The Father's Diary

Dong-hui woke earlier than usual, dressed in a few quick minutes, and went straight to the library. It sat right next door to the study, but she had never had the chance to go in and look; absorbing the information the status window handed her was as much as she could manage, so there had never been a spare moment for reading a book in there either.

Back in her real life she had been too busy scraping a living together day by day to spend her time on anything as leisurely as reading. Any hour she might have given to a book went on one more hour of sleep instead. Not so long ago she had been cutting into that sleep to work part-time shifts, and here she was strolling at her ease through a library stuffed with old books. It gave her the strangest feeling.

“That’s an awful lot of books.”

The books ran from the very oldest volumes to new ones with stiff, uncracked spines, and there had to be tens of thousands of them at the very least. They were neatly sorted by subject, too.

“There’s plenty to be got out of this place as well, by the look of it.”

She was running her eye along the titles, muttering to herself, when the blue status window shoved itself in front of her face.

“Hey! I happen to like reading too!”

“There was a tone in that answer.”

That thing. Right to the bitter end.

Dong-hui glared at the slowly fading status window for all she was worth. Never in her life had she wanted so badly to lay hands on somebody who was not even a person¹.

If I could just get that status window by the collar, one single time — what a fine thing that would be.

The status window flung up an enormous arrow, pointed it off somewhere or other, and scattered away into dots. Dong-hui stood there shaking, then settled herself and took a slow, deep breath.

The library Chloe’s father had used was old and worn, but the furniture filling it was solidly made. Worn or not, every piece had an antique elegance to its design, and Dong-hui spent half the day doing nothing but wandering the room and looking at it all.

Still pretending to browse, she edged sheepishly across to the bookcase the status window had made such a fuss of pointing its arrow at, the one with the easy books. Unlike the rest, that shelf was packed tight with notebooks, and every one of the leather-covered volumes turned out to be a diary kept by Chloe’s father. As though something had taken hold of her, Dong-hui pulled out the one that looked oldest, carried it back with her, and dropped onto the sofa.

The old cloth sofa was surprisingly soft and snug. She leaned back into it and ran her eyes over the library once more, and something snagged her attention: an empty space where nothing quite belonged.

“That’s the spot for a desk, surely. Why isn’t there a desk?”

However she looked at it, that bare patch was where a broad desk ought to have stood. Puzzled, she set the diary down on the table, went over to the window, and studied the floor.

“It is where a desk used to be.”

Just as she had thought, the floor still bore the indentations of desk legs; a desk had clearly stood there once. Judging by their length, it had been a fairly large one.

“Where on earth did the desk go?”

Cast her memory back as she might, she could not recall ever seeing a desk in the room. She would have to ask Delma or Scrooge about it later.

Putting her curiosity aside, Dong-hui sat back down on the sofa and opened the diary. The coarse-grained paper had lost its fight with the years and yellowed.

“This is the entry he wrote the day Chloe was born.”

Peeping into somebody else’s private life pricked at her conscience a little, but whatever anyone might say, the outside of her was Chloe Grace, so she brazened it out. His worry and his love for his wife came off the pages whole and undiminished, and with them the tender ache he felt for the daughter who had been born to him.

The child was smaller than I had expected. I was so afraid a careless touch might break something in her that I only pressed her very lightly with a fingertip, and Chloe shrieked fit to burst. With a voice that big, it seems she has taken after her mother exactly.

That a person’s fingers can be so small. But the more astonishing fact is that the moment Chloe came into the world, I came to love her.

Ah — even now, as I sit writing this, I am overcome that a daughter should have come to me. She is ugly, so why is she so lovable? A strange thing indeed.

A snort of laughter escaped Dong-hui at the last sentence. A baby fresh into the world would have looked wrinkled and homely enough.

Something stirred in her at that, and she lifted her head to look into the little mirror on the table. Chloe must have liked looking at herself; wherever she went there was always a mirror of some size or other. In the round glass, a woman astonishingly like the lady in the portrait she had seen not long ago gazed steadily back at her.

What are you doing in there? Why are you inside my body?

Any moment now, it felt, Chloe’s voice would come at her out of nowhere. For no good reason she felt like a criminal, and she turned the standing mirror to face the other way. And that was when it came.

— Knock, knock.

A heavy knocking sounded.

“Come in.”

The door opened and Delma came through it, storm clouds gathered all over her face, nothing like it had been that morning. Wondering what had happened, Dong-hui watched her and waited for her to speak.

“Word is that the carriage carrying Viscount Patrasche has this very moment crossed the drawbridge.”
“What?”

The lord’s face changed color in an instant, and at the sight of it Delma’s own expression darkened.

Changed a great deal though she had, the young lord still shrank down to nothing in front of her uncle, Viscount Patrasche. And that sly fox Eileen was coming with him, by all accounts, so of course Delma could not help worrying. She was afraid, too, that this time as well the Viscount would push the lord about and get her to hand over what little of the estate remained for a song.

Delma hesitated a moment, then set her jaw with the grim look of somebody who had made up her mind.

“My lady, you are not the lady you were before. So you may square your shoulders and be bold.”

She said it with a stiff face, quite unable to hide what lay underneath, and Dong-hui gave a small, easy laugh, as if to say it was all right. What Delma was worried about was plain enough to see.

“Don’t worry, I’m bold enough. It’s only that it’s been a long time since I received a guest, so I’m a little anxious, that’s all.”

It had not been a long time at all. Leaving out that primped-up pretty boy Ray, it was the first.

The guests who come calling on this place really do have thick skins.
One of them nibbling away at Chloe Grace’s fortune bit by bit, and the other one coming to take even the little that’s left.
Poor, pathetic Chloe Grace.

She was shaking her head, turning back to the diary, when Delma’s hesitant voice came again.

“Shall I call Anna?”
“Why?”
“You must be dressed, of course.”
“Why?”
“Then you mean to receive a guest in that state?”

Delma asked, a look of horror on her face. Only then did Dong-hui drop her chin to inspect what she had on and grope at her hair with one hand. Delma spoke again, her face resolute, as though she had read Dong-hui’s mind.

“Yes. As you are, it will not do. It is no way to show courtesy to a guest, for one thing. And I have no wish to watch Viscount Patrasche and Lady Eileen look down on my lady one moment longer.”

Her choice of words was harsh, in a way that was not like Delma at all.

Which must mean she has that much piled up against the pair of them.

Dong-hui decided that this once she would do as Delma said. Delma looked ready to give her a smack on the backside if she refused, which cowed her a little as well.

“Would you call Anna for me?”

Dong-hui had made up her mind to be dressed, not for the brazen pair coming to call, but for Delma.

“Yes!”

Happily enough, Delma was as delighted as a child handed a Christmas present. For a reaction like that she could put up with a fair amount of bother, Dong-hui thought, and opened the diary again. There would be a few minutes’ grace before Anna arrived.

But Delma turned out to be a faster runner than expected, and Anna, from the moment word reached her that Viscount Patrasche was coming, had been standing by in a posture every bit as combative as Delma’s own. The pair of them came bursting into the library like a typhoon before Dong-hui had so much as turned to the next page.

“We ought never to have cut up all the dresses. There isn’t a single dress left for you to wear now.”
“Quite so. Even those great trailing dresses would have been better than nothing. This is a fine mess.”
“I think we shall have to hide how plain the dress is with jewels.”
“Red suits our lady so well — how about ruby earrings and a necklace?”
“Wonderful! Let’s match a ring and a bracelet to the set as well!”

Delma and Anna were quite beside themselves, dressing Chloe and picking out jewels to match, like a pair of little girls playing with a doll. The dresses had all but vanished, but jewels, unlike before, were in overflowing supply. That much, at least, was a mercy.

The two of them laid out rubies of every kind, held them up beside Chloe’s face, and lost themselves utterly in the question of which suited her best. Red stones went back and forth in front of her eyes like a swarm of gnats, and before she knew it they were being fastened smartly about her neck and ears, her fingers and her arms. A dress that had looked not merely plain but faintly shabby turned elegant and expensive in no time at all. Anna’s remarkable eye had come into its own.

“Oh my! However can it suit you so well! You are so very beautiful!”

Dong-hui looked back at Anna, whose delight was plainly genuine, and smiled broadly at her.

“My lady, you are on no account to make a strange face like that in front of the Viscount. You will look like an easy mark. Is that understood?”
“I only smiled.”

But Delma was not really listening.

Anna undid the hair Dong-hui had tied up any old way that morning and combed it out at speed. With dazzling skill she braided it this way and that, wound it round and round, and produced a hairstyle that looked really rather fine. Her hands moved so fast it was like watching a NewTube video at double speed.

“Wow, Anna. You really are good at this! My hair is so pretty!”

It was not flattery. Anna’s hands were faster than any beauty NewTuber Dong-hui had ever watched on NewTube, and thorough with it besides; the makeup she did drew out everything the face had going for it. Reborn under Anna’s golden hands, Dong-hui looked like an entirely different person.

Peering into the mirror, she was genuinely impressed. Half her hair had been left to fall smoothly down; the other half was braided and coiled round and round into the shape of a flower. She was still gazing into the glass, marveling that a flower could be made out of nothing but hair, when Scrooge announced from outside that the Viscount and his daughter had arrived.

“Viscount Patrasche and Lady Eileen have arrived.”