The Dress Shop of Dreams (7 page)

“Oh my goodness, it’s delicious!”

The words explode behind Cora as she reaches the science section. Cora frowns. The woman’s voice sounds as her own might if she suddenly made a significant scientific discovery.
That’s what it would take to elicit such excitement in her, not simply a slice of cherry pie.

Two hours later Cora’s head is gloriously empty, her own reality washed away by someone else’s. It’s the first time she’s read without checking her watch and she’s surprised how quickly the time passed and how much better she feels. And it’s not the usual lifting of spirits she feels after an immersion into the lives of inspirational women, it’s something more. She can’t quite put her finger on the emotion, but it’s strong and deep. Cora glances down at her T-shirt and trousers, deeply suspecting that Etta’s little red stitches are secreted somewhere in the lining of her clothes.

Reaching the counter Cora glances up again. Perhaps today, given how long she’s been reading, she’ll have two slices of cherry pie. She stops alongside the coffee machine.

“A double espresso please,” she says, without looking up.

“Sure.”

The machine whirs into action and Cora’s caught by the sound of the word, the lightness of tone, the laughter beneath it. Happiness. He sounds happy, she realizes. Cora has never considered Walt a particularly happy person, not that she’s really given it much conscious thought until now, and she wonders if it’s the effect of this new woman.

Walt, his back to her, slips the tiny china cup under the stream of coffee. It’s a minute before he turns around and when he does she’s surprised. Not by the fact that he’s smiling, but by the fact that she wants to keep looking at him. Cora never likes to look people in the eye, not if she can possibly help it. She likes to stay back, keep a safe distance. Or she did. But now even that is shifting.

There is something intriguing about Walt, something new
that captures her attention, piques her curiosity. Perhaps because, all of a sudden and without her noticing, he’s transformed from a bookish boy into a handsome man. And not just any man, since she’s seen so many men and never wanted to look twice at any of them. So Walt, statistically speaking, is an anomaly. Simply scientifically there must be something very special about him. She’s just not sure exactly what.

Walt slides the espresso across the counter, along with a bowl of sugar cubes and a spoon. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Cora feels herself smile. Strange. She straightens her face. “And I’ll have two slices of cherry pie, please.”

“Oh.” Now it is Walt’s turn to smile. But his is tucked inward, a reflex, a smile indicating a secret feeling, not one he’s consciously meaning to share. “I’m afraid we’ve got none left. I baked one this morning but …”

With an apologetic shrug he nods at the empty plate discarded on the counter. Its white expanse is smeared with red cherry juice and scattered with crumbs. Someone else has eaten her pie. With a pang of annoyance Cora thinks of the woman she saw feasting on it a couple of hours before. They have shared it. A pie for two. The woman must be Walt’s girlfriend. A new girlfriend, the reason for all the smiles. So he
was
drunk the other night under her window. Of course he was, how could she have imagined otherwise. Cora feels a quick twist in her chest. But it’s a different sensation from the first. Odd. New. Unrecognizable. Jealousy? Regret? Disappointment? Cora frowns. What has Etta done to her?

Chapter Seven

T
he next day, having kissed her grandmother good-bye, placating her worries and promising to be back before too long, Cora sits on a bus bound for Oxford, rumbling past endless fields of flat yellow dotted with trees, interrupted by an occasional village. An unopened biography of Dorothy Hodgkin lies in her lap. She gazes, glassy-eyed, at the dirty window but doesn’t see the countryside beyond. Cora has taken this trip with her grandmother once a year for the last twenty years. Every year on the first of June, her parents’ wedding anniversary, they board the bus at dawn and return at midnight: an eight-hour journey to a hidden graveyard. They leave a bunch of white roses on each of the two graves. Cora has never done it alone.

Etta had offered to shut the shop and accompany her granddaughter to the Oxfordshire Police Station. In fact, she’d almost insisted. But Cora had been firm. It was something she had to
do by herself, she’d said, though she isn’t entirely sure why. Perhaps so she can back out at the last minute if seized too sharply by the fear circling her now—silently waiting, like a shark in shallow waters. What will she say when she arrives? What does one say to the police in order to find out the particulars of a twenty-year-old case? What procedures will she have to go through? Will any evidence even have survived? Is Etta right in her suspicions, or not?

As the scenery slips past, Cora, wanting a distraction from more distressing thoughts, allows her mind to rest on Walt. She’s surprised at just how many memories she has that contain him. Has she really seen him so often? How odd that he’s never stood out before now. Or perhaps the fact that he’s been such a fixture in her life, like oxygen in water and air, is exactly why she’s always taken him for granted.

Her thirteenth birthday fell on a Wednesday. Etta had wanted to organize a party but Cora begged her not to do so. After sitting around the shop that morning, squirming about in the silk skirt—cream sprinkled with lavender lilies—her grandmother had sewn, Cora had left at lunchtime, claiming she had plans with a friend. A few hours after that Walt found her squeezed into a corner in the back of the bookshop, face buried in a biography of Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

“Happy birthday,” Walt said softly.

Cora glanced up with a frown. “How do you know it’s my birthday?”

Walt blushed and shrugged.

“When’s your birthday?” Cora snapped.

“Thirty-first of October,” Walt said, softer still.

“Halloween.” Cora considered this. “Same day as Adolf von Baeyer and Sir Joseph Swan.”

“Who are they?”

“Scientists,” Cora said. “You must have heard of Sir Swan?”

“Sure.” Walt lied. “I don’t know who else is born on your birthday, but I bet—”

“Albert Einstein.” Cora let slip a smile of pride and closed her book. “Sorry I snapped at you. I don’t like birthdays very much.”

“Why not?”

Cora glanced down at the book again, tracing her forefinger over a woman’s face. While he waited, Walt sat down a few feet away, took off his backpack and set it down on the floor next to his knees.

“My parents died on my birthday.” Cora spoke without looking up. Her finger stopped on the
B
of Burnell. “So birthdays always make me sad.”

“Oh,” Walt said. “I’m sorry.”

Cora shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”

“I just, if my dad died, too … being an orphan, I can’t imagine it. I’m sorry I brought it up.” Then Walt brightened. “I’ve got something that might cheer you up.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a bit of a secret. My dad gave it to me last year, on my tenth birthday. I’m not supposed to show it to anyone else.”

“Really?” Cora leaned forward, fingers twitching.

Walt unzipped his backpack and very carefully pulled out a book. It was quite small, just bigger than a deck of cards, bound in dark red leather with an inscription embossed in gold on the front that Cora couldn’t quite make out.

“My dad had my name engraved on the front.” Walt held it tight between both hands. “It’s—”

“Walt! Where are you?”

At his name, Walt sat up, eyes wide with shock, his mouth straightaway shut with a guilty grimace.

“Oops,” he whispered. “That’s Dad. I’d better go.”

Cora nodded, glancing once more at the book as Walt slipped it back into his bag. As he started to scurry away, Cora stood up.

“Wait.”

Walt turned back.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and smiled.

He had never shown that book to Cora again. Not, she realizes, until the night he came to her window. It had been the same book, red leather and gold. How could she have forgotten that? The book must be something pretty special and she’s honored that he’d wanted to share it with her. But what was it? Cora makes a mental note to investigate the matter on her return home.

The priest looks down at his fingers resting on the feet of the statue. St. Francis wears sandals, the nails of his ten marble toes smoothed away by thousands of hands over hundreds of years. Father Sebastian can’t remember how long he’s been standing there. What was he meant to be doing? What time is it? He’s hungry. It must be nearly midday. Confession. That’s what he’s supposed to do now. Before he stopped by St. Francis, Sebastian had been on his way to the confessional.

He shuffles across the stone floor, his soft leather shoes sliding past the pulpit, shaking himself free of his memories so he’ll be able to listen to his parishioners. He knows most of them think he nods off while they talk, sleeping through their minor transgressions, dozing during their petty sins. Probably they’d prefer it that way. But Sebastian never sleeps during confession, despite the soft velvet cushions and dim light. It wouldn’t be
right. And he tries to be as good as he possibly can, after the great wrong he once did, always vainly attempting to level his lopsided balance sheet, even though his heart isn’t really in the religion of it anymore. In fact, if he’s honest with himself, Sebastian’s heart hasn’t been with the church in a long time. He goes through the motions, the rituals, the pomp and circumstance, but at the end of each day he feels more detached, more alone than when he woke.

Sebastian settles into his seat and leans his head against the wood, letting a small sigh escape his lips. He feels the presence of someone else alongside him, another soul seeking redemption. And, before he even speaks, Sebastian knows who it is. He can’t help a smile.

“I’ve met someone, Father. A woman.” The words tumble out in a rush of excitement. “A real woman, one who actually looks me in the eye without laughing.”

“Well, that’s a wonderful thing,” Sebastian says. “And I’m very happy for you. But, strictly speaking, you aren’t really supposed to be here, are you?”

“I didn’t steal someone else’s place,” Walt protests. “There was no one waiting, so I just thought—”

“But you’re not a Catholic, dear boy,” says Sebastian gently. “And you don’t have anything to confess, do you?”

“No,” Walt admits. “But I like talking to you. You’re such a good listener.”

The priest smiles again. He knows the real reason Walt comes to him. For, while he listens carefully to each of his parishioners, there is no need. He’s always been able to see people’s stories on their faces: their greatest regrets, fears, hopes and dreams, hanging in the air around their heads and hearts. He only has to look at a person to suddenly feel exactly what
they feel. And so it was with Walt, ten years ago. But still Sebastian listens, because it’s the right thing to do and because, while he does so, he is able to forget about himself.

“I think,” Walt continues, buoyant as a balloon, “I think she might actually … like me. Not just my voice, but me.”

“But this is not Cora?” Sebastian frowns. “The one you’re in love with?”

“No.” Walt sinks back to the floor. “Not her, I’m trying to forget about her.”

“Oh. Okay.” Father Sebastian feels the sudden stab of pain in Walt’s chest as if it had just happened to him and decides not to pry. “And who is this new girl?” He’s vaguely aware that, in these politically correct days, he shouldn’t really call grown women “girls” but he can’t help it. Any woman not of his generation seems like a girl to him.

“Milly.” Walt smiles. “Her name is Milly. And she’s nearly forty. Seventeen years older than me. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t even notice. She wrote to me. I called her. She’s really quite lovely.”

“Oh.” Sebastian scratches his nose. “I see.” But that is a lie. Another sin to add to his infinite list, though of course there was only one that really mattered, the one he tries every day to forget.

“I’m not being fickle,” Walt protests, as if finally giving up on a twenty-year-long unrequited love could be interpreted as being capricious. “I’ll always care for Cora, of course I will. But I’ve got to get over her. She’s never going to love me back and I need … I need to be loved back.”

Sebastian traps another sigh—of deep longing—in his chest and holds it there. He’s always had very strong willpower, been
good at fasting, at holding secrets, denying himself sustenance and rest. But not love. He’s never been able to stop loving someone simply because he should. If only. Then the last fifty years of his life would’ve been considerably more bearable.

“Of course you’re not fickle,” Sebastian says, suddenly realizing the boy might interpret his silence as judgment. “No one could say that of you. And I’m happy. You’ve found someone. If you’re lucky you’ll fall in love. I’m happy for you, I truly am.” The priest’s nose twitches again and he scratches it. Another lie. He’ll have to chant Hail Marys while polishing the vestry windows tonight.

“Thank you,” Walt says. “I’m happy too.” But, although this is certainly true, although Walt feels happier than he has in his whole life, something the priest said is starting to trouble him. Will he fall in love again? Is it possible? Because, since he decided to finally let go of Cora, he hasn’t felt his heart at all. Not a quickening, not a skip, nothing. It just sits in his chest, beating out its dull monotone, ticking out the time for the next fifty years, until it reaches its last beat, never to be moved or touched or captured again. And Walt is starting to suspect that perhaps neither he nor his heart is actually capable of loving anyone else.

Cora stands on the steps of the Oxfordshire Police Station. Now that she’s actually here, she’s unsure whether she wants to go in. It has taken her all morning to get there. When the bus dropped her off in the city center, Cora had intended to hurry directly to her destination. But instead she found herself dragging her feet, forgetting directions, taking wrong turns. She lost hours counting leaves and bricks and cigarette stubs dropped on the streets, drifting around Oxford, avoiding personal places and stumbling across famous ones: Bodleian Library, Balliol College, Ashmolean Museum.