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

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On Friday, Isobel stays in her classroom for a while after the last class has gone. She marks practice exams, ticking and crossing deftly, until the pile on her desk is finished. She stands up and grabs her coat from the back of the chair, shivering as the cool air from the room snakes around her. As she glances out of the window, she sees something that makes her move closer to the glass. Tom’s Volkswagen Polo is parked outside and if she squints Isobel can see Tom sitting in the driver’s seat. He must be waiting for her, although they haven’t planned anything: Tom said he was working tonight and Isobel has plans for a night in with Iris.

Isobel takes her bag from the desk and rushes from her classroom and down the staircase. The side entrance is locked, so she flies through the main doors and round to where Tom waits.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says breathlessly as she pulls the passenger door open.

Tom leans over and grins. ‘It’s a good job Iris warned me you’d come out late, otherwise I might have thought you’d succumbed to the curse of the vanishing people of Silenshore!’

‘But what are you doing here? I thought you were working tonight.’

‘Nope. Get in.’

Iris throws her bag into the foot well and climbs into the car, still catching her breath. ‘When did you speak to Iris?’

‘When she was helping me plan this weekend. She told me what to pack for you. I didn’t have a clue.’

‘Pack? For what?’

‘Oh, I’m taking you away for a night. It’s been a crazy few weeks, what with our shock and everything. I think we need a treat. We’re driving to London tonight. It’ll be late when we get there but we’ll stay over, then spend the day there tomorrow. If you want to, that is.’

Isobel feels her heart rush at Tom, the way he’s packed the car – she sees her floral weekend bag squashed onto the backseat – the way he’s spoken to Iris and planned a surprise. ‘Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before,’ she says.

‘Well, I’m glad to be the one to do it, then,’ Tom says as he starts the car. He leans across and kisses her softly on the cheek. ‘Ready?’

‘You really have all my stuff?’ Isobel asks, incredulous.

‘Yep. Straighteners, shampoo and conditioner, your facewash in the green bottle, some blue dress that Iris picked, phone charger, makeup bag, toothbrush…I think that’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Pyjamas?’

Tom wiggles his eyebrows comically. ‘Not needed.’

Isobel laughs, excitement fizzing up inside her and spilling out. ‘Then let’s go!’

The next morning, after lying under the crisp, tight hotel sheets and sitting in a warm bath filled with chalky complimentary bath salts, Isobel kneels on the floor in front of a brightly lit mirror and puts on her makeup. Her skin has always been clear and pale, but pregnancy is doing strange things to her, sending chemicals soaring through her blood and out of her pores. Her face is rounder now, too. She brushes some translucent powder over her pink cheeks and sits back.

‘So are you still not going to tell me what we’re doing today?’ she asks Tom, who is lying on the bed reading the free newspaper.

He puts the paper down on the bed and sits forward. After staring at her own face in the mirror, Isobel feels a surge of pleasure from looking at Tom’s. His features are defined, but not sharp. His teeth are straight and white. She went out with a man before Tom whose teeth you couldn’t see because he never really smiled, so that every time she wasn’t with him, she couldn’t remember what his teeth looked like. With Tom, she can always picture his smile perfectly.

‘No, I’m not telling you anything yet’ he says. ‘You’ll find out where we’re going when we get there.’

‘Are you driving us there?’

‘No, we’ll leave the car parked here.’

‘Well, then, I’ll know what we’re doing when we get off the Tube.’

‘We’re not getting the Tube,’ Tom says, moving from the bed and sitting on the floor next to Isobel amongst lipstick and powder, eyeliner and blusher brushes.

‘Well, then I’ll know when you tell the cab driver.’

Tom shakes his head and laughs. ‘Smart arse.’

When they climb into the juddering black Hackney cab that smells of the cabbie’s leather jacket and yesterday’s cigarettes, Tom hands him a note that Isobel saw him scribble in the hotel reception just before they left. The driver rolls his eyes, gives a brief nod, then swings the cab out of the hotel’s grounds and onto the road carelessly.

When the taxi stops, Tom turns to Isobel and raises a dark eyebrow.

‘Portobello Road!’ she gasps.

‘Yeah. You’ve mentioned that you like vintage things a lot, so I thought we should do this kind of thing before our shopping consists only of Mothercare trips.’

Isobel squeals, and sees the taxi driver rolls his eyes again through the smeared rearview mirror. She takes out her bright-purple purse and pushes some money through the partition, waving away Tom’s money.

‘Can I have the note, please?’ she asks. The driver twists around, confusion blurring his unpleasantly roguish features. ‘The one that my partner gave you when we set off,’ she says, looking at him expectantly.

It’s pushed back through the glass, along with her change, creased and dented by pound coins. She looks down at the piece of paper as the cab rattles off down the road. Tom’s writing is block-like, square.

Please take us to Portobello Market, but don’t tell her – it’s a surprise!

Tom takes her hand. ‘What did you ask him to give you that for?’

Isobel clutches it to her chest. ‘I want to keep it. Today is perfect and I want to always remember it.’

It’s still early and the morning air is crisp and cold. They meander through the endless antiques, Isobel stopping at the brightly coloured jewellery stalls and gazing out over the amber brooches, mint-green bracelets, glittering black-stone rings.

‘Are you going to get something?’ Tom asks.

‘Yes. Definitely.’

They stop at a stall crammed with stock: elegant teapots, jewellery, gold-rimmed saucers, china animals, staring Victorian dolls.

‘Look! We could get the baby something,’ Isobel says, reaching for a small doll with china lips and stiff black curls.

Tom grimaces and backs away slightly. ‘I don’t know. Something about old things like that freaks me out. Especially dolls.’

Isobel nestles the doll back amongst the others. ‘I love them. But we can leave it if you want. It might even be a boy. If it’s a girl, we can get her a vintage doll when she’s a bit older. Look at this, though.’ She pulls a ring with a ruby-coloured stone from the mass of items. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Taking it, love?’ the female seller asks, not missing a beat. ‘Ruby is the stone of love and energy. It keeps you safe and makes you powerful. Warns you of danger too.’

Her voice is monotone: it’s as though the woman is reading from a prompt card for the hundredth time that week, and the stone in the ring obviously isn’t a real ruby, but there’s something about the words that Isobel likes. She slides the cool ring onto her middle finger and moves her head, watching the red stone twinkle in the weak light. ‘Yes. I will,’ she says. She picks up a turquoise compact mirror in the shape of a rose. ‘I’ll take this, too.’

‘You’ll be safe now,’ the woman says as she stuffs Isobel’s notes into her till.

A couple of weeks after their London trip, Isobel lies in Tom’s bed, staring up at his cracked grey ceiling. He always wakes later than her. Every time she’s stayed over here, she has woken early and listened to Tom’s easy breaths and the sound of the thrashing sea.