Grayson was on guard, just as I’d expected. He was sitting outside Mia’s door in jeans and T-shirt, reading a book that he hastily tried to hide behind his back when he saw me coming.
“You really are a genius if you can read a book in your dreams,” I said. “What’s it about?”
“The principles of genetics,” said Grayson awkwardly. “I thought I could use the time to study.”
“Genetics?”
“I know it’s only a book I dreamed up, but maybe you can trick your brain in this place.…” He rubbed his forehead. “Or maybe not,” he added.
“You look tired. Like me to take over here for a bit?”
“Definitely not! I haven’t been here long, and I don’t want to go back into my dreams. I was dreaming of Emily and Emily’s horse, she was comparing me with … Well, anyway, Granny was there, too, and she was in a filthy temper again.…”
“Like this afternoon?” I asked sympathetically.
“Worse,” said Grayson, but with all due respect to him, I didn’t think that was possible. The muffins had just gone into the oven when the door opened and the Boker came in, dressed from head to foot in discreet shades of beige and ocher. And with her nostrils distended in rage.
“Please leave the kitchen, Miss Whistlehooper,” she had said to Lottie without ceremony or even a greeting, ignoring me entirely as usual. “And take that delinquent girl with you. I have something serious to say to my grandson.”
But Lottie and I couldn’t leave the kitchen because we had to time the baking muffins, so Grayson and his grandmother went next door into the living room, which she called the salon. That suited her rank better, anyway. Luckily she uttered her serious remarks loud enough for us to hear them easily in the kitchen. At least, if we kept perfectly quiet and put our ears as close to the door as possible.
The Boker was furious with Grayson for “committing the unforgivable folly” of breaking so suddenly with “a wonderful girl like Emily.” As if she (the Boker) didn’t have enough on her mind with Ernest’s stupid midlife crisis, now Grayson had to behave childishly too. “Dear boy, you must consider my heart,” she complained. “God knows I’m not as young as I was, and since Saturday and that … that … engagement,” she said, almost spitting out the word, “I haven’t had a wink of sleep.”
Which seemed to me a remarkable achievement, considering that Saturday was days ago. And the Boker didn’t seem particularly tired, in fact the opposite. She continued her lamentation with much vigor. Emily was all that a young man like Grayson could wish for: clever, pretty, from a good family, and above all very ambitious. “With a girl like Emily beside you, you’re sure to succeed in life,” she cried. “She’ll always make sure that you stay on the right track.” She dismissed Grayson’s objections that he was only seventeen and was planning to decide on his own life, by pointing out that his grandfather had been eighteen when he met her, and it had been the making of him, so he, Grayson, had better stop making trouble. Grayson had no answer to that, and a little later the Boker marched out of the house in high dudgeon.
“Granny can really be rather … interfering sometimes,” said Grayson unhappily, stretching his legs out in front of him.
“Well, I think it was mean of Florence to tell tales.” I sat down on the floor beside Grayson and leaned back against Mia’s door.
“She didn’t,” replied Grayson. Only now did he make his book on genetics disappear. “That’s the creepiest thing of all: Granny reads Secrecy’s blog. And in my dream she spat at me for failing the biology test.”
“Oh. That sounds really bad. But not as bad as my dream,” I said, looking down the corridor. The milky white light in it seemed brighter than usual. “Guess what: I woke from a horrible nightmare, and I was so relieved that I was lying in my bed safe and sound. Or rather, Mia’s bed. Then, after a while, I realized that I wasn’t awake at all. I’d only been dreaming that I woke from my dream, if you see what I mean.”
Grayson slowly shook his head. “Er … no, not entirely.”
“It was a dream about dreaming a dream, so to speak.” I pulled my nightgown down over my knees and admired the lace at the hem. This was the first time I’d worn it, and it wasn’t really my style, but when I saw it in December while I was out shopping with Mom in those little vintage boutiques near Covent Garden, it had been love at first sight. Sleeping Beauty must have been kissed awake in a gown like that: creamy white with lace, and a border of little embroidered roses. I wondered whether I ought to imagine something more practical, but it was simply too pretty for me to do that.
Grayson ran his hand through his hair. “A dream of a dream in a dream? Sounds complicated.”
“It is. But doesn’t it show how versatile this dream business is? We can never really know whether we’re awake or asleep. Maybe we’re not real at all; we just exist in a dream.”