The Dress Shop of Dreams (16 page)

“Get inside then,” Nick snaps, “or you need me to hold your hand?”

Diminished in stature then, but not in spirit, Henry thinks.

“Thank you,” he says, and follows the old man down the hallway. They step into a living room with frayed gray carpets underneath an orange-and-green-striped three-piece suite, still wearing its plastic protection, clustered around a glass coffee table. Nick eases himself onto the sofa and regards Henry, who lingers in the doorway, suspiciously.

“Are you going to sit or stand there like a lemon?” Nick asks.

Actually Henry would love a cup of tea, even a glass of water, to help take the edge off what he’s about to do, but since he’s clearly not going to be offered either, he sits gingerly on the edge of the nearest chair. They sit in silence for a moment. Henry studies the faded yellow wallpaper.

“Well, what’s this about then? Get on with it. I haven’t got all day.”

“Yes, of course,” Henry says, though he can’t imagine what other pressing engagements are pushing him out the door. “I came to see you about a case I’m working on—”

“So you said on the phone,” Nick interrupts. “If you’re going to repeat yourself we’ll be here all day.”

“Okay, well, it was an old case of yours,” Henry blurts out, “two Oxford academics died in a house fire: Maggie and Robert Carraway.”

“Doesn’t ring any bells.”

Henry opens the file and slides it across the coffee table. “It was ruled accidental. But I have reason to believe it might have been arson.”

“Do you now?” Nick says. “And what do you care about a twenty-year-old case?”

“Their daughter came to me a few weeks ago. She wants to reopen it.”

“Does she now?” Nick sits back into the sofa and the plastic covers scrunch slightly under him. “Pretty girl, was she?”

Henry doesn’t like the way Nick looks at him, doesn’t appreciate the implication of the question. It makes him think of Francesca, who could stop the words in his throat with just one look, but for a different reason. Then he thinks of Cora.

“No, not especially,” Henry says, perched on the edge of the plastic-coated chair, slightly afraid he might at any moment slide off onto the floor. “So, can you tell me what you remember about the case? Anything unusual, anything out of place?”

Nick Fielding shakes his head and shrugs. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. There was nothing unusual about that case. Open and shut. I’ve nothing else to tell.”

Oh, but you do, and you just did
, Henry thinks.
You just don’t know it
.

“They must have made a great scientific discovery,” Cora says. “I don’t know what it was, but the way they were talking … it could only be that.”

Etta nods. They sit on the banks of the river on the lawns of
Trinity College, snuggled in their coats. It’s a cold morning and the river is empty of punts, the paths empty of tourists. Etta persuaded her granddaughter to venture out for a walk, citing fresh air as good for the brain cells, knowing Cora forgets to exercise unless forced.

“So that’s what Maggie was going to tell me.” Etta says, her breath puffs of clouds in the air. “If only I’d stopped long enough to listen.”

“Unless it’s just a figment of my imagination,” Cora says.

“No.” Etta takes her granddaughter’s cold fingers and rubs them between her palms. Cora looks up into her grandmother’s gray-blue eyes and, in that moment, she no longer
thinks
what she saw was true, she
knows
. It’s still a strange experience, having faith instead of facts. It’s odd the way her heart has been triumphing over her head lately. Having spent her whole life ignoring it, prizing facts over feelings, Cora’s surprised it still works at all.

“But what will we do now?” she asks. “We’ve got no proof, no empirical evidence. I can’t go back to the police and tell them I’m having visions.”

“Why not?”

Cora can’t tell whether or not Etta is serious.

“Well, for a start, I’d rather not lose my reputation as a scientist,” Cora says. “I still have hopes of doing something …” She trails off, too embarrassed to admit the full grandiosity of her desires to another person, even her adoring grandmother.

“What about that nice chap you saw in Oxford, the policeman?” Etta asks. “The one who helped you before.”

“He was probably just taking pity on me.” Cora shrugs. “And however nice he is, I doubt he believes in investigating cases based on intuitive whims without corroboration. And he
shouldn’t, I wouldn’t. At least, not before …” She trails off, unable to articulate just what’s been happening to her lately.

“I could never be a scientist. No imagination, no fiction, no magic.” Etta sighs. “I don’t know how you don’t die of boredom.”

“How can you say that?” Cora exclaims. “There’s incredible imagination in science. It’s what matters most of all. Einstein said,
‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’
That’s how all the great leaps are made, when a scientist thinks of something she can’t yet prove, then dedicates her life to trying.”

Etta regards her suddenly impassioned granddaughter curiously. “Are you speaking from experience? Because I always thought you were rather suspicious of imagination and all that is plucked out of the air, unmeasurable, untestable, unquantifiable.”

“Maybe.” Cora smiles, realizing how much she’s changing. “I don’t believe in imagination that doesn’t undergo rigorous tests. At least I didn’t used to, before … Anyway, ‘unmeasurable’ isn’t a word.”

“Come here.” Etta wraps her arms around Cora and they sit together, nestled up close in the cold, watching the ducks dipping their heads into the river as they drift. 7 ducks, Cora notes, a prime number, the square root of 49.

“I’d hate to be a duck in winter,” Etta says. “Their feet must freeze.”

“Not really,” Cora says. “At zero degrees ducks lose only five percent of their body heat through their feet. They have a counter-current heat exchange system between the arteries and veins.”

Etta laughs. “What are you talking about? Speak English.”

“Their blood keeps their feet cool so they don’t lose heat in cold water,” Cora explains. “Because the smaller the temperature
difference between two objects, the more slowly heat will be exchanged.”

“You had me until ‘water,’ ” Etta says. “You lost me after that. How I, such a free-spirited artist, produced two mad scientists like you and Maggie, I really can’t think.”

“I don’t know. But I’m glad you did.”

“Me too.” Etta smiles. “Me too.”

Cora finds her grandmother’s hand and holds it. She isn’t used to the way she feels. She doesn’t want to go back to the lab or stare into microscopes, she doesn’t want to think about policemen or anything else. She just wants to sit and hold the hand of the person she loves most in the world. The ice around her heart isn’t just thawing now, it’s melting fast. It’s a bit unnerving but rather lovely and she probably can’t do much to reverse it now. And so Etta and Cora sit by the river, until their fingers and toes are numb, and for a while the question of death and police investigations and what they are going to do next is forgotten.

Chapter Sixteen

M
illy lies in Walt’s arms. She has to position herself just so in order not to slide off the sofa. But she doesn’t want to move, she doesn’t want to wake him. Walt snores softly, the tips of his ears wiggling with every exhalation. Milly smiles. She watches Walt while he sleeps, craning her neck back to get a better view. He sleeps so peacefully, so openly, so completely, like a child: arms and legs flung out, tummy exposed, open to the world. He shifts in his sleep and a little smile opens his mouth. Milly gazes at him and realizes then, clearly and absolutely, that she’s kidding herself. She will never tell him she loves him to his face. No. It’ll have to be done a different way. She could call him. But that wouldn’t be very elegant, and she’ll still be waiting to see whether he’ll say it back.

Then she remembers the way they met: a letter. A letter is perfect. She’ll write it now before she chickens out. Gently lifting
Walt’s arm from around her waist, Milly slides off the sofa onto the floor. She sits on the cream carpet for a moment, glancing about for paper and pens in the moonlight. Walt’s notebook lies a few feet away on the floor, illuminated, almost glimmering in the light. She picks it up.

Turning the pages very gently, Milly traces her fingers over the jumble of letters and numbers. She thinks of Walt’s dead mother and the cryptic memento she left him. What on earth is it? What does it mean? She’d love to be able to decipher it for him, to bring a piece of his mother back. She’s sorry that Walt’s parents are gone, sorry for him and sorry that she’ll never meet them. She’d love her parents to meet Walt. They’ve worried about her since Hugh’s death and she’d like them to see her happy again. They’d also long ago given up on grandchildren, and Milly, seeing how Walt loves babies, is rather keen to give them hope on that front, too.

Holding the notebook, Milly stands and walks across the room. She lifts a pad of paper, the pages embedded with rose petals, off the bookshelf. It’s the paper she wrote her first letter to Walt on, which might bring luck. It’s also her best, reserved for such special occasions. Milly picks a pen, one with magenta ink to match the roses, from a tiny china pot. She walks back to the sofa and sits on the floor with the notebook and paper in her lap. The notebook will infuse her words with power and potency. So, as the moonlight fades and the sun slowly rises, Milly writes, the lines of her letter ebbing and flowing with the rise and fall of Walt’s snores.

Etta slept with the Saint a month after he told her she was beautiful. Right up until the moment they fell onto his bed, her dress already unzipped, Etta promised herself it wouldn’t happen, they were only friends, they would resist. But really she had known from the moment they met that—if he wanted her—she would give him everything, every inch, every part and piece of herself. And when she finally did, making love with the Saint was the most heart-expanding, mind-eclipsing magical night of her life. Every moment, every touch—even the fumbles and the first initial flash of pain as he pushed inside her—was infused with delight and joy.

When Etta thought about that night afterward, and she did so often, she tried to compare it with other experiences in her life, though the similes never quite matched up. Sex with the Saint was like falling into a pile of enchanted dresses; like chocolate cake, cherries and cream; like sunlight on bare skin; like dancing, singing and laughing. Except that it wasn’t, not even, not hardly, nothing she’d ever known before could touch it. Etta was sometimes shocked to remember that she’d been so consumed with pleasure and passion that night, she hadn’t even had the decency to think of Joe or to feel guilty. Not even a little. Not once.

When they woke the morning after, his head pressed to her breasts, his foot clasped between hers, Etta told herself that it was the first and last time. But she knew that it wasn’t. Given the chance, she knew she’d do it all over again, that night and every night for the rest of her life.

During her lunch hour Milly usually wanders around town eating her sandwiches and window-shopping, leaving her assistant, Cheryl, in charge of the Craft & Curiosity Shop. Since meeting Walt she’s often gone to Blue Water Books and shared the hour with him. They sit behind the counter, eating and talking, watching customers wandering in and out. But today she’s got something else to do; today she has to post a letter.

Milly had considered simply giving Walt the letter, then scampering off to be somewhere else while he read it. But that’d be silly. She also thought of leaving it at his house, or in the bookshop, but finally decided on posting it to the radio station, just as she did with the first one. It might bring her luck, she hopes, since the last time she sent a letter there it brought Walt to her.

In addition to the letter, Walt’s notebook nestles in Milly’s handbag. He’d left it at her flat that morning as he rushed off to work. Intending to restore it to him later, she’d spent the morning trying to make sense of something, anything, in the pages full of puzzles. She dips into it now and then as she walks through town.

Drifting in and out of shops, buying a few things here and there, a hopeless attempt to postpone the posting, Milly finds herself, like a lovesick homing pigeon, at the corner of All Saints’ Passage. But she’s not ready to see Walt yet, she hasn’t let go of the letter. It still sits in her overflowing handbag, underneath boxes of vitamins, face cream, fragrant tissues, an empty can of ginger beer and an empty packet of chocolate mints—fortification for the job at hand.

Before turning out of the street, Milly stops at a bin to empty her bag of clutter. When she looks up again she sees the window full of dresses. They shimmer and sparkle, sequins and beads glimmering, flashing and winking, inviting her in. Milly shakes her head. Now is not the time for beautiful dresses. But she still remembers the way she looked in that mirror—the image seared like the sun on her eyes, she only has to blink to see it. Would it
hurt to step inside again? Would it invoke fate too strongly to try the dress just once more, to touch the silk and lace between her fingers?

Dinah Washington belts out “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” as Milly steps inside. She doesn’t see Etta until she’s standing right beside her.

“You came back.”

“Yes,” Milly says, surprised she’s so memorable since it’s the last thing she imagines herself to be. “I thought … I hoped maybe I could try on the dress again, if it hasn’t been sold.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Etta says. “It’s been waiting for you.”

“Really?” Milly smiles. She’s missed it, too, though is rather embarrassed to admit it.

Ten minutes later, clothes and handbag discarded on the floor, Milly stands in front of the mirror staring at herself wearing the red dress of silk and lace. Milly had thought her memory of the dress had been gold-tinted, a wish fulfilled in fantasy. But it wasn’t. If anything she’s more beautiful now than she was before.

“You’re glowing,” Etta says softly.