The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Fourteen





I only know his name,” Alba explains. “And that he lived in a remote Scottish village for sixteen years, and used to be a teacher.”

“Nothing else?”

“I have these letters.” Alba pushes the shoebox across the desk. “But they’re personal. They don’t have any information that’ll help you find him.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” The detective takes the box and opens the lid.

“I went looking for him in Inverie,” Alba says, “but he’d left four years ago and no one knew where he went. Or maybe they did and just wouldn’t tell me. Either way . . .”

“It doesn’t matter,” the detective says. “I’m quite sure I won’t need to go there. But if I do, you’ll cover all expenses, in addition to my time. Are you fine with that?”

Alba nods. She still has the rest of her student loan fund and nothing else to spend it on. Of course, in five weeks she’ll have to find a new place to live and something to do with the rest of her life, so there is that to consider. But for now finding her father is all that matters.

“It’s a shame you don’t have a photograph,” he says, “or a bit more to go on. But I’ll do my best and we’ll see where it takes us.”

“And you’ll give me weekly updates?”

“Yes. Or call you as soon as I get anything concrete.”

—

Yesterday Albert lied his way into King’s College, then tracked down and interrogated Alba’s former supervisor about her whereabouts. Dr. Skinner was suspicious and obtuse, claiming to have no idea where she could be, claiming to hardly remember Alba Ashby at all.

“I don’t know. One day she just up and left—”

“Two months ago,” Albert said, “April thirtieth was the last day I saw her.”

“Yes, something like that. Must have cracked under the pressure. Quite a few of them do. Probably went running home to mummy—”

“No.” Albert suppressed an overwhelming desire to knock Dr. Skinner down. “She didn’t do that. Her mother is dead.” It was the first time he had spoken the words out loud. They tasted black and bitter as soot.

“Well, then, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere else to be.” And with that, Dr. Skinner had turned and walked away, leaving Albert standing on the stone path next to the lawn, seething with a fury he’d rarely felt before, a sadness he knew only too well, and wondering what the hell he was going to do now.

—

Carmen heaves her weight against the chapel door and falls through the doorway. Excited laughter floats toward her as she runs down the aisle to Nora and Sue, skidding to a stop in front of the altar, pausing for a split second to cross herself, then joining them. “Sorry I am late,” she gasps, catching her breath. “Stuck at work, I run all the way.”

“Oh, don’t worry . . .” Nora smiles.

“. . . we haven’t started yet, we’ve been too busy . . .” Sue giggles.

“. . . planning our television debut.” With this, Nora lifts her arms toward the chapel ceiling, then takes a deep bow, dipping her head toward her toes, as far as her girth will allow. “Oh, dear,” she splutters, “I’m stuck.” Nora waves a chubby hand toward Sue. “Help me.”

“Come here, you silly diva.” Sue steps forward and lifts Nora so she’s upright again.

Carmen drops her bag onto the nearest pew. “Television?”

“Yes.” With a flourish, Nora hands Carmen a piece of paper. “There’s a televised talent contest coming to Cambridge . . .”

“. . . we’re seizing the opportunity for fame, fortune,” Sue declares, “and, in Nora’s case, public humiliation—”

“If you remember rightly,” Nora says a little frostily, “my Queen of the Night went down a storm last year.”

“Yes, a thunderstorm that sank your ship.” Sue giggles. “If only you hadn’t insisted on wearing that helmet with the horns, I think you might not have been laughed off the stage—”

“Yes, well, that’s not quite how I remember it,” Nora huffs. “Anyway, I’m sure she gets the idea.”

“No, not really.” Carmen stares at the press release. The show is on July 21, ten days before she has to leave the house. And that’s assuming she’s allowed to stay all of her ninety-nine nights, which is only if she digs up the midnight glory tonight. The thought sends a shot of panic through Carmen. “We are really doing this? But, it is only three weeks away. This is a bit crazy, nao?”

“Not entirely,” Nora replies. “It’s an opportunity. A very remote one, yes . . .”

“. . . but this year you’ve inspired us to try again.”

“Me?” Carmen looks at the two women, wide-eyed.

“But of course,” Sue says. “Without you we’re just two fat ladies on a stage.”

“Speak for yourself. I lost two pounds last week,” Nora declares. “And I’ve got a fabulous idea for a costume this year, lots of silk and taffeta—”

“I predict a fiasco,” Sue sighs, “but it’s bound to be fun. You will join us, won’t you?”

Carmen is about to shake her head when the last shafts of sunset shine through the stained glass. Squares of colored light fall on her face, lighting her up like a Christmas tree, and something inside her stirs. Despite everything that happened with Tiago, despite her memories and her fears, she wants to feel that excitement again, the pure, unadulterated joy of standing onstage and singing to an audience.

“Sim.” Carmen nods. “Okay, I will.”

—

Blake Walker has a sixth sense about women. He knows when they’re still madly in love and when they’re on the verge of giving up. Halfway across town he feels Greer’s decision to finally dump him. And he can’t let her. No, if he has to swim all the way to Savannah, he’ll be the one to leave first.

Blake lifts the female arm draped across his torso and places it back on the bed. He glances at her face, the long dark hair spread out like a fan on the pillow, but can’t remember her name. Barbara? Bridget? Something beginning with B. Or possibly G. It doesn’t matter. He went home with her only to get Greer and the Spanish singer out of his head.

Looking at the alarm clock on the girl’s bedside table, he curses. He’s an hour late. He slips out from under the duvet and, quickly pulling on his jeans and T-shirt, ducks out of her bedroom and into the street. He runs to The Archer, pausing only to nip into a newsagent’s and buy Greer the best bunch of flowers they have.

—

Peggy sits at her kitchen table sipping Earl Grey and listening to the radio: a dramatization of the abdication of Edward VIII. She remembers hearing his speech when it first aired in 1936. She was six years old, watching her mother washing dishes. She can’t recall now where her sisters were but remembers the house was silent, except for the radio.

Today her tarot card is the Six of Cups: the card of simple blessings, family and innocence. Peggy closes her eyes to listen, but instead she’s back in her mother’s kitchen, splaying her tiny hands into starfish on the shiny plastic tablecloth.

“You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the throne . . . but I want you to know that, in making up my mind, I did not forget the country or the Empire . . “

“What does ‘impelled’ mean, Mummy?” Peggy kicked her legs under the table.

Milly Abbot turned and smiled at her daughter. “It means pushed, or forced. It means he doesn’t really have a choice.”

“But he does.” Peggy frowned. “He doesn’t have to abandon us, does he?”

Milly wiped her wet hands on her apron. She pulled out a chair and sat down. “He’s in love with a woman,” she explained, “but she’s not allowed to be queen. And he can’t marry her unless he stops being king. So—”

Peggy interrupted. “But why can’t he just find another woman to marry?”

“My dear, I’m afraid you can’t simply choose who you fall in love with. And, when you do, you can’t give them up so easily.”

“Oh.” Little Peggy stared at her fingers, considering this. It made sense, she supposed. But she still felt she’d been let down somehow, that a grown-up had done something selfish.

“. . . and he has one matchless blessing enjoyed by so many of you, and not bestowed on me: a happy home with his wife and children . . .”

Peggy looked up, suddenly curious. “Are you happy, Mummy?”

“Yes. I am, very.”

Because her mother never lied, Peggy knew this was true, but she still wondered. Her sisters—all born exactly two years apart—were forever fighting. And her mother never seemed to do anything but look after everyone.

“Do you ever want to run away?”

“Sometimes.” Milly laughed. “But I also know that not everything I want every moment will actually make me happy. This is my circus, I’d miss it after a minute.”

Peggy regarded her mother with a suspicious squint. “I want lots of different things. How do I know which one will make me happiest?”

Back in her own kitchen, a song bursts out of the radio and Peggy jumps. Still caught up in the past, she wonders where she is, and where Milly has gone. Unable to summon the energy to stand and switch off the music, Peggy shuts her eyes and attempts to return to 1936, to remember her mother’s answer to the question.

But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t. It’s gone.

—

Greer stands at the bar, polishing glasses. She holds each one for a few seconds over a bowl of hot water, watching the steam fill the paper-thin bulb, then gently rubs the smudges away with a cotton cloth. Every now and then she’s seized by the urge to smash one against the marble counter and watch it shatter. Today she’s wearing a black miniskirt with red leather boots. It’s her power outfit, the thing that will give her the confidence to break up with Blake. It must be done today.

Greer has finally decided to heed Peggy’s nudging and take action. It’s time to get back to the business of addressing the mess that is her career, and for that she’ll need all her energy. No more white nights and slept-through days. She must focus. She must really apply herself, line up auditions and not stop until she succeeds at something. She should probably move to London and set her sights on the RSC. Greer feels strong. Resolute. This time she won’t cave in to his seductive southern ways, she won’t lose her will to the pull of mind-blowing sex.

Less than an hour later Blake stumbles in to the bar, out of breath. Nearly knocking over a table on his way to the counter, he stands opposite Greer. She doesn’t look up.

“Hey, Red.” He gives her his best grin. “How you doing today?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice is controlled and cold.

Panic tugs at Blake’s heart. It’s worse than he thought. He’ll have to do some damage control, quickly.

“I missed you, Red.” He holds out the flowers, red tulips and roses, toward her.

“You didn’t call.” Her words are sharp as flint. “You haven’t been to the bar in days.”

“I know, I’m sorry, sweetheart, I had a heap of stuff to sort out. Let me take you to dinner tonight.” He reaches for her hand but she pulls back. “I’ll make it up to you after.”

“No.” Greer feels tears threatening. She must be quick. “This isn’t . . . we’re not right—”

“Don’t say that,” he says, “please, don’t.”

She hears the crack in his voice and is surprised. He must care more than she realized. For a moment she wonders. Seeing she’s wavering, Blake reaches again for her hand and, this time, she doesn’t flinch away. It is her fatal mistake. As his warmth flushes her skin, Greer’s resolve weakens.

“Give me another chance.” Blake gently lifts her chin until their eyes meet. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

“The flowers are lovely.” Greer surrenders a little smile. “My favorite color.”

“I know, Red, I remember.” He fixes her with his most alluring smile. And she is trapped, helpless, as he leans over the counter and kisses her so deeply that her cheeks glow, her heart swells and her womb begins to throb.

—

Alba lies across her bed, Albert’s pen in her hand, the yellow notebook open, trying to come up with something to write—fiction, not fact. But her mind is completely blank. And she keeps getting distracted, wondering if the private detective has made any discoveries yet. The pen is beautiful, which is something. Letters flow out of it, silky across the page, dark blue on white. But so far Alba has only three sentences. Crossed out.

Fireworks explode, scattering light like fistfuls of stars. Esme tucks her head under the pillow. Everyone is celebrating in the garden but she escaped hours ago.

Seeking inspiration, Alba glances up at her books, catching sight of Great Expectations snuggled between North and South and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Dickens was Dr. Skinner’s favorite author. With a sigh Alba thinks again of that day. The day everything fell apart.

She found out about Dr. Skinner’s betrayal while sitting in her favorite place on earth: a table underneath a south-facing window in the university library. There she could pretend she was alone in the world with only eight million books for company. A cast-iron radiator fixed to the wall toasted her ever-cold feet when she slipped her toes between its ridges.

It was Zoë who brought her the news. She snuck up behind Alba and tapped her gently on the shoulder. “Sorry,” she said when Alba flinched, “I didn’t want to disturb you, but I’ve just got something I thought you’d want to see.”

“Oh?” Alba closed Pitt and Peel: The Legacy of Youth on Victorian Britain and looked at the Journal of Modern History in Zoë’s hand: edition 8312.

“Your supervisor just published a paper. It’s brilliant.” Zoë nodded at Alba’s notebook. “You know, you must be the only one in here without a computer—”

“What? But the article—” Alba looked suddenly startled. “What’s the title?”

“‘Mona Caird and the Marriage Question in 1888: A Revisionist History.’”

“Really?” Alba wondered if Dr. Skinner had been meaning to surprise her with it. She took the journal and flicked through its pages until she found the title in bold and, underneath, the author’s name: Dr. A. Skinner.

One name. Alone. Single.

It must be a mistake. She stared at the black letters standing out against the white page, trying to suppress her rising panic. Perhaps this article was a precursor to the real one, perhaps Dr. Skinner had written it to prepare for their joint paper so that it would have the impact it deserved. Entirely forgetting Zoë, Alba began to read. Although she was an extremely fast reader with a nearly photographic memory, it took her two hours to read the article’s ten pages. Ten pages of what would now be known to the world—at least the world of academic historians—as Dr. Skinner’s brilliant revision of Victorian marriage mores in the late nineteenth century. It was a perfect, word-for-word account of her initial notes, crafted into elegant, brilliant paragraphs that followed every line of her reasoning exactly.

When she’d finished reading, Alba stayed at the desk, still holding the magazine, staring at the wall. Her world had turned on its axis, tipping so far that she could no longer see straight. And Alba sat there, until the library closed at ten o’clock and a concerned Zoë had to ask her to leave.

—

Carmen kneels in the dirt, carefully scooping out handfuls of soil with her fingers. Twilight sinks slowly into night, but the sky is still light enough for her to see by. Carmen wishes she’d never done it, wishes she had never brought it with her to England. It was a stupid mistake. And then it started to smell so strongly of Tiago, of sex and cigarettes, that it began to choke her. So Carmen tried to get rid of it, and burying it seemed the most sensible option. Though of course it hasn’t worked.

The midnight glory was the first plant Carmen saw when she came to the house. Its nearly black flowers reminded her of Tiago, how everything around him turned dark, so it had seemed appropriate. And she thought, once she buried the last piece of him, that she could get on with her life, that she could forget. But it’s just the opposite, and now he’s poisoning everything around him.

As Carmen digs she prays to a Catholic God she no longer worships that she’s doing the right thing—not burying her problems but facing them. She thinks of the night it all went wrong, the night their love turned sour. Tiago had invited Carmen up on stage to sing a duet with him, something he wanted to serenade her with. But when she sang, the audience fell silent, totally enchanted. And when she stopped they cheered so loudly, begging for an encore, that Tiago couldn’t hear himself singing his part. He stared at her. A light had flicked on inside Carmen, one he’d never seen before, not even when they made love. But it went out the moment she saw his face. That night he slapped her, warning her not to take on airs or think she was anything special to anyone but him. Carmen never sang after that. Indeed, she hardly ever left the house again.

“Foda!” Carmen’s knuckles hit the box and she winces, pulling her hand out of the ground and rubbing away the pain. She glances up at the sky and the black shadows of the trees as the last patch of light slips away. She doesn’t have any more time. Carmen wraps her fingers around the wooden edges of the box and pulls it out of the soil. She places it next to her on the grass, hurriedly fills the hole, stamps down the dirt, spits on it, then turns back toward the house with the box in her hand.