My Queen,
It’s fortunate that I know where you live, because if I couldn’t write to you, I would most probably expire: a brutal, red death. I only hope that these letters will be passed onto you, and that you will write back to me and tell me where you are. I have visited Lace Antiques seven times this week. I have had to buy a painting of a rather ugly dog and a chipped crystal vase to keep your father happy. I wanted neither. I only want you.
Please, tell me my dear. Where have you gone?
H
Seconds pass, and Tom still doesn’t speak. Isobel stands in the doorway to his lounge, staring at the television, where cars tear around a black track that’s glossy with rain. The whirring of the engines makes her want to scream. She sees the remote on the arm of the sofa, seizes it, mutes the cars and then tosses it back down. But then there is silence, which is somehow even worse. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to take a steady breath, but panic still roars inside her.
‘Tom,’ she says, her eyes still closed. As she speaks, she feels his arms closing around her. She clutches onto him.
‘When?’ he asks eventually.
She hasn’t even thought about this. She counts now, losing track once and having to start again. Isobel doesn’t understand her body like other women seem to. She can’t say for definite when she missed a period because they come and go with no warning. ‘June, I think.’ Her thoughts flit against each other and tears spill out again, her head throbbing. ‘Yes, end of June. It’s too soon. We can’t do it. You don’t have to-’. She opens her eyes, sees Tom through her tears: his ashen shock, his wide eyes.
‘I should go,’ she says next, turning from him so abruptly that the room spins. ‘I’ll leave you to it for a bit. You don’t need me here, in a mess like this.’
‘Isobel.’ Tom’s voice is sharp but kind, his grip on her arm firm but gentle. ‘Come on. Sit down.’ He goes to the tiny kitchen and roots around in the fridge, taking out a can of Coke and handing it to her. ‘Here.’
She’s sitting on the couch when he comes and sits so close to her that it almost feels like they are one person. He watches her swig from the icy can, waits for her to swallow and take a few deep breaths so that she can listen to what he has to say.
‘This is our issue. We’ll be shocked together, and we’ll sort it out together. You’re going nowhere.’
It’s as if Tom has clicked a switch inside Isobel. She takes a wobbly breath and another gulp of her drink. Her trembling hands begin to still and her banging heart quietens.
‘I’m stunned,’ Tom continues, his hand resting on her knee, his other hand rubbing his face. ‘But I love you, Isobel. And I want us to really think about this. I want us to think about whether it’s something we can do. For what it’s worth, I think it probably is.’
Isobel stares at him. ‘You do?’
His eyes fix on something that Isobel can’t see. They are soft green, crinkled slightly around the edges by life. His lashes are thick, dark and straight. ‘Yes. I really do.’
She thinks for a minute. June. Next summer, a pram, a tiny little pink person. Tom, holding the baby, shushing it and rocking it gently. ‘Maybe,’ she says, the word making her lighter somehow. Anxiety still claws at her and shock ripples through her body. But the raw terror has cleared. She leans her head against Tom’s shoulder, inhaling his warm scent of mint, herbs, an earthy aftershave she doesn’t know the name of. He turns and kisses her gently, and for a split second she feels as though there’s nothing wrong at all.
‘I don’t know how it’ll work,’ she says as she nestles back into Tom and puts her feet up beside her. ‘But I trust you.’ She takes the remote from where she threw it down on the sofa just after she arrived and turns the TV back on. The racing has stopped. The winner is being interviewed, beaming through his helmet.
They watch for a while, curled together like cats. Isobel’s mind whirs steadily through hundreds of thoughts. She gazes around Tom’s flat and thinks of her own. They are both so small.
But they have until June. She closes her eyes again, presses her body against Tom’s.
The first day back after half term is one of those days that never gets light. November darkness lingers in Isobel’s classroom: even with the lights on, it’s dingy. The English department is based in one of the round turrets at the top, with an arched window that rises so high it almost touches the ceiling. Isobel taps out emails on her laptop as the pupils work, glancing now and again around the room and out of the huge windows at the side of her desk.
The sky outside is a brooding purple-grey. Seagulls swoop past, cawing like rooks. The trees along the entrance to the school are almost skeletal now that winter is coming, their branches clawing in the wind. Between the trees, the grey sea churns in the distance. Isobel loves the view, loves this classroom. She can sense the past here, seeping from the huge stone bricks. When she can, Isobel weaves into her lessons stories about the castle and its past. She makes the younger classes write stories about the ghosts that might be trapped in the walls, about the horses and soldiers that might have trotted across the courtyard and the grand people who lived here when it was first built hundreds of years ago. She tells them about the enigmatic Edward du Rêve, whom the castle was built for, and how his family stayed here for generations. She tells them about how later, the chateau-style castle was used as Silenshore University for over forty years.
Isobel remembers her mother telling her stories about the strange disappearance of the du Rêves. She tries to recall the details now, as she watches silver raindrops begin to gather on the windowpanes. She sees scenes from a long time ago in her mind: images of sitting up in bed, her hair in a plait so that it would be crimped in the morning, her mother sitting on the pale-pink chair in the corner of the room with her long, thin legs crossed as she told Isobel stories to send her to sleep. Words come back to Isobel now, shrouded in her mother’s voice: they just vanished! But Isobel can’t remember the details. There are so many fragments of conversations with her mother that lie in Isobel’s mind like bits of broken china. If she thinks about them too closely, or tries to touch them, their sharp edges sting her.
She clears her throat and a few of the more restless pupils look up from their biro scrawls, eyes round with hope that the lesson is over. When Isobel announces that it is, there’s a sigh of contentment and a final rustle of papers. She clicks her laptop shut and collects the answers in, the thought of what she needs to do now that her working day is over looming in her mind.
When she reaches the bottom of the main staircase, Isobel turns away from the double doors that lead into the main hall and reception area, and instead pulls open the side door and steps into the wet afternoon. Impressive as it is, Silenshore Castle has too many secret exits to be a high school: teachers and children escape all too often. Isobel should stay and do her marking, and normally she would. But today, she can’t concentrate until she has seen her father.
Blythe Finances is about halfway down Castle Street, between the Co-op and Wheels chippy. Isobel regrets not bringing her car as the raindrops hammer down on her like needles. She has an umbrella, but the hostile wind whips it out of shape. By the time she arrives at the shop, rain has seeped through her pumps, her feet squelching unpleasantly as she pulls open the door.
Isobel’s dad sits at his usual desk, surrounded by files and Post-its. He looks away from his screen briefly and smiles as he sees Isobel.
‘Izzie! What brings you here?’
She shrugs. ‘Thought we needed a catch-up. Got time?’
Graham clicks his mouse a few times and glances at his watch. ‘Jon’s finished, so there’s only me here. I’ve just got a few phone calls to make, but then I’ve got a bit of time.’