Silent Saturday Read online

  She kept her eyes shut, tight shut. There were too many things out there, on the other side of her eyelids, the other side of the door. Information she didn’t want to face yet. Questions. Recriminations. Explanations. Veerle decided that she did not want to go there.

  Kris, she thought, and in her mind’s eye she saw him at the bottom of the staircase in the house with seventy-three bottles of champagne in the cellar. First she saw him in his usual uniform of black jeans and black leather jacket. No; that was wrong. He was supposed to be wearing evening dress. She dived back into the well of memories and clothed him in black and white, complete with bow tie. He was smiling at her, that lopsided smile that went to her heart.

  Veerle looked down at herself and saw that she was wearing the red silk dress with the spaghetti straps and the matching shoes. The shoes still had ludicrously narrow pointed toes and towering heels, but she glided down the staircase without difficulty. Her feet didn’t even hurt. Anything is possible in a dream. Veerle touched her earlobe and felt the diamond nestling there. She reached the bottom of the staircase. Kris was offering her his arm, an old-fashioned courtesy. She smiled up at him.

  Someone was knocking on the front door. Veerle paused for a moment. The knocking was growing more persistent. Someone was out there and they were very keen to come in. She knew that there was no dark moonlit garden on the other side of that door, no glittering black ornamental lake. There was a well-lit corridor with a number of people in it, and she thought that some of them had uniforms on. They wanted very much to wake her up so that they could talk to her.

  They were persistent, the people on the other side of the door. It took an effort of will to ignore them, but Veerle had plenty of that. She turned her back, the red silk dress rustling as she did so, and took Kris’s arm. Together they strolled out of the hallway, into the heart of the house.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Camilla Wray of the Darley Anderson Agency for her honesty and enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Annie Eaton, Fiction Publisher, and the team at Random House, for their energy and vision.

  Particular thanks are due to Tom Alaerts and Rebecca Benoot for their advice about various aspects of Flemish culture and language; any mistakes are mine. Thank you also to Gaby Grabsch for her support and friendship, and for providing transport and accommodation during my research in Belgium. And as always, I would like to thank my husband Gordon for his unfailing support and for all those cups of tea!

  About the Author

  HELEN GRANT is a highly acclaimed YA author. Her debut novel attracted praise from critics and readers alike and was shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal.

  Born in London in 1964, Helen showed an early leaning towards the arts after being told off for writing stories under the desk during maths lessons. She went on to read Classics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years to fund her love of travelling before returning to writing.

  Helen has lived in Bad Münstereifel, Germany, and in Brussels, Belgium, and has frequently set her novels in these atmospheric locations. She now lives in Scotland with her husband, two children and their cats.

  Find out more about Helen and her books at www.helengrantbooks.com

  SILENT SATURDAY: FORBIDDEN SPACES TRILOGY

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 12175 5

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

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  This ebook edition published 2013

  Copyright © Helen Grant, 2013

  Cover photo copyright © Arcangel Images

  First Published in Great Britain

  Bodley Head 9780370332413 2013

  The right of Helen Grant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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