Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  She’d desperately wanted a baby, after all. In fact, she’d wanted three or four of them: a big, boisterous family. She’d decided that she wouldn’t wait until her thirties like so many of the mothers she saw coming into the shop. She wanted to start whilst she and Billy were still young.

  ‘What’s the big hurry?’ Billy had said. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’ Ella knew that he worried about providing for them all. He was only just finishing his PhD, doing some teaching here and there, hoping for a permanent contract. But her book had been selling well, the shop was bringing in a small monthly income and the longing inside her was growing.

  ‘Babies don’t need much,’ she’d said. So it was all her own fault. She only had herself to blame. And now it seemed that she wasn’t cut out for either birth or motherhood, after all. She had no instinct for it. She found it all mystifying.

  She began to Google for answers. How often should a newborn baby feed? Should she be woken if she slept for more than four hours? What temperature should the room be kept at? Her mind circled endlessly as she lay awake listening to Grace shifting in her Moses basket at the foot of the bed, her little caws and mews and grunts and rasping sighs. To Ella, she sounded more like a baby bird than a human baby.

  She compared herself to the mothers of newborns on the forums that she found, late at night, in her frantic Google searches. She imagined them sitting at their computers in beautifully laundered lounging pyjamas, their living rooms carefully ordered around them, whilst she floundered in a tide of stale muslins and dropped dummies and milk-stained Babygros.

  What was it that her old friend Katrina had said to her when Ella had announced the news of her pregnancy? ‘Rather you than me, sweetie.’ Her laughter had ricocheted down the phone from LA, where she was just starting filming on the sequel to the box-office hit Reputation. At least Katrina had the good sense to know that she was too ambitious, too caught up in the little details of her own busy and interesting life – yes, too selfish, even, was what she’d said – to ever become someone’s mother. Whereas she, Ella, had been arrogant enough to think that she could do it all.

  And the terrible truth, the thing that taunted her as she folded baby clothes, and that got in amongst the words she occasionally tried to pick out from her keyboard when Grace was sleeping, was that being the mother of a tiny baby was nowhere near enough. She envisaged the years stretching ahead of her – years of buggy-pushing and conversations with other mums, comparing details of children’s developmental phases, sleep habits and bowel movements and the best place to pick up discount toys – and she had felt the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

  So, in desperation, when Grace was nine months old, she’d printed out a sign and stuck it in the shop window: Mother and Baby Book Group. Come and talk about your favourite books. Adult conversation and good coffee guaranteed.

  And they’d come. Every Monday morning for a couple of years now. Because Monday was the day when you had the whole week stretching out in front of you, when the week could feel like a mountain to be climbed.

  They came and they kept coming. Some were women whom she’d met in the shop before, and some she’d never seen until that first morning. Women with clothes like hers, smeared with breakfast and toothpaste. Women with faces creased with sleeplessness, clutching their babies and a wild kind of hope. And for a while, she’d hoped for something too. Because these were women who seemed to get it. These were people who understood that being a mum wasn’t everything.

  But even now, sitting here in the middle of her own shop, surrounded by a group that she herself had pulled together, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was the imposter in a private members’ club.

  She found herself wondering how Florence, who had become her closest friend, always managed to look so attractive, in her slightly dishevelled but utterly seductive way. Even after a sleepless night with Alfie, she’d turn up with a silk scarf wound around her neck, just so, her eyes ringed with smudges of kohl, or a smear of lip gloss or a nice pair of earrings. And Sarah had somehow managed to run a half-marathon in aid of the local children’s ward, just last month. And Kate always seemed to know exactly what to do in any situation involving small children. Whilst the only thing Ella knew about was stories and storytelling. And lately she didn’t seem to be much of an authority on those either.

  ‘Yes,’ she heard herself saying now. ‘What about all the stories we were told as children? All those fairy tales. Deep dark woods, wolves with big teeth. Or was that only my mum?’ She laughed, perhaps a bit too loudly, and some of the women laughed with her. A few of them remembered Fabia, her reputation for flamboyance.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Florence was determined to press home her point. ‘Kate, I don’t mean to say that we should bombard our kids with horrible moral messages. You know, if you’re not good, the bogeyman will come and get you or the woodcutter will chop off your feet. All that gruesome Brothers Grimm stuff.’

  Next to her, Kate winced visibly and bent to stroke Ava’s blonde head, but Florence was warming to her theme.

  ‘Not that kind of scary stuff, perhaps. But I do think a bit of non-Disneyfied fear is healthy. You know, encouraging them to create these worlds in their imagination, where it’s safe to experiment. Isn’t this how we learn to control things, how we learn that bad things happen, yes, but we can also make the world bend to our will? I mean, you’re the writer, El. What do you think? Perhaps you would never have written your novels if your mother hadn’t told you all those scary stories?’

  Ella poured more coffee into Kate’s cup. The truth was, she thought, that recently she hadn’t felt much like a writer at all. Her last book had been published almost three years ago, just after Grace was born and, since then, everything she’d written had been, in her opinion, a load of drivel.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Flo,’ she said, carefully. ‘I mean, yes, certainly my mum had a lot to do with me starting to write. And looking back, I can see that she always encouraged me to be my own person. I didn’t appreciate that at the time, of course.’ She caught Florence’s eye and grinned. ‘Back then, I just wanted her to be like other mums. Less . . . well, shall we say eccentric? But now I see that she was trying to show me that I could achieve anything, anything at all that I wanted.’ She sighed. ‘But do I really believe that now? Do I actually feel that, deep down? I don’t really know.’

  She heard her own voice trail off. She glanced quickly at the faces around the circle. Alison, a new member of the group, shot her a sympathetic look. Some of the others looked down at their feet, studiously avoiding her gaze. But now that she’d started, she found that she couldn’t stop. The words kept coming in a hot gush.

  ‘Lately, I just bore myself. I mean, don’t you sometimes feel as if whatever you do, it doesn’t seem to be enough? You’re always trying to do something more, something . . . well, better, and it never comes out right?’

  Some of the women nodded or exchanged glances. Kate furrowed her brow and Sarah blushed. That’s the problem, Ella thought. I’ve said something out loud that we’re not supposed to say. We’re not supposed to admit to each other that everything isn’t just perfect and wonderful.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, folding her hands carefully in her lap, forcing a smile. ‘Which book shall we do next week? Any suggestions? Kate, I think it’s your turn to choose?’

  After the other women had gone, wrestling toddlers into hats and coats, buckling them into pushchairs, Florence helped her gather up the coffee cups and stack them in the sink.

  ‘Darling, are you OK?’ Her face was twisted in concern.

  ‘Sorry, Flo. I think I’m just . . . just tired. As per bloody usual.’ Ella pushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand and squirted washing-up liquid over the cups. She felt Florence’s fingers, warm and strong, squeezing her shoulder. ‘Don’t be nice to me, Flo. I might not –’

  ‘Alfie! Do not jump on that chair with your shoe
s on. In fact, do not jump on Ella’s chair AT ALL.’ Florence bounded across the room and scooped up her son with one arm. ‘God, he’s getting far too heavy. I’m going to have to stop feeding him. Sorry, darling. Time for us to make our exit, I think.’ She began stuffing books and toys into her already bulging shoulder bag. ‘He’s been an absolute terror all week. Not like this little cherub here.’ She stroked Grace’s cheek and Grace rewarded her with a picture-perfect smile.

  Florence turned to Ella. ‘Sweetheart, you take care,’ she said, struggling with the zip on Alfie’s coat. ‘I’ll call you, just as soon as Steve gets back from his London trip. We need a night out. We’ve not done that in so long. It’s about time, don’t you think?’

  Ella nodded. She realised that she was biting her lip, trying to hold back tears.

  She watched from the window as Florence negotiated the cobbles with Alfie’s pushchair and then she turned back to the sink and dried each cup carefully, methodically, replacing it on the shelf. Grace stood next to her, stroking the backs of her legs.

  ‘Mamma,’ she said. ‘Mamma, hug?’ She lifted her arms for Ella to pick her up.

  Ella wiped her hands on her jeans and bent.

  ‘Ooof, you’re getting too heavy for this, poppet.’ She held Grace to her chest, breathing in her scent of biscuits and chamomile shampoo, then settled her on the rug with a collection of her favourite toy cars and a stack of books and opened up her laptop on the counter.

  That was the worst of it, she thought. These days, Grace was what people called ‘a good girl’. The first year of Grace’s life had been a haze of sleeplessness, colic, teething and bad daytime TV. The second year, Ella had just about managed to get herself showered and dressed each morning. And for almost a year now, Grace had been settled into a routine of sorts. On the days that she didn’t do her mornings at the nursery around the corner, she could happily entertain herself there on the rug in the middle of the shop floor for forty-minute stretches. She was bright and demanding, she still woke at least once in the night but, these days, she was asleep by eight in the evening and usually didn’t try to get out of her little bed until six the next morning so that, in theory, Ella had a couple of writing hours to play with each day. So she had no real excuse anymore, had she?

  ‘You’re so hard on yourself, El,’ Billy always said. ‘You’re being a mum, running a business. You’ve got hardly any time to think.’

  But that was part of it, too. Billy’s career had grown in the years since they’d married. He’d risen rapidly through the university ranks, publishing papers and then a couple of academic books, doing the conference circuit. He was on the editorial board of this, the committee for that. And yet he always made time for Ella and Grace. He got up early on Saturdays and got Grace out and about before the shop opened so that Ella could have some writing time. He took her to the park or to see his mum every Sunday so that Ella could have some time to herself. He did a lot of the cooking. He was, in fact, so bloody good. That was the problem. She didn’t have anything to complain about. Not really. Not like Kate, whose partner never lifted a finger. Or Florence, whose husband was in management consultancy so that she only really saw him at weekends. Or Laura, who was on her own. Billy was kind and patient and supportive. It made her feel even more of a failure.

  The cursor blinked at her from the bottom of a blank page. Chapter Six, she read, swallowing hard, feeling the edges of the black gap inside her begin to widen again.

  With the last two books she’d written, the words had seemed to flow out of the ends of her fingers. She’d woken each morning, itching to get down to work. She’d scribbled notes on the backs of shopping lists, old invoices, restaurant serviettes. She’d stayed up well into the early hours, lulled by the rhythm of her hands on the keyboard, the blue-white hum of her laptop screen.

  Now she breathed in deeply, trying to relax her mind, to feel her way outwards into the words. She imagined putting out slender antennae that would tremble in the air, catching the slightest signal. Or a net – yes, that was better – a net of silver that she could spread just beneath the surface of things to catch the sentences as they unfurled.

  But already her mind was jumping, clicking, whirring. She was thinking about Bryony Darwin in her bulky coat and sensible boots. The way that she’d clasped that square red leather-bound book to her chest as if it were a life raft. How tendrils of feeling had seemed to unfurl all around her with the fragrance of mingled earth and rain.

  And then the sadness that Bryony had left behind her, the feelings that had lingered in the room for days after. Those ribbons of blue-grey longing.

  Ella didn’t want to admit it but she knew that it hadn’t all been just her imagination. She couldn’t shake the feeling that her dream – the one where Mamma had arrived on her windowsill in the middle of the night – and Bryony’s sudden arrival at the shop were somehow connected. But how?

  ‘Brrrrm-brrrrrm,’ said Grace, wheeling a fire engine over the rug and up to the counter. ‘Peep peep, Mamma.’

  ‘Yes,’ she heard herself saying, as if from far away. ‘Peep peep. Time’s up.’

  6

  To banish unwanted dreams or nightmares: Write the dream on a piece of paper and burn the paper in a candle flame. Every bit of paper must be reduced to ashes. Throw the ashes immediately out of an open window or door. The ringing of a bell of pure silver will also encourage any dream spirits to fly away.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  Bryony opened the front door and then immediately shut it again.

  She gripped the hall table, steadying herself, closing her eyes and then opening them as if this might make what she’d just seen on her doorstep disappear.

  ‘Come on, Bryony. Aren’t you going to let me in?’

  That clipped voice with its cultured vowels. The glossy, blonde hair. The perfectly white teeth.

  Bryony sighed. First the creature in the woods. Now this. Why couldn’t they all just leave her alone?

  She opened the door again, just a crack this time, and peered out.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’ The pointed toe of a boot appeared, shoved between the door and its frame. The leather was black and expensive and polished to a perfect sheen. The boot ended in a long leg in glossy black tights and the hem of a black tailored coat. Bryony curled her fists and forced herself to look directly into the familiar cold, green gaze.

  ‘No need to be coy, Bryony. I’m allowed to come and check on my little sis from time to time, surely?’

  ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ Bryony heard her own voice. It was a tiny croak of a voice, barely a squeak, the voice of something you’d step over in the street, some poor little defenceless thing. She hated how Selena always made her feel this way. She cleared her throat. ‘Actually, this isn’t a good time, Selena. I’m very busy . . .’

  Selena put back her head and laughed. Except that it wasn’t a laugh. It was more of a crackle in her throat, like the sound of paper thrown on a fire.

  ‘Busy Bryony? Doing what exactly? Looking in on your little rental properties? Gosh, that must be tough.’

  Bryony felt her cheeks burning. She looked down at Selena’s foot, still firmly wedged halfway across her doormat. She wondered if a well-aimed kick would be enough.

  ‘Bry? Are you all right? I thought I heard the door.’ Ed squeezed himself into the tiny hallway behind her.

  ‘It’s nothing. I mean, no one.’ Bryony turned to him, relaxing her grip on the door handle and Selena seized her chance, launching herself through the gap.

  ‘Selena Darwin,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Bryony’s sister. Elder sister, to be exact. I was just passing. Thought I’d call in. Such a long time since we had a catch-up. But I don’t believe we’ve met before?’ Her gaze flickered briefly over Ed’s face and Bryony saw her lips twitch with amusement. ‘Bryony, you dark horse. Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

  ‘Ed. Ed Baldwin. Bryony’s fiancé.’ Ed laid his hand proprietorially on Bry
ony’s shoulder. ‘And I’ve, erm . . . Well, I’ve never heard Bryony mention a sister.’

  Selena laughed again. ‘Really?’

  Bryony shot Ed a look. He was staring at Selena, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Bryony tried to intercept his gaze. If she could just make him look at her again then maybe he wouldn’t say it. No. It was too late.

  ‘Well then, Bry. Aren’t we going to offer your sister a cup of tea?’ He smiled at Selena. ‘You’ll have to forgive her, Selena. She’s sometimes a bit distracted. Since . . . Well, you know . . .’

  And then he winked. A bubble of rage burst in Bryony’s throat. How dare he talk about her as if she wasn’t there, as if she were a five-year-old? Not that you’d treat a five-year-old in that way, either.

  She pushed past him into the kitchen and began banging mugs onto a tray. Behind her, she heard Ed ushering Selena into the living room. She caught the rise and fall of Selena’s voice and Ed’s loud guffaw in reply. No doubt he’d be utterly charmed by her, she thought, sloshing milk into her best jug. Peas in a pod, those two, her mother would have said. Funny how she’d never thought of that before.

  She pushed through the living room doorway, balancing the heavy tray. Ed had Selena by the elbow and they were standing together looking out at the tiny courtyard garden. He’d bore the pants off anyone, given half the chance, about his stupid pots of beans and tomatoes.

  ‘Tea,’ she said, shoving the tray onto the coffee table on top of a drift of Ed’s old newspapers.

  ‘Oh, lovely,’ said Selena in that silly, tinkly voice that Bryony knew she only ever used on men. ‘Now, Ed, I hope you won’t be offended, but the thing is . . .’ She looked down, blushing prettily, every inch of her mimicking perfectly the damsel in distress. ‘I really need to talk to Bryony about something, well . . . a bit personal. Delicate, you know. I hope you won’t mind.’