The Dress Shop of Dreams (15 page)

Maggie giggles. “You sound like someone in those silly spy books you love so much.” She kisses him. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. And we’ll do something absolutely wonderful with what we’ve discovered.”

“I hope so,” he says. “I hope so, I really do.”

“Oh, my darling.” Maggie kisses Robert again. “You worry too much.”

Cora blinks and her parents disappear.

Milly has invited Walt for dinner. He hasn’t been to her place before. They’ve always met in the bookshop and ended up at his flat in the evenings. But today she wants to be at home. She needs to be on her own territory for this; it’s time to tell him how she feels and what she wants.

“What’s wrong?” Walt asks. “Are you okay?”

Milly looks up at him. She’s cooked spiced chicken and sweet potatoes with chocolate mud pie for pudding. They eat on the sofa, the plates on their laps, since Milly’s flat is too small for a dining table. It’s a studio flat with a bed in the corner, a minuscule bathroom, a fridge, cooker and countertop. She doesn’t earn much managing the Craft & Curiosity Shop but what she misses in wages she makes up for in a staff discount at 75 percent. She’s bought so many beautiful things, cushions, throws, bags, pictures, that stepping into her house feels like stepping into the shop.

Milly opens her mouth. It’s time. She’ll tell him. Right now.

“Yes,” she says softly, “I’m fine.” Though of course she isn’t, she’s a coward. She loves, though, that he notices how she’s feeling and that he cares.

“You haven’t eaten your pie. Don’t you like it?” he asks.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit burnt on the bottom,” she says. “Sorry.”

“No,” Walt says, “not at all. It’s delicious.”

So thoughtful, so kind. Milly smiles, in spite of herself. “Thank you.”

Walt sets his empty plate on the floor. Gently, he takes Milly’s plate from her hands and puts it on top of his own. The china clinks—a bell sounding the start of something. Cora pops into his head and, gently, he pushes her out. He opens his arms.

“Come here.”

Milly shifts closer, discarding a silk pink cushion between them, and rests her head on his chest. Walt’s breathing is slow, soft, and it soothes her. He holds her, stroking her hair, until her eyes close and she feels herself falling asleep. Walt whispers words into her ear. At first she doesn’t realize what he’s saying and then she hears:

“I long for, a little life, a splash of sunlight …”

Milly sits up, eyes open. “How do you know that poem?”

“I don’t,” Walt says. “It’s framed on your wall.” He nods toward her bookshelves (mostly adorned with pretty boxes, origami stars, white feathers and bouquets of dried flowers instead of books) where the poem hangs alongside a garland of purple paper butterflies.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Milly says. “I forgot.” She thinks of days: the day they met, their wedding day, the day he died.

“Did you write it?”

“What?”

“The poem.”

“Oh, no,” Milly says, returning to him. “I found it. It arrived at our shop the same day my husband did. It became something very special to us.”

“Tell me about him.” Walt brushes a strand of Milly’s hair from her face. He wonders if Milly’s heart broke at the loss of her husband in the same way that Cora’s did at the loss of her parents when she was a girl, though this isn’t something he can ask either of them.

“Are you sure?” Milly asks.

“Of course, I want to know all about you, not just who you are now but who you were before I met you.” Walt sits up. He can do this, he thinks, he can learn to love her, he can. “Everything. All of it.”

Milly smiles. “Okay,” she says, “if you insist. But it’s mostly very boring, I warn you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“It’ll send you to sleep.”

“You forget, I’m a creature of the night. Nothing sends me to sleep,” Walt says with a cheeky grin, “not even Jane Austen.”

“Hush!” Milly exclaims, glancing around the room.

Walt laughs. “I don’t think she heard me.”

“I don’t understand how you can read so, so beautifully, like you’re in love with every character, every word,” Milly says, dropping her voice to a whisper, “when you don’t even like the books.”

It had been a huge disappointment to her when Walt had confessed he didn’t like
Sense and Sensibility
or, indeed, any of Austen or anything similar. She’s still trying to pretend he didn’t.

“Hugh loved Jane Austen, you know,” Milly says. “He read them all, even
Persuasion
. Sometimes we’d read them aloud together, as if they were plays.”

Walt is about to raise an eyebrow in mockery, before remembering they are talking about a deceased husband. Milly is a
widow
, he realizes. The word makes him think of wineglasses so delicate, so fragile you fear they might shatter in your grasp. She’s to be handled with extreme sensitivity and care. Walt glances down at his hands, probably too rough and clumsy for the task. Cora, the thicker-skinned sensible scientist, would probably be a perfect fit, though he mustn’t think of that.

“That’s … sweet,” Walt says. “He must have loved you like crazy.”

“Yes.” Milly smiles. “Yes, he did.”

She falls silent and Walt wonders what to say next. A dozen platitudes about love, life and death pop into his mind but they all seem too cheap and silly to say now. Walt had thought that tonight might be the night he finally stayed over, but now he isn’t sure he’s ready. Milly turns to look at him then and before she even opens her mouth Walt can hear the words in the air.
I love you
. She wants to say it. He can feel it vibrating off her skin, evaporating in waves of cinnamon and nutmeg. He breathes it
in. Then he sees the doubt in her eyes. He sees that she’s scared to say it; she probably wants him to say it first. But he can’t. Not yet. He cares for Milly. He could love her, he thinks, or at least something like love, if only he could give up the ghost of someone else. But these tentative, possible, maybe feelings pale in comparison so greatly to what Milly’s husband gave her that he can’t offer them now. However, he needs to give Milly something, to offer a piece of himself, a little slice of his heart. So Walt reaches into his back pocket and takes out his mother’s notebook.

“What’s this?” Milly asks as he hands it to her.

“It was my mother’s,” Walt says. “My father found it the night she died. She wrote it for me.”

“Oh.” Milly touches the notebook as if it were the most precious thing she’s ever held, as if it might crumble to dust in her fingers. “Oh.”

“Open it.”

Very slowly, Milly turns the first page. She studies it for a few minutes, squinting and frowning at the letters and numbers streaked and swirling across the paper. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Walt says. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure it out.”

“It’s like a code. Like Sudoku or something like that.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I’ve never been good at those sorts of things.”

“I’m okay,” she says. “I like doing
The Times
cryptic crossword.”

“Hey, that’s pretty impressive,” Walt says.

Milly shrugs. She wants to ask more about his mother, about his father, about his past. She wants to know everything about him, but she’ll wait.

“Thank you,” Milly says.

“For what?”

“For showing me.”

She leans forward and kisses him. She’ll save the confession for another day.

They slept together for the first time that night. Just slept, in each other’s arms, on the light blue velvet sofa with the pink silk cushions, and everything unsaid circling in the air around them.

Chapter Fifteen

E
tta chews her Chelsea bun slowly, plucking off pinches of dough while she gazes out of the window. Every time she sits here Etta hopes to see him, though she knows that, if not impossible, it’s improbable. For, fifty years ago, when she and the Saint parted, they’d agreed never to see each other again. And since Cambridge is too small a place for two people not wanting to meet accidentally on its streets, they decided to split the city in half. Now Etta waits at the boundary line, wishing she’d never made that promise and wishing she had the courage now to break it. With a sigh, Etta sips her coffee. It’s an especially quiet Sunday morning so her memories can play out perfectly, unrolling in her mind without interruption.

When Etta met the Saint, she’d only been engaged to Joe for six months though they’d known each other almost all their lives. She’d lived in the flat above the shop with her mother and
he’d lived just around the corner from All Saints’ Passage on Portugal Place. They had grown up together, cycling their bikes and kicking balls and playing tag. He was a handsome boy, with dark hair, beautiful skin and a tiny triangular birthmark in his left iris. Most of her girlfriends had enormous crushes on him, but Etta had never felt the spark. She liked him very much, as a best friend or a brother, but catching a glance of the mark in his eye didn’t make her quiver like all the other girls. It was to everyone’s surprise then that, when it was time for childhood friends to start falling in love, Joe chose Etta.

At first, she fobbed him off. She ignored the looks he gave her. She didn’t reply to his notes. She even encouraged him to give her girlfriends a chance. And then, one day, he did. On Valentine’s Day he showed up on her doorstep with a card but, before Etta could say anything, Joe opened it up.

“I was going to give this to you,” he said. “Now I’m giving it to Alice Mychik instead.” And he pointed to the place where her name had been crossed out and replaced with Alice’s. His handwriting was surprisingly small and neat.

Once Etta couldn’t have Joe anymore, she wanted him. She watched Joe holding hands with Alice and began to wonder if she hadn’t made a mistake. He became like the prettiest dresses in her mother’s shop, the ones that she wasn’t allowed to touch. Of course those were the ones she coveted most of all. When she tried on other dresses, ones not made with silk and lace, she’d only look in the mirror for a moment before turning to the prohibited racks and begging her mother. All her friends fancied Joe, after all, so he must be something special. With the forbidden dresses Etta didn’t even stop to consider whether they’d fit her figure or complement her coloring, and it was just the same with Joe.

So Etta set about trying to win him back. She gazed at him during classes, she sent notes, she offered to hold his hand, to let him kiss her cheek. At first Joe wasn’t interested, at least he didn’t seem to be. He ignored her notes, pretended he didn’t see her staring at him, and continued to flirt with all the other girls but her. Then one day, perhaps after deciding she’d been punished enough, he offered to walk Etta home. She glided along, every step as light as lace and as smooth as silk, barely able to stop smiling, fueled by joy, triumph and delight. When they turned the corner onto her street, Joe offered his hand and she took it. Their fingers didn’t fit together, knuckles rubbing awkwardly. Without saying anything, they tried different positions but nothing quite worked. Finally, Joe let Etta’s hand go and offered the crook of his arm instead. When he walked her to her door, Etta thought he might try to kiss her, but he didn’t. And she thought that as the years passed the awkwardness between them would soften and relax but it didn’t, not really. Etta simply became used to it and better able to smooth out the rough edges.

The Saint, on the other hand, was a perfect fit. From the first moment they touched, Etta knew it. The fact that she had to sit on her hands after that, to stop herself from reaching out and touching him again, confirmed it. And it wasn’t just that she wanted to touch, kiss and do all sorts of things she really shouldn’t be wanting, she wanted to talk with him as well. All the time. They met every Sunday afternoon at the candles under the Virgin Mary, said their prayers, then went for a long walk around the neighborhood. They talked about everything: flower power and feminism, their favorite Beatles songs, faith, the state of the world and what they wanted to do to make it a better place. He told her about the theology degree he’d just earned
and she told him about the dress shop, though not entirely everything about it.

Etta told herself she wasn’t doing anything wrong. They were just friends who talked a lot and made each other laugh. She wasn’t being disloyal to Joe and, to prove it, she never took off her engagement ring. For his part, the Saint either didn’t notice or pretended not to.

The first time the Saint told Etta she was beautiful, she knew they’d started skirting a dangerous line. It was fairly easy to tell yourself a friendship was innocent if nothing was ever said to indicate otherwise—what went on under the surface of things could be put down to imagination and fancy. But once an attraction was admitted, no matter how tentative, innocence was harder to feign.

“You shouldn’t say that,” Etta had said at first.

“Why not?” the Saint had asked. “If it’s the way I feel.”

He looked at her with bright blue eyes. It was an earnest look, full of sweetness and hope. And when she looked back into his eyes for a little too long, Etta entirely forgot she even knew a boy named Joe.

Henry waits a moment before knocking. When he tells Nick Fielding why he’s really here he’ll probably be chucked out on his ear. His superior officer, before retiring a decade ago, was known for having one of the worst tempers in the department—several times accused of assaulting suspects, though none of the charges ever stuck or held him back from promotion. He’d completed his career as chief superintendent probably because, Henry thought, the powers that be were as scared of him as the criminals were. And because he got results. Conviction rates went up 38 percent and crime fell by 23 percent while Nick
Fielding headed the Oxfordshire Constabulary. Figures so good for publicity that no one asked exactly how he achieved it.

Henry grips Cora’s case file tightly in one hand and reaches up to ring the bell. He waits for nearly a minute before he hears scuffling in the passageway and someone fumbling with the lock. When the door opens Henry tries hard not to show his shock. The man who’d scared the life out of him on several occasions has, in the last ten years, shriveled and shrunken into something rather resembling an overgrown goblin.