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

It is Sunday. Exactly two months to the day that Isobel and Tom first met.

Isobel turns over onto her side, stares out of the curtainless window at the blank grey sky, and waits for Tom to wake up.

‘Happy anniversary,’ she says when he does. She leans across him, into the warmth of his sleep and kisses his forehead.

‘Anniversary? How long have I been asleep?’ Tom asks lazily, draping an arm over Isobel.

‘Oh, a hundred years.’

‘Then our baby is a hundred years old now?’

Isobel laughs and kisses Tom again. ‘It’s our two-month anniversary. I was just thinking, it’s two months since we met in September.’

‘Wow. It seems longer. I can’t imagine not knowing you.’

‘I know. I can’t imagine things any different, now. The baby, us.’

‘Let’s celebrate. I’m off today, so let’s go out for lunch somewhere, and then look for some things for the baby.’

Isobel imagines a shop full of married couples and bright toys and muted newborn clothes: lemon and white and beige. She feels the tug of excitement that has been bubbling inside her for the past few weeks, even stronger now.

‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

After lunch in Mayor’s, the high street’s biggest café, they drive to a nursery shop just outside Silenshore in a grey retail park with huge square chain stores lined with car parks and trolleys. The shop smells sweet, like talcum powder and fresh cotton. Isobel stares at the prams and cots and car seats. Tom leans over them, checking the straps and the mattresses, muttering things about regulations and price.

‘It’s bad luck to buy a pram before the baby’s born. We can’t get a pram today,’ Isobel says as she sees Tom checking the price dangling from a tight black hood.

‘I’m just looking,’ he murmurs, before wandering over to the cribs.

Isobel pushes one gently and it rocks. She moves along the aisle, through wooden and white cribs, until she reaches the last one. It’s mahogany: a dark, luscious colour that reminds Isobel of another place and time.

‘I like this one,’ she calls to Tom. He puts down a yellow blanket and walks over to her.

‘It’s very nice,’ he says as Isobel runs her fingers along the glossy wooden sides. ‘Do you prefer that to white?’

Isobel nods emphatically. ‘Yes, definitely. Why, do you prefer white?’

Tom laughs and puts his hands up in mock defense. ‘No, no. I was just checking that you were happy with your choice.’

‘Shall we go back to mine once we’ve paid for it?’ he asks. ‘I’ll put the crib together, and we can see how it looks. If we know we’re happy with it then we can take it down again and store it until the baby arrives.’

‘Okay.’ Isobel feels doubt niggling at her, but pushes it away impatiently. ‘Sounds great.’

Once Tom has carried the box up the stairs to his flat, and Isobel has made them a cup of tea each, and they have sat and sipped it, listening to the patter of the rain that soon turns into pelting shards of water against the glass and into the sea outside, Tom opens the box and peers inside.

About twenty minutes later the crib is made. Tom works methodically, taking the instructions seriously, frowning at the paper and the letter-coded parts and the minute screws that scatter from his hands and roll across the uneven floor.

Isobel knows as soon as he makes the frame. She knew it in the shop, really, but refused to succumb to the doubt. Now, there’s no avoiding it, no pushing it aside.

The crib is too big.

It won’t fit in the bedroom. It only just fits in the lounge, in front of the television, with the coffee table pushed up against the window.

They stare at it, their eyes glazing over. As soon as one of them says it, it’s real.

‘There’s no room for it, is there?’ Isobel says eventually.

Tom shrugs, but his face is ever so slightly pink with the stress of the tiny screws and the letters, and now the dimensions that mean all his efforts are wasted. ‘I’ll carry it to my bedroom, and we’ll see if there’s any way it’ll fit in there.’

Isobel follows him, watching as he sets the crib down at the door, watching as he shuffles it further into the room, until it won’t go in any more.

‘It won’t fit,’ he says eventually. ‘I’m not sure what we can do, other than perhaps get a smaller bed. Or a smaller crib. But the others were pretty much the same size, as far as I can remember.’

Isobel stares at the mahogany bars that are wedged between Tom’s bed and the door. If the crib is left there, she’ll have to vault over it to get to bed.

‘What about your flat?’ Tom asks.

‘My bedroom isn’t much bigger than yours. And anyway, that website I was looking at last night said that the baby will only be in our room for six months max. What will we do after that?’

Last night, when Isobel was reading an article on newborn sleep, six months had seemed like a lifetime. Now, it seems like an impossibly short time to adjust to another person with a mahogany crib and a need for a bedroom of its own.

Tom drops onto the bed. ‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘Did you find out how long you’re contracted to stay in your flat?’

‘Yes. Only another few months.’

Tom nods. ‘Okay. I suppose it’s irrelevant, really, because I have to pay rent for here for almost another year. I can’t afford more rent on top of that.’

‘And I won’t be able to afford much more once I’m on maternity pay,’ Isobel says. Her temples ache and she rubs them. ‘What are we going to do?’

Tom thinks, is silent. The wind cracks against the windows outside, whipping the sea and the sand up and slamming them against the panes. Eventually, he looks at Isobel and takes a deep breath.

‘I have an idea. But I’m not sure you’ll like it.’

Isobel nods. ‘Go on.’

Evelyn dropped one more pair of stockings into the case that lay open on her bed. It was quite full, but then it was very difficult to know what to pack, and so she’d thrown in quite a lot. She stood up, excitement flooding through her as she looked out of her tall bedroom window at Silenshore.

Today was the day.

Today, from her position at the end of the elegant castle, Evelyn felt like she was on the very edge of the world, in control of everything. She was eighteen now, and she had waited, year after year, for her life to jolt into action, to somehow be catapulted into Hollywood as she’d planned. She’d read in her mother’s magazines about stars like Carole Lombard, who had been spotted by film directors in the street and offered film roles that changed everything. She imagined it happening to her: a frantic packing of her mother’s best suitcase, a tangle of necklaces being thrown in along with lipsticks and perfumes and furs, a tearful goodbye as Evelyn left for a sudden new life. But it hadn’t happened yet, because Evelyn barely left the castle. There was nowhere to go in Silenshore. There was nothing to do and nobody to meet. Years ago, Evelyn might have met someone useful at one of her parents’ parties. But since the war, there weren’t as many parties as Evelyn would have liked. In fact, there were hardly any.

Poor Mary, the evacuee, had been right when she’d said the war would change everything: it had. But it hadn’t changed enough for Evelyn. She would have to do that herself. And she couldn’t wait for life to come and claim her any longer. She needed to go and claim her life.

Throwing open the huge dark oak doors of her wardrobe, Evelyn was greeted by her own scent, as a stranger might be. It smelt of spring flowers and sugar. That would change. A new life had to have a new, more mature, scent. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a yellow crepe dress. Yellow was the perfect colour. There was, she was sure, a pair of yellow shoes at the back of her wardrobe that she hadn’t worn since last summer. She fell down to her hands and knees, and scrambled amongst her things until she found one of the shoes. The other was further back; she could see its heel sticking out from a mound of bags. As she pulled the bags out of the way, her fingers fell onto something cool and sharp: the mirror. She yanked it from the tangle of straps, and ran her hands over the cool glass.