Finding Dreams by Lauren Westwood (6)

That night, as I go up alone to my room, I try to enjoy the fact that I don’t have to fight anyone for the duvet, wear earplugs to drown out the sound of snoring, or wait for someone to finish the sudoku before I can start on the crossword. I try not to listen to the creaking of the wood and the lonely keening of a fox somewhere in the woods outside the garden walls. Try not to feel the solitude pressing on me like a stone slab – after all, it’s not like I’m alone in the house. Jack is asleep in the room that adjoins mine on the other side of the bathroom. Katie is still up reading a book, the dog sprawled out at the end of her bed like a fuzzy silver rug. No matter what’s gone wrong in my life, I have two lovely children, and for that I am eternally thankful. And if I were still lacking company, outside in the drive is a large silver caravan inhabited by Connie and Simon.

I’d invited them to stay at the house, of course. But Connie had declined – as I knew she would. ‘Can’t live without my ultra firm mattress and my heating pad,’ she’d said. ‘The little home comforts.’ Then she’d winked at Simon. ‘Besides, wouldn’t want to keep the kids up with any hanky-panky in the guest room.’

Which was just too much information.

‘Fine,’ I’d agreed breezily, giving her a piece of paper with the wi-fi code. ‘See you in the morning, then.’

‘Sleep tight,’ Connie had said. Then, she’d handed me a package. ‘Bought this for you on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.’

‘What is it?’ I’d blurted out in surprise. Though in the past, I’d tried to play the dutiful daughter-in-law and buy her little presents at Christmas – first I’d tried bath salts, which were disdained, then chocolates, which were grudgingly accepted, and finally, settled on a bottle of Glenfiddich at Christmas and birthdays – she’d never given me anything.

‘Well open it,’ she’d said.

I tore off the brown tissue paper wrapping and opened the thin box. Inside was a bundle of beads and delicate silver wires woven into a circular spider web pattern about the size and width of my palm. Long leather thongs dangled down from the circle, with feathers attached to the ends. The craftsmanship was superb, but I had no idea what it was. So I took a punt. ‘What a lovely thing,’ I said. ‘It will look great on the Christmas tree next year.’

‘No no,’ Connie said, ‘it’s not an ornament. It’s a dreamcatcher.’

‘A dreamcatcher?’ A vague bell tinkled somewhere in my mind. I’d once seen something similar. In a Disney video maybe? Like Pocahontas? In the last few years, the sum total of my cultural experiences seemed to derive from Disney films.

‘It clears the fuzz from your mind. Catches it while you’re asleep. That way, you’ll remember your dreams. Protects you from bad dreams too.’

‘Oh.’ I looked at Connie, wondering if she’d smoked a few too many peace pipes when she was touring Native American settlements. ‘Does it work?’

She shrugged. ‘Look, I know you like jewellery and whatnots.’ She looked disdainful that I could be so ‘girly’. ‘So suck it and see.’

I get into bed and open up the box with the dreamcatcher. On the top there’s a silver hanger, and I hook it over the reading lamp above my bed. The beads shimmer in the light, the feathers dangling from the slightest current of air. Suck it and see.

Though I’m tired from a day of worries, and the disappointment of not hearing from Rabbit-N-Hat Locations, I know it will be some time before I drop off to sleep. I put the box on the nightstand and pick up the e-book reader that I bought myself two Christmases ago and let Katie wrap up to give to me from her and Jack. The reader is full of books and samples that I downloaded hoping to distract myself, most of which are less than ten percent complete. In the days Anno Dave Morte I liked romantic comedies and literary historic dramas. But in these Post Dave Morte days, gritty crime dramas and psychological thrillers have become more my thing. It’s a guilty pleasure to read about people who have more problems than I do.

Tonight, though, I have a different mission – research. I browse through the online store searching for The Lady’s Secret by Phillipa King.

I find it easily. Apparently it really is an international bestseller (though I’d never heard of it before the letter came). The cover is cringeworthy. An auburn-haired beauty in a pink silk gown is passing through a wrought-iron gate towards a dark, forbidding-looking house. She’s looking over her shoulder in fear – or desire – the image is too small to make out for certain.

I focus in on the house. It’s too distant and soft-focus to distinguish many details other than the twisted Tudor chimneys silhouetted against a bruised purple sky. Chimneys like the ones Tanglewild has in spades! A tremor of anticipation shoots down my backbone.

I read through the testimonials and the blurb:

‘Dark, mysterious eyes’. ‘Powerful new love’. Rubbish. It sounds like a garden-variety-mystery-cum-bodice-ripper – definitely not my usual fare. But as I purchase and download the text, I feel a little giddy at the prospect of reading it. It’s research, I remind myself, as I move my finger across the screen to scroll to the first page.

*

Guilty pleasure or no, Victoria Easterbrook’s story is a page-turner. The opening scene is ambiguous – was Victoria a willing participant in Tom’s ‘amorous advances’, or was she in fact raped? We find out soon enough that, either way, she’s made a life-changing mistake. She marries Tom against the wishes of her father. The father cuts her out of his will for disobeying him. This pleases her new husband not at all. Then she tells Tom the ‘good news’ – that she’s pregnant. He goes right off her, and less than a month after the wedding, she finds him in bed with a servant girl.

I find myself squirming in uncomfortable sympathy for poor Victoria. She’s clearly been a bit of a dupe when it comes to Tom, but on the other hand, what options were open to women of her time? Marry or don’t marry – that’s about it. And if Victoria, married for less than a month, is a dupe, then where does that leave me?

In the third chapter, Victoria visits a so-called wise woman in the forest to take care of her ‘problem’. The woman gives her purgative herbs and also a name – Idyllwild Hall – where they’re looking for servants. Victoria is shocked at the suggestion. She returns to her father’s house hoping to throw herself at his mercy. But she learns that Tom has been there looking for his wife – he isn’t going to leave her in peace. She realises that her father won’t protect her and will want to avoid a scandal at all costs. Victoria makes her choice – to leave her marriage and cast herself adrift into the unknown.

She waits until late at night when her father is passed out drunk at his desk, a bottle of ink spilled on his papers, and moves on to Plan B. She jimmies his desk drawer with a paperknife shaped like a lizard, and steals money to run away.

As I read, the description of the father’s study morphs into Dave’s office in the Square Mile, looking eastwards towards the towers of Canary Wharf. The spilled ink becomes a keyboard. He slumps forwards, his forehead typing an endless row of kkkkkkkk until his PA finds him and…

I close the cover on the e-reader, my eyes strained and bleary from the words on the screen. The clock on the bedside table shows that it’s after midnight. No wonder The Lady’s Secret is a bestseller.

I stare up at the canopy above me – when the previous owners left Tanglewild, the huge, carved oak canopy bed wouldn’t fit down the stairs, so it stayed put. On the inside of the canopy are folds of dark blue fabric, meant to look like the night sky.

What would I have done if Dave had lived? If (when?) his financial and amorous shenanigans had finally come to light, would I have had the courage to leave all this and start again? I’d like to think that I would. I’d uproot myself and my children, and bear the consequences. I’d reinvent myself and start again, keep fighting on day after day. Just like I’m doing now. I know she’s just a soppy heroine in a soppy romance novel, but I feel for Victoria – more than I’d like to.

The one thing that I’ve found a little disappointing is that, so far, The Lady’s Secret hasn’t evoked any visions of my own house. Victoria’s childhood home was a rectory, and Tom’s house was a large farm – both completely different than Tanglewild. But maybe that’s a good thing. The rectory and the farm only have minor roles, whereas the real star of the book must be Idyllwild Hall.

I try to read on, but my eyes just won’t cooperate. The last thing I see as I turn out the light is the dreamcatcher, its beads sparkling in their silver web, waiting to come alive just as I drift off to sleep.