‘I spoke about wings. You just flew.’
‘Is that a poem?’
‘No, it’s a song,’ I said, taking her hand. I could not be in the same room and not be close to her. ‘It’s about the moon and this guy who’s an idiot and a girl who just … knows everything.’
‘Sounds just like us!’
‘Exactly. I knew you’d like it.’
She put her arms around my neck and we stood there, shuffling a dance with no music.
‘This isn’t all too weird for you, is it?’ Her words came out muffled as she spoke into the shoulder of my woollen jumper.
‘If it was, I would have said so when the tree started growing out of your flat.’
She snorted, which made us both laugh.
‘I feel like I’m in a dream,’ she said and I concurred. But dreams had a habit of ending. I decided, quietly, that our dream would be different.
‘There’s another door!’ She broke free of my arms and rushed to the far end of the room.
On closer inspection, there was indeed another door. It was exactly where I thought the cheval mirror had stood, with our reflections inside. I blinked slowly. Nope, it was a door. No mistaking it.
‘How are we supposed to see where we’re going?’ I asked, after about thirty seconds of following her blindly in the dark. We were inside what felt like the eaves of the house.
‘You’re not. You just have to trust me.’
‘But you don’t know where you’re going either?’ I panted, now half crouched as I’d just whacked my head on a roof beam.
‘You once asked me to trust you and you don’t see me moaning about it,’ she needled.
I kept quiet for another minute or so, until it felt as though we were going upstairs.
‘Just checking that you’re aware of ascending, despite being in the attic.’
‘I’m aware.’
She reached back and patted the side of my head. It did not help matters.
‘You remember the book, how it talks about an upside-down stairway?’
I did remember it, but I thought it was some kind of sweet fairy tale for kids, not a map for … what exactly?
‘Yes, but, you don’t really believe we’re going to find the bookshop?’
Her voice seemed to be getting farther away. ‘You can’t find something that was never lost!’
Great. Even Martha was speaking in riddles now. That was Madame Bowden’s influence. And where the hell was she? There was no time to think logically, as the passage grew narrower and I could feel the skin on my hands being scratched.
‘Is now a good time to mention that I’m claustrophobic?’ I announced, as casually as I could, bravely omitting to comment on the fact that the stairs seemed to be taking us downward now, in a tight spiral.
‘I think these are the roots of the tree. Don’t you?’
Of course they are, I muttered to myself. I mean, it made perfect sense if you had just taken some sort of Class A drug. Or if your last name was Pevensie and you had just stumbled into a wardrobe full of fur coats. I suddenly became very aware of my own thoughts – this constant stream of ridicule. As Martha pointed out, wasn’t I the one who had walked straight into the bookshop on my first night here? Yet I had immediately dismissed it as some kind of drunken mirage.
My mind wouldn’t let me believe. Martha suffered no such resistance and I decided that if I could not necessarily believe, I could at least believe in her.
‘The soul of the night turned upside down.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That line from the book. It said that you have to trust you will end up exactly where you’re meant to be.’
‘I feel like I already have,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard me. No sooner had I spoken the words than I saw a literal light at the end of the tunnel. My heart began to race.
Chapter Fifty-Five
OPALINE
Dublin, 1952
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
I let Emily Dickinson’s poetry book fall on to my lap and spied the stained-glass windows of the shop, the colours of which now painted the image of a bird and an open cage. I made a kind of pact with the universe that if I kept the door to my heart open, one day my little girl would walk through it. In the meantime, I found an occupation that created the illusion of doing something to bring that day ever closer. I began writing a book. A children’s book. A Place Called Lost. I knew there was a strange kind of magic in these walls. Maybe not the kind you’d find in travelling shows or under the big top, but something far subtler than that.
I began to switch off the lights, lingering over the task. I had an undefinable sense that something, or someone, was close. Someone I knew. Someone I loved. But I couldn’t trust it. Wouldn’t. Even when I heard the knock on the glass door, I didn’t turn to look. Couldn’t face the disappointment of being wrong. I placed my hands on the desk and let my weight lean against it, squeezing my eyes shut. My heart was disobeying my mind and without consciously making the decision, I turned around.
He was there.
Josef. The snow falling gently on his head and shoulders.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips and I could have sworn the books on the shelves sighed too. The bookshop had let him in when I had first escaped St Agnes’s and needed him the most. Now he had returned, everything felt hopeful again. He stepped closer to the window and I followed. We were separated only by the thinnest pane of glass. My eyes searched his eyes, his lips, his entire frame. Was he real?
‘Are you going to let me in?’ he asked, a lopsided smile on his face. ‘It’s a little cold.’
I burst out laughing and it sounded like silver bells to my ears, bells that hadn’t rung for years. I opened the door and we both stood at the threshold, the stained glass overhead blooming with flowers.
‘Are you back for good?’
‘My father passed away in the autumn.’
I placed my hand over my heart. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I can repair some of the old music boxes that were in the attic. Anything that is broken—’
‘You’ve already repaired what was broken in this place,’ I said, rushing into his arms.
‘So many nights I have dreamed of you and this place,’ he said, holding me tightly, as though nothing would tear us apart again.
‘This bookshop is rooted in my heart,’ I said. ‘I have to find a way to keep it alive. For my daughter.’
He pulled back and searched my face for answers.
‘She’s alive. My baby is alive.’
He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. The joy in his eyes was enough.
‘Please, come inside,’ I said, finally.
All he carried was a large canvas duffle bag with a book poking out of the pocket at the front. Red leather, gilt-edged pages. It was so familiar to me, but so utterly incongruous that I hardly dared to hope.
‘For you,’ he said, following my eyeline and handed it to me. ‘I found it in an old bookshop in Austria.’
I took the time-worn book into my hands and felt the magic of childhood rushing back to greet me. I searched for the inscription and gasped when I saw it. Alfred Carlisle. My real father.