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

‘You read Robert Bell books? Well, you really aren’t what you seem, are you?’

Victoria grinned. ‘I like mysteries. I read them all the time.’ She rushed over to the counter and retrieved a tattered copy of The Blue Door from its place underneath a pile of receipts.

The man grinned: a wide, wonderful grin that showed off a broad set of teeth, his left canine slightly crooked, the rest in perfect white rows. ‘You know, I don’t think there’d be a problem with you coming along to one of the talks if you wanted to. I think you’d enjoy it. I could arrange for you to attend as a visitor, if you’d like?’

‘I’d love to!’ Victoria said, wondering if she would sit with the man, wondering if he might offer to take her for a cup of tea afterwards, wondering if her father would let her say yes if he did. He wouldn’t, she knew it. She would have to keep it to herself, somehow.

‘Well, as soon as the talks are arranged, I’ll come back here and tell you when they’ll be.’

Victoria nodded, knowing that her life as she knew it was gone, and in its place was one where all she thought of, dreamt of, was this man who stood before her with his white teeth and his rained-on suede brown shoes.

‘Forgive me,’ the man said, holding out his hand and offering to shake Victoria’s. His hand was firm, strong, warm around hers. She wanted to hold it forever. ‘I didn’t tell you my name. It’s Harry.’

‘I’m Victoria.’

‘Ah. Like the Queen,’ Harry smiled.

Victoria smiled back. ‘Yes. Just like the Queen,’ she said, pleased with her tone of voice and aware, somehow, that it was a different tone to any she had ever used before.

‘Well,’ Harry said after a few seconds, ‘I’d best be going. But it really has been excellent to meet you.’ He looked up out of the front window of the shop. Through the clocks, the candelabras, the stacked picture frames, the glass case of twinkling brooches, the sun could be seen glowing through the clouds. ‘It’s dried up as quickly as it arrived,’ he added.

Victoria, suddenly remembering her injured shoulder again, touched it and winced. Harry winced with her.

‘Get that seen to,’ he said kindly as he opened the door. The hum of the crowds on the promenade beyond, the shouts of excited children on their holidays, the screams of seagulls merged with the monotonous ticking of clocks in the shop for a moment.

Then the door swung shut and he was gone.

Lace Antiques was a small, narrow shop with a sloping floor and walls that were crawling with paintings, clocks and bowed shelves. A fine layer of velvet dust lay over the top of almost everything in the shop. Victoria didn’t like cleaning, her father was too busy at auctions to clean, and her mother was always too tired to clean. And so the layer of dust remained.

Behind the counter, which was piled high with yellowed pamphlets about Silenshore, more clocks (really, it sometimes seemed as if clocks were all Victoria’s father bought) and a small cracked bowl of garnets that her mother placed there to bring the business success, was a white door. The white door led to the stairs up to Victoria’s parents’ flat, which, like the shop, was veiled in dust, tangled belongings and a brooding quiet that threatened to build into a sudden storm at any minute.

It was an hour after Harry left the shop, leaving a chest-tightening scent of cigarettes and rain behind him, that Victoria heard the white door behind her edge open. It wouldn’t be her father behind the door because he was at an auction, probably bidding for some useless clock at that very moment. That left only her mother.

Victoria didn’t turn around, but continued staring in the mirror she had found before Harry arrived. She was trying to work out what he might have seen when he looked at her. How strange that the image seen through Harry’s eyes could have been so very different to what Victoria saw in the mirror before her. She wondered if he’d seen the faint scar on the bridge of her nose from when she’d tumbled downstairs as a baby, or the way her black hair flicked up ever so slightly on the left side of her temple, or the green flecks in her bright-blue eyes. She wondered if he had thought she was beautiful. The way he’d looked at her when he was in the shop made her sure that he did. But now that he’d gone, that certainty had vanished with him.

Victoria raised an eyebrow and inspected the impact the movement had on her features. If she saw Harry again, she would remember to raise an eyebrow. It looked quite good.

‘Victoria!’

The shout was unexpected, so unexpected that Victoria swivelled around in panic, almost dropping the mirror. It slipped slightly from her grasp and the jagged sapphires on the back scraped across her fingers. She tightened her grip around it and looked up at her mother, who was staring at Victoria in horror.

‘What are you doing with that mirror? Where did you get it from?’

Victoria hesitated. She’d had the story all planned for her father. A customer opened the case and got the mirror out. I was just about to put it back. But her mother was different. She hadn’t expected her mother to even come into the shop, and she certainly hadn’t thought her mother would notice the mirror, because her mother never really noticed anything.

‘I found it in the suitcase. I like it.’ Victoria said.

But her mother wasn’t listening. She was trying to take the mirror, trying to unpeel Victoria’s fingers from its rough, glittering handle.

‘You mustn’t play with that, darling. It’s not safe.’

Victoria thought of Harry, remembered how she could somehow smell his skin, remembered the way he shook her hand. He did think she was beautiful, she was suddenly sure of it again. And the mirror, the whole morning, was now a part of Victoria’s time with Harry. She didn’t want it to end, any of it. She didn’t want it snatched from her hands, treated like a childish game and nothing more. She wasn’t a child: she was sixteen, and if she was going to be trapped in this shop all day every day for the rest of her life then she should be able to touch whatever she wanted to.

‘Victoria!’ her mother shouted again, giving up on wrestling with Victoria’s tight grasp. ‘You cannot play with that mirror!’ Her hands crept up to her face, and Victoria watched as her mother suddenly seemed to wilt. The fight in her had gone as suddenly as it had arrived. ‘Just promise me you will put it away and leave it alone,’ she finished quietly. She turned and disappeared behind the white door again, as smoothly as a ghost, leaving the mirror behind.

Sleep was out of reach for Victoria that night. Her mind was bright with the image of Harry, and she tossed from one position to the next, wondering when he might return to the shop. She replayed their conversation over and over again in her mind until the black night had turned into a blue dawn. He hadn’t said he would be back the next day, or even soon. It all depended on Robert Bell, the author, and when he arranged to give the talks that Harry would invite Victoria to.

Robert Bell , thought Victoria as she heard the clatter of the milkman’s bottles break through the silent morning, please, please arrange to do your talks soon.

And as the milkman clinked his way down the winding hill of Silenshore, and the birds began to sing, and the blue dawn turned into a pale-yellow morning, Victoria finally fell asleep.

Since they had left school last month, Sally Winters had come into the antique shop every Tuesday to see Victoria. Sally worked at Clover’s Tea Rooms at the other end of Silenshore, near the promenade, and Tuesday was her day off. Normally, when the door swung open with Sally’s rather forceful push, Victoria would do a quick mental run-through of all the things she wanted to talk to Sally about, all the things she wanted to ask Sally about the week that had just passed. But this Tuesday, the day after Harry, Victoria yelped and jumped up as soon as she saw Sally through the glass, scurrying over to the door and ushering her in.