The Dream House

by Rachel Hore

  That’s just where I’m at today, she thought. The still point. Where you can think. And maybe learn the answers to things that you’re searching for. Or not yet, in her case.

  Following the others into the cathedral shop she found a bookmark with the famous words of the medieval mystic Mother Julian of Norwich: All will be well and all manner of thing will be well. Kate bought it on the off-chance the saint was right.

  After half an hour, Simon was anxious to move on. ‘You’ll love the castle,’ Joyce told the children. ‘There are mummies and a dragon costume.’

  ‘Would it be all right if I met you all in a little while?’ asked Kate, feeling guilty about wriggling out of the childcare. On the other hand, it would be nice for Joyce to have the children. They always went to their mother if Kate was there. ‘I feel like exploring round here.’

  They arranged to meet by the market and Kate watched them go off together, Sam holding Joyce’s hand and Daisy her father’s.

  Kate ambled through the cathedral close and across a main road into a maze of narrow streets as the old cracked bells of the cathedral dropped their dissonant litany into the cool late-afternoon air. For nearly an hour she wandered, utterly enchanted by the misshapen houses, the stone churches, the myriad antique shops and quaintly named pubs. She crossed and recrossed the river, looking at the boats and the old wharves rearing up on either side. In the event, she almost missed the little shop on the corner of two streets. What caught her eye was a striking, Egyptian-patterned plate in orange and black. Next to it in the window, a naked nymph held a lamp aloft.

  Kate peered through the hatched glass to see what else was there, remembering pictures from the book about the Bright Young Things she had been working on. She saw Clarice Cliff-style tea services and, ranged along the back wall, Art Deco wardrobes and dressing-tables. The whole shop specialized in art from the 1920s and 1930s.

  What drew her through the door was a small glass display case of jewellery. It contained a beautiful link bracelet, each black enamelled square bearing a delicate Russian pattern in red and gold, large plastic red earrings with geometric designs and chunky rings. And crammed into one corner like an afterthought was a large silver pendant, its chain balled up. The oval bore a moulded relief of a young girl with flowing hair. A dove had alighted on her raised palm. Studying it, Kate was struck by a teasing feeling that it was familiar. But she just couldn’t put her finger on why.

  When she pushed open the door a little bell rang, but for a moment nobody came. Then a door banged at the back of the shop and a tall young man eating an apple slipped in behind the counter. He smiled shyly. Kate moved over to the jewellery.

  ‘May I?’ she asked, and when the young man nodded, she reached into the back of the display case and picked up the pendant. It was a locket, the size of a fifty-pence piece, she saw, turning it over. No, half a locket. The remaining half displayed a washed-out photograph of a woman’s face. Such a shame the piece was broken – the hinge looked as though it had been ripped apart. Kate studied the front again and ran her thumb over the design. The girl was a little rough-hewn but something about her – her serenity, her affinity with the bird she had tamed – touched Kate. The thin chain was still perfect and the clasp good.

  Kate looked at the price tag – £25. It was broken, but very pretty. Suddenly she wanted it. It would be a present to herself. She always wore silver, it suited her Celtic colouring. Even her wedding ring was platinum rather than gold.

  ‘Do you know anything about this piece – its history, I mean?’ Kate asked the young man, who dropped the apple core in a bin and shook his head.

  ‘You’d have to ask my mum. I’m just minding the shop while she’s out,’ he said. ‘I can’t do bargaining, I’m not allowed. You have to pay the price it says.’

  Kate was ten minutes late already to meet the others near the market. She had to decide.

  ‘I’ll take it then,’ she said, and waited while he wrapped it up, inexpertly, in tissue.

  Kate couldn’t resist unwrapping the package as she went on her way. She slipped the locket quickly around her neck and tucked it under her shirt, where it felt cold and heavy against her skin. Trying to remember the young man’s directions, she crossed a main road and hurried on through a striking Art Nouveau shopping mall, its entrance framed by leaves and flowers in stained glass – and out to the bustling market square.

  That night, in Paradise Cottage, under the sloped ceiling of Joyce’s second bedroom, Kate lay spooned with Simon in the mahogany boat bed and dreamed. In her dream it was a perfect summer’s day. She was walking down a path through an Italianate walled garden, a gentle breeze caressing her face. Before her was a gracious redbrick house with tall chimneys and wisteria blossoming rampantly round the walls. There must be three storeys – she could see the skylights in the attics. To the right was a conservatory. Inside, a grapevine in full leaf wound its way up one wall and across the ceiling. The French windows in the centre of the house were ajar, and as she walked up the four steps to the terrace she could see through them into the drawing room beyond, with its faded blue chairs, a polished grand piano, a great carved wooden mantel. She turned back to the garden and stood quietly, taking in the scents of the flowers, the statues, a little tinkling fountain. A distant skirling rose above the gentler notes of the garden birds – the cry of peacocks. As she waited – for what? – the light changed and the lovely sunny day folded into a deep evening gold. The sounds of the birds converged into one low, ringing note. The house was fading, everything was rushing past her . . . She felt a terrible pang of loss.

  Suddenly Kate was awake, the velvet darkness pressing on her face. It took her a moment or two to remember where she was. She lay there, listening to the creaks of the wooden beams and the pattering of rain on the roof, thinking about the dream. The beautiful house had seemed so familiar and dear as to feel like home. And yet, she was quite sure she had never been anywhere like it. Perhaps she had seen it in a picture or a film. Had some deeply embedded memory come to the fore because they’d been talking about houses? Perhaps her mind had put together some lovely peaceful ideal of home. Wishful dreaming.

  Kate tried to get to sleep again, but she was too wide awake now. After ten minutes of tossing and turning, she thought she’d visit the bathroom and eased herself out of bed so as not to disturb Simon. Her foot connected with a particularly boring manuscript she’d been reading the night before – something she was supposed to finish before Monday – and the pages sighed their way across the rug. A thin line under the door from the dimmed landing light guided her out.

  On the way back she slipped into the children’s room. They were sleeping peacefully, their faces golden in the soft light. Sam was as still and cherubic as a warm baby statue. Kate picked up Daisy’s toy dog, which had fallen on the floor, and tucked it back in the crook of the little girl’s arm. Daisy’s eyes opened for a moment, gazing unfocused as though seeing something in another world, then closed again. Kate stood watching them sleep. I love my children most when they’re asleep, she thought suddenly. Perhaps it’s because they look so innocent and vulnerable. They and Simon are my world, the most precious things in my life. How is it I can leave them every day? Kate sank down on the end of Sam’s bed. I don’t know if it’s the dream or something else that’s making me so tender, she thought, wiping her eyes. I cry so easily at nothing at the moment.

  She sat there for a while, wondering at the lovely house in her dream, turning over in her mind all the strands of her life, trying to untangle them, to imagine them woven into a new pattern. Finally, shivering with cold but strangely elated, she trailed back to the bedroom. As she felt her way back to the bed, her hand met the bedside cabinet and closed on something cold and hard. It was the locket. The oval fitted comfortably into her palm and she lay down with it under the duvet in the dark, running her fingers over its bumps and edges. Images of her children, the house and the locket went round and round in her head. What should they all
do?

  ‘Simon?’ she whispered finally, hearing him sigh and wondering if he, like her, was lying awake.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You know we’ve been talking about moving? I was wondering. I suppose we could get quite a big place here after London, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Mmmghhh,’ he muttered and began to snore lightly.

  Tomorrow, Kate decided, they’d go and look at some estate agents’ windows in Halesworth. After all, just looking couldn’t hurt.

  When she came to pack up to go home late the next afternoon, Kate thrust the manuscript, unfinished, into Joyce’s recycling box, finding satisfaction in this pitiful gesture of rebellion. The locket she slipped into a small zip-up compartment of her holdall for safety. Then, as the waters of everyday life closed over her again, she forgot where she had put it.

  Chapter 3

  London, April 2003

  The first Sunday in April, five months later, the Hutchinson family were part of a crowd of spectators lining the banks of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge. It was late afternoon, the day of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race, and the Longmans, friends of theirs whose house backed onto the towpath, had been hosting one of their famous parties.

  ‘Blimey, Kate! Sam’ll be in the river in a minute! Here, take Charlie.’ Laurence Longman thrust his own son at Kate, who spun on her heel in confusion to see four-year-old Sam, in full Spiderman regalia, wobbling his way along a willow branch out over the murky current. She dashed towards him, heart in mouth, but Laurence got there first. Stretching his lanky body across the length of the tree trunk, he dragged Sam back to safety.

  Kate crushed Sam to her, simultaneously gulping with the horror of what might have happened and dizzy with relief that it hadn’t.

  ‘I wanted to see! I can’t see the boats.’ Sam wriggled against his confinement.

  ‘Come on, I’ll lift you up – hold on tight!’ Kate gasped, hefting him onto her narrow shoulders with Laurence’s help. ‘Oof, I’ll have to stop feeding you.’

  ‘They’re coming,’ someone shouted, and Kate edged forward to look. There in the distance, through sparkling rainbows of spray, she could make out the shapes of the two boats, almost prow by prow, oars lifting and falling in regular rhythm. A gust of wind blew her hair in her eyes and made them water. Sam bounced up and down on her aching shoulders, pointing and squealing.

  ‘Cambridge are moving into the lead,’ remarked a middle-aged man with a radio to no one in particular. Kate watched them toil closer, the nearer boat definitely gaining the advantage.

  Sam was wriggling, so Kate helped him down and gripped the back of his costume as he strained towards the river.

  The bridge and the towpath were crowded with people of all descriptions, young City types in thick overcoats swilling champagne straight from the bottle, students making do with Fanta, families wrapped up against the fresh spring breeze. Kate caught Simon’s eye where he waited further down the bank. Daisy on his shoulders waved a dark blue flag – Kate couldn’t remember why they supported Oxford, but they always did. Had Laurence’s brother Ted been there? She smiled at Simon and he smiled back – a look of such complicity a rush of warmth spread through her. They had a secret and today they were going public.

  Every year, for the last five, they had come to Laurence and Liz’s Boat Race Special at their Edwardian house in Barnes, a good vantage point for the famous Surrey bend of the river. Race Day coincided more or less with Laurence’s birthday, and Liz, who loved big parties, invited a crazy mix of friends and acquaintances. Today there had been a slap-up buffet and sticky chocolate cake washed down with plenty of fizz before they had all filed through the little garden gate onto the wide muddy path to watch the race. Kate was struck by a sudden sad thought – this might be the last Boat Race party for her and Simon.

  ‘Cambridge will do it!’ said Radioman smugly as the boats toiled past, the wind carrying to them the angry barks of the coxes and the grunts of the rowers above the slap and splash of the oars. On, under the bridge. This bend was crucial to the result. ‘Rubbish, they are, Oxford.’

  ‘Can we go, can we go?’ Sam had lost interest now. Kate waved to Simon and followed her son back through the gate into the chattering throng of guests, where she shortly learned that Oxford had, in fact, won.

  Half an hour later, Sam and Daisy safely ensconced in the playroom with Charlie and the Longmans’ twin daughters, Lily and Lottie, Kate went out into the garden to look for Liz.

  The numbers were thinning out now. Simon was talking to a woman in her late thirties Kate had been introduced to earlier, Meredith something or other, a tall, well-groomed blonde in a charcoal sheath dress – some American colleague Ted had in tow from his bank. Kate noticed with a mild flash of envy that she carried one of those embroidered Miu Miu bags recently featured in Desira, the fashion and lifestyle magazine which Liz edited and where Laurence was creative director.

  Seeing neither of her hosts, Kate went to the gate to check it was locked; after her scare with Sam earlier she wasn’t taking any chances. The key was safely turned so she wandered slowly back towards the house, unrolling the sleeves of her jacket against the sudden cold breeze.

  Deep in some anecdote, Simon didn’t notice her, and Kate played the old game of pretending she was seeing him as a stranger might, as she’d seen him that night ten years ago when they had first met.

  He really did look like Jude Law, she thought, not for the first time, admiring the animal grace of his gestures as he talked, an unlit French cigarette (who had he cadged that from, then?) caught between two fingers. OK, so his nose had a bump in it and his black cashmere sweater and elderly leather jacket were dotted with mud from Daisy’s shoes – there was nothing like the rosy filter of love. Though he hadn’t narrowed his blue eyes at his wife in quite such a seductive way for a long time. Meredith seemed utterly absorbed in what he was saying. Simon liked the company of women – he got on well with them. Indeed, it was one of the things that had first appealed to Kate about him, his ease and friendliness. She had always been quite shy with men, had never ‘set her cap’ at anyone in the way, so the story went, that Liz had with Laurence.

  That evening at her old schoolfriend Sarah’s engagement party, Kate had been standing on her own, wondering why she was the only one of their class whom Sarah seemed to have invited, when a passing stranger had jogged her arm, spilling champagne over her dress. The culprit had moved on, unnoticing. Instead it was Simon who, disengaging himself from a noisy group nearby, offered her a handkerchief, holding her glass whilst she mopped the damp patches, then fetched her a refill, all the while chatting in his shy manner, which turned out not to be true shyness at all, about schooldays and playing football with Sarah’s fiancé. As he talked, those half-narrowed blue eyes focused on Kate’s, moving to her mouth, and back again to her eyes. Then his fingers had accidentally brushed against hers as he’d lit her cigarette – they had all smoked occasionally then, before marriage and children – and a shock of desire had rushed through her.

  During the weeks that followed she realized that while he drew her out of herself and reassured her, in turn, she was a haven for him. Kate accepted him for himself, made no demands that he be anyone except himself. She remembered one conversation driving back from Suffolk after meeting his parents for the first time. She’d tentatively commented that he had not seemed entirely relaxed with them.

  ‘It’s Dad.’ Simon shrugged. ‘He’s always after me about something.’

  ‘He did seem anxious that you’re happy.’

  ‘Yes, but he wants me to be happy in his kind of way. He’s never got over me not doing medicine like him. My grades were never good enough. So then he was on about me having a profession – you know, law, accountancy or something, and I just went along with him, I suppose. Scraped into doing maths at university, had fun, got a reasonable degree. Then the City seemed the obvious thing. Dad was pleased, so that was good.’ Simon sighed. ‘But now he won’t let up t
ill I get a partnership.’

  ‘I thought you liked your job, Simon.’

  ‘I like being part of a team, all that stuff, but I hate the pressure. And auditing is hardly exciting. I can’t stand the thought that I’ll be going through figures for the rest of my working life.’

  ‘But you don’t have to, do you?’

  ‘I don’t really have anything else I want to do, Kate. I’m not bad at it. I rub along all right with the people. And it keeps the old man off my back. Maybe I’ll make a million and retire at forty. Then see what else turns up.’ He smiled at her briefly with that lopsided smile that made her heart flip and squeezed her hand.

  As she looked at him now, Kate experienced the same tenderness she had felt in those faraway early days. Recently, there had been less of the passion, but was that surprising after eight years of marriage and the exhaustion of running fulltime jobs and two children? Well, now they had made their decision, perhaps they were embarking on a life where they would have more time for one another again . . .

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Ms Miu Miu’s husky laugh broke through Kate’s reverie. Simon half-turned, smiling at his own joke, the smile faltering when he saw Kate. He slipped the illicit cigarette into his pocket – does he think I’m going to tell him off, like his mother? thought Kate – and held out his hand, drawing her over.