You’re like a magpie, her mother had said once, a long time ago. All that glitters is not gold, darling. You’ll end in trouble if you go for everything that sparkles.
As Victoria tugged the cool, metallic object out of the cavernous case, she saw that it was a beautiful hand mirror, its back encrusted with deep-blue sapphires. She sat back on her heels and turned the mirror over in her hands to see her reflection, then over again to see the glittering dark case, then over again to stare at herself: her pale skin, opaque with youth, her black hair and heavy fringe that sat above her eyes like the brim of a hat.
It was moments after Victoria stared at her unblinking reflection, as a thunder cloud trawled through the sky like a pirate ship, that the shop door swung open, and Victoria fell in love.
Frederick, the shop cat, showed an instant affinity to the man at the door, purring and wheedling around his legs. Victoria, gazing down at Frederick in a moment of panic that he would cover the man’s trousers in unappealing grey cat fuzz, noticed that the man was wearing beautiful brown suede shoes, which the rain had threatened to ruin.
You can tell everything about a man by his shoes, Victoria had heard somebody say once, though she couldn’t remember who. Everything.
Victoria looked at the shoes and tried to work out the Everything that had been promised. But when all she could see was the tightly wound laces, the faint pattern of rain on the sides of the shoe, the water that was seeping up from the heel, she moved her gaze upwards, where it was drawn, all at once, to the man’s exquisite face.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, moving forwards and scooping Frederick up in her arms.
‘I was just wanting a little shelter, I’m afraid. I wasn’t expecting such an onslaught of rain.’
An onslaught. What a wonderful expression to use.
Frederick yowled and attempted to wriggle from Victoria’s grasp. Not wanting to seem intimidated by a small grey cat, she grasped him with all her might. But Frederick, his sights set firmly on freedom, unleashed his claws as he scrambled out of her arms and over her shoulder. She yelped as his claw ripped through her yellow dress and into her white, soft skin beneath.
The man took a step forward immediately, his face all the more attractive for its air of perfect concern.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
Victoria sniffed. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ she said, only just managing to ignore the bolt of pain that was coursing through her. ‘It’ll soon stop.’
The man pulled out the chair from behind the counter. ‘Here. At least have a little sit down.’
Victoria smiled as she took the offered seat. ‘Are you really sure there’s nothing you need to buy?’
The man shook his head. ‘I feel quite guilty now, coming in here and upsetting your day. I have an important meeting today, and I didn’t want to arrive looking like something washed ashore, so I thought I would just nip in here to stay dry.’
‘Where do you work?’
‘I’m a lecturer of English Literature at the University. We have an author coming in later to discuss some talks we want him to give to some of our prospective students. I admire him, so I wanted to make a good impression.’
‘Who’s the author?’
‘It’s Robert Bell. Do you know him?’
Victoria stood up, forgetting her wounded shoulder and her weakness from moments before. ‘Robert Bell! He’s one of my favourites!’
‘You read Robert Bell books? Well, you really aren’t what you seem, are you?’
Victoria grinned. ‘I like mysteries. I read them all the time.’ She rushed over to the counter and retrieved a tattered copy of The Blue Door from its place underneath a pile of receipts.
The man grinned: a wide, wonderful grin that showed off a broad set of teeth, his left canine slightly crooked, the rest in perfect white rows. ‘You know, I don’t think there’d be a problem with you coming along to one of the talks if you wanted to. I think you’d enjoy it. I could arrange for you to attend as a visitor, if you’d like?’
‘I’d love to!’ Victoria said, wondering if she would sit with the man, wondering if he might offer to take her for a cup of tea afterwards, wondering if her father would let her say yes if he did. He wouldn’t, she knew it. She would have to keep it to herself, somehow.
‘Well, as soon as the talks are arranged, I’ll come back here and tell you when they’ll be.’
Victoria nodded, knowing that her life as she knew it was gone, and in its place was one where all she thought of, dreamt of, was this man who stood before her with his white teeth and his rained-on suede brown shoes.
‘Forgive me,’ the man said, holding out his hand and offering to shake Victoria’s. His hand was firm, strong, warm around hers. She wanted to hold it forever. ‘I didn’t tell you my name. It’s Harry.’
‘I’m Victoria.’
‘Ah. Like the Queen,’ Harry smiled.
Victoria smiled back. ‘Yes. Just like the Queen,’ she said, pleased with her tone of voice and aware, somehow, that it was a different tone to any she had ever used before.
‘Well,’ Harry said after a few seconds, ‘I’d best be going. But it really has been excellent to meet you.’ He looked up out of the front window of the shop. Through the clocks, the candelabras, the stacked picture frames, the glass case of twinkling brooches, the sun could be seen glowing through the clouds. ‘It’s dried up as quickly as it arrived,’ he added.
Victoria, suddenly remembering her injured shoulder again, touched it and winced. Harry winced with her.
‘Get that seen to,’ he said kindly as he opened the door. The hum of the crowds on the promenade beyond, the shouts of excited children on their holidays, the screams of seagulls merged with the monotonous ticking of clocks in the shop for a moment.
Then the door swung shut and he was gone.
Lace Antiques was a small, narrow shop with a sloping floor and walls that were crawling with paintings, clocks and bowed shelves. A fine layer of velvet dust lay over the top of almost everything in the shop. Victoria didn’t like cleaning, her father was too busy at auctions to clean, and her mother was always too tired to clean. And so the layer of dust remained.
Behind the counter, which was piled high with yellowed pamphlets about Silenshore, more clocks (really, it sometimes seemed as if clocks were all Victoria’s father bought) and a small cracked bowl of garnets that her mother placed there to bring the business success, was a white door. The white door led to the stairs up to Victoria’s parents’ flat, which, like the shop, was veiled in dust, tangled belongings and a brooding quiet that threatened to build into a sudden storm at any minute.
It was an hour after Harry left the shop, leaving a chest-tightening scent of cigarettes and rain behind him, that Victoria heard the white door behind her edge open. It wouldn’t be her father behind the door because he was at an auction, probably bidding for some useless clock at that very moment. That left only her mother.
Victoria didn’t turn around, but continued staring in the mirror she had found before Harry arrived. She was trying to work out what he might have seen when he looked at her. How strange that the image seen through Harry’s eyes could have been so very different to what Victoria saw in the mirror before her. She wondered if he’d seen the faint scar on the bridge of her nose from when she’d tumbled downstairs as a baby, or the way her black hair flicked up ever so slightly on the left side of her temple, or the green flecks in her bright-blue eyes. She wondered if he had thought she was beautiful. The way he’d looked at her when he was in the shop made her sure that he did. But now that he’d gone, that certainty had vanished