‘Be careful with that,’ she heard her mother murmur as Victoria left the room.
By the time Victoria had applied the lipstick and wiped away the smear that bled out from her top lip onto her pale skin, and put on her favourite yellow shoes, and transferred the small amount of money in the till to the locked cabinet in the kitchen, as she did every night, it was almost three o’clock. Victoria’s father was normally back home at around seven, after drinking in The Smuggler’s Ship.
Four hours was plenty.
She locked the shop door quietly, just in case the sound did make her mother get up out of bed. As she left Lace Antiques and stepped out onto Castle Street, Victoria stole a brief glance at her mother’s bedroom window upstairs. Her jittering heart stilled when greeted with unmoving curtains, behind which a sleepy darkness was promised.
From the rocky beach at the bottom end, Silenshore rose upwards in an uneven hill, to where the silvery-grey spires of the University rose into the clouds. Victoria could remember being tugged along by her mother on rare occasions when she was very small, up Castle Street, and perhaps into the butcher’s and the bakery and Boots the chemist. But every time they got near the top of the hill, where the fragrance of salt and sand faded and was replaced by the damp, dark scent of the old castle towering above them, her mother would grip Victoria’s hand so tightly that Victoria could feel their bones clicking against each other, and they would turn around to walk home in a mysterious silence. So Victoria had never, ever gone further than a third of the way up the hill, past the colourful, exotic window of Harper’s Dresses.
Until now.
The spring air was warm and as she walked briskly upwards, Victoria felt her clothes become damp with perspiration. She stopped for a moment and sat on a bench outside Harper’s. Fumbling with her handbag, she took out a mint and placed it on her tongue. She hadn’t been nervous before she’d left the shop, so where had the sudden shaking fingers, the shallow breaths come from?
She crunched down on the mint, and stood up, swallowing the glassy fragments as she neared the wide expanse of shadows cast down by the sprawling university. Now that she was getting closer to the imposing stone building, the looming, ghostly turrets that Victoria had gazed at so many times throughout her childhood were somehow less intimidating, and more elegant than Victoria had ever noticed. Arched windows glittered beneath them, the golden stone carved with intricate detail to frame the leaded glass.
Victoria followed the signs for the English department and, with short breaths and the image of Harry firmly before her eyes, picked up pace along the cobbles. Although the term was probably over, he might still be busy speaking to students or other lecturers. But as soon as he saw that Victoria was outside his office, he might dismiss them. They would pass her, whispering the rumours they had heard about Harry’s new love who had the name of a queen, who had raven-black hair and porcelain skin, that this must be her, that she was just like the girl everyone was talking about.
The English department was in a squat building that lacked the drama of the rest of the castle. That was a shame, Victoria thought as she stepped through the green swinging door. It would have been quite nice to have her romance begin in the mystical, shining castle, rather than a dreary hut that reminded her of her old school. When she reached the office with Harry’s name on the door, Victoria glanced behind her to check that nobody was watching, and pressed her fist quietly against the bright teak.
Nothing.
She leaned her head against the wood and listened hard. The faint rustling of papers came from within. He was in there, then. She knocked again, more of a rap this time: the knock of somebody who meant business. The sound of rustling was quickly replaced by the creak of a chair and two light footsteps. Then the door swung open.
His face was squarer than Victoria had remembered, but no less exquisite for it. His hair, which she had taken for black, was actually the dark brown of cocoa. He ran his hand through it and ruffled it slightly.
‘Victoria! What a nice surprise to see you here!’
‘I’m sorry to come uninvited.’
Harry frowned. ‘Not at all.’
‘It’s just that I was thinking about the Robert Bell talk. I wondered if you’d managed to get it arranged yet.’
Harry gazed at Victoria for a few more seconds. He ran his hand through his hair again, looked behind him into the untidy, square office that lay beyond the door, and then nodded.
‘Forgive me if I appear distracted. Seeing you just…I was very much in my own world before you came. But I have arranged the talk by Robert Bell,’ Harry continued. ‘It’s next week. I was going to come to the shop this weekend and tell you.’
Victoria looked back up at him. ‘Really?’
He smiled then, a generous, wide smile that took her back to the dream she’d had last night. It wasn’t so much a dream, more of an image that had endured in her mind for the whole night, of Harry taking her hand and smiling at her, again and again as she tossed around underneath her tangle of blankets.
‘Yes. I was looking forward to seeing you again. The talk is on Monday at four. If you get here a bit earlier, you’ll get a good seat.’
‘Then I will be here at half past three,’ Victoria said, feeling a strange excitement crackling in the air around them.
‘I’ll look forward to it.’ Harry looked for a few moments as though he wanted to say more, but then somebody came down the corridor, and Harry smiled once more, then disappeared back into his office, closing his door gently behind him.
On Monday night, Victoria’s father was travelling to London and staying overnight so that he could attend an auction in London on Tuesday. Normally, when he visited auctions, the time he was gone was filled with a crisp, brittle tension. If he was what he called winning at the auction, then a couple of days later he would return home drunk, buoyant, red-faced with alcoholic cheer. If he wasn’t winning, if some other sod had bought up the collection he wanted, the one that would make Lace Antiques get through another blasted winter, then he would crash home drunk, pale and angry. Sometimes, if she was up to it, Mrs Lace went with her husband to the auctions. She had her uses, being so beautiful. She could sometimes make the auctioneer overlook a nod or a tap on the opposite side of the room.
Tuesday’s auction in London was an important one, and Victoria’s mother found enough spirit in her to get out of bed, hang some beads around her neck that she said were lucky, pack her small, mint-green suitcase and disappear off with Victoria’s father.
‘We’ll see you tomorrow, darling,’ she said, disappearing through the shop’s front door in a cloud of Chanel No 5.
Victoria had already made the sign that she would put on the shop door whilst she was gone. She had sat crossed-legged on the floor in her bedroom when her parents had gone to bed the night before, writing in large black letters on a piece of card:
TAKEN ILL. PLEASE COME BACK TOMORROW.
She had been sick, she would tell her parents if they somehow found out the shop had been left closed this afternoon. She had suddenly been as sick as a dog, gone to bed for a few hours, but was much better now. Who could argue with that?
Now, she taped the sign to the glass on the front door, her fingers trembling a little with thrill at the thought of seeing Harry again.
The walk to the University was longer than Victoria had remembered, and her limbs were tight with anticipation by the time she arrived at the majestic iron gates. With a judder of nerves, she remembered that Harry hadn’t told her which room the talk was being held in. She looked at her watch. Ten past three. She was a little early, but Harry had told her to get a good seat and she simply couldn’t have waited any longer. She walked down the tree-lined