The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

rather than worry. ‘Felix is walking it and Emma seemed to as well. She is such a bright girl. It’s so unlike her to get flustered.’

‘Flustered?’

The tone of Simon’s voice clearly annoyed her. ‘Yes, flustered! What was I supposed to think?’

‘Perhaps if you had discussed it with me, I would have had a chance to think.’

‘How could I discuss it with you when you’re never here? If you are here, you have your head in your books!’

‘Val—’

‘No, Simon, this is clearly your fault. You have to bring her home. I’ve spoken to the doctor and he wants to see her as soon as she’s back. He’s going to put her on tranquillisers so she can get down to her studies.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean no?’

‘I mean no. I am not bringing her home. At least not until she’s ready to come back voluntarily, and you are not going to medicate the poor child. Absolutely not.’

He was interrupted by a small gasp from the doorway. Distracted by their shouting match, he hadn’t heard Bea and Emma come back from their walk. One look at Emma’s face was enough to make him switch off the phone and throw it down on the table. ‘Darling, I’m sorry you heard that. You mustn’t worry. I am not going to let anything happen.’

‘Felix told her.’

‘I’m afraid he must have done.’

He saw Emma’s face crumple. She looked from Bea to her father in despair then pushed between them and ran up the stairs to her bedroom. They heard the door slam followed by an outburst of impassioned sobbing.

Bea walked towards the kitchen door without a word. Simon followed her. ‘I’m sorry you heard that as well. Val can be a bloody cow sometimes. However much I love the woman, she still manages to infuriate me! I’m afraid our relationship can be a bit tempestuous. It appears the school had spoken to her, but she decided not to tell me or to do anything about it.’

Bea pulled out a chair and threw herself down at the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘This is absolutely not your fault.’

‘But I haven’t helped. I should have done something more.’

Simon sat down opposite her. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to drive her back to London.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ She looked up at him wearily. ‘I’m not a psychologist, Simon, but as a former teacher myself and the mother of two daughters, my advice would be to let everything calm down. When is her first exam?’

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I’m not sure when they start. How bad a father does that make me?’

‘A hard-working father, no worse than some, better than a lot. Can I make a suggestion? Would it be a bad thing to ring Emma’s head teacher and talk it over? In broad brushstrokes, without too much detail. If they have already raised the subject, then they know there’s something worrying her. And you must tell Emma that there is always the option of sitting the exams later. It’s not the end of the world if she postpones them. She needs to know that.’

‘It’s funny, you know. I’ve been schooling myself to cope when the subject of boys raises its ugly head, but this …’

‘This is boys, Simon. Only this particular boy is a Welsh prince who lived twelve hundred years ago. And Emma is feeling the pain and longing and excitement of another young woman who had her dream snatched away, which is unfair, but that’s the way it has always been. It happened in the past and happens all the time now. We have to find a way of mediating that pain and helping Emma deal with it. You have three teenagers, not two, to deal with. The fact that one of them is a Saxon princess is just an added complication.’ She gave a wry smile.

‘And what about the older Eadburh, the one you see?’

‘In my version, after her exile from Wessex she was offered marriage to his son by Charlemagne, who seems to have been furious when she said yes.’

‘Ah, I remember that story. He offered her a choice, didn’t he. Catch twenty-two. And she made the wrong one.’

‘Of course you know what happened from the history books. So that bit is true.’

‘I can quote from Asser. “He did however give her a convent of nuns in which, having put aside the clothing of the secular world and taken up that of nuns, she discharged the office of abbess, but—”’

‘Stop! Don’t tell me!’

He grinned. ‘You still don’t want to know what happened?’

‘No. Not yet. I want to see it for myself. I am trying, Simon, to find out why she yearned – yearns – back to her younger self. Or was that younger self so traumatised by what happened that it somehow split from the rest of her? We read so glibly of the horrors of history, but if one thinks, really thinks, of the things that happened, the things people witnessed, the things that made them helpless victims of events and compare that with what we do for people today if we are in a position to help, what with PTSD, with schizophrenia, with multiple personality disorder, all kinds of trauma, with all these things diagnosed and heavily medicated today, then think of that one woman. Her whole family were dead. Her father was, one assumes, a controlling and arrogant tyrant, probably capable of genocide and maybe an abuser, her mother was a murderess, her sisters disappeared and I don’t know if she ever found out what happened to them. She was forced to abort her lover’s child, and her daughter, the only child she was able to carry full term, was taken from her. Her husband turned out to be gay, and flaunted the fact in front of her. She was guilty of murdering some of his lovers, and at the very least of the manslaughter of her husband, she