The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Three





Alba has scarcely left her bedroom for three days. She’s pulled on a pair of pajamas and a safety blanket of books and lost herself in the dark labyrinths of Victorian history. The song she heard that first night still floats through the house every night and Alba senses that it’s somehow connected to the ghost. She can’t prove it, but something about the ghost’s smile made her wonder. It was a knowing smile, the sort someone makes when she has a secret and wants to give a hint of it.

Alba shuts her biography of Gladstone, sits up in bed and rubs her eyes, brushing away the last traces of sleep. On the bedside table, atop a pile of books, sits a little slip of white paper. Alba thinks of Alice at the threshold of Wonderland as she picks it up and reads:

You Are Loved

She frowns. What does it mean? Is it a generic statement, or a message of hope suggesting Dr. Skinner loves her after all? Both are unlikely, since her ex-supervisor was a fraud, her family barely acknowledge her existence and, being a freak genius with no social skills, she has no friends. In fact, the only person Alba can remotely claim as any sort of friend is Zoë, assistant librarian at the university library, the only human being she’s shared more than three words with on a weekly basis. When they met, Alba instantly liked the short, skinny, spiky-haired girl who looked so much like her, just a little older, prettier and far more friendly. But Alba has never gone beyond small talk and the formalities of book requests, so she really can’t claim to know anything about Zoë beyond her name.

Alba folds the note and tucks it into her pajama pocket. Perhaps if she keeps it close to her heart for long enough, she’ll be able to work out its message. Or, she could ask someone else. As soon as that thought floats into her head it is followed by another. All at once Alba senses that the ghost is sitting in the kitchen sink, and that she knows something, something worth knowing. Alba loves mysteries. It’s one of the reasons she studied history, the chance to solve all the grand questions of the past. And now she has one on her own doorstep. It’s enough to get her out of bed.

Three minutes later Alba catapults through the kitchen door, the lights flicker on and there is the girl, smiling from her spot in the sink. A little embarrassed at her eager entrance, Alba slides slowly into the nearest chair.

“Hello,” Alba ventures, wondering if the ghost can talk.

“Hello.”

They sit in silence for a few seconds when Alba, too nervous yet to ask about the note, stands and walks to the nearest wall, searching for a familiar face among the photographs to give her something to talk about. She stops at a picture of two women: one tall with curly black hair and a wide-brimmed feather hat, the other with trousers and a pageboy haircut.

“That’s Vita Sackville-West and Dora Carrington.” Alba feels the ghost just behind her. “This is where they first met, great friends by all accounts, perhaps even a little more than that . . .”

“Really?” Alba asks softly, still conscious of the ghost’s being so close.

“Oh, yes, you’d be rather surprised by all that’s happened here, stuff you’ll never read about in your history books.”

Alba feels the ghost float away and turns to see her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the kitchen table. “What’s your name?”

“Stella.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why are you here?”

Ignoring the question, Alba pulls the note out of her pocket. “Do you know what this means?” She steps forward and slips the paper onto the table. Stella leans down to read it.

“Ah,” she says. “Yes.”

“What?”

“Someone loves you.”

Alba resists the temptation to raise her eyebrows. “Yes, that’s what it says. But I was wondering . . . Well, who?”

“Ah.” Stella smiles. “That would be telling, now wouldn’t it?”

—

Greer wakes to find, much to her surprise, that she’s actually feeling rather happy. After two weeks of tears she no longer longs for the fiancé or even cares she lost him at all. It’s possible, she’s starting to realize, that she never really loved him at all. Or maybe it’s that the house is the most comforting, strangely healing place she’s ever been.

She slips out of bed, steps carefully over the piles of clothes strewn across the floor and walks out onto the balcony, her very favorite place in the house. She stands and looks out at the garden. Wind blows a mist of drizzle through the air, dusting Greer with drops, but she doesn’t care: the air is warm, and the water on her face isn’t tears. She can close her eyes without seeing the philandering fiancé. She will sleep without dreaming of him. She will wake without thinking of him. It’s over and done.

An unfamiliar urge nudges Greer and, wiping the misty rain from her face, she turns back to her bedroom and, reaching the bedside table, stops. Next to the red velvet-shaded lamp is a note.

First of all, find a job

Greer sits on her bed with a little sigh. Truthfully, she’s exhausted with her career, if you can call it that. She still adores the thrill of the theater, but her passion for acting is becoming bloody and bruised from the severe beating it’s taken over a lifetime. Acting has always been everything to Greer. At age six, after being a donkey in the school play, she had wanted only to act every day for the rest of her life. But now, after nearly twenty years of countless failed auditions, innumerable rejections and lackluster roles, Greer is almost ready to give up. The problem is, having focused on it for so long and having tried so hard, she can’t quite bear to let it go. Anyway she has absolutely no idea what else she could do.

Greer falls back into her pillows, burying her face in them. She wants to keep hiding, to wrap herself up in a ball in the dark. But she can’t. She’ll be out of the house by August and needs gainful employment before then. On the positive side, she thinks, looking for a job will enable her to debut her new dresses. So far, excepting the morning with her housemates, she hasn’t shown them to anyone, which is a shame. Beautiful things are supposed to be worn in public, not hidden away in a wardrobe. It’s not fair to the clothes not to show them off.

Greer has always loved dressing up to go onstage, delighting in the transformation of slipping on a costume. She always preferred glamorous roles to dowdy ones, but even the thrill of pretending to be someone entirely new is something she’ll never tire of. If only the journey from her heart to the stage was an easier one, less fraught with disappointment and heartache. If only she’d fallen in love with a profession that wasn’t so damn difficult to sustain. She could have been a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, earning oodles of cash and enjoying a life of security and success instead of struggle.

With a theatrical sigh, Greer pulls her head out from the pillows and is surprised to see something else. Close to the balcony windows stands a purple dressing table, every inch crowded with bottles: polish, lipsticks, blushers, pencils, eye shadows— all in a dozen different colors. The mirror is huge and edged with lightbulbs.

Greer stares at it, speechless. Not taking her eyes off the lights, she untangles herself from the sheets, steps out of bed and tiptoes to the table, as though approaching the last living bird of paradise about to take flight. She reaches the velvet purple chair, presses her palms on its upholstered back, then sits. She picks up a bottle of perfume, sprays a few puffs into the air and lets out a happy sigh. She sweeps her hand over the nail polishes and picks one. In an hour, with nails as red as her hair and a dress to match, Greer will be ready for her next role.

—

Peggy stands in front of the door to the forbidden room. She’s been knocking for nearly thirty minutes and has had no answer. She’s being ignored. Which is very odd. Ever since she received the note she’s been trying to get into the room, seeking a little advice about what to do next. She needs some help. But, for some reason she’s quite unable to make sense of, the powers that be aren’t giving her any. Peggy’s frustration mounts and she sighs. Then she clenches her fists and gives the door a swift kick. She waits for some sign of life, a sound from the other side. But there is nothing. Just silence.

“You can’t lock me out forever,” Peggy snaps. “I’ll bash down that bloody door if I have to.”

—

Carmen is dreaming. She’s three years old, standing at the bottom of her childhood garden, hiding behind her favorite tree. She gazes up at the apple blossoms scattered along the branches: a thousand tiny moons against the evening sky. Her throat is tight and dry and Carmen realizes she hasn’t yet spoken a single word aloud. She leans one pudgy hand against the tree trunk, kicks off her shoes and plucks at the grass with her toes, waiting.

A moment later she takes a deep breath and starts to sing. The notes are soft and sweet, their echoes dancing through her tiny body long after they’ve disappeared into the night air. Everything is silent. Carmen looks up at the blossoms, then opens her mouth to sing another note. It sweeps out of her and, caught by a breeze, floats gently through the air. Carmen watches it drift upward, wishing with all her heart she could follow it, gliding above the garden, past the chimney tops and into the clouds. Instead she stands perfectly still, utterly captivated by the sound that has come from within her but seemed to come from somewhere else altogether. It’s so surprising, so beautiful, she laughs. Then, behind the tree, she sees a shadow. Someone else has stepped into her dream. And the sight of him so scares Carmen that it wakes her up.

—

When Alba opens her eyes she can already feel her sense of sight getting stronger. The hurricane in her head has stilled. She’s stopped shaking. The parts of herself that have been breaking off and scattering into the air are, piece by piece, coming back and beginning to settle. She can see sounds and smells again, just as before, long before she hears or sniffs them. And very gradually, as though looking through an out-of-focus telescope, she’s starting to get a picture of what’s buried under the midnight glory.

Alba knows her senses are stronger now because of the healing powers of the house, and because of Stella. That the ghost appears only to her at least makes Alba feel rather special. They now meet every night, just after midnight.

Alba isn’t intrigued by Stella because she’s a ghost, she’s seen ghosts before, but because she’s a complete mystery. Stella talks about everything but nothing personal, she asks questions but never answers them. So far all Alba really knows is her name; everything else is guesswork. Alba’s fascination with Stella has achieved what, so far, no living person has done: tempt her away from books. In the last few days she’s read only two biographies and three novels: Great Expectations, The Mandarins and Far from the Madding Crowd. Considering her average is usually thirty textbooks a week this is a significant slow-down. And she’s visited the library only once. Now, except for the hours when she reads, Alba talks to Stella all night and sleeps all day.

They talk about everything: literature, history, philosophy, politics, science, art . . . But most of all, they talk about books. Stella, it seems, has spent her death working through every great work of fiction ever written.

“What are your top ten books of all time?” Alba asks. Talking about her greatest passion doesn’t exactly heal Alba’s heart, or solve the problem of what she’s going to do next—but it certainly lifts her spirits.

“That’s an impossible question.” Stella laughs. “What are yours?”

“Rebecca. Middlemarch. Mrs. Dalloway. Those are my top three, after that I’m not sure,” Alba admits. “Okay then, which books have changed you?”

“The Golden Notebook,” Stella says, “probably more than any other.”

“I haven’t read it,” Alba admits reluctantly.

“Oh dear,” Stella smiles, “Doris Lessing wouldn’t be too impressed to hear that. She actually stayed here while she wrote it, a few years before I arrived. She now resides on the living room wall. You should visit her, she’s an inspiration to any writer.”

“I’m not a writer.” Alba frowns. “I’m a historian. At least I . . .” She doesn’t quite have the stomach to finish the sentence. Could it be that she’s lost forever her single chance at success, stability and security? Of doing the only thing she has ever wanted to do. Or at least, the only thing that made any sense. Alba can remember an old, secret wish for herself but it was ridiculously unrealistic and she’d let go of it long ago. “Anyway, what do you mean, visit her? It’s only a photograph.”

“Not at all,” Stella says. “Don’t you hear them whispering to each other at night? Any of them would be delighted to talk to you, you only have to ask.”

“Really?” Alba brightens. “Gosh. How exciting.” She’s not sure if she has the courage to approach figures such as Doris Lessing or Florence Nightingale and simply strike up a conversation, but the thought of it sends tingles of excitement along her fingertips.

“How many books have you read?” Stella asks. As of last night, when Stella completed the final volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, her total is three hundred and forty-one thousand, nine hundred and two.

“I don’t know. A lot.” Alba shrugs. “You?”

“A few.” Stella smiles. “Not when I was alive though; I never bothered with books then. But being dead doesn’t give you much else to do. Not that it’s boring. It’s rather blissful, really.”

Alba sits forward, delighted that Stella is at last saying something about herself.

“And time isn’t the same,” Stella continues, wistful. “It doesn’t go forward or back. It’s vertical. Eternity sits inside you. So you can spend ten thousand years in one spot and it feels no different than an hour, you see?”

“No,” Alba says, “not really.”

“Well, I suppose you can’t yet,” Stella admits. “Not until you do.”

“How long have you been here?” Alba ventures.

Stella smiles at Alba’s hopeful look and decides to give her a little gift. “Forty-two years, eight months and seven days.”

“Why, why so long?”

“I’ve been waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you.”

—

For the past four years Alba, eschewing the cold austerity of online book-ordering for the comfort of paper and pen, has gone to the university library three times a week, every week, without fail. Now she hasn’t shown up since last Wednesday. This morning, Zoë was finally so worried she looked up Alba’s details and almost called King’s College, but the head librarian stopped her. Now Zoë leans against the library counter, doodling lightning bolts in a notebook. She’d promised herself that today she’d finally start the novel, the story that’s been floating around in her head for four years while she’s been procrastinating with endless amounts of research. Although it hasn’t all been a waste of time, because that was how she found out about Alba.

Zoë noticed Alba immediately, a scared, silent fifteen-year-old who, though five years younger than Zoë, could have been her twin. In fact, with the exception of Zoë’s striped blue hair and Alba’s bright blue eyes, it was like looking in a mirror. It had taken months before they exchanged their first words, and several years until they had anything approaching a conversation: about Sir Robert Peel and the Poor Law of 1844—an exchange that had lasted less than three minutes.

And then, while doing research for her nonexistent novel, Zoë accidentally stumbled upon the Ashby family, and a scandal: the disappearance of Lord Ashby eleven years ago. Zoë read everything she could find about the case. Charles and Elizabeth Ashby had been second cousins. It had been a loveless marriage by all accounts, producing three children before Lord Ashby took a flat in London and thereafter was often caught in discreet locations with indiscreet socialites. And then, nearly a decade after that, to everyone’s surprise, another child was born. It seemed that Alba’s arrival had triggered a change of heart in her father, who surrendered his bachelor pad and returned to the family home. There he remained, until his disappearance eight years later.

As the single product of a stable suburban relationship, Zoë was desperately intrigued by it all. She longed to ask Alba for more details, but there was no easy way to bring such delicate matters into casual conversation. So Zoë has been biding her time, waiting for an opportune moment to take her acquaintance with Alba to the next level. Though she has to admit her methods are perhaps over-cautious; at this rate they won’t progress to afternoon tea for another twenty years. Zoë glances down at the lightning bolts scattered across her page and tells herself she won’t wait any longer. Next time Alba comes into the library she’ll invite her out. Zoë writes this in big, bold capital letters:

NEXT TIME.

So big and bold are the words that, this time, she almost believes she’ll actually do it.