The House at the End of Hope Street Read online

  She stares into the cauldron of coffee, thinking of the three witches in Macbeth and how her life seems to be spiraling out of control as quickly as his did. The last few days have torn Alba’s history apart, splintering her memories, fracturing her sense of self. Half her genes were provided by a man named Albert. She is a cuckoo, a cliché, the product of illicit love and lies, of her mother’s affair with some penniless poet, kindled over their shared love of A Room with a View.

  At least now she understands why she loves books so much, why she’s always dreamed of being a writer. But how could she not have known? How could she not have sensed it? How could she see sounds and smells, ghosts and auras, and not see herself? And how did anything else matter when she couldn’t see where she came from, when she couldn’t see the truth of who she really was?

  When Stella appears in the sink Alba looks up from her coffee and tells the ghost the details of every letter, every poem, every moment and line of her mother’s love affair. Stella sits silently and listens to it all. She feels the fury in Alba’s heart as though it’s in her own chest, but it doesn’t worry her. Not being blessed with breath or life, the ghost is also relieved of some of its more irksome qualities: fear, guilt, loneliness, the need to stop those you love from feeling any pain. She knows that Alba needs to feel it before she can move on.

  The only thing that balances Alba’s shock and sadness at the discovery of her paternity is her happiness at the rediscovery of her mother. Since Alba fled Ashby Hall, Elizabeth has visited her daughter every evening in her dreams. They talk and hold hands and walk across the world, sometimes spending the night at the Sydney Opera House or outside the Shaolin Temple or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But most of the time they sit on the roof of the King’s College chapel, watching Cambridge while it sleeps. Alba had feared that leaving Ashby Hall would mean leaving Elizabeth behind, so the first night she appeared, Alba was so surprised and delighted to see her mother that she woke herself up. But she is so used to the nocturnal visits now that she closes her eyes expecting them. In the morning Alba can never remember what they talked about, but she always wakes feeling lighter and brighter than when she went to bed. That feeling lasts until she opens her eyes and stretches and remembers the fact of her absent father again.

  All of a sudden, a warning whistles through the pipes and the kitchen door bumps open. Stella disappears and Alba looks up to see Carmen walk in. She doesn’t sashay this time, and her clothes are tight but not bright, her hair is pulled back into a bun, every curl contained. She stands behind a chair, her hands resting on the curve of the wood. “It’s okay if I sit?”

  No, Alba wants to say, I’d rather you leave me and Stella alone. But the ingrained politeness of a private education overrides her impulses, and she slips into good manners and nods.

  “I am very sorry for your mother,” Carmen says softly. “I think not to bother you, I know you like to be alone, but…”

  Alba looks up, surprised.

  “But I hope still maybe we can be friends.”

  Alba looks more closely at Carmen. Purple bruises still linger under her dress, seeping into the air and staining her aura. Alba has no idea what’s happened to her housemate but the dark shadows hovering over her heart are unnerving. Uneasy under the intense stare, Carmen breaks the silence.

  “I hope you will come to my bar,” she says. “I know you do not love the music, but I just want you to see…”

  Alba feels a twinge of guilt, remembering her lie. Carmen’s eyes are so vulnerable that, for a moment, Alba wants to help her. She nods.

  “Really?” Carmen asks, delighted that she can finally put her plan to release the passions buried deep within Alba into action. “When will you come? Tonight, tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” Alba says, knowing she’ll regret it. “Tomorrow.”

  “Brilliante. Come to my room before evening, Greer will help you”—she makes a sweep of Alba’s person—“with all this. You will look beautiful. You will have wonderful time. Maybe…” Carmen winks. “Maybe we even find a boy for you.”

  After Carmen leaves, Alba waits for Stella to reappear. She thinks of the letters, of the clues. She thinks of her mother, who scatters little secrets about Albert in her daughter’s dreams, urging her to look for him and to contact Edward, who has secrets of his own to share and who, having been lost in widowerhood for too long, now wants to connect with his sister. Alba sighs.

  “Okay, enough sighing.” Stella materializes in the sink. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Enough thinking. You think too much,” Stella says. “It’s time to take action. “

  “I’m not ready.”

  “If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be dead,” Stella says. “And, as a life strategy, I don’t really recommend it.”

  Despite herself Alba smiles.

  “What do you want to do?” Stella asks. “That’s the only question that really matters.”

  The ghost looks at Alba then with such a pure and truthful gaze, unencumbered by exception or judgment, that Alba feels suddenly free. Her fear evaporates, leaving only her desire.

  “I want to find my father.”

  Stella smiles.

  Chapter Ten

  What’s it like to have a daughter who doesn’t know you exist? For Albert Mackay, it’s as though he’s only half alive. Because, if Alba can’t see him, can’t touch him, then how does he know he’s really here, a living, breathing man and not simply a fictional character?

  When Elizabeth Ashby told him she couldn’t abandon her other children, that she had to try and make her marriage work, to bring Alba up as Charles’s daughter, she asked Albert to move away. She said it was too painful knowing he was nearby, close enough but impossible to touch. And so he did, for both their sakes. He knew that walking down the same streets they’d walked together, fearful of bumping into his lover and their giggling baby would be too painful to bear. Albert moved as far as he could while remaining in the same country, so he’d know he was breathing the same air and seeing the same sunset as the daughter who would never know him.

  When he moved to Inverie, the most remote village in Scotland (at the time not connected to the mainland by road, with Glasgow a boat trip and five-hour train ride away), Albert thought he could pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist, that there wasn’t another man out there raising his daughter and sharing a bed with the love of his life. Unfortunately, Albert soon found it wasn’t any easier to bear the pain of this from a distance of four hundred and ninety-one miles than it was from three.

  Albert got a job in the local primary school, but being with the ten children all day, teaching them to spell and make sense of Shakespeare, pushed him over the edge. And, when he fell, it was into broken glass. Every night he finished a bottle of wine and five inches of brandy. At midnight, he smashed the empty bottles against the stone wall at the bottom of his garden so that over the years the soil was covered with layers and layers of multicolored glass. Every year on Alba’s birthday he drank a bottle of champagne and an unspecified amount of vodka until he passed out.

  And then, on her seventh birthday, he stopped. He had a dream the night before, the most vivid experience of his life. In it his daughter was crying, begging him to come and save her from something. When he woke, her terror and need for him was just as visceral as it had been in the middle of the night. It felt like a prophecy. That day he stopped drinking. Just in case. Just in case his daughter ever needed him. As the weeks went by Albert imagined that somehow, over distance and logic, if Alba ever needed him he would know, he would feel her. And, if and when that miraculous day ever came, he wanted to be sober for it.

  —

  Greer can feel herself starting to fall. She’s forgetting about food, clothes and all the minor practicalities of life and instead thinks only of him. Blake has bitten he
r, entered her bloodstream and left her drugged. She walks around in a fog of desire, feeling him watching and waiting to pounce. It’s a troubling development, since she had planned on keeping things casual, on allowing it to go only so far—an experience in light entertainment, not a full-blown epic. This isn’t because she couldn’t fall in love with him but because she deeply suspects he couldn’t fall in love with her. Blake doesn’t strike her as the type to mess around in the muckiness of deep emotions.

  Greer suspects it’s the sex that’s done it. Her mother always warns her that sex complicates things, that it’s harder to remain aloof, to hold on to your own heart, once you’ve been marked by a man. Women, Celia always says, no matter how savvy and self-possessed, are always affected by sex. Even casual sex, she insists, has a way of tightening the strings. Greer and Blake have had sex every night since the first night: in the wine cellar, the alleyway behind The Archer, on a table after closing time… And every time, it’s the very best sex of her life.

  Of course Greer is no fool. She knows that most men are repelled by needy women. She can sense these men, can smell them at a hundred feet. And Blake is one such man. So Greer pretends. She pretends she doesn’t feel a thing, that she couldn’t care a jot. And fortunately Greer’s a good enough actress that she can pull off such a deception. She knows how to laugh, how to look, how to hold herself, as though he’s not affecting her at all. All those drama lessons are now paying for themselves. Greer may not yet have had the chance to play Lady Macbeth but she can play the role of nonchalant female to a T.

  Now she stands at the bar polishing glasses by candlelight, humming to herself, feigning disinterest in Blake while he counts the takings. She chats to the other employees, about customers and tips and where they’re going on their summer holidays. It’s nearly two o’clock in the morning before everyone else has gone home, before the place is deserted, empty and still.

  “Right then, Red.” Blake steps behind the bar where Greer stands, and slips one hand up her back. A single shiver ripples down her spine. “Let’s go.”

  —

  For his part, Blake is rather surprised by how much he feels for Greer. Indeed he’s surprised he feels anything at all, since it’s not his habit to care for the women he sleeps with. But there is an ease about Greer, a carefree, footloose, happy-go-luckiness that feels freeing. It’s also entirely refreshing—not a quality he very often encounters in his bedfellows. She doesn’t seem to want to trap or contain him, she doesn’t ask more from him than he wants to give and so Blake finds he wants to give more. He finds himself buying little presents, seeing things he knows she’ll like and being moved to acquire them for her. He finds himself asking to see her every night. He catches himself thinking of her far too often. He notices himself absently gazing at her while she works. It is quite unlike him.

  Blake wonders if he is maturing, following the rest of the human race toward monogamy and matrimony. Is his heart, for the first time, starting to win influence over his head? Might he be moved to break his vow never to let a woman weasel her way into his affections? But he can’t. He mustn’t allow it. The twenty-year-old crack in his heart has never really healed. Blake can declare that he doesn’t care that his mother left him, but he knows it’s a lie. He can tell himself he’s made of stone, that he’s superhuman, that nothing will ever hurt him, but he knows love could. And being left is something Blake refuses to endure again.

  —

  Carmen paces along the path outside the Clare College chapel. She glances up at the carved stone spires marking the four corners of the courtyard, reaching into the nearly dark sky. Three rows of windows, interrupted by staircases and the main entrance, run along each wall and vines of honeysuckle reach up from the flower beds to the roofs, framing everything. Lemony light from several windows shines out into the dusk, giant lanterns illuminate the courtyard. The door to the chapel is open and the soft notes of a piano spill out into the air… but Carmen’s still not ready to step inside.

  She breathes deeply, trying to relax. Tonight she’s wearing the conservative clothes befitting a college choir: a black sweater with a high neck and a long blue skirt that reaches her ankles. Admittedly both are tight but, having compromised with length, she drew the line at baggy. At last, Carmen takes another deep breath and walks through the open door. Like all good Catholic girls she went to church every Sunday, sitting between her father, who slipped a hand onto her thigh at the start of every service, and her mother, who pretended not to notice. But there was no church this beautiful in Bragança.

  Carmen walks carefully down the aisle, glancing up at the delicate patterns engraved in the arches. She’s never seen stained-glass windows so vast, so intricate, so colorful. Final glints of sunlight fall through them, illuminating the saints’ feet, shining slices of red, green and gold across the wooden pews.

  As she nears the pulpit Carmen sees two women, both very short and very fat, standing side by side like two barrels of beer in the cellar of The Archer.

  “I’m Nora.” The first one grins and reaches out her hand. “And this is Sue.”

  “Or, rather, I’m Sue.” The other one steps forward and reaches out her hand. “And this is Nora. I think that’s the way it should be.” She looks at Carmen. “Don’t you agree?”

  “I’m sure I don’t.” Nora folds her arms. “I introduced us perfectly well, without your embellishments.”

  Carmen suppresses a smile. Now the two women don’t remind her of beer barrels but Tweedledum and Tweedledee. This relaxes her a little.

  “Are you Meg’s friend?” Sue asks. “She called last week, to ask if you could join us. Of course we said we’d be delighted. Can’t have too many bats in the belfry I always say.”

  “Yes,” Nora sighs, “and I do wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Peg,” Carmen corrects Sue, “Peggy.” She might have known this was a set-up. But now she’s here, she can’t very well run away. And, if she did, she has the feeling that these two would chase her.

  “Yes, Peg, exactly,” Sue says, “that’s what I said. Anyway, enough talking, it’s time to release the Kraken, it’s time to sing!”

  “But,” Carmen stalls, “Peggy tell me this not serious choir, because I am not ready for—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about little old us,” Nora giggles, “we’re very casual, from our knickers to our socks, you’ll fit right in. We only sing because we like to be loud.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Sue huffs. “Right, enough chitter-chatter, let’s get on with it.”

  She starts to hum. Nora joins in and soon the chapel is filled with song. The notes dance around Carmen, across the pews, soaring past the stained-glass windows, past the stone arches of the ceiling, before disappearing through the bricks and mortar and up into the sky. Carmen is enchanted, filled with a sense of serenity she’s never felt before. And then, without a single thought in her head, she begins to sing.

  This time her voice isn’t soft and low but high, bright and strong. For a second it soars at perfect pitch above every other sound, then dips and sinks back to meet the other voices, twirling and twisting between them, collecting their scattered and solitary notes like a strong September wind that whips through a pile of autumn leaves and brings them, for one eternal moment, into a perfect and elegant dance. And then, all of a sudden Carmen realizes something is wrong: the other two women have fallen quiet, hers is the only voice in the air. She shuts her mouth to see Nora and Sue staring, their own mouths hanging open.

  “What?” Carmen asks. “What is wrong?”

  “Your voice,” Sue says, “I’ve never heard anything like it. You’re not a bat, you’re an angel.”

  “Quite, quite,” Nora exclaims. “It’s exquisite, simply exquisite! Don’t you know it?”

  Carmen bites her lip and thinks of Tiago. “I not really sing very often.”

  “Why on God’s green earth do you not?
” Nora cries. “Your voice is so full of spirit, it bursts my heart right open. Blooming heck, if I could sing like that I’d never talk again.”

  Sue raises an eyebrow. “Hardly.”

  “Oh, shush,” Nora says, “we’re in the presence of greatness.” She reaches out and clasps Carmen’s hands. “Your voice, my dear, is divine.”

  Carmen frowns, a little startled at the enthusiasm of Nora’s embrace. “Really? You think so?”

  When both women nod so vigorously it seems that their heads are on springs, for a moment Carmen forgets Tiago. She forgets about the midnight glory, about being found out and every other fear that haunts her. Then she smiles, gazing at her two friends, until she has tears in her eyes.

  —

  When Alba made the biggest discovery of her career, she couldn’t wait to tell her teacher. She ran all the way from the university library to King’s College. She slipped along the cobbled paving stones in the rain, falling once in Burrell’s Walk, but didn’t stop for a second. Dashing across the quad, darting over the grass, she arrived at Dr. Skinner’s rooms nearly fainting and ready to throw up. Taking a few seconds to catch her breath, she knocked—far more vigorously and insistently than she usually dared.