breath lingers as she talks: stale and dry. ‘I wanted to say sorry, Isobel.’

  How does she know her name? Isobel takes the step back that she wanted to take moments ago, unable to stop her legs from moving.

  The woman steps back too, like a frightened animal. ‘I know I shouldn’t have said anything about Tom that day. I shouldn’t have given anything away. It was wrong of me and I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t know what you meant,’ Isobel says.

  ‘Then think no more of it. Forget it.’

  The woman turns to cross the road and go back into her house. Isobel feels a sense of strange relief, until the woman’s final words reach her, carried on a breeze that smells of dark rain and damp pavements. ‘It’s not my secret to tell.’

  Isobel doesn’t look back at the woman. She yanks the front door open. Even without overhearing Daphne on the phone telling somebody to leave Tom alone, without bumping into Lucas, without Tom being secretive about his phone and his trips out, Isobel would’ve known. There’s something wrong. She tried to stand back by coming out for a walk, to calm herself down instead of doing what she always does and bulldozing into things without thinking them through. She thought she couldn’t do that with Tom. She thought there was too much to lose.

  But now the urge to know more rattles inside her, threatening to spill out.

  Daphne’s words that she overheard yesterday echo in her mind as she swings the door shut behind her.

  You must leave him alone.

  Tom’s in the house somewhere, but Isobel doesn’t know where. He’s probably getting ready for his shift at the restaurant. He’ll be oblivious, spritzing his neck with his aftershave, running damp fingers through his hair, buttoning his shirt. He won’t know what Isobel’s doing, he will presume she’s changing Beatrice or still out walking or doing something normal.

  She looks in the cabinet in the hall first. There are a few letters in the mahogany drawers, addressed to Daphne. Isobel pushes them out of the way, to see if there is anything else underneath them. An old wallet, some keys, a torch. Perhaps these belonged to Tom’s father. A surge of guilt flies through Isobel, filling her body with nausea. She slams the drawer shut.

  The rain clicks on the windowpane of the front door and taps on the letterbox. She glances around, frozen in an instant of panic that Daphne will appear and see Isobel going through her things. But she can’t stop. She needs to know.

  In the kitchen, the heat spilling out from the Aga combined with the airless warmth of the morning is almost unbearable. Isobel tugs at the neck of her top, feeling stifled and strangled. The drawer of the white dresser is full of old Christmas cards. Isobel’s hopes prickle and dart. It might be in here. Glitter sticks to her hands as she sifts through the greetings cards. Red, gold, green specks twinkle on her palms. She opens each card. None of them are addressed to Tom. She keeps going, searching wildly, until she sees the red envelope that she’s been looking for, pushed into the corner.

  She tugs it from the drawer, moving her fingers over the smooth red paper. When Tom said on Christmas Day that he didn’t know who it was from, she didn’t ask again. She believed him then.

  It’s been opened once, so Tom must have seen it. Isobel imagines him standing by the dresser, tearing open the red envelope and glancing carelessly at the greeting inside before tossing it into the drawer. The image is strong in her mind, but still, she finds her fingers working towards the opening of the envelope, sliding the card from beneath.

  It’s an old-fashioned card with a Christmas tree and a badly painted fire on the front. Isobel flips it open. The swirling, feminine letters of the writing tangle ar
ound each other like ivy. As Isobel stares at them and finally makes them out, a piece of her world falls away.

  Happy Christmas, my darling secret love.

  ‘Secret love?’ Iris repeats. She is folding floral dresses, what seems like hundreds of them, into a polka-dot suitcase. She’s leaving for Paris first thing tomorrow, so Isobel should be leaving her to it. But she can’t. As soon as she found the card, she scooped Beatrice up from her cot and went to Iris’s flat.

  ‘Yes, that’s what it said. It had no name on it.’

  ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean Tom is in love with somebody else too.’

  ‘But I saw the envelope at Christmas. It was open, so obviously he has read it and not told me. If he’s not involved in this secret love, then why didn’t he just tell me? And there’s all the other stuff too.’ Isobel bites her lip. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it all. That old woman across the road even said he has a secret.’

  Iris shakes her head and throws a pair of Converse trainers into her suitcase. ‘I really think you need to speak to Tom about all of this. Does he even know you’re here?’

  ‘Do you think it might be Georgia? I always trusted that Tom never spoke to her, but now I don’t even know why I took his word for it.’ Isobel’s breaths are shallow and fast. ‘Should I try and find Georgia on Facebook or something, and message her?’

  Iris sighs and snaps her suitcase shut. ‘Oh, Isobel. I really don’t think you should. That might hurt Tom, going behind his back.’

  ‘But if I ask Tom about any of this, he doesn’t give anything away. And there’s something I don’t know. I’m certain of it.’

  ‘Isobel, you know nothing about Georgia. You have no reason to think this secret even has anything to do her. I don’t want you to do something that you’ll regret. Tom needs to know how you feel.’ She pauses, searching Isobel’s face for a clue that she’s listening, but Isobel can’t meet Iris’s eye. ‘Normally, you’d say something to Tom straight away. It’s not like you to go behind somebody’s back trying to find things out about them. Where’s the Isobel who just says what she thinks?’

  Isobel bites her lip, trying to stop herself from crying. ‘I don’t know. I’m trying not to lose myself, Iris.’ She brushes an irritating tear away from her cheek. She really doesn’t want to cry. She’s sick of crying. She’s sick of everything, everything, everything.

  Isobel draws her knees up to her chest on the bed next to Iris’s suitcase. She’s got mascara on her hands where she has wiped her streaming eyes over and over again. Beatrice lies on the floor, kicking merrily, oblivious, grasping at the cluttered items around her: a moisturiser, a lipstick, a nail file, and dropping them again in glee. The lipstick rolls along the wooden floorboards, making a dull, ominous sound as it disappears under the bed. Beatrice begins to whine and Isobel shushes her through her own tears.

  Iris picks Beatrice up and lays her on the bed among the rubble of clothes. ‘Look, I’m worried about you, Isobel. Tom’s probably worried about you too. He loves you, I know he does. We spoke on the phone a few times when Beatrice had just been born, because he wanted to know how he could cheer you up. Why would he ring me and ask for ways to cheer you up, and ask me if I thought you were okay, if he was just going to hurt you anyway?’

  Isobel lifts her head. She thinks of Tom hiding his phone, the whispers between him and Iris when Beatrice was born. That’s all it was? Him wanting to know how to make things right for Isobel?

  ‘Really?’ Relief is near, and Isobel reaches for it, but then it snaps away. ‘But what about the card? What about Daphne? The woman across the road? They are all hiding something.’

  ‘Isobel, I know a lot has changed, but I’m worried that you’re so anxious. All of these things might have an explanation.’

  ‘Everything has changed,’ Isobel cries loudly, her eyes raw and sharp. ‘I feel so different.’

  Iris puts her arms around Isobel and holds her tightly. Even her scent is different. The lemons have gone and now she smells of Seth and musk and something unfamiliar. ‘But things have changed for the better. It just takes a while to see it. You need to talk to Tom properly. Don’t accuse him, just talk to him.’ Iris stands up. ‘Come on. I’ll make us some tea.’

  Isobel follows Iris to the kitchen. She holds Beatrice and puts her on her knee when she sits at the table. ‘I’m so sorry for shouting. I really don’t know what’s going on with me at the moment. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’

  Iris stirs their tea and clears her throat. ‘Isobel, do you think you should go to the doctor?’

  Isobel gazes at Iris. She looks just as she did when they lived together, stirring two mismatched floral mugs of tea in the powder-blue kitchen, one leg bent slightly, her bright-red hair hanging straight down her back. But something, everything is different. The notes clamped to the fridge by alphabet magnets are all written by Iris. The fruit in the bowl is the fruit that Iris has chosen. An almost-empty bottle of red wine stands next to the hob, but Isobel isn’t the one who shared it.

  All the time that Isobel has been at Broadsands, she has missed this flat so much. Now she is here, it doesn’t appear to be the place she really wants to be. The place she wants to be, is back with Tom. The weight of tears that has dragged behind her eyes, in her throat, almost constantly since those early, raw days of Beatrice, pulls at her again now. She bounces Beatrice on her knee blindly.

  ‘I felt better before.’ She thinks of the picnic, the beach, the sun. ‘When we had our picnic? Surely you weren’t thinking I was ill then?’

  Iris comes over to the table and sets the mugs down. Isobel has the turquoise one with a pink tree on it. Hers every day for over a year at the flat, but forgotten until now.

  ‘I was glad that you seemed a bit happier. But now, since you found that card to Tom, you seem to be unsettled again. Isobel, the doctor might just suggest something to help you feel a bit more like yourself.’

  Isobel sips her tea for something to do, but it’s too hot. ‘But I’m not myself, am I? Like we said, everything has changed now.’

  ‘Since when? Everything is always changing, Isobel. For all of us. You have Beatrice, yes, but she hasn’t changed everything, has she? She’s just added to it. She’s beautiful and healthy. She’s not something to have made you this unhappy, and neither is Tom.’

  Isobel doesn’t answer. Iris and Isobel have always been in the same places at the same time: primary school, high school, sixth-form college, university, disappointing jobs, exciting jobs, flat renters. Now, it’s as though they don’t live in the same world. Their planets move alongside each other, drifting along, bumping against each other now and again when their universe narrows.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’ Iris is asking.

  Isobel shrugs, ‘Not really.’

  Iris takes Isobel’s hand. ‘Isobel, please. Just think about the doctor. I know you. I know you’re aware of what might be wrong. I don’t doubt that you were doing well earlier at the beach. But I feel as though going to the doctor and talking to Tom, being more open with him, would be more productive than snooping online at Georgia. Even if she is still in love with him, she’s hardly going to post it on Facebook, is she?’

  Isobel doesn’t say anything. She carries on holding onto Beatrice and drinks her tea from her forgotten mug.

  Broadsands is silent when Isobel arrives back from Iris’s flat. Tom must have gone to work and Daphne is obviously still out somewhere with Hugh, because the dog, his meaty, leathery smell, his lead and Daphne’s long green Hunter boots are all still absent. A brooding quiet fills the house. Isobel puts Beatrice down in her cot and then sits at the kitchen table and thinks about what Iris said.

  She sits for a while, thinking. Then she pulls her laptop towards her. But as she types into the internet address bar and loads the page she wants, the page she’s been thinking about, she feels a shadow behind her and snaps the laptop shut.

  Chapter 20

  Victoria: 1965

 
; Jackie, the new girl, was on bottle duty this week with Victoria. She was slow and silent, her whole body seemingly dusted with spilled formula. The milky powder clung to the air.

  ‘The pains have started again,’ Victoria said, clutching her enormous bump. ‘I think it’s going to be soon. Jackie, I’m feeling quite frightened about it all.’

  Jackie nodded. Just as Victoria had decided that it was a lost cause talking to this girl, that she wasn’t ever going to reply, that she was better off chatting to Katherine when they had finished their jobs, Jackie’s mouth fell open, in preparation for her to speak.

  ‘Don’t be. You won’t remember it.’

  ‘I know that. That’s what worries me.’

  ‘Better twilight sleep than unimaginable pain. Katherine said they give you some drugs one minute and the baby’s brought to you the next. It’s the bit after that which frightens me. The bit where they take it away again and I have to go home to my parents and answer questions about my time in London, working in an office that doesn’t even exist.’ Jackie plopped some formula into a bottle, red with the effort of so much talking all in one go.

  ‘Have you seen Bev much since she came back from having her baby?’

  ‘Bev? No. I don’t know her much. She’s going home soon, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose she will be.’

  Victoria gazed around the windowless room. This dank, odorous kitchen was next to the nursery, and she could hear the wails of babies from their cots. The image of Bev’s wrists lingered in her mind: raw, red, stained. She closed her eyes, hoping that the image would go away, but it was replaced by another: of Bev tied down, bloody, writhing and screaming.

  ‘I’m going to find her and ask her exactly what went on,’ Victoria said, her eyes flying open. But as she placed down her scoop of formula and took a step towards the kitchen door, a blast of burning pain consumed her body. She doubled over, the floor swinging dangerously near: scrubbed tiles, powdered with fallen milk.