The Secrets of Castle Du Rêve

by Hannah Emery

  She stood still and silent, waiting for Mrs Blythe to demand answers, to paw Victoria’s hand and ask where her wedding ring was, to tell her to leave Silenshore and stop bringing disgrace to their town, and do all the things she expected people to do if they found out.

  But the woman just stared, waiting for Victoria to turn and leave.

  And so she did. She turned slowly and clumsily towards the blue door of the bakery, the smell of flour and butter making her feel as sick as she had done at the very start of her pregnancy. As she lumbered across the road to Lace Antiques, sneaked back in and locked herself away in her bedroom again, Victoria wondered if she might have made a terrible mistake. The thought was ugly and dark, and Victoria pushed it to the corner of her mind, wanting it to decompose, to vanish.

  The loaf she’d bought sat uneaten, under her bed, blooming with green within two days and making her room smell of mould.

  ‘And so did it?’ Katherine asked now, breaking Victoria’s reverie. Katherine’s eyes narrowed as she bit into a slice of toast and waited for a reply.

  ‘Did it what?’

  ‘Make you feel better? You said you wanted to hold the baby because you thought it might make you feel better. Did it?’

  Victoria stood up and brushed herself down, even though she’d eaten nothing. ‘No. It didn’t. It made me feel worse.’

  After Bev’s baby was born, Bev migrated over to the mums’ table at breakfast and was moved to the mums’ bedroom. Her bed next to Victoria’s lay stripped, ready for its next victim. Bev’s face seemed stripped too, as though a layer of her had been ripped away. Her eyes were vacant and her skin sallow. She didn’t talk much to Victoria now.

  ‘I’m going to write to Harry,’ Victoria said to Bev a week or so after her baby had been born, to see if her new friend would come to life again. Bev had just been in the nursery to feed her little boy and smelt of milk and talc.

  Bev shrugged and looked down at Victoria, who was stooping to scrub the floor of the nursery. The task of cleaning the floors and stairwells had been assigned to Victoria today. It was one of the harder ones: her back felt as though it might snap every time she sat on her heels to wring out her sponge.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me there’s no point?’ Victoria said, arching her back and wincing.

  Bev shook her head, ‘No. I’m sorry. I suppose I’m tired.’

  Victoria sighed and knelt back down on the damp floor. It was true: she had thought about writing Harry a letter. She’d even started one.

  My dear Harry,

  The first thing I want to say is sorry. I’m sorry that I lied to you about where I am. It breaks my heart to think that you might be thinking of me with Sally, or worse, that you might have somehow stumbled across Sally in Silenshore, and found out that I’m not with her and never was.

  The truth is, I am going to have a baby. Our baby. I did come to tell you, but it was too late, and Sarah wouldn’t pass on my message to you. I would have told you sooner, but my father

  It was here that Victoria had stopped writing. Her pen had fallen to the scratchy bedroom carpet with a thump as she let go of it. She shouldn’t write, if she could help it. She didn’t want Sarah to read it, so she could only post it to Silenshore University. It could quite easily be opened by the wrong person there. And if it was, and it somehow got back to Jack that Harry was the father of Victoria’s baby, then Harry would be in danger. Victoria thought of her once-beautiful mother, whose spirit had been beaten out of her. If Jack could do that to his wife, for no reason, what might he do to Harry, for every reason?

  Victoria had picked up her pen and put it back on the desk in the corner of the bedroom. And then she tore up the letter into fragments as fine and small as a broken eggshell.

  ‘I don’t seem to have much to say any more, do I?’ Bev was still standing in the doorway of the nursery, watching Victoria. She had put her baby back down, and he snuffled quietly, searching for sleep.

  Victoria had been so taken with thinking about Harry that she had forgotten Bev might still be there. Guiltily, she lumbered to her feet and put her arms around Bev. ‘It’ll just take a bit of time to recover, I suppose. But you’ll be okay. And so will your little boy.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ Bev said, reaching into the pocket of the turquoise smock dress she wore most days. She pulled out a length of red ribbon and handed it to Victoria. ‘I bought this in the village just before I had him, because I hoped I’d have a girl. I was going to give it to her, as something to remember me by. But a boy won’t want ribbon, will he?’

  Victoria reached out and touched the ribbon, which was cool and smooth. ‘Bev, I’m sure he’d love to have anything from you. You should still give it to him.’

  ‘No,’ Bev said loudly, her voice cracking. ‘I don’t want to. It’s pointless. You have it. I think you’re right, you are going to have a girl.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Bev nodded, trembling, her eyes wide and watery, and Victoria put her arms around her, the ribbon tangled between them.

  ‘Promise you’ll put it to good use?’ Bev whispered.

  As they separated, Victoria nodded and held Bev’s hands in hers. As she looked down at the entwined fingers, the sight of Bev’s wrists snapped something inside Victoria, made her feel like she needed to sit down, or perhaps be sick.

  ‘Bev? What-’ Victoria started to say, but Bev snatched her hands away, her wrists disappearing underneath her cardigan.

  Bev shook her head, her chin wobbling furiously and one tear racing down her cheek. ‘I’ve got to get on with my jobs,’ she said quietly, before disappearing from the room.

  Victoria stared after her, the memory of Bev’s torn, burned skin on her wrists already hazy. Had she imagined it? She tried to think of the other girls who had come back from having their babies. None of them had said much about the birth. None of them had spoken about pain or blood, or all of the things that Victoria suspected they had experienced. But then, none of them had spoken much at all, because once they’d had their babies, they moved away from the pregnant girls, separated by a gulf of experience. Victoria shook her head as she felt tears begin to prick at her eyes.

  Not now. Don’t think about it all now. Don’t think about anything other than Harry.

  Harry.

  As she moved out of the nursery and towards the stairs in the hallway with her bucket and sponge, Victoria thought again of how she might reach him. As things were at the moment, she would have to rely on a miracle.

  ‘You’ll scrub those stairs away if you’re not careful,’ a voice said from somewhere above Victoria. She looked up and saw Nurse Hammond, the one who had been kind to her when Bev’s waters broke. Victoria smiled. The nurse was more like one of the girls than a member of staff; nothing like Matron. It wasn’t just that she was younger than the other nurses; she was more friendly, less sneering than the others.

  ‘I’m daydreaming,’ Victoria admitted.

  ‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Nurse Hammond said. ‘Especially when things aren’t as you’d like. A bit of daydreaming keeps me going, sometimes.’

  Tiny pearlescent bubbles burst as Victoria slopped the sponge onto another step.

  ‘Things aren’t as I’d like at all. But that doesn’t mean they never will be.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Nurse Hammond nodded, her peaked white hat moving up and down. ‘You never know what’s around the corner. You have to have faith that it’s what you’ve asked for. I know I always do.’

  The nurse’s cheeks flushed then and Victoria felt a rush of gratitude that she was confiding in her. Victoria lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I’m hoping for my baby’s father to come for me any day now. I’ve left a message for him. I just have to hope that the person I left the message with sees sense.’

  She wanted to tell Nurse Hammond that the person she’d left the message with was Sarah, Harry’s wife, but that Sarah had trapped him into marriage and that it was Victoria he really wante
d. But she didn’t say anything, because although Nurse Hammond seemed to be the kind of person who would understand, she didn’t want her story of Harry tainted all over again like it had been when she had told the girls here that he loved her, not Sarah. She didn’t want someone who seemed as though they could be a friend tarnished by their doubtful reaction and dubious stares. So Victoria simply smiled and stayed quiet. The nurse smiled back. ‘Hoping is better than despairing,’ she said.

  They were simple words, but so very true. Victoria would continue hoping and hoping, and she would never despair. She wrung out the sponge as Nurse Hammond walked away to the kitchen. She imagined Harry arriving at Gaspings House and making everyone swoon and realise how wrong they’d been; making them see how different Victoria was from all of them. He would tell Victoria that Sarah had relented and had told Harry that Victoria needed him more than she did. And then he would come for her.

  Any day now, they would be together again.

  The letter arrived the day after Victoria’s contractions began. Hers weren’t sudden and frightening like Bev’s had been. They were slow and dragging, like somebody pulling at her insides. They came and went all day.

  ‘The pains need to be closer together,’ Nurse Hammond said when Victoria told her. ‘You don’t need to go anywhere yet. I’ll tell Matron that you think you’ve started, but you just carry on as you are for now.’

  By the next day, the pains had gone altogether.

  ‘False alarm,’ Katherine said knowingly, even though she hadn’t had her baby yet and couldn’t possibly know anything for sure.

  Victoria shrugged and carried on knitting the shawl she was making. She still wasn’t very good at knitting, but it wasn’t too bad. She’d chosen a ball of fuzzy peach wool from the shop in the village, and just as Bev had warned when Victoria had first arrived, the woman who sold it to her had scowled as Victoria handed over her money. But Victoria hadn’t been as upset as she thought she might. It was wool for her baby with Harry and she felt an elation that compared to nothing else as she wandered back to Gaspings.

  The girls had squealed when they’d seen that Victoria had bought peach wool. ‘What if you have a boy?’ they’d asked all at once, their voices merging into a loud collective caw.

  ‘He’ll have to learn to like it. And anyway, it’s definitely a girl,’ Victoria said.

  As she clicked her needles together, Victoria imagined Henrietta swaddled in the shawl, her cocoa hair nestled against the soft wool. A surge of excitement rippled through her abdomen. Harry had better hurry, otherwise he wouldn’t get here in time to see his baby on the day she was born.

  ‘Victoria,’ Jackie, one of the new girls called as she came into the room. ‘You’ve got a letter here.’ She placed the letter on the arm of Victoria’s chair, next to the ball of wool.

  Victoria put down her needles and took the letter. It was the first she’d received since arriving at Gaspings. She tore into it neatly, Harry’s face in her mind all the time. This could be it. This could be the key to her new life with Henrietta and Harry. It was all falling into place. It occurred to her as she unfolded the sheet of paper inside the envelope that it was her father’s writing, but perhaps Harry had talked him round, and her father was finally giving his blessing.

  She began reading and let out a cry.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she heard somebody ask. But she couldn’t answer. She could do nothing but read the sloped, uneven writing. As she did, the room around her seemed to collapse in on her. Everything turned black. She felt her knitting needles fall from the chair and her wool spill softly onto her lap. She sensed Henrietta’s shawl being pulled away and felt herself being lifted somewhere, and she saw the words from the letter disappearing into the darkness.

  When the heavy blackness that had settled around Victoria seemed to begin to lift, she felt warmth on her face, and pulling at her limbs. She strained to try and open her eyes, but her lids fluttered weakly and she couldn’t make anything out but a blur of a face, and breath on her skin that smelt of cigarettes and strawberries.

  ‘Victoria! Wake up!’

  ‘Victoria!’

  There was more than one voice. She recognised them, but the words floated in her mind, independent of any face or identity. Somebody continued to tug at her arms, to try and lift her up. Slowly, it dawned on her that she wasn’t in her chair any more, that she was somehow on the floor now instead, which was cold and unyielding beneath her aching back. She let her arms be pulled, and then felt her body be arranged in a sitting position. She tried to open her eyes again, and this time they gradually focused on a face. It was Katherine’s.

  ‘You collapsed, right out of your chair,’ Katherine said. She brushed something to the side, so that Victoria wouldn’t see it. But Victoria remembered, all at once, what it was.

  ‘My letter,’ she whispered. Her voice was thin and strange.

  More faces came into view then. One of them belonged to Nurse Hammond. She sat back on her worn black heels and gazed at Victoria. Behind her was the new girl Jackie, perspiring with the dramatic turn of events and hovering to catch a glimpse of Victoria too.

  ‘If the letter is going to upset you, perhaps I should keep hold of it for a while,’ Nurse Hammond said, adjusting her hat.

  ‘It’s not going to upset me,’ Victoria said. ‘Because it can’t be true.’

  She remembered the words now. They burnt every fibre of her body, made the unborn Henrietta rear up in her belly like a frightened horse, made the world fall away underneath her.

  Victoria,

  Harry is dead. When you return to Silenshore, you must never speak of him. You will tell people that you have been caring for a lady in Lancashire. Do not disobey me.

  Your father.

  ‘Have you read it?’ Victoria asked. Katherine shook her head, her amber curls bouncing.

  ‘No,’ Nurse Hammond said, concern clouding her face. ‘We were more worried about trying to get you to come back round. Do you want me to call for Matron? Or I could get you some hot tea?’

  ‘It’s absolutely not true.’ Victoria stumbled to her feet, her legs trembling with weakness and fright. ‘I’m going to our bedroom. If Matron says anything, just tell her that I’m not well.’

  She climbed the wide staircase slowly, clutching her chest. Her breaths came sharply and quickly, and acid rose into her mouth. She stopped halfway up the stairs and retched, her throat burning. She had to write to Harry. There was nothing to lose now. Victoria knew her father, knew how he worked. He was full of threats and anger, but he would not kill. Even so, Harry had to be warned, at home or at the university. It didn’t matter where she sent it: not now.

  She tipped out her drawer when she reached the bedroom and scrambled among her belongings: her hairbrush, cream, socks and the splinter of emerald that her mother had given her, to find her pen. Then, still shivering, she sat on her bed and began to write on the back of a postcard.

  Harry

  My father says you are no more. This can’t be. The world would surely not still be turning.

  I am going to try to keep our baby. I know that already she has brought out the strongest, best version of me, just as you did. That’s what true love should do.

  Ripping her away from me would kill me.

  I hope that my father gave me such unthinkable news to make me move on quickly when I return home. But I can’t believe it. I cannot give up hope. Instead, I must warn you to stay safe, away from Silenshore and away from my father, until I am back and I can calm him and make him see. Write to me at the address above and tell me where you have gone. As soon as I can, I will follow with our baby.

  And if you can, my darling Harry, do something for me. Make the best happen for me somehow. I am frightened. Come to me. Be with me.

  Your loving Queen,

  Victoria

  She turned over the postcard and stared at the faded, sepia picture of Queen Victoria on the front, remembering the day in London when Harry had
given it to her.

  It’s to remind you, whenever I’m not there to do it myself, that you, and only you, are my Queen.

  She wouldn’t be allowed out now to post it, not after her fainting like that. She’d have to rest for a while first. As she lay back on the cold, overwashed cotton sheets, Victoria felt her belly squeeze together again, as it had the other day. She tensed, waiting for another pain. When none came, she sighed and took her book from the side of the bed.

  It was the third time she’d read The Blue Door. It was the only book she’d brought with her to Gaspings. She’d read it at home too, twice, since she had met Robert Bell. So she knew what happened on every page. But still, she read every word, because it was Harry’s copy that he’d given her on the day of Robert Bell’s talk, and because reading every word over and over again somehow made her feel calmer and close to Harry.

  As her eyes flickered over the worn pages, she heard the door open softly. Nurse Hammond loitered in the doorway. ‘I came to check you were feeling better. What are you reading?’

  Victoria closed her book and handed it to the nurse, who turned it over in her hands to inspect it. ‘I don’t read much. I can never seem to concentrate for long enough.’ She flipped it open and stared down at the inscription, and then read it aloud.

  To Miss Lace

  May your life be filled with dreams come true and blue doors opened.

  Best wishes,

  Robert Bell

  ‘Signed by the author? That’s impressive,’ Nurse Hammond said, then snapped the book shut, her interest lost as quickly as it was piqued.

  ‘Yes. I want to be a writer, you see. So I went to a talk,’ Victoria said, her urge to talk about her life outside of Gaspings, about what she wanted and liked and cared about, spilling from her. ‘Robert Bell, who wrote this book, inspired me to write my own mysteries. One day I’m going to write all sorts of things, and keep people guessing about what’s going to happen to my characters.’