The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Nineteen





Albert twists the cap off his fifth bottle of vodka in five days. He pours a glass slowly, watching the liquid slice through the air and splash up the sides. Then he closes his eyes and sees Alba as a baby, the first day he saw her, the only time he ever held her.

They met in London, in a dark little café in Covent Garden where no one would know Lady Ashby. But still they didn’t kiss or give any indication that they were anything more than acquaintances. When Elizabeth handed him his daughter, Albert took her as if she were made of glass. From the moment he held Alba he never wanted to let her go. He wanted to kidnap his daughter and lover and take them somewhere they’d never be found. But of course he gave his little blue-eyed girl back. He watched Elizabeth walk away and finally felt the hope he’d been holding on to so tightly shatter inside his chest.

When Albert blinks again the vodka is overflowing and spilling onto the floor. Albert rights the bottle, bends down, sips an inch out of the glass, then picks it up and takes it to the sofa.

For his first anniversary with Elizabeth, Albert planned something spectacular. He stopped writing for a few weeks, worked extra shifts at his part-time jobs at the cinema and corner bookshop to save what he needed for his surprise.

Elizabeth met him at the cinema at midnight. Charles was spending the weekend in London with his latest socialite, the nanny was at home with their children. Elizabeth was dressed in dark blue silk, the color of her eyes, her blond hair twisted up in curls. Albert met her in the foyer with a dozen roses and a tub of salted popcorn shaken up with chilled chocolate drops. He’d paid Tom, the projectionist, to stay late and show the film he’d ordered, couriered from the capital at great expense.

“Can you guess what it is?” he asked, as they snuggled down in their seats.

“I think so.” She smiled. “And I can’t believe you did it.”

“Anything, anytime.” He slipped his hand into her lap. “If it’s within the realm of my magical powers, you’ve got it.”

The titles flickered onto the screen. Elizabeth squeezed Albert’s hand as Miss Bartlett appeared:

“The signora had no business to do it, no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking onto a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”

Albert glanced at Elizabeth to see her mouthing the lines. He knew she wouldn’t leave her husband while her children were young; they’d lose all their privileges, relocate to a council estate and probably hate her forever. Albert, having grown up on a council estate, can’t see what a disaster that would be, but he understands about the children and is quite prepared to wait until they have left home, or whenever she’s ready, as long as it takes.

With Elizabeth’s eyes still fixed on the screen, Albert kissed her.

Without turning to him she whispered: “I’ll love you, Al, for the rest of my life.”

Snapping out of the memory, Albert sees that his glass is empty. He heaves himself off the sofa and shuffles back to the sink. As the half-empty bottle comes into view, he stops. What the hell is he doing? Is he really going to give up on Alba as he did on Elizabeth? Will he let her run away, or will he find and fight for her? Will he drink himself into a coma, or search and not stop until he’s looking at his daughter again?

Albert picks up the bottle and watches his hand—seemingly of its own accord—skim over the glass and tip the rest of the vodka down the sink. As Albert watches the last few ounces slip down the drain, he’s suddenly hit with an idea so simple he can’t believe it hasn’t struck him before. He doesn’t have to go from place to place, seeking out Alba in her regular haunts, hoping one day he’ll see her. He can go to one place and wait until she comes. And if Alba is still in Cambridge, then there is one place she’s sure to visit eventually, even if he has to wait a very long time.

—

Having left Harry upstairs waiting for her, Peggy knocks on Greer’s bedroom door. She holds a new note in her hand, one she found on her pillow this morning. She knows it was meant for someone else, which means it’s clearly time to stop stepping back and start interfering again. When no one answers she pushes the door open and crosses the room to the wardrobe. She finds Greer buried in the back. Peggy stands outside and softly calls her name until Greer pokes her head through the curtain of couture.

“Oh, hello, Peg,” Greer says, a little flustered. She’s holding a silk tea gown as shiny and pink as the inside of a shell.

“Sorry to burst in like this.” Peggy runs her fingers through the beaded tassels of a black sequined flapper dress. “I have something for you.” She offers the note.

Greer unfolds it and reads,

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.—Goethe.

“It came to me. For the second time this month,” Peggy says. “And I believe that, this time at least, it was meant for you.” Peggy notices the sea of shoes on the floor. “Goodness, how lucky you are, I do so love shoes.”

Greer picks up a pair of velvet heels the color of Peggy’s earrings. “Try these on.”

“Oh, no.” Peggy laughs, slipping them on. “I gave up heels years ago.” She thinks of how much Harry would enjoy them.

Greer glances at the note again. “So, what do I need to trust?”

“Your instincts,” Peggy suggests. “The truth about the things in your life.”

“Is that what you do?”

Peggy frowns. “Yes.” Though she’s not nearly as certain about that nowadays as she used to be.

“But,” Greer says, “I don’t think I know what my instincts about things are.”

“Oh yes, you do.” Peggy looks at her. “You know exactly, you just don’t want to believe it.”

—

“Won’t you move in with me, Peg?” Harry asks. “You don’t have to marry me, just live with me. Haven’t I paid my dues? Haven’t you paid yours?”

Peggy bites her tongue. The temptation to say yes is so strong in her now that she can hardly hold it back. “You know the answer to that,” Peggy says softly, “it’s the same one I’ve been giving for the last twenty years.”

“Yes,” Harry agrees. “But I’m not sure if I believe you anymore.”

There is no point in marrying me, Peggy wants to tell him. You’d be a widower before we were even on our honeymoon.

They’re sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a slice of postcoital chocolate cake with cream. The characters on the crockery are suspended in the poses they were in when Harry sat down at the table. On Peggy’s plate Rumpelstiltskin is lifting the Lady of Shallot’s skirt above her head. On Harry’s, the Red Queen is engaging in a little light bondage with Dopey. They’ve been spending nearly every night with each other recently. Peggy doesn’t care anymore about the rule against overnight visitors. If the forbidden room is locking her out, if the house is ignoring her, then she will jolly well ignore it in return. If she’s going to be selfless and sacrifice the remaining days of her life to the house, then she’ll also be selfish and cram in all the mortal joy she possibly can while she’s still breathing.

“It hasn’t been that long.” He takes another bite of cake, while Peggy licks the cream off her fork. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Peggy says, “quite sure.” The desire to run away with him swells up but with some effort she pushes it down again.

“I don’t understand.” Harry takes her hand. “You’ve given up everything to be here, to do this. You haven’t had a husband or a family—”

“These girls are my family, they’re my daughters,” Peggy says, wanting to end the conversation.

“But they leave after ninety-nine days, which isn’t quite the same, is it?”

“It’s always suited me fine,” Peggy lies. “I told you that.”

“I’m not going to drop it, Peg. I know you’re hiding things from me. What about that door, the one that won’t open?”

“It’s just stuck.”

Harry, who has tried several times to pry open the door with a crowbar, knows this isn’t true. “I love you, Peg, so I’ve accepted your lifestyle. But it’s different now. Something’s changed—you want to leave, I can feel it.”

“Don’t.” Peggy holds up her hand to stop him, but Harry just enfolds it between his hands and places it on his chest, not letting her go.

After Harry has gone home, Peggy finds a hammer in a long-forgotten cake tin (along with a very moldy piece of cake). She’s decided to take drastic action; waiting clearly hasn’t worked, so she’s going to resort to brute force. She lifts the hammer high over the door handle and brings it down hard. This makes a little dent in the gold-plated knob, but nothing more. So she does it again.

Downstairs, in the living room, Carmen stops playing and wonders at the rhythmic banging above her, which is punctuated ten minutes later by an exasperated scream.

—

Alba lies in bed, unable to sleep. She’d been practicing with Carmen earlier, testing out the first verse of their song. They’d agreed it was okay, but far from brilliant. Finally she’d come to bed and picked up Chocolates for Breakfast, curious to see why Zoë loved it so much. Now that she’s finished it, the book lies next to her, open at one of its most well-thumbed pages, and Alba is a little nervous.

She looks back at the book, thinking about its sensual scenes. Is it ridiculous that she’s never touched herself before? Surely it’s something she should have done at puberty, but she was just too self-conscious. Every time she got the urge, she blushed. Alba’s never read anything as sexy as this before and the parallels of the book’s plot with her own life are shocking: the protagonist is a rich teenager with a crush on her teacher. Alba wonders if Zoë might be psychic.

Tentatively, Alba picks up the book again. She glances down at her tiny breasts under her T-shirt, studying them, then takes a deep breath and slowly begins to stroke her hand along her body, her touch as light and soft as the cotton. Alba shivers a little. She slides her hand along her ribs, gathering her T-shirt until it settles in folds over her belly. She licks a finger and strokes it across her skin as the lights in her room begin to flicker.

Air rushes through the pipes, rattling as Alba gasps. Soon every wall of every room in the house trembles, shaking the photographs in their frames so that eight hundred and twenty-one women giggle. Whispers on the lips of every woman rush along the corridors. As Alba’s body contracts, every light in the house flickers and every flower of the midnight glory bursts open. Every fuse in the house blows. And then, one by one, the streetlamps on Hope Street explode, scattering thousands of golden sparks into the night.

—

At two o’clock in the morning Carmen leaves the piano and returns reluctantly to her bedroom. She’s been practicing until her fingers went numb. Since she’s agreed, or at least surrendered, to the crazy stubbornness of Nora and Sue, Carmen is determined not to make a fool of herself, if she can possibly help it. She walks slowly across her floor and stands in front of her dressing table. Finally, she opens the drawer and peers inside, half hoping the box will have disappeared. But of course it hasn’t moved. It sits among the clothes, partially hidden by the sleeves of a silk shirt and the hem of a red dress. Every time Carmen enters the room she’s compelled to check on the box, though she still hasn’t flipped the lid and looked inside.

The smell of Tiago is overwhelming, rising off the little box in waves of sweat and spice as it sits in the drawer. The smell has sunk into Carmen’s skin and, no matter how many showers she takes, she can’t seem to wash it off. She’s soaked herself with perfumes, rubbed her skin raw with scented soaps, but nothing works. If Blake were to kiss her now he’d taste nothing but Tiago. For the thousandth time she wonders how the hell she’ll be able to get rid of him for good.

An hour later Carmen is sitting on her bed, the box in her lap, willing herself to pry it open. She can feel it feeding on her fear. Her room has lost all of its color. The view of the ocean has disappeared, replaced by gray skies that never shift no matter what the weather is outside. The box is slowly draining the life out of everything, and if she doesn’t do something soon, it will have her too. She’s already off her food and her clothes aren’t fitting as tightly anymore. Next her heart will start to shrivel, her lungs will dry to dust and, worst of all, her voice will evaporate. She can’t allow this to happen. She has to do something to stop him.

Carefully, as though fearing it might unleash the Apocalypse, Carmen picks up the little box and forces it open half an inch. The spring catch snaps back, nearly grabbing Carmen’s fingers, but she pulls it open again, all the way this time, until she can see the glint of a band of gold. Very slowly, Carmen lifts the ring and places it in her palm, staring at it as if seeing her husband again for the very first time. Tiago’s hands were delicate, the hands of a guitar player, his fingers long and thin. So the ring looks as though it might fit her; but Carmen knows it’ll slip right off if she tries it on. Not that she has since their wedding night. She curses herself for bringing it to England. Why couldn’t she have left it? Why did she have to be so sentimental?

Carmen stares at the golden circle, at the engraving inside, at the drop of blood that covers the T of Tiago’s name. It grips the gold like a limpet, still as red and fresh as six months ago, when she pulled the ring off her dead husband’s finger.