Danielle Cahill

Aurora

Prologue

The First Pages of Orla’s Novel: Castle Aurora

She picks her way down to the lake as quickly as she can over the pebbled shoreline. The sharp edges of the stones catch under her bare feet; she winces, brushes off the worst of them and keeps going.

When she reaches the edge of the lough, she lifts the hem of her gown and trails her feet in the lake. First one. Then the other. In the gentle warmth of an Irish summer, the coldness of the water shocks through her. Her toes prickle. But she forces herself to stay in the lough, gazing over to the other side where blue-tinged mountains peep through the mist.

When she can bear it no longer, she hops up onto a boulder next to the little boat – her only chance of salvation – which is pulled up above the waterline. It is packed with provisions for the journey, and laden with two sleeping bags. Two might be a little optimistic, she thinks.

She glances up at the castle, which is set on a rocky outcrop far above her.

A shaft of sunlight breaks through the clouds, and, for a moment, it illuminates the gargoyle-adorned turrets of Castle Aurora. The pale grey stone shimmers, and the beauty of the citadel takes her breath away.

Now that she has decided to leave the castle walls, it feels as if she is seeing the place’s enchantment afresh; as she first experienced it three years ago, when she knew none of its secrets.

Castle Aurora has been a haven for many women who lost their way in life, including her, and she is grateful for that. It is a stronghold against progress. A melting pot of creativity. A home. But now, to her, it feels more like a prison.

She rests her chin on her knees, and she waits: willing Angus’ tousled dark hair to appear over the edge of the forbidding cliffs. And for him to lift his hand in a half-wave, as he has done many times before. All through the languid summer afternoons, they met to swim, or to take the boat out across the lake before finding a secluded spot in the trees that fringe the water’s edge, where they were always in a rush: limbs tangling in their haste to be together.

A warmth pulses through her, as she remembers the last time.

They were swimming, and Angus was too impatient to get to the safety of the canopy of trees, so he coaxed her onto the boulder where she was now sitting. Too easily observed from Aurora high above them. It was risky. But she craved that: the desire mixed with danger.

She lifts her head, and the breeze catches at her hair, bringing with it the faint sourness of seaweed. The ocean is not far away. Cold droplets in the air sting her skin, and she tastes salt on her lips. Rain is coming.

Angus needs to hurry.

She gets up from the rock, and she paces the lakeside. To calm her anxious thoughts, she counts the gargoyles on the turrets. There are fifty-two, although one is broken: lost his head in a recent storm.

Where is Angus? What could be keeping him? He knew how important it was for them to leave tonight – Midsummer Eve – when the whole castle would be busy preparing for tomorrow’s festivities. She planned it all so carefully. Her frustration rises. But she tells herself there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. He might have been summoned by one of the Ladies of Lir. Perhaps forced to play the guitar. Song after song. Until his fingertips are raw and bleeding.

A shiver runs over her skin.

She has to believe that Angus will come to her soon. They are so close to being free, at last, from the castle’s shadow.

Chapter One

Orla

Leafy North London

It is a boiling afternoon in the second week of the summer holidays. The sun is beating down on the pavement outside, turning the tarmac of the roads slick and glistening with heat. It is so warm that people are seeking the relief of ice-cream and paddling pools, rather than literature.

I am alone in Medusa Books.

Daphne has driven her two boys to the beach in Margate. Part of me wanted to encourage her to close the shop for the day, so I could take Fliss to the park – at the very least – but I couldn’t afford to take it as unpaid leave. Fliss needs new sandals, and the washing machine gave up the ghost partway through a cycle yesterday, and I’m trying not to think about the cost of repairing it, or replacing it, or how Brian’s face will fall when I tell him what has happened. I’m not going to message him – he will be back soon, and we can talk about the worn-out washing machine and our marriage then.

Keeping an eye on the shop door, I start doing returns, stacking up the books that are no longer needed. This is my least favourite part of the week, but I am determined to “eat the frog”. I read a productivity self-help book last week, which urged its readers to do the things they didn’t want to do at the start of the day (this is called eating the frog), and I decided to give it a go. So far, it has made my afternoons a lot more fun than the mornings, and that’s about it.

The returns, the books I have to remove from the floor, are the unloved ones. The ones that customers trailed their fingers over, but did not pick up. Far too often, I liberate these novels from their fate, even though it is only borderline allowed. I buy them and take them home to the flat, squirrelling them away in corners: behind the sofa, or in a towering pile beside the sash window.

I ran out of bookshelves long ago.

Brian said he would build me some more, but he has not had the time. A few weeks ago, I found a book trolley for sale in a junk shop, which helped for a while. But now the trolley is packed with volumes balanced precariously, so if I try to move it, they tumble all over the floor.

As I continue scanning the novels and piling them up, I do not feel any real need to carry any of today’s returns haul away. There is a historical romp supposedly written by a young actress, and a TikTok star’s not particularly twisty thriller, but I still give the novels my care as I pack them carefully into the waiting crate.

When it is done, I could, of course, start work on my own book. There are still no customers around. But although the story of Castle Aurora haunts my dreams, and pops into my head at odd moments, when I am brushing my teeth or pulling promotional stickers off the front of other people’s novels, I can’t manage to work out how to get back into the flow of writing it. The love story that felt so mesmerising before I had Fliss doesn’t grip me in quite the same way anymore. This has to be the problem with writing a book for so long: I want to scream at the younger me that there is a whole world of experiences that she doesn’t yet understand.

The wind chimes, which Daphne hung on the shop door to use as a bell, let out a peal of silvery notes.

A customer.

I look up, and smile brightly.

The girl walks in a wide arc around the shop with the meandering gait of the browser, wanting to explore all the possibilities Medusa Books has to offer, from cookery to poetry, and children’s books to classics.

She has dark hair piled up on top of her head, secured with a long stick of some kind. As she turns her head to inspect our shelf of early modern classics, I spot the bristles.

A paintbrush. Part of me suspects this is an affectation, but I am also impressed she managed to use just a brush to hold up her hair.

The customer runs her fingers along the shelves, and she pauses level with the middle of the alphabet. Her head is tilted to one side.

She must be looking for something specific, I realise.

‘Can I help you at all?’ I ask.

But in that moment, she has moved and pounced in a fluid movement on the copy of Frenchman’s Creek I ordered in last week.

She hurries towards the counter, her face illuminated by a brilliant smile.

‘I knew you’d have a copy,’ she says, putting the slim volume down in front of me.

‘It’s one of du Maurier’s best,’ I reply, which it is. I should know. I have read everything she wrote, including the more obscure short stories.

‘She’s an inspiration to me,’ the girl says. ‘I’m a writer, or trying to be, and I won this retreat this morning.’ She laughs, her hand covering her mouth. ‘Sorry, I’m oversharing. I do that. I’m just excited. I’ve never actually won anything before. And I need a book to read on the plane.’

‘Congratulations,’ I say, and I answer her smile with one of my own. But I cannot help but wonder. A retreat: could this be the one I was dreaming of? ‘Is that the one at Castle Aurora, by any chance?’ My heart is thumping, as I say the words. But I just have to know.

‘Yes,’ she replies eagerly. ‘Have you ever been?’

I shake my head.

‘I’ve heard it’s transformational,’ she says. ‘No phones, or anything like that allowed.’ She is recording a short video of her turning the book over and back, with her perfectly manicured nails, then she sweeps her mobile around the bookshop.

‘I’m not in that video, am I?’ I ask, painfully conscious of my wild hair, unbrushed and unruly, and my makeup-free face.

‘No, don’t worry!’ she says. ‘You can see, I’m really going to struggle with the no internet thing.’ The girl laughs again, and so do I, warming to her in that moment. ‘Thank you for the book,’ she says, and she tucks it into her green tote bag.

Her sunniness buoys me up until the shop door closes, and the wind chimes have died away, then the dull ache of envy curls in my stomach. That girl – so luminous and friendly – she has won one of the coveted spots at Castle Aurora. For ten years, I have dreamed of going there. I applied every year since I started writing my book, but each time I have been knocked back. I gave up on using a smart phone last year, as part of my determination that Fliss should grow up in a screen-free household, so I cannot even search for the inevitable rejection email. The one that begins: Thank you for your application, the standard was high this year, etc, etc.

I will have to wait until I get home.

Later, I am running Fliss’ bath, and she is happily occupied building a tower of blocks in the hallway, when I finally get a chance to check my emails on Brian’s ancient iPad.

The email subject says: Congratulations!

I let out a squeak. I can’t believe it. My head is spinning.

Fliss calls out, ‘Mummy!’

And I run out into the hallway and sweep her up into my arms. We dance round and round.

I cover her in kisses. ‘I’m going to Ireland,’ I say. ‘It’s my dream.’

‘No!’ she says with the vehemence only an angered three-year-old can muster. ‘I don’t want you to go anywhere.’

A sharp pain knifes in my chest.

I had been so caught up in the moment, that I did not stop to think about how it might sound to Fliss. Of course she would not want me to go.

I stop dancing.

As I do so, I feel the humidity in the air from my daughter’s bath, which reminds me irresistibly of the misty lake beside Castle Aurora, which I have been dreaming of and writing about for so long. In my heart, I know I need to see it for myself. Brian will be here tomorrow, and Fliss’ grandparents are round the corner. Between all of them, they should be able to take of a happy, healthy three-year-old for a few nights. But I am torn.

I push my daughter’s hair back off her face to look at her properly.

‘It’s all okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll come back soon, and Daddy will be here, and Grandma and Gramps will come on Thursday to pick you up from school. We’ll miss each other. But I can call you, and I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.’

My daughter will have three adults around to take care of her, I tell myself, but I am already worrying about the nights without her, and how difficult it will be for me to make telephone calls. And I have never missed a bedtime since she was born.

Fliss is all sunshine now, and planning a sleepover with her grandma, and I am able to hurry her into the bath and then her pyjamas.

It is not until much later, after I have read Fliss six stories, and she is sleeping quietly, still clutching onto my hand, that I can re-read the email and savour the joy of those words: We look forward to welcoming you to Castle Aurora.

That night, curled up in the corner of the double bed, which is so cold without Brian there, I dream of the cliff and the dark lake – reliving a storyline I came up with long ago, but I have half forgotten. The fireplace in the great hall catches alight, and there is a chance for my heroine to show her mettle. I had cast the scene aside, thinking it was lacking in emotional depth, but maybe the fire was the start of something powerful and new.

When I wake in the morning, I remember that I have a chance to see the castle soon, where I could feel the chill of the wind ruffling my hair. I have to believe that being there will unlock something for me. And the words will come pouring out of me, as they did three years ago – before I had Fliss. When I used to stay up each night until past midnight to write Castle Aurora, and the battlements, the stone-strewn path down to the lake, and the ripples shimmering across the surface of the water like silver chevrons were more real to me than the bookshop, or our minute garden flat with the heavy buses that trundle past at all hours of the night.

Chapter Two

Brian is not due back until the early afternoon, so I store up my good news, walking around with it warming me: bringing brightness to my morning. When I spill some of Fliss’ breakfast cereal, I sing Moon River to her as I mop it up – the same tune I hummed to her when she was first born, and she lay with her tiny crumpled face on my chest. I knew a fierce love I had never felt before. My happiness reminds me a little of that love-drunk euphoria.

I drop a kiss on Fliss’ curly hair, and then hurry her to nursery.

When I arrive at Medusa Books, I am still floating in my happy bubble. The door crashes open with a flourish of wind chimes.

Daphne is standing behind the counter with several heavy books of photographs in front of her. She has on her usual combination of a navy shift dress and a pale cardigan, which she is wearing despite the heat. I immediately feel frazzled by comparison, suddenly conscious of the yoghurt stain left by Fliss’ eager hands on my sleeve.

‘Morning,’ she says. ‘How was it yesterday?’

‘A little quiet,’ I say. ‘But it meant I got all the returns done.’

‘Wonderful,’ she says. She shoots a look at me. ‘Are you okay? You look a bit…warm.’

I run my hand through my wild hair, which has expanded during the humid walk to the bookshop.

Now has to be the right moment to tell her, before the first customers start trickling in.

‘I had the best news last night – I won the writing residency,’ I say. ‘The one in the Irish castle where my novel’s set.’

‘That’s great news!’ she says.

‘It’s for two weeks, but it starts on Monday. Do you think it’s fine for me to go? It’s short notice, I know.’

Daphne waves her hand around the quiet shelves. ‘Orla, it’s summer. We’re dead quiet. Of course you must go.’ She leans forward and puts her hand on my arm. ‘You deserve this! Particularly after all the solo parenting you’ve been doing.’

Tears sting my eyes. I can’t disagree, but saying anything feels disloyal to Brian. He has not been around much for Fliss over the past few months. The summer is a busy period for travel journalists. But this year has seemed even more packed than normal – requiring journeys to Eastern Europe more and more, and it has got to the point that I am starting to wonder: is Brian trying not to be part of the family? I give myself a mental shake, and glance over at Daphne, who is now pulling at the bookmarks piled next to the till.

‘Make sure you take plenty of these with you.’ Daphne passes me a stack, which have a snake motif on the front. ‘Leave them in the castle for other writers to discover. There’s nothing like a captive audience.’