Page 92 of The Bookshop By the Loch

I let out a gasp of indignation. “Not helping you or giving you any encouragement. I think that’s awful… If that had been my mum, I wouldn’t have been able to stop her going dress shopping with me.”

Celeste’s mouth drifted into a small, dry smile. “My mother thought that anything above the ankle constituted indiscretion and loose morals.” She flapped one delicate hand. “Anyway, I managed to secure a few more pub and club singing spots and did some extra work at the council offices, so I had enough money to buy something snazzy.”

“I bet you did! So, what was your dress like?”

Celeste’s gaze became dreamy. “Do you remember the dress I asked Maeve to retrieve from my wardrobe that day you and Tobias visited? The one I’m wearing for my portrait sitting?”

I let out an appreciative gasp. “Yes. The silver dress! The one with what looks like silver raindrops on it? You must have looked stunning.”

Celeste blushed to the roots of her wavy ball of hair. “I didn’t scrub up too badly, it has to be said.”

She explained that she’d spotted the beautiful dress in Glasgow, when she was travelling in one Saturday a couple of weeks before the party. “I’d seen a lovely crimson one in the window of this upmarket boutique, but it was after I went in to try that dress on that I saw the silver one on a mannequin in the corner.”

Celeste described slipping on the dress, its gauzy underlay sliding down and over her head. “It was like putting on a waterfall,” she mused. “I felt like Marilyn Monroe in it.”

She smiled at the memory. “As soon as I tried it on and saw my reflection in the full-length mirror, I knew it was the dress for me.” She pulled an embarrassed face. “And, of course, that also meant new shoes, a bag and getting my hair done. But I knew it would be worth it, or at least I hoped it would.” Her voice faltered.

“Celeste?”

She composed herself. “I can remember standing up on stage in that glamorous function room up at the big house. It was all chandeliers and cream and yellow tablecloths, balloons and napkins. Everything shone like precious jewels, even the cutlery.”

Celeste swallowed, before she managed to pick up the story again. The branches of the trees outside the windows waggled and dipped in the summer breeze. The air was warm and languid.

“I can remember belting out ‘Happy Birthday’ to Johnson Stafford-Wells and I’d just started singing ‘Congratulations’, the Sir Cliff Richard song, when I thought I was going to forget the lyrics, forget where I was, forget everything.” Celeste’s cheeks burned with colour. “There was the most handsome young man I had ever seen, who’d pushed his way to the front of the audience.”

I craned forward, enchanted. “Who was he? What did he look like?”

Celeste’s expression was gentle. “It turned out he was Reece Stafford-Wells, their son. He was twenty-four and had these stunning smoky-grey eyes almost like a mirror and a mass of floppy, light brown hair.”

Celeste dropped her voice, even though we were the only two in the summer room. “He stood head and shoulders above all the other gentlemen there.”

I digested this, desperate to hear more. “He sounds gorgeous. Did you speak to him? What happened?”

It was then that her soft, lined expression twisted into one of pain. “Oh, we spoke. We flirted, in between me singing my set for his father. It turned out to be the most magical evening of my life, wandering together in the grounds, talking and laughing together under the stars until…”

A thud of apprehension landed in my chest on Celeste’s behalf. “Until?”

“Until Flora Simmonds spotted us together.”

My jaw dropped to the floor. “Flora? What was she doing at the party?”

Celeste was back to fiddling with the edge of her knitted blanket. “She was there because she was after Reece. Her parents were real social climbers. Her father was the local bank manager and he took it upon himself to deal personally with the financial arrangements of the Stafford-Wells family.”

A sliver of trepidation stabbed at me. “So, what happened? What did Flora do?”

Celeste fell silent.

Part of me couldn’t help but compare the agony on her face with the pain I’d experienced on hearing the woman’s voice in Tobias’s flat that evening. I recognised that expression. “Celeste?”

She pushed some hair away from her face. “She used my past to ensure Reece wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

I stared across at her. “What past? Celeste?”

She reached out a hand and placed it upon mine. She set her shoulders under her cardigan. “Two years before, when I was seventeen…” She drew up and readied herself. “When I was seventeen, I… I fell pregnant.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Celeste tried to suppress her haunted look. “Flora took great delight in telling Reece, and after that the relationship was over before it even had a chance to begin.” She struggled to inject some lightness into her voice. “They were different days then. Why would someone like him, from a monied, entitled family, want to fraternise with me after that revelation?”