The House at the End of Hope Street Read online

  In the ensuing silence, the spices circle the kitchen, even stronger than before, and although Alba can’t see the smells, she can hear the hum of her mother’s song again in the back of her head. It rocks her like a lullaby.

  “You can stay here,” Peggy says, “for ninety-nine nights, until the seventh of August, just before midnight. And then you must go.”

  “Sorry?” Alba wonders if the hot chocolate was spiked with rum because she’s suddenly light-headed. “But I couldn’t possibly…”

  “No rent, no bills. Your room will be your own, to do with as you like.” She smiles, and Alba can almost hear the old woman’s papery skin crinkle. “But take care of the house, and it’ll take care of you.”

  “Well, I…” A thousand questions crowd Alba’s mind, so she asks the first one that comes to her lips. “But why ninety-nine nights?”

  “Ah, yes,” Peggy says. “Well, I think because it’s long enough to help you turn your life around and short enough so you can’t put it off forever.”

  “Oh, okay,” Alba says, thinking it’ll be impossible to pick up the pieces of her shattered life in such a tiny amount of time, let alone get it all back on track.

  “Oh, it is possible,” Peggy says. “I can promise you that. And you won’t have to do it alone. That’s the whole point of being here. The house will help you. It’s all yours, except for the tower, which is only mine. And you can never go there. That’s my one rule. Do you understand?”

  When Alba nods, it’s clear to them both that she’s staying, even though she hasn’t yet said yes. But how can she say no? A secret tower. How deliciously intriguing. It reminds her of another fairy tale. When Alba first saw the house she thought of Rapunzel, then Sleeping Beauty and now Bluebeard. Alba smiles. She loves fairy tales.

  “If you stay I can promise you this,” Peggy says. “This house may not give you what you want, but it will give you what you need. And the event that brought you here, the thing you think is the worst thing that’s ever happened? When you leave, you’ll realize it was the very best thing of all.”

  —

  After showing a sedated, sleepy Alba to her bedroom, Peggy shuffles along the corridor toward the tower, creaks up her own stairs and hurries into her kitchen to find a pile of glittering presents and a cake. An enormous, three-tiered extravaganza, iced with thick white chocolate cream, decorated with sugar flowers and scattered with fresh ones: red and yellow roses, wisteria, sunflowers, bluebells and buttercups. Just as Peggy knew it would be, just as it has been every year for as long as she’s lived in the house. Along with the cake, the kitchen is decorated with a rainbow of balloons, streamers and a banner emblazoned with the words

  HAPPY 82ND, PEG!

  Still catching her breath, Peggy glances up at the clock and smiles.

  “Eighty-two years, two hours and twenty-nine minutes old.” She eases herself into the little sky blue chair at the wooden table in front of her cake. After blowing out the candles and cutting herself an extremely large slice, Peggy slowly, methodically begins to devour the first tier and very soon, icing is smeared around her mouth and all over her fingers.

  “Delicious.” She grins, displaying a mouthful of cake. “Even better than my eighty-first. I must say, you outdo yourself every year.” Peggy looks up and the ceiling lights flicker in appreciation of the compliment.

  Peggy’s kitchen is smaller and prettier than the one downstairs. The furniture is made of beech and painted white, excepting the blue chair. Vases, pots and jam jars sit on every surface, filled with flowers that alter according to Peggy’s moods but never wilt or die. The cupboards have glass doors to display a collection of crockery: bone china cups covered with tarot cards that read the future of whoever drinks from them, teapots and plates painted with characters from Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Don Giovanni, The Frog Prince, “The Lady of Shalott” and The Flower Queen’s Daughter. The characters shift around at night, indulging in various games and love affairs. They are Peggy’s own celebrity magazines and, when she shuffles in for her first cup of tea every morning, she’s always curious to see who’s fallen in love and who’s split up overnight. Now, on the teapot, Rumpelstiltskin is slipping off Guinevere’s blouse while, on her plate and almost hidden by the remains of a third slice of cake, the Mad Hatter is kissing an Ugly Sister. The Star—the tarot card that always appears on her birthday—shines from her teacup.

  Peggy celebrates her birthday twice. First, just after midnight, always alone. Then in the morning, with whoever is residing in the house. Peggy never knows how many guests she’ll have, sometimes as many as twelve and sometimes, very rarely, only one. Today, with the arrival of Alba, she’ll have just three: a rare island of calm and tranquillity in a sea of usual confusion and chaos. And for once, these particular women won’t need much babysitting. Years ago she would have been insulted, now she’s simply relieved. Though, sadly, Peggy knows the relative peace won’t last. She can already sense several women whose hope is almost extinguished, who’ll be turning up on her doorstep before too long.

  The house always joins in the birthday festivities, creaking its beams and rattling its pipes because it’s celebrating too. The house was completed, its last brick laid, on the first of May 1811, and every Abbot woman who has inherited the house since has been born on its anniversary. The house was a gift from the prince regent to his lover Grace Abbot. And when the prince moved on to his next mistress, Grace opened the house to women who needed it. Slowly they came, drawn by their own sixth sense, stayed for their ninety-nine nights, and, with a few tragic exceptions, left with their spirits high and their hearts healed.

  Peggy sips her tea. The tarot card on her cup has changed. Death looks up at her now: the card of beginnings and endings, sudden shifts and dramatic transformations. She puts down her cup.

  And on the table is a note:

  Congratulations on your 82nd and final birthday. You have been a beautiful landlady. One of the very best. We thank you for your service. Now it is time to find your successor. Then you will be free from this life and can move on to the next.

  Peggy has to read the note nearly a dozen times before she can believe it. She knew she couldn’t live forever, but the shock has still left her a little shaken. If she were another sort of woman she might be scared, she might cry and wish for more time. She might look back on her life and be filled with regrets. But Peggy won’t. She is made of stronger stuff. She’s also in the rather unique position of being very well acquainted with a great many departed souls and knows that death is nothing to be scared of. It’s a mere adjustment in living conditions. In fact, if it wasn’t for Harry, she wouldn’t mind at all.

  Peggy holds the cup to her lips, thinking of him, and wondering how many days of life she has left.

  Chapter Two

  When Alba wakes all she can see are books. Thousands line every inch of every wall and the ceiling, some drift through the air like birds, lifting off from one shelf and settling on another; precarious stacks are spread across the floor like skyscrapers. For a moment, Alba thinks she’s dreaming.

  Slowly, she slides out of the bed, stepping through the city of books to the nearest wall. She reaches up to touch the spines: Tractarians and the Condition of England, Disraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics, The Oxford Movement… Alba stops. When, a little drunk on sugar and cream, she’d stumbled into the room last night, it had been empty except for a bed. Now every historical text she’s ever read is at her fingertips.

  Slowly Alba steps back, slips on a pile of books and hits the floor.

  “Shit!” She snatches up The Liberal Ascendancy and hurls it at the wall. The room watches her silently, waiting. Whispered words float through the air. Alba shakes her head, wishing she could forget. But every seductive sentence Dr. Skinner ever said has seared itself onto her skin. At last Alba’s tears begin to fall. She pulls her knees to her chest and sobs.

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bsp; —

  Peggy is putting off getting out of bed. It is her birthday, after all, so she deserves a little lie-in. From the corner of the room comes a plaintive meow. She smiles at the big fat ginger cat attempting, yet again, to dig his claws into a chair leg.

  “Oh, Mog, when are you going to give that up?” Peggy pats the bed, feeling a little sorry for her pet who is forever trying and failing to mark the furniture. “Now, come and give your mama a hug.” Lately Peggy has been missing her lover, Harry Landon, a little more than usual. She wants to be cuddled at night and kissed in the morning, though the archaic house rule of no overnight male visitors won’t allow it. And, after last night’s revelation, she’s missing him rather more. Not that she needs comforting. She’s resigned to her fate and isn’t scared. But since she might not have much time left, she’d rather like to spend some of it with him.

  Peggy clicks her fingers at the cat. “Let it go, Mog, I haven’t got forever anymore.” The cat ambles across the carpet with a yawn. When Mog reaches the bed he stretches up to scratch his claws along the wood and Peggy just sighs, knowing he can’t make a mark.

  Mog has haunted the house since it was built. In life he’d belonged to Grace Abbot, but he has been loved and spoiled by her six successors, all Abbot women chosen for their psychic skills, selflessness and sense of duty. But with the passing of her niece last summer, all Peggy has left now are second cousins. And they, without a flicker of foresight or a touch of telepathic thought, will never do. So, for the first time, it seems as though someone outside the family will inherit Hope Street. Perhaps, with her extraordinary sense of sight, Alba might be the one. But she would need extraordinary strength, too, and she doesn’t have that. At least, not yet. The recipe for running the house on Hope Street is special indeed: four parts psychic ability, one part patience, two parts fortitude, three parts altruism, and Peggy has yet to find every ingredient in another woman.

  Mog leaps onto the bed, making dips in the duvet as he pads to Peggy’s outstretched hand. When he’s feeling frisky Mog roams the house to startle the residents, who can feel but not see him. After he died, to his never-ending annoyance, Mog has only been able to brush his silky fur against skin and momentarily leave his paw prints on the softest surfaces, but never make satisfyingly solid scratches.

  “Hello, Moggy.” Peggy settles back into a cloud of pillows to gaze up at the ceiling, while Mog pushes his nose into her armpit. A vast skylight is cut into the ceiling, so she can fall asleep studying the stars. She doesn’t know their real names, preferring mysteries to facts, but loves to trace her fingers along their shapes. She wonders if she’ll be lucky enough to land among them when she dies. Peggy closes her eyes and, a moment later, feels a scrap of paper land on her nose. She picks it up and reads:

  I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

  “I need advice about my successor, Anne Abbot.” Peggy rips the paper into tiny pieces. “Not a critique of my sleeping habits. And no one believes you had an affair with Jonathan Swift, no matter how many times you quote him.”

  Entirely oblivious, Mog stretches and yawns. Peggy strokes his head, absently scratching his ears until he purrs and starts to drool. Watching the expanding patch of wetness on her sleeve, Peggy sighs. “You can sleep in my bed, you little minx, but I draw the line at drool.”

  Mog opens a single eye and gives her a reproachful look. While they’re staring at each other, another note floats from the ceiling and settles between Mog’s ears. The cat shakes it off and Peggy picks it up.

  Trust yourself and you shall know how to live.

  Peggy hears a ripple of laughter through the walls, and sighs. “You are all entirely useless.”

  —

  Having finally stopped crying, pulled herself off the floor, and yanked open her bedroom door, Alba steps into the hallway. She has a headache, and needs fresh air. At the end of the hallway she finds a balcony and, hoping no one will mind, clicks open the French doors and walks out to lean over the railing. A low mist hangs over the front garden, floating beneath the branches of the willow trees and engulfing the cowslips. In the light Alba can see just how grand the garden is, and how far from the street. Wisteria twists over every inch of the house in a maze of branches and a blanket of flowers. Looking out across the town she can see the tops of every house and tree for miles. All of a sudden Alba is dizzy.

  She turns, stumbles back into the hallway and trips over a small wooden stool. She steadies herself against the wall, perplexed because the stool wasn’t there a moment ago. Another wave of dizziness comes over her, and she sits down. She’s stepped into another world, one that makes no sense at all, with objects that don’t have the decency to obey the proper laws of physics. Just like me, Alba realizes. Having felt odd and out of place all her life, she’s finally found somewhere she fits perfectly.

  From the walls the photographs take surreptitious glances at Alba. She catches the curious eyes of two sisters: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in England, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, cofounder of Newnham College in 1871. Though, Alba remembers, women weren’t actually awarded degrees until thirty-two years after that. She smiles. The idea that this house has been a temporary home to such prestigious figures sparks a tiny glow of hope inside her. Maybe, just maybe, it can help her too.

  Suddenly aware that someone is coming, Alba jumps up off the stool and hurries down the corridor, away from the smell of cigarettes and sex drifting toward her. Alba is only halfway to her bedroom before a voice calls her back.

  “Espera, por favor, espera!”

  Alba can’t help turning. At the top of the stairs stands a woman so striking that Alba has to steady herself while she stares. Carmen Viera is tall and voluptuous, about ten years older than Alba, wearing a dress that clings to every curve. She has thick dark curls that float over her shoulders and fall down her back. She makes Alba feel scrawny and unkempt. But as she stares, Alba starts to see something else. The woman is scared, wearing her self-confidence like perfume: a heavy, sultry scent to distract onlookers from the broken, blackened pieces of herself she wants no one else to see. Her body is bruised underneath the dress; purple shadows that linger on, her olive skin scarred with cigarette burns, her heart cracked in so many pieces it’s a wonder it still beats.

  “Hello,” Alba says, pleased that her sense of sight is already getting stronger.

  “Ola.” The woman reaches out a delicate hand with long fingers. “I am Carmen.”

  Alba hurries forward to take it, noticing the manicured nails and suddenly feeling self-conscious of her bitten-down stubs.

  “Muito prazer.” Carmen smiles, wondering why this pretty girl is dressed so shabbily, why she hasn’t bothered to brush her messy hair or put on makeup. Carmen doesn’t understand why a woman would want to hide her own beauty. A gift from God should be put on display. Even though she barely believes in God anymore, after all that she’s been through, she still believes in this. “Okay,” Carmen says. “You come for breakfast now?”

  “Well, um…” Alba stalls, not at all sure what she’s doing. “I—”

  “It’s a special day.” Carmen cuts her off. “The day you come, and Peggy’s birthday. She will make a cake and—qual e a palavra?—yes, pancakes with cherries and cream. She is crazy for this stuff. You will stay for this, celebrate with me and Greer, nao?”

  “I’m not sure… I don’t know,” Alba says. “Who’s Greer?”

  “She lived here a few weeks already.” Carmen leans against the wall with a little sigh, apparently tired from standing for so long. “She is an actress, tall, long red hair, green eyes. I not met her yet but Peggy say she very glamorous.”

  Oh, great, Alba thinks, another beautiful one. I’ve stumbled into a cult of extraordinarily beautiful women and I’m their sacrificial virgin. “Greer’s a funny name.”

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p; Carmen shrugs, swallowing a comment about pots and kettles she recently heard but can’t now quite recall. “She is named from an actress, English with also red hair and many awards.”

  “Oh.” Alba frowns. She finds films frivolous and knows nothing of actresses. “I’ve never heard of her.”

  Carmen regards Alba curiously, still not quite able to make sense of her. The new girl seems so timid, so careful, shut up tight as a clam, that Carmen longs to shake her up. She wants to take this little mouse to the bar where she works, get her drunk and see her dance on table tops. Resolving to fulfill this ambition before she leaves the house, Carmen smiles, flashing bright white teeth against olive skin. “You will join us for this, nao?”

  Unsettled by the directness of the question, Alba gathers herself and considers her options: she’d rather live on the streets than see her family again or, more specifically, her siblings, who will be utterly horrified by what happened. They will interfere, demand to know the truth, and she can’t tell them. Her mother is a different matter. She won’t throw around threats, in fact she won’t say a thing; she’ll just stare at her daughter until both are soaked in sadness. And that is more than Alba can bear at the moment.

  “Yes,” Alba replies, “I’ll join you.”

  —

  Greer is nearly forty and has no home, no career and no fiancé. Two weeks ago the abysmal play she was struggling through finally closed. That same night she’d come home to find her fiancé with a twenty-two-year-old on the kitchen table. After throwing saucepans while he declared his love for this new girl, Greer ran out of his flat, wandering through a fog of tears until she finally found herself on Hope Street, standing in the garden of a house she’d never seen before.

  After nearly two weeks Greer still isn’t completely used to its strange ways, but it no longer scares her. Like every other resident who lives there—breathing its air, eating its food, drinking its water—she has become entirely enchanted by her new home. Slowly, her heart is beginning to beat in time to its gentle pulse, and her lungs fill with its soft breath.