The Dress Shop of Dreams by Menna Van Praag

Author:Menna Van Praag [Praag, Menna van]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7899-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-12-29T16:00:00+00:00

He loves her. He loves her. He loves her. The smile is so wide on Milly’s face that her cheeks hurt. So happy is she, so bright is her joy, that she almost—almost, but not quite—forgets she hasn’t yet told Walt that she’s lost his mother’s notebook.

Cora has been wearing one of her grandmother’s T-shirts every night and every night she has dreams so vivid and bright that they seep into her days. She doesn’t only dream of her parents, but also her childhood, of her grandmother and Walt. Perhaps, in his case, it’s because she also listens to his readings on the radio before falling asleep. Though she suspects it’s more than that. It’s incredible though, the things she had forgotten, the events with Walt that didn’t seem significant at the time, the words he’d said that didn’t touch her heart then because she’d lived life in her head.

Last night, after hearing, to her great relief, Marianne Dashwood recover from her illness, Cora dreamed of how she’d used to sit sometimes on the doorstep of the bookshop with Walt on Saturday afternoons. Etta had been busy with her customers and, after feeding her a breakfast big enough to last the day, told Cora it was time to play outside and fill her lungs with fresh air. Cora, having never been a big fan of fresh air, would wander up and down All Saints’ Passage doing sums with the number of leaves on the trees or cigarette stubs on the street, and imagining how she might one day save the world. Would she cure a disease that killed millions? Would she invent a drug that halted the aging process? Would she create a miracle plant that could feed starving populations? One Saturday while Cora paced she’d glanced over at Walt hunched over a book, shoulder blades bent together like birds’ wings. As a general rule Cora avoided people but for some reason, perhaps because he was a few years younger and small for his age, Walt didn’t scare Cora. She said things to him that she’d never for a moment even consider saying to anyone else.

“You’ve got a hundred and eight stripes on your shirt,” Cora said as she stopped at the step and looked down at him. “That’s only if the back matches the front. Does it?”

Walt looked up at her, awestruck. “I don’t know,” he apologized, “I’ve never looked.”

“Oh,” Cora said, glancing back in the direction of her grandmother’s shop, then down at her feet. “Did you know there’s a wine cellar underneath the street?”

“No,” Walt said, “I didn’t.”

“Yes.” Cora sat down on the step beside him. “It belongs to Trinity College. Apparently the cellar is made of caves six hundred and eighty-nine feet long containing over twenty-five thousand bottles worth over two million pounds.”

“Really?”

“Allegedly. I’ve never seen it with my own eyes, so I can’t promise, but I think it’s true. My grandmother told me. I’d like to count it myself, to check on the number of bottles, but I’m not sure how to get down there.

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