The Secrets of Castle Du Rêve

by Hannah Emery

  ‘Jack,’ she said, her hands reaching out for his across their table. ‘Do you think I should ask the police about my parents? They might help me find out what happened to them.’

  ‘The police? Don’t be stupid. You’d be wasting their time.’

  Evelyn frowned. ‘Would I really? I can’t imagine they’d mind. In fact, they’d probably be glad to help. My parents did a lot for this town in their time. They looked after people during the war and they always threw such wonderful parties. They were very generous. Maybe people here should go some way to trying to help them out. The police could ask around, perhaps. I could walk down to the station tomorrow.’

  The pain was sharp and sudden, the blow unexpected. Jack seemed to be sitting opposite her one minute, and beside her within an instant, his hand stinging her cheek.

  ‘No,’ he breathed. ‘You never, ever bring the police sniffing round here. I have things I don’t want them poking their noses into. You ask them about your parents, you invite trouble to our door.’

  Evelyn nodded, stunned, her shaking hand touching her cheek.

  Chapter 11

  Isobel: 2010

  My Queen,

  I walked along the coast today, and stood for a while in the very spot where we ate our ice creams together in the summer. It was so very odd being in the same place without you, and not knowing why you weren’t there with me.

  Once I’d had enough of standing and being melancholy, I turned down West Street. Then I realised I needed to get back to the university for a meeting, so I turned around again.

  It was as I looped around the houses like a lost man, going back on myself, that I realised.

  There’s somebody following me.

  Please, if you are reading this, take care. Watch behind you, and where you are going. You are so very precious to me.

  H.

  On Christmas Eve, Isobel and Iris sit in Mayor’s coffee shop on Silenshore High Street, a tray crammed with lattes and mince pies between them. Iris tells Isobel about the man she’s recently met through her work at the local gallery. She talks quickly and excitedly, smiling her narrow, secretive smile each time she pauses to have a sip of coffee.

  ‘Seth’s taking me out for dinner tonight, although I’m not sure where,’ Iris says as she picks a tiny piece of pastry from her pie.

  ‘Is he surprising you?’

  ‘Yeah. He seems to be a fan of grand gestures. I mean, I know the first date I told you about was just in the gallery café, but he brought with him this huge bunch of lilacs for me. I was a bit embarrassed, because I had to put them on their own seat whilst we had our drinks. It was like a whole other person was sitting there with us. Anyway,’ Iris says with a wave of her hand. ‘Enough about me. What are you doing with Tom tonight? Anything special for Christmas Eve?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s at the restaurant till about eight, and then Daphne said something about cooking a meal. She’s invited my dad, but he doesn’t want to come. He’s coming tomorrow for Christmas dinner because I didn’t really give him much choice, but he’ll probably stay late in the office tonight. I have a feeling that’s for the best anyway.’

  Iris looks at Isobel sympathetically. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just get the impression Daphne doesn’t really want him to come. She was fine about it a few weeks ago when she first invited him, but now she seems to be backpedalling, as though she’s gone off the idea.’

  Daphne’s usual awkward countenance had been more pronounced when she asked Isobel about her dad’s plans this morning. She had fired question after question at Isobel: wanted to know about his office and his flat, how long he’d lived there, what he knew of Silenshore and the people in it. Isobel had told Daphne the bare bones of the facts of his life, wondering if her answers were the ones Daphne wanted. Tom rolled his eyes behind his mother, out of Daphne’s view, trying to make light of her interrogation.

  ‘If it’s too short notice, I understand. Same with tomorrow. I know it’s strange spending Christmas with somebody else’s family,’ Daphne had said, her words cool in the warmth of the kitchen.

  ‘No, he wants to come tomorrow. Let me double-check about tonight, too. He struggles a bit at this time of year, though, and doesn’t always want to do social things. He spends most of his time working.’

  Daphne nodded almost exuberantly, her grey hair swishing around her face uncharacte‌ristically. ‘I understand. That’s fine. If he doesn’t want to come, then he mustn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll go well,’ Iris says now. ‘The main thing is that he’s not on his own on Christmas day. And if it’s that awkward having him with you at Daphne’s, text me. You can come and watch the Queen’s speech with my family. Then you’ll be begging us to take you back to Daphne’s.’

  Isobel laughs. ‘Oh Iris, I miss you. Oh! I nearly forgot! I’ve got your Christmas present here.’ She digs around in her oversized green leather handbag and takes out the compact mirror she bought on Portobello Road. She’s wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with magenta taffeta.

  Iris places a gift on the table too and gestures for Isobel to open it. Isobel leans forward to see what’s inside. A silver box nestles in a mass of shredded gold paper. She lifts out the box gently and places it on the table, then waits as Iris tugs at the taffeta of her present.

  ‘Oh, Isobel! It’s beautiful!’ Iris says as she tears the paper open carefully to reveal the rose-shaped compact. She opens it and smiles at her reflection. ‘I love it! Sixties?’

  ‘I think so. It’s from Portobello Road.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m going to take it out with me tonight. Open yours,’ Iris says as she gestures towards the box. Isobel pulls the lid open. Inside, there is a brooch, peacock blue and glittering in the fairy lights that are twisted around the walls of the café.

  ‘I love it!’ Isobel says as she lifts it from the box and pins it onto her dress. It’s light and delicate, and sits perfectly on the twisted black wool. ‘Forties?’

  Iris nods excitedly. ‘Yeah. Etsy. I don’t have someone sweeping me off to vintage markets, so I had to make do with online.’

  ‘Well, by the sounds of things, Seth will be sweeping you off to all sorts of amazing places before too long!’

  They sit for a few minutes in peaceful silence, Isobel looking down at her brooch and fingering the jagged blue edges of the stones; Iris clicking her mirror open and shut before putting it into a side pocket of her bag. The café murmurs around them, the electricity of Christmas anticipation almost tangible in the air. Children writhe in their seats, too excited to sit still, baristas smile widely as tips clank into the glass jar on the counter, and outside the afternoon light turns luminous blue then black, golden car headlights sweeping through the window every few minutes.

  ‘So, how is it living with Daphne in general?’ Iris asks.

  ‘It’s okay. She can be hard to read sometimes, which makes things a bit awkward. But she’s nice enough, I suppose.’ She takes her coat from the back of the chair. ‘You’d better get going and glam up for your night with Seth!’

  ‘I should,’ Iris says. She stacks their saucers and shuffles into her coat.

  Outside, in the freezing still air, Isobel hugs Iris and smells her familiar lemon scent. ‘I’m so glad I’ve seen you. I’ll call round to the flat this week and get the gossip on your date.’

  ‘That’ll be great. Any time,’ Iris says, pulling her purple coat around her body and hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm.

  Isobel watches Iris as she disappears up the hill and begins to merge with shops and trees and other people. She looks up to the very top of the hill, at the elegant, pointed turrets of Silenshore Castle High School, and the blue-black sky above them. Then she hurries across the road, her hands buried deep in her pockets, her chin nuzzled down into her scarf.

  As she turns onto West Street, Isobel sees the old lady from across the road. She’s standing outside her house, her arms folded against
the cold. Her hair, silver grey, blows across her face. Isobel lowers her gaze when the woman’s eyes meet hers, but it’s too late: the woman takes small, quick steps towards Isobel until they are face to face. The woman moves closer and closer, until Isobel can see all of her faded features: the greying skin, the browning teeth that reveal themselves as she opens her mouth to speak.

  ‘You’re nicer than the other one,’ she says, her voice rasping.

  The words make no sense. Isobel waits for more, and when nothing comes she raises her eyebrows in question, trying to look friendly. She’s probably talking about Georgia. The other one. Isobel imagines telling Tom, teasing him about his never-ending line of women.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said,’ the woman says eventually, her face crumpling with worry. ‘I was just trying to be nice to you. Tom doesn’t know I saw him. I didn’t mean to watch, it’s just that I saw him.’ The woman’s words bleed into one another, and she wrings her hands as she talks. Isobel glances at the woman’s face again, and sees that her eyes are pale and watery. ‘The thing is,’ she continues, ‘I’d want to be his number one. I wouldn’t want to share him.’

  Isobel shakes her head. Share him?

  But the old woman is turning around, muttering apologies and Christmas wishes as she heads back to her house. Isobel dashes across the road, wanting to be away from her, wanting to ring Tom and tell him what’s just happened. She takes her phone out of her pocket. They’ve already spoken about the old woman after she made Isobel feel uneasy on her first night at Broadsands. Isobel asked Tom what he knew about her. She was strange, he said, and Daphne had always told him to avoid her. She’d always lived across the road, and was harmless enough, if a bit nosy. Isobel brings Tom’s number to the screen and smiles at the little picture of him that comes up. She’s about to press call when she remembers that it’s Christmas Eve, which means that Tom’s shift is a really busy one.

  She’ll tell him later, when he gets home.

  Christmas Day is silver with frost. Isobel drives to her dad’s, her car skidding perilously over the glittering roads, and lets herself into the office. Her dad is sitting at his desk, the only person in the whole of Silenshore to be working.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ Isobel says when he looks up from his papers. She sees his hand tremble slightly as he pulls his coat from the back of his chair. He’s nervous.

  ‘Thanks for coming today, Dad. I’m so glad you’re not going to be on your own. And I can’t wait for you to meet Tom.’

  Graham doesn’t answer, but pats his coat pockets to check for his keys, and mutters to himself about the office and what still needs to be done.

  ‘Come on,’ Isobel says quickly as she moves towards the door.

  This time three years ago, Graham was a different person. The office would have been shut for days by now, locked and forgotten about, in favour of festivities. This time three years ago, he was suitably pleased with the mug that said ‘I Love Spreadsheets’ and stack of CDs that Isobel bought for him, and he laughed at the jokes from the crackers that weren’t funny. Her mother had always worn the same perfume, but her father had bought her a different one that year.

  ‘Time for change!’ her mother had said with a smile as she squirted it on. The cloud of fragrance was sharper than her mother’s usual sweet scent, almost bitter, and Isobel had felt a twinge of anxious disappointment for her father. Why hadn’t he just bought her mother’s usual perfume? Surely she didn’t like this one as much?

  But her mother had smiled and spritzed, and kissed Isobel’s father’s cheek when he came in the bedroom, and Isobel had thought how much her mother must love him.

  Now, three years on from a time for change that nobody could have predicted, Isobel opens the car door for Graham, her body pulled tight with cold and apprehension.

  ‘Daphne’s a really good cook. You’ll like her food,’ Isobel says as the car climbs the main road of Silenshore.

  ‘Turkey?’ he asks, staring out of the window, up at the castle. His arms are crossed tightly across his chest, ready to defend himself from whatever madness the world is bound to fling at him.

  ‘No. She’s cooking duck, I think.’

  ‘Duck? At Christmas?’

  ‘Yep. I know Mum never did duck at Christmas. But I bet she’d have liked it. Maybe you should try it on her behalf.’ Isobel steals a glance at her dad, wondering if she’s gone too far, as usual. But his expression is unchanged.

  ‘Maybe I will,’ he says, his arms still crossed firmly and tightly across his chest.

  Broadsands twinkles with the bright white lights that Tom helped Daphne to put up a few weeks before. They throw a luminous dapple onto the driveway as Isobel and her father walk up to the front door. Isobel pushes open the door, but it catches on something. She bends down and picks up a small red envelope that is jammed between the door and the mat. It’s obviously a Christmas card. She glances down at the name on it.

  Tom

  ‘You’re here!’ Daphne says as she wanders down the hall to greet them. She holds out her willowy arms to take their coats. ‘It’s lovely to finally meet you, Graham. Merry Christmas.’

  Graham hands over his coat and smiles. ‘You too, Daphne. You needn’t have invited me. I would have been fine at the office, you know. I don’t really like Christmas.’

  Daphne nods and takes Graham’s duffel coat and the red envelope that Isobel holds out before ushering them into the kitchen. ‘It’s no problem. Dinner’s almost ready.’

  The air in the kitchen is thick and white with heat and steam and Isobel feels sweat prickle her underneath the black lace blouse she squeezed into this morning. The smell of duck crisping in the Aga is bitter and syrupy. Tom is moving over from the cooking to the doorway of the kitchen to greet them, and Isobel searches his face for signs of anxiety at meeting her father for the first time. But there’s nothing, just a faint line of perspiration on his forehead from standing at the Aga.

  ‘Dad, this is Tom. Tom, Dad.’ Isobel says.

  ‘So you’re going to take care of her and the baby?’ Graham asks, his eyes scrunching up as he takes in Tom: the snowflake-patterned jumper that Isobel bought him as an ironic nod to Christmas, his short dark hair, his wide, uncomplicated smile. Isobel cringes, but Tom replies smoothly, unruffled.

  ‘Definitely. Your daughter’s amazing, Mr Blythe.’

  Graham nods. ‘Call me Graham.’ He sits down at the table and is silent, leaving Isobel to watch her strange new family: Daphne crouching at the Aga to check on the duck and whispering to herself about the timings of the potatoes, Tom stirring gravy slowly and cautiously, her father sitting silently in Daphne’s spindly pine chair at the head of the table. When dinner is brought to the table in huge, steaming dishes, everybody is quiet. The sounds of the clanking of spoons against plates, the calm tones of the carol-singing CD that is playing, the hopeful padding of Hugh the Labrador under the table, the wind from outside tapping meekly at the back door, all rise in the air and fill in the empty spaces where there should be conversation. After a few quiet minutes, Isobel can’t stand it any more.

  ‘Just think, next Christmas, we’ll have a baby with us!’

  Tom makes an amusing mock-frightened face, and then meets Isobel’s eye and grins. ‘A bit scary. But I can’t wait. Another member of the family.’

  Isobel and Tom continue chatting about the baby, about the year to come. Graham chips in now and again, recalling stories about when Isobel was a baby.

  ‘She was a crier,’ Graham says. ‘Just as feisty as she is now. As soon as she was born and I saw that red hair, I knew I had trouble.’

  Isobel shakes her head and smiles. ‘I can’t believe that for a minute.’

  ‘Well, we could have another redhead on its way. So we’d better prepare ourselves,’ Tom says, and Graham laughs.

  Daphne stares across the table, a little stonily, Isobel notices. But perhaps she’s not even listening. She watches Daphne until their eyes meet, and Daphne smiles thinly, the
n stands suddenly to clear the plates.

  Later that night, after Isobel has taken her father home and returned to Broadsands to eat too many mint crèmes and play two quiet games of Scrabble with Daphne and Tom, she lies in bed, curled into Tom.

  ‘I’m sorry if today’s been a bit dull.’ Tom says.

  ‘It’s been fine,’ Isobel replies, her words stretched out by a yawn.

  ‘It’s always quiet here at Christmas these days.’

  Isobel laughs, a whispery laugh that hisses in the darkness. ‘I must admit, I was waiting for your mum to turn the Eastenders Christmas Special on tonight.’

  ‘When did you realise she wasn’t going to?’

  ‘About eight-thirty. When we were setting up for the second game of Scrabble.’

  They laugh and Isobel pulls herself closer to Tom. ‘I don’t mind, really. I’m grateful to your mum for having my dad here, and for letting me stay. At least we’re getting to live together, and spend Christmas together. I can’t believe that this time last year I didn’t know you. It’s unimaginable now, isn’t it?’

  Tom kisses Isobel and pulls her even closer towards him. ‘Yes. Unthinkable.’

  ‘Did you get the card that came through the door for you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  There’s silence and Isobel’s mind wanders. Before she can help herself, she’s whispering to Tom again.

  ‘Tom? I know this isn’t very festive, but can I ask you something?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Tom murmurs, his breath warm on her cheek. ‘Depends what it is.’

  Isobel squeezes her eyes shut and speaks. ‘It’s just about Georgia. I know you told me that you just grew apart. But I feel like I don’t properly know what happened. Was there anything else?’

  Tom shuffles and then sits up, propping himself against the old-fashioned headboard. ‘It’s as I told you,’ he says. His voice is neutral. ‘I don’t say anything about those days because there really isn’t much to say. We’d only been together for about two years when we got married, and most of that time we were travelling around France, so I suppose it wasn’t really like real life.’ He looks at Isobel and she can see his face move in the dark, into a smile. ‘Once we’d been back in Silenshore for a few months, I could tell Georgia was annoyed that we weren’t in New Zealand or Australia like she wanted to be. She was itching to get away again, whereas I was happy to stay in Silenshore. I enjoyed travelling, but I felt a pull to come back at the end of it. It was probably because my dad was becoming quite ill and so I knew I needed to stick around. Georgia didn’t really understand that because she wasn’t very close to her family. I just don’t think we were very compatible, in the end. And now she’s back in Australia, it’s a bit like she never happened.’