The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Thirteen





In the seven weeks since he last saw her, Albert has searched for his daughter everywhere. But she’s apparently broken all her rituals and, as far as he knows, disappeared from the face of the earth. He can’t understand why she’d leave in the middle of her MPhil. Of course no one at King’s would tell him anything, and every other lead he had followed failed. Albert’s at a loss. He can’t afford a private detective, not unless he takes out a loan, so he roams the streets worrying about what might have gone wrong.

At times, when he’s staring at an (as yet) unopened bottle of vodka, Albert actually contemplates going to Ashby Hall or calling Liz. It’d be a gross breach of promise, but should it matter anymore now, given that Charles is long gone? Although Albert has thought about her so often, he thinks he might turn into a pillar of salt the moment he sees Liz again. Perhaps a letter would be best. He could write and ask about Alba, surely she owes him that, doesn’t she?

Finally, Albert decides on a letter. Of course he knows her address by heart, but there is a tiny possibility she might have moved. So he turns on his computer to search for Elizabeth Ashby’s whereabouts, just in case. And that is how he discovers that the love of his life is dead.

—

“You can’t give up,” Stella says, “you have to keep trying.” The kitchen ceiling sinks down then springs back up, twice, as if nodding in agreement.

“How?” Alba asks, fingering the pen in her pocket. She holds it now like a talisman, a good-luck charm. “I only know his name and where he used to live.”

“Well, don’t bother with the police, ’cause they’ll do nothing,” Stella says. “But you can pay a private detective because he will, I guarantee it.”

“I don’t know,” Alba says, “it seems a bit . . . seedy.”

“Don’t be silly.” Stella laughs. “They track down missing persons, too, not just philandering spouses. Anyway, what’s the harm in trying?”

The disappointment, Alba thinks, the absolute crushing disappointment of having hope dashed, obliterated, blown to smithereens. There is something to be said for avoiding all that. “Okay, I’ll think about it,” Alba says, “but can we change the subject, just for a bit?”

All right, Stella thinks, enough p-ssyfooting around. It is time to be direct. “Well, if you want a little distraction, why don’t you try fiction?”

“Yes.” Alba frowns. “That’s exactly what I do for—”

“No,” Stella says. “Not reading it, writing it.”

Alba is struck dumb. The ghost has just looked straight into her heart to see the secret desire she’s never admitted to anyone. Alba stares at the frayed sleeves of her T-shirt and fiddles with a loose thread.

“But I’ve got nothing to say, and no imagination.” Alba speaks softly, without looking up. “That’s why I’ve always written about facts, not fiction.”

“Except that you don’t write now, either fact or fiction,” Stella says. “Do you?”

—

Albert Mackay had clung to sobriety for twelve years, eleven months and six days. Until he learned that the love of his life, the mother of his child, was dead. That night he drank half a bottle of vodka. It was cheap and tasted like paint-stripper. But it was enough to take the edge off his agony, to numb his suicidal urge, to slide him into a coma of no longer caring about anything anymore.

But it didn’t last. And the ache in Albert’s heart hasn’t ceased. He can’t eat, he can’t sleep for more than a few moments, he can’t focus on anything. Instead he remembers. And, clearer than any other memory is the time he first saw his daughter. She was a week old and looked nothing like him, except for the little blue eyes. Those eyes were a perfect reflection of his. They blinked up at him as he held her. Since then, he always wondered how he could care so suddenly and so deeply for such a small, oblivious being. How could he feel that way for someone who had no feelings for him at all?

Now Albert drifts off in the middle of sentences, leaving his students staring at him. He’ll be reading a scene from Waiting for Godot or Antony and Cleopatra, then stop halfway and forget to read on. When he has no students and is supposedly marking essays, he simply stares at the same page for hours. At some point he will look up at the clock and realize the day is long since over and the school is deserted.

Albert knows he has to do something. He can’t go on like this. Last night he walked into a lamppost and cracked his glasses. This morning he overheard his departmental head discussing Albert’s descent into distraction in not altogether sympathetic terms. So he has to do something, or he’ll lose his job. And that would be a tragic event worthy of Godot, Bovary, even Hamlet. Teaching literature is all he wants or knows how to do.

—

Since Carmen left Peggy’s garden she’s been worrying about what she has to do. She doesn’t know if she has the courage to face again what she thought she’d got rid of forever. But right now, as she walks out of The Archer, she refuses to think about it. She has a few days left to decide what to do. And now songs from choir practice still echo joyfully in the air, and as she crosses the street she starts to sing—and then she hears Blake calling her name. Carmen turns back to see him leaning against the door and grinning.

“Where are you off to?”

“Home.” Carmen recognizes his smile, it is the sort that bewitches women into doing foolish things, causing them to fall down rabbit holes into other worlds. But not her. She is safe from this, she won’t fall in love. Tiago killed that possibility off years ago. Her heart is cold now, and numb. And in this, Carmen senses that she and Blake are a perfect match.

“Hey, sugar.” He crosses the street to reach her. “Fancy a drink?”

Carmen laughs. “I think I have enough of drink at work.”

“How about a cuppa, then?” The slang sounds strange on his southern tongue.

Carmen notices that he often asks questions as if they aren’t really questions. He isn’t requesting permission; he already knows that the answer will be yes. But she doesn’t care. A gypsy woman in Bragança once told her that a man leaves his mark on the spirit of every woman he sleeps with. And Carmen is ready to have Blake wipe away Tiago’s. So she shrugs. “Okay.”

Instead of going to a coffee shop, Carmen asks him back to the house. She can’t explain why she does this, but once the invitation has slipped out, she can’t take it back. As Blake follows her across town, always half a step behind, she can feel him watching every curve of her body as she walks.

Thirty minutes later, in the kitchen, Stella, Vita Sackville-West, Dora Carrington and one hundred and fifty-seven other women eye Blake suspiciously. Oblivious to this, he leans back in his chair and slides his feet onto the table. With a pang of guilt and remorse, he thinks of Greer, working until midnight at The Archer. For her sake he regrets what he’s doing. But he still has to do it. He can’t fall in love with Greer and if that means sleeping with Carmen then so be it. In this life, Blake has to protect himself. He must put his own needs first, just as his mother did.

“You want Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” Carmen interrupts Blake’s thoughts and he looks up, then remembers to smile.

“I’ll drink whatever you’re drinkin’.”

“Milk?”

“Black, plenty of sugar.”

Carmen drops the tea bags into cups.

“After two years, I’m finally starting to understand the English obsession with tea,” Blake says. “Down south we love ourselves some iced tea, but it’s so stifling down there most of the time that we don’t go in for the hot stuff. But anyway, you aren’t English.” His gaze lingers on Carmen’s hands, her hair as it falls over her face. Carmen watches the kettle, waiting. Stella watches them both.

“In Portugal,” she says, “we drink tea usually just for fever or flu.” She pours boiling water into their cups. “But here is different, here I like it.”

“I like it too. You got any cookies?”

“I think so.” Carmen opens the cupboards again and rummages around. Blake fixes his eyes on her bottom, the strong curves of her thighs. She tips some slightly stale ginger biscuits onto a plate and sets it on the table next to Blake’s cup. Then Carmen sits down next to him, cradling her cup of tea.

Stella floats across the floor to stand between them. She studies the American with narrowed eyes. She can see right through him, past his dazzling smile, his seductive words and straight into the heart he strives so hard to keep far from prying female fingers. She sees that he hasn’t let himself love a woman since the day his mother left. From that day he hasn’t shed a single tear, or slept a single night through without waking.

Stella’s fingers skim the air an inch from Blake’s neck and he shivers.

“Do you feel that?”

“Sorry?” Carmen looks up.

“The chill in the air.”

Carmen shakes her head. Stella looks closer into Blake’s heart, so broken that shards stick through his chest, creating heartbreak all around him. She runs her finger along his spine, watching as his muscles twitch. She knows what he’s feeling now, because she’s making him feel it. Everything that he’s always striving so hard not to feel, everything he suppresses with sex: longing, despair, fear . . . Stella stands behind Blake as this cocktail of emotions sinks into his bones, deep into the marrow, until they are so brittle they could snap.

Suddenly Blake pushes his chair away from the table. He glances around the kitchen, at the photographs of all the women on the walls, now terrified they are about to leap out of their frames and attack him.

“I’m so sorry, sugar.” He chokes on the words. “I, I . . . , there’s somethin’ I’ve gotta sort out. I’ll see you later.”

Carmen frowns. “You don’t finish your tea?”

“No, sorry, another time.” He shakes his head, edging toward the door. And is gone.

—

It’s three o’clock in the morning. Greer sits inside her wardrobe wearing a T-shirt and short black taffeta skirt and clutching a bright pink minidress to her chest. At times like this her couture always brings her comfort. When she’d walked into the house, long after midnight, she’d felt the presence of Blake, so sharp and strong that it had driven her straight to her clothes. Now he won’t leave her: his smile, his touch, his unreachable heart. And whenever she tries to replace him with happier thoughts, he is replaced only by Lily. Her daughter would be almost Alba’s age now. Waves of sadness wash over her as she wonders what Lily would have been like. The idea of adoption, something she discussed with the ex-fiancé, returns but Greer pushes it away. She knows it’d be a struggle to be approved. She’s single, broke, works in a bar and, in less than a month, will have nowhere to live. She can barely support herself, let alone another human being.

—

The desire to be a writer, to create fiction instead of rehashing fact, is one Alba has held hidden in the depths of her heart since she was a child. After being admitted to King’s College she suppressed it completely, allowing herself to read only novels relevant to her historical study: all the Victorians and their European counterparts: Balzac, Dumas, Flaubert, Goethe and the like.

But despite this willpower and focus, Alba has always secretly loved fiction more than fact. She didn’t cry over the death of Darwin’s daughter or the millions killed by the Great Plague, but sobbed buckets at the fates of Emma Bovary, and Beth in Little Women. She loves books more than life and, for that very reason, she never tried to write anything of her own. Who was she, after all, to think that she could create something brilliant and beautiful, something that wouldn’t simply be a waste of the paper it was written on? Alba never dared to dream it was possible. Instead she buried the longing deep in her soul where it wouldn’t trouble her too much. But now it’s risen again. Stella’s suggestion won’t leave her alone. Finally, this morning, Alba thinks—Why not? She might just give it a try. What, after all, does she have to lose? Nothing, except her heart, and there’s not much left of that anyway.

Alba sits up in bed and rubs her eyes. Thousands of books blink back at her. But they’ve changed. They’ve shifted around and reshelved themselves. They must be misbehaving, she thinks. Perhaps they know that their historical facts are no longer needed. Curiosity gets Alba out of bed. Then she sees her mistake. The books haven’t moved, they have been replaced. The histories and biographies of great Victorians have become the novels they read: Wuthering Heights, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, North and South, The Picture of Dorian Gray . . . Alba walks across the room to study the titles on the opposite wall. This time they are plays from the same period: The Cherry Orchard, Peter Pan, A Woman of No Importance, Pygmalion, The Woman in White . . . then poems: Tintern Abbey, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Ozymandias, La Belle Dame sans Merci, The Maid of Athens . . .

Alba’s alarm clock beeps. She hurries back to her bed to turn it off—and there on the table is a note, the words curling across the paper in black ink:

Take one step back and two steps forward.

She reads it twice, then once again, but still doesn’t understand. Alba pulls a moth-eaten cardigan off her bedpost and slips it over her pajamas. She’ll have to ask Stella. Opening the bedroom door, she sees a bright yellow notebook on the floor. A lurid color, like radioactive egg yolks. Alba fingers the pen in her pajama pocket, then picks up the notebook and walks slowly toward the stairs. Reaching the first step, she stops. On the wall is a photograph she’s never noticed before.

“Emmeline Pankhurst.” Alba smiles at another of her historical heroes. The suffragette nods at the notebook. “I see you’re about to embark on an adventure.”

“I don’t know,” Alba says. “It’s just something I wanted to do a long time ago. I don’t even . . .”

“Hardly so long ago, you’re still a teenager, a tadpole.” Emmeline laughs. “You’re far too young to give up on yourself or life yet. And my own experiences should certainly teach you never to give up at the first hurdle. Or, indeed, the second. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, I’ll bear that in mind.” Alba smiles. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Emmeline says. “Anytime.”

A few minutes later when Alba opens the kitchen door she hears her mother’s butterfly song and stops in her tracks.

“Well.” Stella materializes in the sink. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Very funny.” Alba sits at the table. “But I did just meet one of my idols. I can’t quite believe Emmeline Pankhurst just gave me life advice.” She smiles.

Stella eyes the notebook. “So are you going to start writing now?”

Alba ignores the question. “The song you were singing just now, the one I heard the first night I came here, how do you know it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, I know you do. Why won’t you tell me?”

But Stella just smiles.

Alba scowls. The mystery of the ghost and the particulars of her life gnaw at her like an Agatha Christie novel with the final pages ripped out. She’s been searching for Stella’s picture in the hope that it might yield clues. She’s also been searching for a photograph of Miss Christie. Alba has a theory that, when the author disappeared for eleven days in 1926, she came to Hope Street. She just needs to find the photo to prove it.

“Why are you here?” she persists. “Why have you been here all these years?”

“I told you—I was waiting for you.”

“Yes, there is that great mystery, but I mean, I wasn’t born until twenty-three years after you died. So, for all that time, how did you even know I was coming and why—”

“I told you.” Stella interrupts her. “Time isn’t the same for me as it is for you. Waiting isn’t the point. When I died I wanted to be useful. So I hung around here to help out until you showed up.”

“But why?” Alba frowns. “Why me?”

“Well, now,” Stella says, “if I just told you, what would be the fun in that?”

—

Charles Ashby had been searching for stamps when he found the letters. His wife’s office was open. He strode across the room, disgusted by the mess: papers strewn everywhere, piled up and sandwiched between books. He wasn’t interested in looking at any of it, but when he found a locked box in her desk drawer, he was suddenly intrigued. No one kept secrets from Charles Ashby. At age five he was the first of his friends to uncover the true identity of Father Christmas and was singlehandedly responsible for disillusioning his entire class. He was the only one who knew about all his father’s affairs, the first to discover his mother’s drinking. And if his wife had a locked box, he would be the one to open it.

Twenty minutes later, after he’d found the key, he sat in her chair and read her letters. Charles reflected that, if the box hadn’t been locked, he would never have known. Now, although he cared that his wife loved someone else (he still loved her despite his own infidelities), he would have overlooked it if not for the other discovery. It didn’t take Charles long to realize, the date on the last letter being Alba’s seventh birthday (along with the fact that he’d had sex with his wife only once the year that she conceived), that Alba wasn’t an Ashby at all. And having his wife cuckold him was one thing, but raising another man’s child was something else altogether. He simply wouldn’t stand for it.

As he sat and considered his options, Charles contemplated making the scandal public but, considering his own innumerable indiscretions, quickly decided it wasn’t an option that favored him. He thought of the address on the last letter, of visiting the bastard and beating the hell out of him. But being a tall, skinny man, Charles never courted physical violence, and with no idea what Albert looked like, he wasn’t really prepared to risk a confrontation. After a few hours of musing on the matter, Lord Ashby came up with the perfect plan of retribution: one that ensured himself maximum gain and minimum pain, and his wife just the opposite.