The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Eleven





Back at Hope Street, Alba still can’t believe it. The first time she allows herself to be taken out, to go somewhere public, other than a library, something horrible has to happen. A dreadful coincidence, a frightful shock that she doesn’t deserve. This, she thinks, is why it’s best to stay indoors. There they were, in that silly posh bar—Dr. Skinner with another girl, another student. The former object of her adoration with her replacement: next year’s Alba, who has already got farther than she ever did: being taken to a public place, a social event. A month ago this was the holy grail to Alba, more important even than a kiss. She hadn’t rated physical intimacy high on the list of what she’d wanted with Dr. Skinner, having no experience of it; the practicalities scared her a little.

Only once did Alba step outside King’s College with her teacher. Dr. Skinner had invited her to attend a two-day conference in London. They would go up on the train in the morning, stay overnight in a hotel, then return the following evening. Dr. Skinner would be presenting a paper on the first day and Alba would act as a sounding board and general assistant.

They set out for London very early, sitting side by side on the train, and all Alba could think about was the closeness. She couldn’t focus on a single word of the speech Dr. Skinner was reading aloud, though the colors exploded around them like a fireworks display. When they finally reached the hotel, every inch of Alba’s skin was alive with electricity. She felt ready for anything.

But as she stared at the door of room 236, Alba was suddenly petrified she might be faced with a double bed. She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t cope with it. She was suddenly and absolutely sure that, were Dr. Skinner to touch her, she’d dissolve into a pile of dust on the floor. When the door opened to reveal twin beds, Alba had let out a tiny, silent sigh of relief. Then the pesky itch of disappointment started to scratch at her heart. For the next forty-eight hours she watched every move her teacher made—waiting for a sign, for a purposeful touch on her thigh. All the while torn between wanting it and fearing it.

—

Albert finally left Inverie in 2008, a few years after the local pub linked up to the Internet and he began spending hours on it, monitoring the Ashby family, every morning typing in Alba’s name. He longed, more than anything in the world, just to see what she looked like. Sometimes the longing took him back to the edge, though he never again fell over it.

It was during one of his first searches that he learned about Lord Ashby’s disappearance, only a year after he’d written that letter. It took every ounce of willpower, loyalty and love not to jump in the next boat, then take a taxi straight to Ashby Hall. Liz was free, alone and available. But she hadn’t written to him. She hadn’t called him back. And so Albert had to accept that, for one reason or another, she didn’t want him anymore.

Lord Ashby’s disappearance meant Albert no longer had to stay in Inverie, but he stayed anyway, out of habit. However, when he finally saw it—the picture of a frowning fifteen-year-old over an article announcing Alba Ashby as the youngest entrant ever to King’s College—he at last left Scotland and moved to Cambridge, skipping Hampshire and the heartbreak of seeing Elizabeth on the way.

He found a flat, a teaching job and a weekend position in a little bookshop opposite Alba’s college. Nearly two months passed before he finally saw her, and it was all Albert could do not to cry out and run to her. But he’d made a promise to Elizabeth and he would keep it. So he watched Alba hurry across the street, half a dozen books clutched to her chest, a tatty black scarf flapping out behind her. And he stared down the street long after she’d gone out of sight.

Over the next four years he came to know her schedule and, fortunately for Albert, his daughter was a person of habit. Every day she went to the library at the same time. Every day she bought her lunch from the same café and ordered the same thing. At the weekends she ate in hall. He always hoped that one weekend she’d wander into the bookshop. And then one Wednesday, a dark day of heavy rain, she finally did. Alba walked through the door, shaking her short hair free of water, and Albert looked up to smile at the new customer. He stared, gripping the counter with white knuckles, while Alba glanced around the shop, breathing it in. After that Albert ignored all the other customers, watching her walk to the section on historical fiction and slip a book about the English Civil War off the shelf. Albert prayed to all the gods he’d ever known that she’d come to the counter and buy the book. Someone smiled down on him, and she did.

“It’s very good,” he said.

“Sorry?” Alba asked, and Albert realized he was whispering.

“The book.” He slid it into a paper bag. “I hear it’s very good.”

“Oh.” Alba handed him a ten-pound note. “Okay.”

Albert took the money, opened the till and gave his daughter her change.

“Thank you.” Alba dropped the coins into her coat pocket and picked the bag up off the counter. “Have you read it?”

Albert shook his head as though this oversight was the biggest regret of his life. “No, sadly not, but I will, tonight, as soon as I finish work.”

“Oh, okay.” Alba looked puzzled.

Albert smiled. He realized he hadn’t stopped smiling since she looked at him. “Have you read A Room with a View?”

“Once.” Alba frowned. “A while ago. Why?”

“Because it’s wonderful, that’s all.” He tried not to stare, he tried to seem normal, nonchalant, but he couldn’t manage it. “Didn’t you think so?”

“Yeah, sure.” Alba edged toward the door. “’Bye, then.”

“’Bye.” Albert turned to the window to watch her cross the street and disappear through the King’s College gates. While he replayed every word of their conversation, every look on his daughter’s face, Alba walked to her room, wondering why she always felt drawn to that little bookshop and why on earth she’d just bought a book at random on a topic she wasn’t even studying, when she could get anything and everything she wanted from the university library.

Two weeks after that, Alba seemed to disappear. She stopped coming into college, going to the library or eating in the café. Albert waited for her every day but, by the end of May, he realized she wasn’t coming back.

—

Carmen sits at the piano in the empty bar. It’s past midnight, everyone else has gone home and she promised Blake she’d lock up. But first, she wants to play something, even if in her excitement her fingers won’t relax. She can’t wait for next Friday night: three days, six hours and twenty-four minutes. She can’t think of anything else. Choir practice hovers on the horizon of her week like a beacon of light calling her home. Now she stumbles around in the happy haze of someone who’s finally found IT: the one thing in the world that makes her feel more alive than anything else.

She should be worried. Tonight is the tenth of June and she can stay at Hope Street only another six weeks or so, until July 31. The idea of where she’ll go and how she’ll stay safe after that is a troubling one. But now that she’s started singing again she can’t seem to get worried about anything at all. As she rests her fingers on the keys, Carmen remembers the singer last night and the fiery beauty of her songs. Then she thinks of Alba. The plan to shake Alba up, to see her get drunk and dance on tabletops, might have failed the first time, but she will succeed in seducing Alba’s spirit with music, Carmen decides, no matter what it takes. She will free this clueless young woman, shut up tight as a clam, so that Alba can know joy and passion and love. And if Carmen is lucky, this good deed will undo the very bad deed she has done. Invigorated by the thought, she starts to play: something sensual and sexual, notes that bounce off the walls and shiver through the air. Then she starts to sing.

Sleeping in the office with his feet on the desk, Blake wakes with a start. He loses his balance, slips off the chair and falls to the floor. Then he hears the music. Slowly he gets up, opens the door, creeps down the corridor and steps into the bar.

When she sees him standing in the doorway, Carmen stops.

“Please.” He tries to swallow the longing creeping up his throat. “Don’t stop.”

For several moments they are both silent and still; the air around them is heavy with the echoes of music. And then Blake walks slowly up to the stage. This woman that he never paid much mind to before, except to admire her rather splendid curves, has suddenly activated his radar. Blake can sense a familiar feeling beginning to stir. He’s never been able to resist a woman who’s sexy and talented. He gazes at Carmen as if he wants to run his fingers over every inch of her body. Here is his antidote to Greer.

“You are a knockout.” Blake draws out every syllable. “An absolute knockout.”

Carmen stares back into his bright green eyes without blinking. She’s a little surprised by how direct he is. After six weeks in England she’s become used to the bumbling, stumbling seductions of British men. It’s unnerving to be confronted by this confident American, so completely sure of himself. Of course, she sees how Blake can afford to be so bold. He is, even including Tiago, the best-looking man she’s ever seen.

“I reckon I never heard singing like that before.” Blake smiles. It’s a smile of pure seduction, fixed on her as if she were the only woman in the world. Hypnotic. Dangerous. Designed to make Carmen lose her heart as well as her head. “Never in my life. Let’s have a drink.”

It isn’t a question. Carmen feels a little lightheaded. Cautionary tales about dating in the workplace, along with memories of Tiago, swim around the back of her mind. She isn’t sure if she really wants to do this, have a drink and whatever might follow. If she was thinking straight, Carmen really ought to decline the offer, she really ought to say no. But then, to a man like this, how can she?

—

Alba has now memorized every line of every letter. She can piece together the scenes, the places her parents met and what passed between them. Elizabeth met Albert by chance in a coffee shop. They were sitting on opposite sides of the small room, each reading the same book. It was Elizabeth who noticed the coincidence. She examined him—rather sweet and friendly looking, if a bit short and scruffy—before commenting.

“Are you enjoying it?” She spoke a little louder than usual and, because there was no one in the café besides them and the waitress, he looked up at her.

“Yes.” He smiled. “I always do.”

“Always?”

“I read it every year, on my birthday.” She noticed the way his bright blue eyes lit up his face. “I know it by heart now. I could probably quote long passages to you and bore you silly.”

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t. But I always thought it was a girly book,” she said, teasing him. “I’ve not met a man before who loves this book as I do.”

“Well, I suppose I’m in touch with my feminine side.” He smiled.

Elizabeth laughed, shocked and delighted. That was the moment she fell in love with this stranger. She couldn’t imagine her husband saying something like that, not if his life depended on it. It was Charles Ashby’s complete lack of humor that had disappointed Elizabeth most of all, even more than his philandering, quick temper and aversion to physical affection. He was a wonderful dancer and he’d once swept her off her feet, many years ago, but that was about the best that could be said about her husband.

“Would you like to share a slice of apple cake?” she asked. “I can never eat a whole slice.”

“Well, in that case, how can I refuse?” he said. “I’m Albert.”

And, because she suddenly wanted to be a different woman, a carefree, single woman without a husband and three children, she said: “Liz.” A name no one had ever called her before but now he always would.

They talked about literature, writing novels and poetry (him), raising children and managing mental illness (her), watching films in the morning, going for walks in the woods, reading Shakespeare aloud in empty parks (both of them). They gazed at each other but never let their hands touch, though their fingers were only ever a few inches apart. At the end of the afternoon, they exchanged an apparently casual agreement to meet again, in the same place, the next day.

Of all the scenes from her mother’s letters, this is Alba’s favorite. Thank God, she thinks, for letter writers. But some of her questions are still unanswered. Her father doesn’t write about everything. He never reveals his surname, for a start. And her mother won’t tell her that, or very much more during Alba’s dreams. Unless, of course, she does and Alba simply doesn’t remember when she wakes up. Snippets return to her sometimes, bubbles float up into her day and surface at odd moments. But the information is always a smattering of silly random facts, like the color of Albert’s socks the day they met, or what dress she wore on their first date or the smell of his hair. But Alba wants information of more significance. She wants to know if her real father has the slightly mystical gifts she has? If they share similar likes and dislikes. Does he look like her? And most important of all: if she ever finds him, will he want to know her?

—

Elizabeth replied to Albert’s last letter the day her husband left, a year and a month after she’d received it. A long letter of love telling him she was sorry, that she’d regretted her choice every day, she hoped he’d forgive her and, if he had waited as he promised, would he come back to her now?

For another year Elizabeth waited for a reply. She wrote him a letter every week: the same words on the same paper, posted on the same day from the same post box, the envelope kissed before letting it go. Her magic ritual.

Every morning of that first month, Elizabeth ran to pick up the post the moment she heard letters hit the mat; and for the whole year she kept hoping. At first she didn’t think of going to find him herself. Then, as events triggered by her husband’s disappearance overtook her, she wasn’t allowed to travel. Finally, faced with the fact of no letters in fifty-two weeks, Elizabeth could no longer bear it. She retreated into a place where she couldn’t feel the pain anymore, where nothing could touch her, a world she could no longer leave and no one else could enter. Of course, Elizabeth never knew that Albert still loved and longed for her, that none of her letters ever reached him.

—

Alba hurries toward the library, safe in the knowledge that she won’t bump into anyone she’d rather not see, since Dr. Skinner never visits the library, always sending research assistants instead. It’s been at least a decade since she read A Room with a View and, since it was the reason her parents met, she’s curious now to study it closely. Also, she hasn’t been to the library in nearly a month and she’s starting to get withdrawal symptoms. It’s not just the books Alba craves, it’s standing inside a place that houses millions of them. Libraries are Alba’s churches, and the university library, containing one edition of every book ever published in England, is her cathedral.

Alba approaches the counter, where Zoë sits behind a computer, absorbed in her work.

“Hello,” Alba ventures.

Zoë glances up. “Oh! Hi.”

“Hey!” Alba smiles shyly. “How are you?”

“Where have you been?” Zoë asks, forgetting herself.

“I had to go away for a . . . my mother died.”

“Oh no,” Zoë’s face falls. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Alba says, and she realizes it really is. Instead of Death taking her mother away, He’s actually given her back. “Hey, do you have Room with a View available?”

“Gosh, I adore that book.” Zoë grins. “I’m in love with old Mr. Emerson. When he tells Lucy Honeychurch ‘You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you’—isn’t that wonderful? I think that’s how you know if it’s true love or not. It is if it stays with you for the rest of your life.”

Alba looks carefully at Zoë, at her words still lingering in the air: as bright as fire, glowing brightly for a few seconds before extinguishing in little puffs of smoke. Their brief heat warms Alba and colors her cheeks.

“You might like Howards End, too,” Zoë says. “It’s beautiful, though it doesn’t end happily. ‘Only connect! Live in fragments no longer. And human love will be seen at its height.’ I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that’s the gist. Isn’t it gorgeous? Do you know it?”

Alba shakes her head, a little embarrassed she doesn’t. “I’ll take them both.”

“Okay. Wait here, I won’t be long.”

Only connect, only connect, only connect. Zoë rolls this mantra around her head as she runs down the steps to the book stacks. Now is the time. She can’t wait in the wings any longer. She must act, she must ask. Ten minutes later, holding the books in one hand, Zoë takes the steps two at a time, reaching Alba out of breath.

“These are only a one-week loan,” she gasps. “I think they’re on the English Lit syllabus for the Freshers.” Ask her now, Zoë tells herself. Now, now, now.

“That’s fine,” Alba says, hearing a strength in Zoë’s words she’s never heard before; they’re edged with magenta, the color of desire. “I won’t take long. I’ll bring them back in a few days.”

Just then, the other library assistant staggers toward the counter carrying an enormous pile of books. His messy hair is covered in dust and his baggy jeans reveal the top of his underwear. “I’ve got ’em, babe.”

“Cheers, Andy.” Zoë glances at him with a quick smile.

Then Alba understands. She’d seen Zoë’s aura tinged deep red, the color of obsession, a few times before, and wondered who it was the librarian wanted. Alba’s a little surprised at the object of her affection; she’d have afforded Zoë better taste, but who is she to judge?

“All right.” Alba picks up the books. “Well, thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

“’Bye then.”

No, wait, Zoë thinks. I haven’t asked you yet. Give me a second. Wait! Run after her, you coward. But instead she just gives Alba a little smile and a wave. “’Bye.”

—

“Do you fancy a film tomorrow night?” Greer lies across Blake’s bed, her head nestling in his armpit while she strokes the golden hairs on his chest, gently twisting tufts around her fingers and humming.

“Huh?” He opens his eyes, having dozed off. A few days ago, mumbling something about office politics, he suggested they shouldn’t have sex at work anymore, in case someone should see them. So now they stick to his flat. Greer would like to take him to the house. But she has a funny feeling that it wouldn’t welcome him, so she hasn’t asked.

“Adam’s Rib is on at the Picturehouse.” Greer glances up at him. “We’re both off, I thought we could go together.”

“Sorry, Red.” Blake starts to sit up, dislodging Greer from her crook. “Not tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay.” She tries to sound nonchalant, though it isn’t proving as easy anymore. She’s finding it harder to feign confidence or contentment or whatever emotion she chooses, which is proving a little disconcerting. Excepting her mother, Greer has always been able to fool anyone and fake anything she wishes. But now she’s losing her touch—just when she needs it more than ever. Greer can feel Blake starting to pull away, to withdraw little by little into a place she soon won’t be able to reach him. And she knows that trying to chase him now will only push him further away. A slight sigh escapes her lips and, quickly, she swallows it. “I’ll ask Carmen, then,” Greer says lightly. “She might fancy it. Or someone else, it doesn’t matter.”

Blake doesn’t react to Carmen’s name. Not a flicker of guilt, surprise or even interest. Instead he smiles. “Okay, sweetheart,” he says, his voice as sweet as sugar. He runs his hand through her hair. “Sounds like a grand idea.” And though his tone is still kind and his actions still thoughtful, Greer knows deep in her gut, even though she desperately wants to deny it, that something significant has changed, that while there may once have been hope of his loving her, there is no hope anymore.