The Dress Shop of Dreams (25 page)

My dearest Milly, this will be my last letter to you. I don’t think we should write anymore. I’ve loved every one of your letters, and will treasure them always, but I think it’s time to stop
 …

Cora and Henry sit perched on the edge of Nick Fielding’s plastic-covered sofa. Cora’s fingers tremble under the old man’s angry gaze of pure hatred and she slips them under her knees, the palms of her sweaty hands squeaking as they stick to the plastic. Cora counts silently to herself. 68 green stripes on the sofa. 12 pictures on the walls, 5 paintings and 7 photographs. 9 silver trophies for golf tournaments. Zero books.

“So,” Nick snaps, “what the hell do you want this time? You’ve got less than five minutes before
Countdown
is on so you’d better bloody well hurry up.”

Cora glances at Henry, who gives her a slight nod.

“Go on,” he says, “tell him what you told me.”

A surge of panic floods through Cora’s chest and her palms sweat. She stares at the coffee table just beyond her feet and speaks to that, doing her best to pretend that she’s alone in the room, merely voicing her thoughts.

“My parents never drank, not ever. So if there was alcohol in those blood samples then either it wasn’t their blood or their drinks were spiked …”

It’s several seconds before Cora can look up again and, when she does, she glances over at Henry, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Nick Fielding. The old man shrugs.

“So? They made a mistake at the lab. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Bunch of bastard boffins,” Nick says, “with their chemicals and science, thinking they’re better than the rest of us doing the real police work.”

“Nice try, Nick.” Henry’s voice is sharp as glass. Next to him, Cora shivers. “But you’re lying.”

“What the hell do you know?” Nick barks. “You never even worked on the case, it was twenty years ago.”

Henry stands and walks slowly over to the plastic-covered chair in which former chief superintendent Nick Fielding is reclined. Cora watches him walk, a man suddenly transformed into someone hard and cruel and ruthless, someone who might threaten to snap an old man’s neck in order to get a piece of information he needed. Cora can’t see his face but she knows he must look like an entirely different man from the one she shared coffee with less than an hour ago. She can tell by his walk, by the way he holds his shoulders. This is a man who could terrify someone into a confession.

“What do you know?” Henry stops at the chair and leans in so close that Nick Fielding shifts away until his back is pressed against the chair.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re lying.”

“I did nothing wrong.”

“You’re lying.”

“Fuck you.”

Henry leans in closer still, dropping his voice so low that Cora has to shift nearer to hear. “The blood samples are still on file, I checked. And with her blood to compare them to—” Henry nods in Cora’s direction. “—I can reopen the case based
on corrupted evidence. You’ll be dragged through the mud. Your reputation, for what it’s worth, will be ruined. You may even go to prison. So tell me what you know.”

Nick Fielding stares at the man standing above him. He spits out his words, firing them into Henry’s stomach.

“I’m not saying anything without a lawyer.”

“You don’t have to, I’ve got everything I need,” Henry says with a smile. “Thank you.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

^“
W
hat do you know?” Cora hurries alongside Henry as they walk down the path toward the car. “He didn’t tell you anything.”

“Oh, yes he did,” Henry says, opening the car door and sliding inside. He’s himself now, soft and gentle again. No longer someone Cora would be scared to meet in a dark alley, but someone she’d confide all her secrets to over coffee. Henry starts the engine, pulls out of his parking space and does a U-turn in the road. Cora slides across her seat and scrambles for her seat belt.

“Where are we going?”

“To the scene of the crime.”

Etta can’t quite believe she’s about to do this. It has been nearly fifty years since she last saw the man whose heart she’s held in
her own all this time. She’s wearing a dress she has made especially for the occasion: dark blue velvet to the knee with patterns in emerald green beads around the hem, collar and cuffs. A scarf of shot silk, green and gold, drapes over her navy coat. Red patent-leather shoes complete the outfit.

Once Etta had made the decision to go to Sebastian she wasn’t able to wait. She stayed up all night sewing, finally finishing the dress just before dawn, and has now closed the shop in order to complete her mission, even though it’s a Wednesday, which is usually her busiest day. As she walks along King’s Parade, hands tucked deep into her pockets and head down against the wind, Etta smiles at the silliness of her urgency. She’s been sitting on her secret for nearly half a century and now, all of a sudden, she can’t possibly wait another minute before seeing Sebastian.

When Etta reaches Downing Street she stops. Fitzbillies stands at the corner. Now she can hardly believe that she’s spent the last fifty years sitting in the café three times a week gazing into no-man’s land, on to the street that divided her territory from his. How many hours has she wasted at the window, drinking tea and consuming near-deadly doses of sugar and hoping she’d one day see Sebastian? How had she never broken their pact, how had she had the willpower to never before cross over into his side of town?

With a single deep breath, Etta walks past Fitzbillies and turns onto Downing Street. She walks slowly now, taking her time to look at everything, anxious to see how it has changed in such an age. Surprisingly, excepting the addition of a rather soulless hotel and multistory car park, Etta finds the street hasn’t changed much at all. Though perhaps she shouldn’t be shocked since university buildings take up most of the space
and it is an institution that holds hard and fast to tradition, avoiding change. Etta walks past the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, past the Zoology Department where she once saw the skeleton of a finback whale. When Etta turns onto Regent Street she begins to hurry, almost breaking into a run, the landscape now forgotten as she’s overcome by the desire to see Sebastian again. Right now.

Etta can see the Catholic church before she reaches the end of the street. She has to stop and lean against a lamppost for a full minute before she can keep walking. When she reaches the crossroad leading to Hills Road, Etta lets the traffic lights change three times before she finally scuttles across the road on a red light, narrowly missing a car that honks at her as it screeches off. When she’s standing outside the open door to the church, Etta waits with her hand pressed against the wall. Perhaps Sebastian is saying mass or giving a service. Etta leans forward, poking her head halfway into the open doorway to listen for a voice she hasn’t heard for so long she wonders if she’ll remember the sound.

Just then, a man hurrying out of the church brushes roughly past Etta, almost knocking her over. For a second, as she stumbles, Etta imagines it is Sebastian. But when she looks up into the face of the man who now holds her elbow she’s disappointed to see that he’s far too young and doesn’t look like Sebastian at all, though of course Etta has no idea what Sebastian looks like anymore.

“Are you okay, madam?” he asks. He’s American, she notes, and looks not unlike Clark Gable.

Etta nods and feels herself flush just a little. Of all the film stars she loves to watch, Gable is hands down her absolute favorite. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Thank goodness for that,” the American says, smiling a charming smile, and hurries off along the street before she can say anything else.

Taking a moment to collect herself, Etta turns back to the open door.

Milly hasn’t had another letter from Walt since he wrote that he wouldn’t write again. She wonders if he’s purposefully avoiding the topic of children, since he didn’t mention the matter in his final letter, or punishing her for losing his mother’s notebook, withholding his written words while not admonishing her aloud. He hasn’t said anything about it since that night she cried. She hadn’t meant to cry, hadn’t done it on purpose to deflect his anger, hadn’t wanted to show him so much of her soul, but it all just came pouring out.

They’ve seen each other every day since then. Nothing is different that Milly can put her finger on and point to and, at the same time, everything is different. A gap has opened up between them, tiny at first, barely big enough to slip a blade of grass through. Now though, less than a week later, Milly could wiggle two fingers through the gap and it’s only getting bigger and bigger. She’s aware of it when they sit together and she wonders how he’s feeling, when they talk and everything they say seems hollow and meaningless, when she tries to catch Walt’s eye and he doesn’t quite meet hers. Now Milly definitely doesn’t have the courage to ask him, face-to-face, about having a baby.

So Milly has a plan. Sex. She’s going to seduce him. She’s going to bring them together again. It is time to wear the dress. The red dress of silk and lace has been hanging in Milly’s wardrobe since the day she bought it. Occasionally she will take it
out and hold it close, stroking its soft, silky folds against her cheek, breathing in its beauty, burying her face in the lace and allowing the scent of delight and joy to soak into her skin. But she hasn’t worn it yet. She’s been saving it for a very special occasion, not knowing what, when or where that would be. Until today.

Walt is coming over for dinner. She’s cooking him his favorite foods: fish, chips, mushy peas and flourless chocolate cake. She’s bought posh candles that smell of verbena and vanilla, a bottle of ten-year-old Merlot and a box of bitter mints to finish it all off. Of course, Milly knows that all this pales in comparison to the dress. It is the dress that will reunite them, the dress that’ll mean Walt, finally, won’t be able to keep his hands off her, the dress that’ll lead them to bed. Milly hopes, with such fervency she almost scares herself, that the particular powers of this undeniably magnificent and quite possibly enchanted dress will bring a particularly special magic to the bed when they finally fall into it.

“I’ve been here before,” Cora admits as they step out of the car. “I mean, not just when I was a child, but recently.”

Henry glances at her as they cross the road. “You have?”

“The day I first met you.”

They stand together on the pavement outside the house, both pausing in front of the steps and looking up at the door instead of at each other.

“Did you find anything?”

“No. At least nothing you could call evidence. I just …” Cora remembers her vision—the fire, the screaming—and then running out of the house. It isn’t something she wants to relay to Henry, though she suspects somehow that he won’t judge her
for it. Cora shifts her feet, now thinking of the lady of the house, flushing with embarrassment at the thought of seeing her again.

“Right, then.” Henry starts walking up the steps. “Let’s go.”

Cora follows behind him, holding back. “What are we hoping to find? It was twenty years ago. There won’t be evidence left of anything—”

Henry stops on the top step and turns back to her. “You never know what you’ll find anywhere, even when you think you do. Solving mysteries is as much about having an open mind as keeping your eyes open. Isn’t it the same in science?”

“Yes,” Cora admits, feeling chastised, even though she knows he doesn’t mean it that way. “I suppose it is.”

Henry is knocking on the door when a ringing vibrates from his coat. He pulls the phone out of his pocket. “Hello?”

Cora steps away to give him at least the illusion of privacy. She busies herself observing the environment: 16 parked cars on the street, 28 roses growing in the neighbor’s garden, 5 cigarette butts on the pavement.

“Fran? I can’t hear you. Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Henry says. “Are you at home? I’ll be right there.” He turns to Cora, who’s gazing fixedly at her feet. “I’ve got to go.”

“Okay,” Cora says, secretly rather relieved. “Well, we can come back another time.”

“It looks like they aren’t in anyway,” Henry says. “So I’ll call you later.”

She nods. “Okay.”

Henry dashes across the road to his car. When he’s turned on the ignition and Cora has one foot on the pavement, the door to number 25 Walton Street opens. Judith sticks her head out to see the young woman she thought she’d never see again, the one
who’d been screaming, who hadn’t been able to run out of her house fast enough.

Henry parks illegally and sprints along his ex-wife’s driveway. When she opens the door, Francesca is red-eyed and white-faced, but Mateo is in her arms, reaching out to his daddy.

“Papa, you’ve come home.”

Francesca holds her son out for Henry to take. As the boy snuggles in his father’s arms, Henry buries his head in the soft black curls, breathes in his smell and tries not to squeeze too tight.

“Mattie,” he whispers, “Matt-Matt. My little Matt-Matt.”

Francesca turns and walks slowly back down the corridor. Henry follows her into the kitchen. Francesca slides into a chair and Mateo wriggles out of Henry’s arms. Henry waits for his ex-wife to speak. When it’s clear she isn’t about to, he starts making coffee. Francesca rests her head on the table, long black tangles of hair spread out like tentacles, as her son shifts magnets into new shapes on the fridge and her ex-husband pours steaming water into a French press, setting it down with two cups and a bowl of sugar between them.

“I shouldn’t have called you,” Francesca says softly, from beneath her hair.

“Why not?” He pushes down the plunger and pours the coffee, adding two sugars to each cup. He glances over at the wine rack—rather at the space by the fridge where it usually stood—wondering if she might prefer alcohol to caffeine. Francesca drinks grappa whenever she gets bad news.

“Would you like something stronger?”

Francesca shakes her head.

“Well, I’m glad you called me. And whatever’s wrong, I’ll do everything in my power to help.” Henry sips his coffee and flinches. It’s far too strong for him, but it’s exactly how Francesca likes it.