The House at the End of Hope Street Read online

  Now she sits up in bed to see something new in her bedroom: an enormous wooden wardrobe filling the opposite wall, with its doors flung open. Greer stares at rows and rows of clothes, at every kind of theatrical costume she could possibly imagine. To the left are those from her favorite era, the screwball comedies of the 1940s: dozens of A–line dresses and flared trousers, fitted shirts and pencil skirts. To the right, costumes from the 1950s: puffball skirts, halter-style tops and sweetie swing dresses. And in the middle, a row of Jane Austen: empire gowns and summer dresses with matching coats in linen, velvet and silk. Along the floor are vintage shoes, heels and flats, and hanging above the clothes, rows of hats.

  “Oh my God,” Greer gasps. Of everything she’s seen so far, this is without a doubt her absolute favorite. The wardrobe beckons, enticing her out of bed. In a gap between a blue dress and a red skirt Greer can see the wardrobe is several meters deep. Tentatively she reaches out to the blue dress, hesitant to step inside behind the curtains of cotton and silk, almost expecting to see Mr. Tumnus trot out from behind the veils.

  A delicate pea green dress catches her eye and the memory rises up again, the one that never really leaves, that always flutters at the edges of her mind. It pushes forward now, and suddenly Greer is numb to everything except the past. Standing in front of a hundred colors, all she can see is her daughter’s face, the bright green eyes blinking up at her. For, despite the doctor’s saying it was impossible, that all babies are born with blue or brown eyes, Lily’s were green. Bright shining green, like leaves lit by sunlight. Greer will never forget gazing into them for the first and last time. The one person she loved more than anyone in the world, she met for only a moment.

  Greer bites her lip and swallows the memory, pushing it back to where it belongs, locked in her heart and held there, a private pain that is hers and hers alone. She has to focus on the present now and find something to wear. She’s hardly in the mood to socialize, to shine and smile, but now it’s time. After twelve days of hiding out in her bedroom with a broken heart, she must finally meet her housemates. Greer takes a deep breath. She can do this—she is an actress, after all.

  —

  Alba sits at the kitchen table, pushing the remains of a barely touched piece of birthday cake around her plate, sneaking looks at Greer, who’s dressed in a green silk gown with red satin heels and matching bolero, looking as though she’s attending the Oscars, except that she’s hardly smiling. Alba studies the two women: where Carmen is stunning and sexy, Greer is more subtly beautiful. They both dress impeccably. Feeling self-conscious and out of place, Alba tries to think of something to say. Carmen munches her way through the bowl of cherries, Greer chats halfheartedly about a production of Twelfth Night at the theater in town and Peggy licks out a bowl of cream.

  “How many people live here?” Alba ventures.

  “That depends on the season.” Peggy lifts her head up from the bowl, a peak of cream on the tip of her nose. “On the weather and the amount of despair in the air. We’re always the most crowded around Christmas.” She swipes off the cream with her finger. “But right now we’re virtually empty. Before you turned up last night it was just the three of us, wasn’t it?”

  She looks at Greer, who flashes Alba a film-star smile, and at Carmen, who nods, then accidentally swallows a cherry pip and coughs. Alba glances around the kitchen at the multicolored helium balloons floating around the room, bobbing in midair just above their heads. How funny, Alba thinks, that they don’t float up to the ceiling.

  “We’re very happy to have you here,” Peggy says. “Aren’t we, girls?”

  “Absolutely.” Greer grins, momentarily blinding Alba, who blinks. “The more the merrier.”

  Nodding, Carmen drains her glass and coughs again. “Sim, I never have sisters, I always want some. I can take you drinking, we can go shopping, get makeups, go dancing.” She grins. “We will have much fun.”

  “Oh.” Alba tries not to look too horrified at the suggestion of socializing with someone so luscious and loud, someone with whom she has absolutely nothing in common, excepting the broken heart. “Well, um, I don’t really know…”

  “Cream?” Peggy hides a smile and offers Alba the bowl.

  “No, thanks—”

  “Pancake?” Greer says perkily, wishing she were upstairs in bed.

  “No, I’m—”

  “Cherry?” Carmen drops one onto Alba’s plate.

  “No, but”—Alba eyes it—“thank you.” As she pops the cherry into her mouth, Alba feels a prickle of anticipation along her spine, the same sensation she used to get as a girl the moment before seeing her grandmother’s ghost. She glances up and there, sitting in the kitchen sink, is a young woman: tall, thin and entirely transparent. She’s in her early twenties, very pretty, with long blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a long dress dotted with daisies. She gives a little wave, kicks her transparent legs against the kitchen counter and smiles.

  She reminds Alba of hippies, flower power and feminism, of an essay she once wrote about the effects of the pill on the liberation of working-class women in 1960s Britain. The young woman waves again, and it’s only then that Alba realizes she is the only one who can see her.

  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 h
aircut.

  “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.”