The Dress Shop of Dreams (20 page)

Now Dylan writes:

I believe that soul mates will always find each other, that true love will weather all storms, that people who want to be together will always find a way, that once our hearts find a home in another then they will stay, that false love will fade away and be forgotten in time, that a free heart is happier than an unloved one
.

Dylan isn’t simply being self-serving, he believes all that and more. He believes that if Walt and Milly are meant to be together
then a few letters from him won’t stand in their way. And that if they’re not (as he hopes), Walt will find someone else to love. But he tries not to think too much about what the fallout could be and how he’s going to explain himself once his epistolary identity fraud comes to light. Because it will, that much is clear.

One day Milly is going to say something to Walt about all these letters he’s supposedly sending her and then all hell will break loose. Although Dylan entertains fantasies of a fifty-year romance of letters, conducted while Milly and Walt get married and raise children, continuing until she dies, he knows that such things are not possible. Husbands and wives tend to talk about the intimate details of their lives, including the love letters they’re secretly sending each other. And of course there is the small matter of the fact that, once they’re sharing the same address, postal privacy would be rather harder to maintain. So Dylan knows that, sooner or later, the end must come. Until then, however, he will keep writing …

How many times have you read
Sense & Sensibility
? It sounds as if you know it by heart. I must confess I’ve only read it once but I loved it, deeply. The moment when Elinor realizes Edward isn’t married after all, and sobs, it brought tears to my eyes. I’m not saying that any of those tears actually fell down my cheeks (that would be too much for me to confess, I think) but I was significantly moved. I watched the film a few days ago, the one Emma Thompson won an Oscar for, well-deserved I think. She did that sobbing scene justice. Hats off to her. I don’t know how these actors do it, really. Are they really just pretending, or are they really feeling what they seem to be feeling, just in that moment? It seems so real to me. If someone acted like that with me, I’d believe them. If Emma Thompson sobbed for me the way she sobbed for Hugh Grant, then I’d think she loved me too. Is
Sense & Sensibility
your favorite book of all? If not, what is? And why? And your film, what film do you love more than any other? And, if you can’t pick one (I can’t) then pick many and tell me what and why for each of them. Tell me that, tell me everything …

Milly sits next to Walt in the darkened cinema. Robert Redford and Mia Farrow declare their love for each other onscreen and Milly blinks, trying to concentrate.
The Great Gatsby
is one of her favorite books and she loves the film, but she’s finding it hard to focus. All she can think about is Walt’s latest letter. She knows they agreed not to talk about the letters, to keep that part of their relationship separate, secret, private, so she won’t mention them aloud but that promise can’t stop her thoughts.

It’s a strange thing, Milly realizes, that she feels closer to him while she reads what he writes than when she listens while he speaks. She feels closer to Walt thinking of his letters than she does sitting next to him right now. In his letter he admits to things he denies face-to-face—like his love of Austen—and she wonders why he holds back in person. It’s even true of when they kiss. As their lips touch, she lets his sentences collect and curl in the air between them. She seeks comfort in his written words when she feels alone, when they’ve run out of things to say to each other, which happens more often than Milly would care to admit. Which is why, slightly silly secret though it is, she will keep writing to Walt at the station and never mention aloud what they’re doing.

Walt leans across the seat and presses his mouth close to her ear. “Shall we go for a drink in the café afterward?”

Milly nods, not taking her eyes off the screen. He’s as distracted as she is and he hasn’t even seen the film a dozen times; he clearly isn’t enjoying it.

“I need caffeine,” he whispers. “I’m falling asleep.”

“You’re bored.”

“No, no.” Walt shakes his head. “I’ve just been having trouble sleeping lately, that’s all.”

“Oh?”

“It’s nothing,” Walt says. “It’s not—”

“Shush!” A voice from the row behind admonishes them. Walt and Milly exchange a silent smile, drawn together by a common enemy. He reaches for her hand and squeezes it. She snuggles down in her seat and nestles into his shoulder. While Mia Farrow cries onscreen, Milly closes her eyes, remembering Walt’s last letter:

Thursday, 30th April

I don’t need to address you anymore. I know who you are, you know who I am. I don’t write to anyone else. I don’t think of anyone else. It is you for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I often snack on you in between. I never knew that love is so substantial, so nourishing, so all-encompassing. I must admit I always thought all those poets and writers were exaggerating, dipping into hyperbole for dramatic effect. Either that or they just felt things differently to the common man. But I was wrong
.

I can’t put things as well as you. When you write about love, I feel as if I’m holding you in my arms and you’re whispering every word into my ear, your breath warming my skin. But when I try to explain myself, I feel clumsy, reaching for explanations, searching the English language for adequate sentences to reflect my feelings. And nothing will ever do. It’s all a shadow of what’s in my heart, it’s a muddled, muddy mess of striving and searching and failing. I’m sorry. I only hope you can feel how I feel, even though I’m doing a thoroughly appalling job of saying it
.

You wrote before of how your father never told you he loved you, never actually said the words. It seems silly of me to assure you that he did, since we’ve never met, though I can’t imagine how he couldn’t, so I’m convinced he did. Still, every person should be told, if they are in any doubt. Perhaps in the closest relationships people never say it, since they don’t need to, if it’s within every look, inside every gesture and underneath every word. I’m not sure if that is true of us yet, so let me step in and say: I love you, I love you, I love you
 …

Milly strokes her fingertips along Walt’s hand. It should be enough, she thinks, that he writes the words, she shouldn’t need to hear them out loud, too. But it’s no use telling herself that, since she can’t help wanting it anyway, every minute of every day. Milly turns her head up to his face and he looks down at her.

“Tell me you love me, please,” she says. “I want to hear you say it.”

Walt feels something tighten inside him. He knew this day would come soon, he knew it wouldn’t be long, he’d only hoped to delay it a little longer, to give his heart a chance to catch up with his head. He didn’t want to lie to her, he wanted to wait
until he could tell her he loved her and it would be pure and true. He wanted to wait until he could at least stop thinking of Cora twenty times a day. But now Milly is looking up at him with wide eyes full of hope and desire and, not wanting to hurt her, there is nothing else Walt can say.

“I … I love you.”

Chapter Nineteen

^“
I
t’s okay,” Etta says, “it’ll be okay.”

“How will it be okay?” Cora says. “I turned down Angola. I haven’t got a job. I haven’t got a purpose. I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ll find another firm to fund your research, you’ll be able to complete it, you might just have to take a break, that’s all. But you’ll do it in the end, I’m sure.”

“Are you?” Cora asks. “Do you know how hard it is to get scientific funding nowadays? Do you know how many other research groups we had to beat out to get that Royal Society grant? Six hundred twenty-six.”

“Gosh,” Etta says. “Well, yes, I suppose it won’t be easy, but you’ll do it. You’re brilliant. You’re the most brilliant scientist I know.”

At this, Cora can’t help but smile, even in her sorry state.
“And how many scientists have you known in your life, Grandma?”

Etta shrugs. “Including your parents and you? Probably three.”

“Yes, I thought as much.”

They’re sitting on the floor in A Stitch in Time, surrounded on all sides by dresses of every imaginable color. Cora realizes as she glances around, her gaze flitting quickly from one wall to the next, that Etta has arranged them like the seasons: sparkling whites, grays, blacks for winter; shimmering greens and blues for spring; pinks and purples for summer; reds, oranges and yellows for autumn. Together they are breathtaking, almost too bright if stared at for too long, like falling through a rainbow lit by the sun.

“You can always swap this science stuff for sewing,” Etta suggests. “I think you might enjoy working here. I can’t say you’ll save the whole world here, admittedly, but I do believe I help it along a bit, one dress, one life, one heart at a time.”

Cora glances down at her clothes—faded blue jeans and a green jumper—then looks pointedly at her grandmother’s red velvet dress, purple tights and violet bolero.

“I don’t think the customers would trust my taste, do you?”

Etta smiles. “Perhaps not now, but we could always spruce you up a bit.”

“Of all the things I could ever imagine doing, of all the fields I could work in, I’m afraid couture isn’t one of them,” Cora says. “I think I’d probably make a better waitress than a seamstress.”

“Maybe,” Etta says, “but then maybe you don’t know what you’re capable of until you try it and see.”

Cora rolls her eyes, settling her gaze on the white dresses sparkling like fresh snow in sunlight. “What I
can
do isn’t really
the point, it’s what I
should
do, which is do the thing my parents never got the chance to. They gave me the ability to do it, to do something that will actually save people’s lives.”

“Yes, but—”

“No,” Cora says, “I don’t think you understand. If I don’t do it, then it’s like … it’s like I’m letting someone die when I have the power to let them live.”

Etta sits up a little straighter, smoothing the red velvet beneath her palms. “Well then, there is only one thing for it.”

“What?”

“It’s time to get you into the changing room.”

Miraculously for Milly, Walt still hasn’t asked the whereabouts of his mother’s notebook. It’s been a while since he lent it to her and she’d expected him to want it back after just a day or two. But perhaps he’s giving her a bit more time, hoping that another miracle might happen and she might decipher it. Sadly, there is next to no chance of that. In her rare free moments, those when Milly hasn’t been reading and rereading Walt’s letters and writing her own, she’s been trying vainly to make sense of the few pages she’d copied out of the notebook before losing it. It’s the strangest code, random jumbles of letters and numbers, one that makes absolutely no sense at all. Milly’s always been good at cryptic crossword puzzles and sometimes even dabbles in Sudoku during dull periods in the shop. But this code is impossible. As impossible, it turns out, as confessing to Walt that she’s lost it.

Milly still listens to Walt every night without fail. When she wakes the next morning, his voice echoes in her head, the sentences of the stories he reads mixing with those of his letters. She wonders how many other women are listening, imagining
him lying next to them in bed, making love … Lately Milly has been having rather wicked thoughts that won’t leave her alone. She tries to push them away, she tries to think of other, better and purer things, but she can’t, no matter how hard she tries she can’t.

Milly has wanted a baby for as long as she can remember. Since she first hugged a doll to her chest and stroked her blond hair while whispering soft words in her china ear. When other little girls imagined their weddings, wearing pillowcases over their heads, Milly imagined what it would be like to feel a being growing inside her, tiny arms and legs kicking, until she gave birth and could finally hold the new life she’d created, wet and warm and screaming in her arms.

Incredibly Hugh had wanted a child too, as soon as possible. They’d even discussed it on their first real date (dinner in a pizza restaurant followed by a walk along the river from Clare College to Trinity) and had agreed on three to start, with an option to add another after further consultation. They’d begun trying after they married four months later. Twelve barren months after that, Hugh died, and the only two dreams of Milly’s life (for a husband and children) died with him. Grief had buried hope and desire for ten years, until she met Walt.

They haven’t talked about babies yet, not specifically at least, or written about them. Milly doesn’t quite dare put her most desperate and precious of dreams into words yet, because she isn’t sure he’ll echo her feelings, but perhaps soon. He’s said he wants to be a father. Walt is friendly with babies and children when encountering them in public places, tickling their chubby fingers and making them explode with giggles. This gives Milly hope.

They haven’t made love yet, Walt has been curiously cautious
physically, but Milly hopes it won’t be long now. She’s thirty-nine, after all, she doesn’t have that much longer to wait. When they finally start having sex, would it be so very bad if they had an “accident”? After the initial shock, everything might work out beautifully. They love each other; they would love their child. But, of course, however hard she tries to convince herself, Milly knows it’d be a dreadful thing to do. She can’t betray his trust so completely. She can’t take a baby from a man without first asking him to give it. And yet … is her desire greater than her devotion? Perhaps. Once the thought seeded itself, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. In the beginning she’d thought only of him but now this imagined being has snatched much more than its fair quota of love from the heart Milly has handed to Walt.