Hannah Emery - The Secrets of Castle Du Rêve - A thrilling saga of three women’s lives tangled together in a web of secrets

Sally’s silver-blue eyes widened in wonder at the tale of Harry. She sighed when Victoria had finished talking, her slim face drawn down in disappointment that she wasn’t at the centre of this thrilling new romance.

‘Is he handsome?’ she asked without waiting for a response. ‘I wish I could meet someone handsome. I hate working at Clover’s. Do you think Harry has any nice friends who would like to meet me?’

‘I’ll ask him,’ Victoria said. She turned to the mirror, which she had brought downstairs with her when she had opened up the shop. ‘Do you think,’ she said quickly, ‘that I should start wearing my hair up more often? Do you think it makes me look older?’ Victoria tore off her red headband and gathered her black hair in her hands.

‘A little, perhaps.’ Sally frowned. ‘How old is Harry?’

Victoria shrugged. ‘I’m not sure, exactly. In his twenties, I think.’

‘Twenties? Wow, Victoria. I bet he’s nothing like the boys from school.’

Victoria grinned. ‘You’re right. He’s nothing like them at all. I have a special feeling about him. I feel so excited all of the time.’ She poured two cups of tea from the teapot that she’d also brought downstairs. Every Tuesday when she visited Lace Antiques, Sally always stayed for a cup of tea served in one of the beautifully fragile china cups that had been collected by the shop over the years. Victoria had bought an orange sponge cake from Blythe’s Bakery across the road yesterday and had already sliced a piece each for Sally and herself.

They sat chatting about Harry for a while, the cake and cups between them on the counter, the sweet tang of orange in the air, until Sally stood up from her stool and brushed down her striped dress, yawning as though everything was a terrible bore. ‘I suppose I’d better be going. Mum’s given me so many jobs to do at home that Tuesday rarely feels like a day off lately.’

When she’d waved Sally off down the street, Victoria poured herself another cup of tea. She had chosen the blue cup, the one with the very fine crack around the base, finer than a hair. Using the blue cup took a certain amount of bravery; it could split and break at any moment. But today felt like a day where it wouldn’t split. And feelings were everything. Whenever Victoria felt something, it was usually right. And that is why, when Harry didn’t come through the door of Lace Antiques that day, or the next day, or the day after that, Victoria couldn’t quite believe it.

Surely the Robert Bell talks have been arranged by now , Victoria thought on Friday. Her mother had been in bed all week, and her father rarely bothered to work in the shop, so Victoria had spent three days waiting for the door to open and Harry to saunter in. She couldn’t remember if he was the sauntering kind, but she thought that he might be.

‘Where is he?’ she asked Frederick the cat. ‘Do you think he’ll ever return here?’

Frederick glanced at her regally, then began licking his pristine grey coat. Victoria touched her shoulder where Frederick’s claws had dug into her when Harry had been there. The mark had gone, she had seen that morning as she had dressed; the final speck of dried blood had been brushed away to reveal brand-new skin. It was, quite simply, as though nothing had ever happened.

Suddenly alive with frustration, Victoria took one final look at the unmoving front door, burst out of the back of the shop and flew up the narrow stairs and along the landing to her mother’s bedroom. She swung the door open, stagnant air rushing from the room in a bid to escape.

‘Are you getting up today, Mum? I need to leave the shop. I need to go out somewhere.’

There was a murmur from the bed, from beneath the mound of knotted blankets and pillows.

‘Mum?’

It was quite normal for Victoria’s mother to spend days, sometimes weeks, in bed. Mrs Lace did not live , she slept. Sometimes, she would get dressed and float down to the shop, stinking of perfume, long strings of pearls rattling around her slender neck. But then Victoria’s father would storm home and shout something, or worse, smoulder silently and then push past them both. Silence meant the worst, because silence was normally followed by a storm. Storms were followed by the pearls being hung up in an upstairs cupboard, the perfume fading, and Victoria’s mother returning to her bed for a week or so.

‘I heard you, darling. I’ll be down later, perhaps.’

Victoria stood in the doorway of the bedroom. The air was heavy with sleep, with heavy breaths and dreams and sweat. Her mother’s bony body was motionless in the middle of the bed somewhere. Victoria gazed at the dressing table to her right, from which makeup and jewellery spilled. She wandered over and touched a lipstick. Her mother still did not move. Victoria picked the lipstick up, twisting the base to reveal a shock of pointed red wax. She stared at the lipstick for a moment before twisting it back down and replacing the lid with a quiet click. Clutching it, she turned around.

‘Be careful with that,’ she heard her mother murmur as Victoria left the room.

By the time Victoria had applied the lipstick and wiped away the smear that bled out from her top lip onto her pale skin, and put on her favourite yellow shoes, and transferred the small amount of money in the till to the locked cabinet in the kitchen, as she did every night, it was almost three o’clock. Victoria’s father was normally back home at around seven, after drinking in The Smuggler’s Ship.

Four hours was plenty.

She locked the shop door quietly, just in case the sound did make her mother get up out of bed. As she left Lace Antiques and stepped out onto Castle Street, Victoria stole a brief glance at her mother’s bedroom window upstairs. Her jittering heart stilled when greeted with unmoving curtains, behind which a sleepy darkness was promised.

From the rocky beach at the bottom end, Silenshore rose upwards in an uneven hill, to where the silvery-grey spires of the University rose into the clouds. Victoria could remember being tugged along by her mother on rare occasions when she was very small, up Castle Street, and perhaps into the butcher’s and the bakery and Boots the chemist. But every time they got near the top of the hill, where the fragrance of salt and sand faded and was replaced by the damp, dark scent of the old castle towering above them, her mother would grip Victoria’s hand so tightly that Victoria could feel their bones clicking against each other, and they would turn around to walk home in a mysterious silence. So Victoria had never, ever gone further than a third of the way up the hill, past the colourful, exotic window of Harper’s Dresses.

Until now.

The spring air was warm and as she walked briskly upwards, Victoria felt her clothes become damp with perspiration. She stopped for a moment and sat on a bench outside Harper’s. Fumbling with her handbag, she took out a mint and placed it on her tongue. She hadn’t been nervous before she’d left the shop, so where had the sudden shaking fingers, the shallow breaths come from?

She crunched down on the mint, and stood up, swallowing the glassy fragments as she neared the wide expanse of shadows cast down by the sprawling university. Now that she was getting closer to the imposing stone building, the looming, ghostly turrets that Victoria had gazed at so many times throughout her childhood were somehow less intimidating, and more elegant than Victoria had ever noticed. Arched windows glittered beneath them, the golden stone carved with intricate detail to frame the leaded glass.

Victoria followed the signs for the English department and, with short breaths and the image of Harry firmly before her eyes, picked up pace along the cobbles. Although the term was probably over, he might still be busy speaking to students or other lecturers. But as soon as he saw that Victoria was outside his office, he might dismiss them. They would pass her, whispering the rumours they had heard about Harry’s new love who had the name of a queen, who had raven-black hair and porcelain skin, that this must be her, that she was just like the girl everyone was talking about.