‘A man in a suit and a microwave meal?’ Tom laughs. ‘You had some strange expectations, Isobel Blythe.’
Isobel laughed. ‘Well, all I can say is that you’ve exceeded my expectations anyway, as always. I can’t wait to taste your cooking. What are we having?’ She sits down at the small glass table.
Tom clears his throat and whips a white tea towel over his shoulder. ‘Filet mignon de porc Normande,’ he says with an uncharacteristically dramatic flourish of the hands. ‘Normandy Pork.’
‘It smells amazing. Is this a throwback from your time in France?’ Isobel remembers Tom mentioning that he spent a year or so living in France when they first met.
‘Yes, I suppose it is. I tried this dish for the first time there, although I never cooked it. I didn’t cook much when I lived in France. I mostly existed on bread and cheese. Have you been to France?’
‘No. But I know a lot about Paris because Iris really wants to go. She’s obsessed.’
‘She’s got good taste. It’s not a bad place to be obsessed with.’ Tom says as he stirs the pot on his sleek black hob. ‘What about you? Where’s your number-one destination?’
‘Vienna,’ Isobel replies quickly. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Vienna.’
Tom smiles and comes to sit at the table. ‘The city of dreams?’
Isobel nods. ‘I even love that it’s called that.’
‘I’ve never been. But I’d definitely go. We’ll add it to our list.’
‘Our list?’
‘Yeah. You know: have a baby, then go to France and then do Vienna.’
Isobel laughs. ‘That’s a pretty short list.’
‘Well, we need to keep it manageable.’ Tom scores a match and lights some tea lights on the table, and then goes back to the kitchen.
‘Actually,’ Isobel says, standing up and following Tom. ‘I kind of have a thing agreed with Iris. She promised to go to Vienna with me. My mum lived there when she was young, and she used to talk about it a lot. She made it sound like something out of a fairy tale: all castles and balls and music. When she died, I suggested to my dad that we should go. He got upset with me, said it was a terrible idea to go there without her, and I haven’t brought it up with him since. We had a bit of a falling out about it, which kind of made me even more determined to go.’
Iris had promised Isobel she’d go with her to Vienna on one condition: that they could go to Paris together too. She’d dug out a battered Paris brochure from her bedside drawer and printed out a webpage on Vienna for Isobel. Then she’d taken a shoebox from her wardrobe, tipped out the shoes onto her bed, and put the papers together in there instead. ‘This can be our box of dreams,’ she’d said.
They had laughed at the drama in Iris’s voice, at the clichéd title she had given the box. But they had kept it and filled it with more leaflets and printouts until the sides bulged.
Tom nods. ‘I know what you mean. My mum can sometimes be funny about remembering my dad, and things they did when they were young. It’s like it just hurts too much to think about the past.’
‘I can understand that. But losing her also taught me that life’s short. So I try to make the most of it. Obviously, it hurts to think about her sometimes because I miss her so much. But I do want to try and keep her with us, by doing things that she liked. I think that’s what she would have wanted me to do. But my dad doesn’t seem to think like that.’
‘Well, he might come round. But I’m with you. I think Vienna sounds brilliant. And it doesn’t matter who you go with, it can still be on the list.’
‘Thanks, Tom. That means a lot.’
Tom grins and winks suggestively. ‘You can show me exactly how much after dinner. I mean, Filet mignon de porc Normande.’
Isobel laughs and sits at the table. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she says as she bites into a tender piece of pork. The flavours of cider and sweet apples have seeped into the meat and the taste is comforting.
‘No nausea?’ Tom asks.
‘Nope. None at all.’ In fact, Isobel’s stomach growls as she begins eating. She has another mouthful and takes a piece of warm bread from the basket that Tom has put between them on the table.
‘So, do you get to cook much French stuff at work?’ she asks when she has finished chewing.
‘Not really. It’s mostly quite thoughtless Italian food. Pizza and pasta. I don’t get to choose the menu, which is a bit frustrating. But this is actually another item for our list,’ adds Tom as he slices neatly into his meat. ‘I really want to open a French restaurant at some point. I would’ve done it already, but starting up a business isn’t cheap, so I’m having to save up and be patient. It’ll happen one day, I’m sure.’
‘Where would you open your restaurant?’ The restaurant Tom works at now is in the centre of Ashwood, which is a grey and uninspiring town that was mainly built in the 1960s – all concrete estates and uniform buildings and towers of flats. It’s impossible to imagine a French restaurant there.
‘I’d open it in Silenshore. This place needs to be famous for something other than people going missing and never coming back.’
Isobel thinks of the stories she’s heard over the years: of the strange disappearing du Rêve family, of the man who was found dead at the castle in the 1960s, of the girl who was taken away one Valentine’s day and was never seen again. ‘I think all the mystery makes Silenshore more special,’ she says. ‘There’s something almost mystical about the castle and all its secrets. Plus, if you hadn’t been so drawn to the castle, we would never have met.’
‘I know. I owe the castle a lot. Like I said when we first talked at the school fair, something has always pulled me to it, although I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was.’
‘I like to think it’s because you somehow knew I was there. That’s why you felt you wanted to go through the gates,’ Isobel blurts out, then laughs at her own openness.
‘You’re probably right. At least that’s one mystery solved.’ Tom says, reaching out for Isobel’s hand across the plates and lacing his fingers through hers.
Victoria would never have even met Harry if it weren’t for the rain.
He didn’t have any interest in antiques, she realised later, and he certainly didn’t need to buy any that afternoon. He only ducked into Lace Antiques because of the fat drops of salty rain that began to drum down on him without any kind of forewarning.
Victoria was sitting behind the counter, staring into a mirror that she’d found that morning. Her father always told her not to touch his things, that he’d box her ears if he found out that she’d been rooting and touching potential money-makers. But the morning had been so very long, and the customers who had come into the shop had been frustratingly indifferent to what was out on display. So Victoria had decided to move some of the objects around a little, and then, before she knew it, she was on her hands and knees in the corner, where some stock she’d never seen before was tossed into an old brown suitcase.
Once she had fiddled with the brittle clasp on the case and opened it up, Victoria had found a strange old doll with shimmering black hair and a cracked red smile. There were some discoloured white beads too, which Victoria hung around her neck, the thick, salty