She began tidying the counter. Nowtherewas a true collector, she thought, just as the bell above the shop door tinkled. ‘Well, hello, Lady Fitz.’ Dorothea smiled, warmed by the sight of her friend.
‘Dorothea! Are you well?’ The woman flitted across the room and took Dorothea’s hands across the counter. The scent of her perfume was dreamy, a little like gardenias. ‘I’m desperate to know all your news. How is that chap of yours getting along over in America?’
‘I got my first letter today. He’s settling in well, thank you! He’s enjoying the company of the new colleagues he’s working with.’
‘Wonderful.’ Lady Fitzhenry was pretty and fine-boned, and often—Dorothea noted when she watched her friend talking with others—she had a hesitant, nervous quality. But with Dorothea she seemed to come alive. Today she was dressed in a pleated wool skirt and a top with a Peter Pan collar. Her hair was coiffured in voluminous waves around her face and curled out just below her collar. She had it styled every week in the local salon.
‘How is Jane getting along with the baby?’ Dorothea asked, looking out onto the street.
‘Oh, yes, quite well it seems.’ A flicker of something passed across Lady Fitz’s face then she brightened. ‘If ever I were lucky enough to have a son, though, I don’t think I would call him Danny-Ray. It sounds like an American matinee idol.’
Dorothea giggled and reached behind her. ‘What would you call him?’
Lady Fitz looked wistful. ‘Edward likes Francis, for a boy.’
‘A lovely name.’ Dorothea handed her the item she’d been saving. ‘Nineteenth-century engravings of regency interiors. A bit of foxing unfortunately, and I don’t know the provenance, but a lovely collection of Ackermann’s work.’
‘How thrilling. I’ll take a look.’ Lady Fitz took the folio into the second room and sat on the old leather sofa, reverently turning the pages. After just moments, she was lost in her passion for European interior design and architecture. Dorothea leaned on the counter, wondering at her friend’s life in that enormous house with her handsome husband and staff. Was it a happy life?Dorothea occasionally had a feeling of unease around Adeline. A premonition of sadness. She wondered what her intuition was telling her. She felt drained of energy today as she watched her, although she supposed she had felt this way all week.
The bell above the shop door tinkled again. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, remembering to bring a smile to her face.
‘Hello,’ she said to the middle-aged man in a tatty old suit. ‘Welcome to The Bookshop of Buried Pasts. Can I help you find the book you need?’
14
DOROTHEA
1975, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
Dorothea felt the breeze on her cheek, cold and laden with the promise of snow. It tugged at the letter in her hand. Two neatly typed pages with crisp creases. The envelope bearing her name and a five-pence stamp had looked official. It had been such an intriguing sort of letter to receive when she and Francis had popped into the post office earlier; she had sent him on ahead so she could open it immediately. She had no concerns about Francis being in the bookshop unsupervised. At nine, he was sensible and trustworthy, and Mr Thistlethwaite would keep him occupied.
From her park bench across the road, she felt a heaviness settle through her as she reread the letter. She looked up. Her eyes traced the deep blue of the painted exterior and the gold lettering that ran the length of the shop above the window:The Bookshop of Buried Pasts. A tug of regret moved throughDorothea; a longing for the innocence and thwarted promise of the life she had once lived inside those walls.
She spied the bright red phone box on the corner, had an urge to run towards it but forced herself to stay seated in case her hands, her unwilling fingers, betrayed her by dialling the number on the letter. It was offering a way out, but how could she abandon Francis? Dorothea blinked away tears. She wondered about her mother’s last days. Had she changed at all in the years since Dorothea had seen her? Become kinder? More honest? She considered the details of the letter. Her mother had once again managed to surprise her.
She stared across the street at the bookshop window, framed by a sprinkling of snow that had fallen overnight.
‘Dorothea?’ Francis was leaning out the door, calling to her.
‘Coming.’ She shoved the letter into her pocket, angry at the illegitimacy it stood for. Dorothea had left her parents’ world, and she stood by her choices.
She crossed the road, stepping carefully on the icy surface. The doorbell tinkled as she entered, a sound as familiar as the voice that followed it.
‘Ah, Thea my girl. Good to see you.’ Mr Thistlethwaite grinned at her.
‘Hello, Mr Thistlethwaite. How’s the arthritis with this awful cold and damp?’
‘Not too bad, my girl. How are things up at the big house?’
Dorothea raised an eyebrow, making sure they were out of earshot of Francis. ‘Not always easy, I’m afraid. I’m worried about Celia. She seems overwhelmed and anxious.’
It wasn’t as if Dorothea had asked to be burdened by the worries of the new Lady Fitzhenry, but for some reason since marrying Edward three months ago, Celia Fitzhenry thought that Dorothea was there to be a confidante. Celia was twenty-one—though seemed much younger—and something of an innocent, targeted as wifely material by Edward and his mother, probably as much for her family fortune as for her excellent potential to provide him with more children.
‘Call me Cricket,’ she had said to Dorothea, moments before Francis fell, as he ran up the pathway from the lake to greet the newlyweds. Cricket and Edward had just returned from their Parisian honeymoon and as Francis screamed in pain, knees bleeding, Edward had grimaced and departed, citing work demands. Dorothea had assessed the damage to Francis’s knees and as she left to retrieve the first-aid box, she heard Cricket say to nobody in particular, ‘What should I do?’ It was as if the girl had only just realised that the job of stepmother might entail some sort of maternal capability.
Mr Thistlethwaite nodded when Dorothea gave him a potted version of her more recent concerns about the beautiful Cricket’s capacity to manage life at Bleddesley House.
‘She’ll get there. Marriage is a big step, but taking on another woman’s child makes it that much harder I imagine,’ he said.
