Cathy had to brace herself as Mrs Hornung levered off her shoes. Then she was ushered onwards, into a palatial hall where glass capsules set between the rafters revealed snow clouds strewn across the London sky. Steps couched in thick burgundy dropped into a living room bedecked in Emporium Instant Trees, colourful streamers hanging around each. A huge hearth dominated half of the room, flames licking high into the chimney, and on a raised level close to the door a table was already laid for supper. Somewhere, a piano was playing a concerto to itself, ebony and ivory rippling up and down without the touch of human hands.
Mrs Hornung meant to whisk her on, but the carpeted expanse in the middle of the room was occupied by a hundred toy soldiers. Some of them were in static regiments on the fringes of the carpet, but others were either marching at each other with rifles raised, or lying prostrate on the ground. On one side of the room, Emil was hunched over a regiment, winding them up madly; on the opposite side, Kaspar was mirroring the action, but spreading his soldiers along a much vaster front.
As Mrs Hornung hopped through, her foot caught one of the marching soldiers, knocking him back into his brethren. ‘Forfeit!’ Emil piped up, leaping to his feet. ‘I call it null and void!’
‘Act of God,’ Kaspar announced. ‘We’ve accounted for them before.’
‘Act of God? It’s outside the rules of the game.’
‘It’s warfare, little brother. There are no rules.’
‘That’s demonstrably untrue! Don’t you remember your Deuteronomy?’
Kaspar grinned, ‘You’d do better to remember your Sun Tzu.’
Just as the battle seemed about to escalate from the minions on the carpet to the deities above it, Mrs Hornung returned – and beside her, Papa Jack. Cathy had only rarely seen him since that first night. The toymaker, Sally-Anne said, stayed in his natural habitat, and that was his workshop. He was holding himself on two wooden canes, their bulbs carved into the visages of bears, and looked even more mountainous like this than he had in his workshop chair. His hair was a waterfall frozen over the crags of his body.
‘Let there be an armistice,’ he announced, with a voice full of whispers. ‘Boys, your guest has arrived.’
Kaspar’s eyes had already found her, but it took some time before Emil could tear himself away from the calamity on the battlefield. Whatever had happened here was so unjust he had tears pricking in his eyes – him, an eighteen-year-old man, crying over toy soldiers. ‘This doesn’t count, Kaspar.’
‘We’ll talk it through later, little brother.’
‘I tell you, it doesn’t count.’
Kaspar met Cathy on the step. ‘You came,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘I did.’
‘I wondered whether you might have another engagement.’
He was needling at her, but with what purpose Cathy was not sure. ‘When your employers invite you to dinner,’ she began, ‘it’s customary to accept.’
‘I’m glad that you did. When two people have been in true danger, as we have, it engenders a bond.’ He paused. ‘Hungry, are you?’
Perhaps that was it, Cathy thought. Perhaps he was trying to catch her out somehow, trying to trick her into revealing her secret. His eyes had not lingered on her bump yet, but the night was young. And why was he still holding on to her hand?
‘Dinner is served,’ came Papa Jack’s fraying voice, and at once Kaspar took her to the table.
It was not food Cathy had ever imagined before, though she was no less grateful for that. Mrs Hornung had spent years perfecting the dishes of the Old Country, Kaspar explained, putting a particular emphasis on the words so that it seemed to Cathy to be some faerie kingdom, not quite real. The dumplings were called vareniki. The gingerbreads had a warmth she was not expecting; the soup was of beetroot and to be eaten cold, alongside slabs of dark rye bread. She started tentatively, but soon the baby was demanding more.
‘So,’ said Kaspar, ‘you are hungry, after all …’
At the head of the table, Papa Jack lay down his spoon. ‘I think what my firstborn means to say, Miss Wray, is that he apologises earnestly for jeopardising your safety as he did the other day. Kaspar, have you anything to add?’
‘Papa, I’ve explained – Miss Wray was positively thrilled to see the paper forest. And so were the customers. Do you know how many EMPORIUM INSTANT TREES we sold last week?’
Papa Jack returned to his food.
‘All of them …’
It was true; Cathy had sold many of them herself, in her first afternoons working the register. Kaspar had put two of the Emporium’s most trusted shop hands on to night shifts so that more could be made, but no sooner did they go on to the shop floor than they were taken again. Somebody, some duchess or minor baronet, was reputed to have lain a forest of them in her hall for the village children to explore. Somebody else had thought to line the trails of Regent’s Park.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Papa Jack, and for the first time his eyes fell entirely on Cathy, ‘you came to this shop not only as our assistant, but as our guest. There are laws of hospitality we would be fools to overlook. We are supposed to honour those responsibilities. Aren’t we, boy?’
Kaspar lifted his eyes to meet hers. ‘My apologies given, Miss Wray.’
‘And accepted,’ said Cathy, though the whole thing seemed preposterous.
‘I hope it has not diminished what you think of us. Tell me – what do you make of our little Emporium?’
There were too many traps in this conversation, and it was too difficult to know which ones were being knowingly laid. So, honesty being the best policy, Cathy said, ‘I don’t want to leave.’
‘There are some weeks yet before winter’s end. You may think differently before then …’
He was making a joke, of sorts, and Cathy found that she didn’t have to force a smile. Papa Jack’s voice was as placid as the snowfall she could now see plastering itself against the window panes beyond the paper trees. High above London, the clouds were giving up their gifts, decorating the rooftops in white. What would it be like to be tramping those streets now, a baby swaddled up against her breast? ‘Do you really open at first frost and close when the snowdrops flower?’
‘Every year,’ said Papa Jack. ‘A toyshop’s trade is in the dark winter months, Miss Wray. It’s only then the magic can truly be conjured. Our summers are given over to … creating. The Emporium would not be what it is today were it not for those months. Yes, while the rest of the world is out there lounging in the long grass, the three of us are here, in our workshops, waiting for winter …’
He made them sound like a family of bears – and, now that she thought of it, there was something peculiarly ursine about Papa Jack. Emil had something of the same look about him. She looked his way and found him with his head down, concentrating on dinner. Surely he couldn’t still be brooding on whatever game they had been playing as she walked in? Her eyes danced across the table and found Kaspar instead.
‘This summer was when I made my trees,’ he said. ‘The dirigibles too. Somewhere, out there, there’s a family floating in one of my dirigibles through a forest of paper trees. Tell me – can you think of anything more perfect?’ He stopped and turned on Emil. ‘Emil, what did you make this summer?’
‘You know what I made, Kaspar.’
‘Tell Miss Wray, Emil. There’s no need to be ashamed.’
Pointedly, Emil dropped his fork. ‘I’m not ashamed.’