The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Twenty-two





Later that evening Carmen tries to focus on the piano and the new verse Alba has given her, but her mind keeps returning to two things: the fact that she has to leave the house, and to Greer. Greer has barricaded herself in her bedroom, ignoring the notes Carmen slips under her door. No matter what Carmen writes, Greer isn’t listening. Which is a shame. But she understands. Surprisingly, the thought of leaving the house fills her not just with terror but also with a sense of calm determination, determination to do the one thing she wants to do: to sing in public—her swan song. She wants it to be the most brilliant thing she’s ever done, so beautiful that the memory of it will light up all the dark nights to come.

Perhaps she should ignore Peggy and just run, leave Cambridge for that remote village Alba mentioned, or emigrate to Australia. She could start a new life there. But what about the ring? Crazy thoughts circle Carmen until she starts to feel slightly mad, but then she gave up any claim to sanity a long time ago. That went out of the window the day she killed her husband.

Tiago Viera wasn’t a mean drunk. In fact, alcohol calmed him down rather than riled him up. But he was always sure to be stone cold sober on the nights he beat his wife. He wasn’t set off, triggered by something that suddenly made him snap. He wanted her to know he meant it. It wasn’t an accident, a mistake, something he’d regret in the morning. No, Tiago’s punches came with purpose because he told her she deserved every blow.

Different things decided him. And before long Carmen could feel it coming: the heat of his gaze on the back of her neck, the twist of his mouth, the look in his eye. She knew what to expect and she braced herself for it. For hours on end, Carmen would think about leaving. Sometimes just the idea of escaping was all that got her through one day, and then the next. Before she knew it, a year had passed. But she never planned anything, because she didn’t have the first idea where she’d go. She’d never been out of Bragança, had never seen Lisbon or been to Spain. And she’d have to go much farther to stand a chance of not getting caught. Tiago had friends, he warned her, friends everywhere. There was nowhere she could go that he couldn’t find her. One day, Carmen’s cousin left for England to take a job in a Portuguese restaurant in a city called Cambridge. After that, when she fantasized about escaping, that was where Carmen went.

On the last night of his life, Tiago decided his wife might be pregnant by another man and he was going to beat the baby out of her. “You’re fat,” he’d said first, spitting the words out over his supper, as though this was something she’d done intentionally, to annoy him. In the past, before jealousy had deformed him, Tiago had adored Carmen’s curves. He’d spent hours smoothing his hands over her breasts, her soft belly, her bottom and thighs. “All this,” he’d whisper reverently, “all this just for me.”

“You’re fat,” he said again, and she waited.

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” he snapped. “Who’ve you been f*cking?”

He accused her of sleeping with every member of his band, and not just one at a time. It all happened very quickly after that. Carmen stood up, walking to the sink with her plate, her food untouched. He reached her before her hand touched the stainless steel tap.

He leaned into her ear. “This time I’m going to kill you—kill you and bury you in the back garden.” And, even though it was almost comical—the soap opera sentence and the way he said it—Carmen didn’t laugh because she suddenly knew, deep in her bones, that he meant it. This time he was going to kill her.

The first blow was always the worst. This time Tiago grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, then slammed her face into the sink. He held her down, punched her in the back, then let Carmen slide to the floor. She gasped for breath, blood dripping into her eyes, pain firing through her body, and then she surrendered. It was enough. She didn’t want to live anymore. The last thought she remembers passing through her mind was a prayer: Please may it end quickly.

She was slipping into a merciful darkness when Tiago pulled her back up to her feet and shoved her against the wall, holding her with a splayed hand pressed to her chest. And then he did something that Carmen had never understood at the time, and can’t even now. With his free hand he reached into the sink for a frying pan, still coated with scraps of fried egg, and held it in front of her face. Carmen flinched, expecting another blow, but instead Tiago wrapped her fingers around its handle one by one.

“Hit me,” he whispered. “I’ll give you one hit.”

For a moment she just looked at him, unable to make sense of what he was saying. He gripped her hand, digging her fingers into the metal. “I won’t tell you again, bitch.”

And so she did. With every last bit of her strength, Carmen lifted the pan and brought it down on Tiago’s head. He slumped to the floor and she waited for him to get up, to see if she’d done what he wanted, still praying he would kill her quickly.

It was a while before Carmen realized Tiago wasn’t getting up. It had happened at last. One of them was dead. Only, shockingly, it wasn’t her. It was over.

Carmen fell to her knees and wept, choking Hail Marys through her sobs. When at last her tears dried up she looked at her husband, at the blood on his head and his beautiful face and the eyes that would never look at her again. And then, in a moment of sentimentality she’d always regret, she took his hand and slid the ring off his finger, still stained with blood, and slipped it into her pocket. She ran from the house, taking nothing with her but money, and hid in the shadows of the streets. The next morning she boarded a bus out of Bragança, then hitchhiked from Madrid. Carmen rode for six days and nights, by land and by sea, until she reached the gray skies and sandy shores of England.

—

Something in the house is beginning to shift. Peggy can’t put her finger on what, exactly, yet she can feel it brewing. Something in the forbidden room is beginning to stir, even though it still refuses to open for her. And something is stirring in Peggy. Something that has been stirring ever since she learned she was going to die is now whipping itself up into a storm in her heart. Her regrets. Her longing. Her hope. But it’s too late now. It’s too late to do anything about all that now. She can feel herself fading. Her edges are starting to dissolve, her breath is becoming lighter and lighter, until she can barely feel it flowing in and out of her lungs. She wants to run to Harry and hold him tight, to have his arms around her. Peggy never minded the thought of death. Especially since she knows it’s not so very different from life, excepting the critical absence of sex, cream and chocolate. But now that Death is so close she can almost smell him, she’s getting a little scared.

Peggy sits by the fire with Mog drooling in her lap. It’s nearly the middle of July but chilly tonight, with a cool wind. There have been pitifully few of the sunny days they’d been promised. Bad weather makes the house irritable and Peggy has to put up with the rush of its wheezing breath through the walls, the shuddering and sneezing of the pipes.

She’s written Harry a letter. A good-bye letter. She’ll leave it for the house to deliver after her death. And until then she’ll spend the remaining weeks giving Harry wonderful memories, showing him boundless amounts of love. She hopes that when he’s turning them over and over like pebbles in his pocket, they will bring him comfort.

HOPE STREET,

MONDAY 17TH JULY, 2011

Harry,

I love you. I know I never say it, but I do. I hope you’ve always known it. I’m going to die. I don’t know exactly when, but it’ll be soon. Don’t worry, I’m all right with it, as right as I could ever be, anyway. I’d love to have longer with you. But we’ve had twenty years’ worth of Sundays together. Every one of them perfect and wonderful which, I imagine, is a lot more than most people ever get.

I hope you understand why I didn’t tell you. You’d have probably thought me mad if I had and, anyway, I didn’t want to spoil our last few months together. I know you could never understand why I didn’t leave the house, why I didn’t marry you. I hope it brings you comfort, rather than sorrow, to know I wish I had.

I love you. I love you with all the words I never gave you, I love you with all my heart.

Peg

—

“Dad.”

“Yes?” Albert glances up, failing to suppress an enormous grin. It’s the first time she’s called him Dad. He turns the word over on his tongue, soft and sweet as toffee. Dad. Dad. Dad.

“I, um . . . there’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Oh?” Albert swallows another enormous grin. He’s being introduced to the boyfriend. A landmark ritual in any father-daughter relationship. He wonders if Alba would mind if he takes pictures.

They are sitting together on a bench outside Trinity College, eating fish and chips out of newspapers, watching the punts glide past. Students knock into each other, the occasional tourist loses his pole to the river and falls into the water trying to get it back.

“Her name’s Stella,” Alba says. “But, well, you might not be able to see her at first. She’s sort of shy and it might . . . take a little while.”

“Oh, okay,” Albert says, slightly disappointed it’s not a boyfriend after all, but glad Alba has friends. He’s a little confused about why he might not be able to see this particular friend at first, but asking for clarification might make him seem uncool, ignorant of the particular ways of young people today. Trying hard to cultivate the air of a fashionable modern father, he’s even bought a new cardigan, a red one. It’s the first time he’s ever owned something so bright.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” Alba blurts out, “and maybe you’ll hate me, but I can’t keep lying to you. And I—”

“Alba.” He places a hand on her knee. “I could never hate you, no matter what.” And he knows, absolutely and unequivocally, that this is true.

“So.” Alba stares down at the cold fish and chips in her lap. She affects a detached tone, as though she’s talking about someone else, just telling him the facts. “You know I’m supposed to be doing my PhD now, but I failed my MPhil? Well, I didn’t actually fail, I was set to get ninety percent, but . . . I was researching a paper for my supervisor and I discovered something amazing. I spent three months writing the paper and it was brilliant. Then Dr. Skinner took it and published it.”

“But that’s incredible!” Albert beams. “How wonderful.”

“No, no—it was published without my name. Without any acknowledgment that any of it was mine, no matter all of it. And when I threatened to go to the dean, the honorable Dr. Skinner dropped me.”

“Oh.” Albert can’t say anything more for the moment, because he’s not sure what the appropriate words are. What is a father supposed to say?

“I didn’t say anything,” Alba goes on, “I didn’t fight. Not just because I didn’t have any evidence, which I didn’t, but because . . .” Alba holds her breath. This will be the first time she’s ever said it out loud. “Because I was in love with her.”

Her.

The word burns brightly between them, three letters ablaze, a startling green, lighting up in the air like fireworks. Alba wants to run, but she can only wait for him to say something.

“With who?” Albert frowns, not quite following.

“With Dr. Skinner,” Alba says.

“Dr. Skinner?”

“Yes.” Alba nods. “Dr. Alexandra Skinner.”

“Alexander?” For a moment Albert is confused. He has met Dr. Skinner, he knows she’s a woman, but he doesn’t immediately understand.

“No.” Alba’s heart thuds in her chest. “Alexandra.”

Albert isn’t sure what to say next. In his rather limited preparations for hip fatherhood he hadn’t expected this. He needs to read a book, or take a course. He needs to be told what to say and what to do. But Alba is waiting; his daughter wants him to speak. So Albert says the first thing that comes into his head.

“I love you,” Albert says. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life.”

“You do?” Alba whispers. “Even—”

“Of course.”

“But—”

“My dearest girl,” he says. “You’ve given me back my heart.”