The House at the End of Hope Street Page 7

  She trails off, her words drying up under the combined force of her three siblings staring at her. For one long, agonizing moment, nobody speaks. Then, suddenly, they all sober up.

  “But, but you only needed a high pass,” Charles says, breaking the silence. “How could you mess that up? It’s virtually impossible.”

  “I don’t understand,” Charlotte says, “I simply don’t understand. Are you a complete idiot?”

  “Oh dear, Al,” Edward whispers, looking at his little sister, his eyes full of pity. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What the hell happened?” Charles brandishes his knife at Alba.

  “I don’t know,” Alba lies. “I just couldn’t—”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, really,” Charlotte snaps, “since you’re not—”

  “No, Lotte, don’t,” Edward says. “Not now.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, all right?” Alba says. “I’d give anything, anything to be starting my PhD in October. I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

  “You’ll have to appeal,” Edward says. “That’s all. It’s okay, not unheard of.”

  “Oh God, how perfectly humiliating.” Charlotte tips the last of a bottle of wine into her glass. “I’m so glad Father didn’t have to witness this, that Mother isn’t here to see what—”

  “Don’t!” Alba bites back tears. “Don’t, please.”

  “Oh, calm down,” Charles sighs. “It’s clearly a mistake, a mess of some kind. I’ll call Dr. Skinner first thing, we’ll sort this out.”

  “No, no.” Alba wants to scream. “You can’t. You can’t.”

  “Why?” Edward gazes gently at his little sister. “Why can’t we help?”

  But Alba just shakes her head. She can’t tell him. She can’t tell anyone. Suddenly Alba feels as though she’s drowning, her lungs filling faster than she can breathe. She wants to relive the last year, to undo what she’s done. Although now she’s starting to remember more clearly what that life was really like at King’s: every day running a race she could never win. Something has begun to unfold inside her, a seed that Stella has planted, so Alba is no longer quite sure she wants that life back anymore.

  “What’s the point?” Alba says softly. “What is the point?”

  “Sorry?” Edward asks.

  “Well, what’s the point of it all?” Alba repeats loudly, looking up. “No matter what I do, if I got five PhDs, I’ll still never get your approval. Will I? You’ve always hated me, haven’t you? Always treated me like an interloper: your unwanted, unexpected little sister. So it doesn’t matter what I do, does it? You’re never going to love me, you’re never going to approve of me—”

  This sudden and rare burst of truth has the unusual effect of shocking the Ashby siblings into silence. Charlotte and Charles stare at her coldly. But Edward has tears in his eyes.

  “Forgive me,” Charles says, “but your question is entirely irrelevant. The point is to push you to greatness. If you got our approval before achieving anything, we’d be doing you a huge disservice.”

  He glances at Charlotte, who half-nods and half-shrugs, as though she doesn’t care either way, and then at Edward, who just looks pained.

  “And what about unconditional love,” Alba snaps. “Isn’t that what families are for?” She waits, but Charles is stone-faced. Charlotte slowly drains her glass. Edward just looks on, speechless, regret tugging at his fingers. He twists them in his lap, locking his thumbs together.

  Alba sighs. “Okay. Right. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised since the only member of this family who ever loved me like that was Mum, and—”

  “And she was mad.” Charlotte sets down her glass. “So I really wouldn’t put much stock in that.”

  Alba stares at her sister, unable to believe what she’s just said. Stunned, clipped words flap through her mind, but before they can reach her mouth, Alba pushes her chair away from the table and runs out of the room.

  —

  Peggy is a great lover of sleep; she luxuriates in it for long, lazy hours in the morning and looks forward to embracing it again every night. But as soon as the clocks go forward in spring, she wakes early and goes to the garden to see her flowers opening their petals to the sun. The back garden is Peggy’s domain, the one place, excepting the tower, that is hers alone. And in the sixty-one years she’s presided over the house, not a single resident has ever stepped into it. Every time another woman turns up, Peggy holds her breath a little, waiting. But no one has yet looked beyond the back of the house and Peggy knows why: the power of her possessive desire is so strong it renders the garden invisible to everyone else. She guards it as her place to be alone, her reward for a lifetime of giving. And so far, at least, the house has acquiesced to her silent request, allowing her solitary Eden to remain hidden, while its windows reflect a false view of fields and trees. Only Alba has seen beyond the mirage, but luckily she doesn’t seem interested.

  In return for keeping itself secret, Peggy adores and nurtures the garden as if it’s her favorite lover. The scent of the honeysuckle soothes her, the breeze strokes her skin and the grass infuses her feet with a warmth that fills her whole body, like sips of ancient, expensive whisky she sometimes treats herself to before bedtime. And just as she attends to Harry’s every need (except the one to marry and live together), so she tends to the garden, taking care of each and every plant. Peggy thinks of Harry more often now, knowing that she won’t have long left with him. She treasures their time together more than usual. And, though Peggy has never been a woman with regrets, she has noticed them starting to sneak up on her lately when she’s not paying attention.

  Scattered through the long grasses of the lawn are old stone birdbaths, feeders hanging from the branches of every tree. In the late spring and early summer, hundreds of multicolored butterflies dip in and out: holly blues, cardinals, monarchs, small skippers, swallowtails… Today a tiny pair of lemon yellow butterflies follow each other on a figure-eights tour of the garden, each settling on Peggy’s shoulder before they leave.

  “Mog.” Peggy catches sight of the flick of a ginger tail from behind a patch of tall white daisies. “Get out of the flower bed. When will you give up chasing butterflies? They’re just toying with your emotions.”

  Mog replies with a haughty meow and stalks off in the direction of the lawn, his tail held high. Peggy kneels at the edge of the grass, plucking at weeds surrounding a cluster of black roses she created herself, cross-pollinating the darkest flowers she could find for years before finally getting lucky. She’s extremely proud of the results.

  The roses remind Peggy of the midnight glory in the front garden. It’s growing too fast and starting to shine so brightly at night, it’ll begin to attract attention. At the moment the house is visible only to those who need it, but if the plant keeps growing it’ll be seen by everyone, and the house will be overrun by tourists, scientists, journalists who will expose it and tear the house apart trying to make sense of its magic. It won’t survive for long after that.

  Last night Peggy looked out of the tower window to see the tendrils of the midnight glory wrapping around drainpipes and slithering up the walls, its dark purple flowers glistening just under the second-story balcony, the moonlight illuminating their glow. She knows there’s no point cutting it down; she has to remove what’s feeding it, to dig up what is buried beneath it. But only Carmen can do that.

  —

  Carmen kneels on the floor, scraping chewing gum off the bottom of a black leather chair. Blake asked her to do the morning cleaning shift and, unattractive as the job is, Carmen finds she can’t say no to him. Luckily she loves being in the bar when it’s empty. No one else there, just the polished oak floors, walls of exposed red brick, bottles of expensive wines on display in alcoves, a raised stage for singers with a microphone and a baby grand piano. There was nothing like it in Bragança. It’s quite the oppo
site of the shady little bar where she met Tiago, and Carmen adores every brick, seat and floorboard.

  This morning she has a plan. Every few minutes she stops scratching the seat and looks up at the stage. Last night Carmen saw the singer she’d invited Alba to see. The woman sang Bessie Smith, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald, and Carmen was utterly captivated. Echoes of the notes play in stereo now, bouncing around her brain, knocking out every other thought. Last night she actually slept, lulled to sleep by all that wonderful music. Everything fell away, leaving only white space and sound. And now Carmen can’t think about anything else. Which is exactly the way she wants it.

  When she’s scraped the chair clean, she stands and stretches. Then, instead of returning to cleaning, as she should, Carmen hurries across the wooden floor and steps onto the stage. A dustsheet covers the baby grand piano. She pulls it off and sits on the wooden stool.

  She hasn’t played in over a year, not since Tiago first taught her. She shakes her head to unlock the memories, places her fingers on the ivories, and slowly begins testing the notes, seeing what will come. But as she tries to remember the songs she most loved, Carmen realizes it’s impossible. They’re locked away in some distant place she can’t reach, trapped deep in her mind, along with all the other things Carmen never wants to remember. And so, just as Tiago gave her the music, now he has taken it away.

  Chapter Seven

  I’m not saying you should get back together with him, sweetie, I’m only saying you should think about it.”

  “Mum, I couldn’t, even if I wanted to,” Greer says, having only just confessed to her engagement ending. “He’s with the twenty-two-year-old and he’s welcome to her.”

  “Stop feigning flippancy,” Celia says, “you’re too old for it. If you were the twenty-two-year-old, then perhaps, but you’re nearly forty.”

  “In eleven months, Mum, not tomorrow.” Greer sits on the bottom step of the stairs, wearing 1950s men’s silk pajamas, the phone cord wrapped around her wrist. This is the topic she always dreads and the one her mother always brings up. Greer stares at the photographs lining the walls. She can picture Celia now: perched on the edge of the kitchen counter, legs crossed, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other. Greer’s grandmother named her daughter after Celia Johnson when she went into labor while watching Brief Encounter, and her mother in turn named her own after Greer Garson, star of her favorite film, Mrs. Miniver. They’d both been trying to live up to their names ever since. Sadly, neither of them has proved any good at either being brilliant actresses or managing to get married.

  “You’re no spring chicken,” Celia says. “And if you leave it too late you’ll end up regretting it, I promise you. If I hadn’t had you I’d have nothing now, would I?”

  “No, Mum.” Greer sighs. “I suppose not.” Her mother is the only one Greer can’t act with, the only one who isn’t fooled by the smile, the laugh, the pretending that everything is wonderful when it isn’t. No, Celia knows her daughter too well for that. The only thing she doesn’t know is the secret Greer’s been keeping since she was nineteen years old. Greer sighs again.

  “I heard that,” Celia snaps.

  “Sorry, Mum, it’s not you,” Greer lies. “I’m just knackered, that’s all. I had to do a double shift last night. Blake asked if—”

  “Blake?” Celia perks up and Greer inwardly curses.

  “He’s my boss, Mum.”

  “Is he… ?”

  “No, and we’re not.”

  “Oh.” Celia blows out a puff of smoke. “Shame. He sounds nice.”

  Greer laughs. “I only told you his name.”

  “Well, it’s a good one,” her mother insists. “It holds promise. I’ll bet he has strong sperm.”

  “Mum!”

  “Listen, love, you can’t count on a man to stick around, but your kids will always love you. And you can’t wait much longer. I know it’s unfair, but that’s how it is for women, we…”

  Greer squeezes her eyes shut and stops listening. All she can see now is Lily: big green eyes, bump of a nose, little bow mouth, dusting of dark red hair and tiny fingers that wrapped themselves tightly around hers and held on as long as they could. Celia knew nothing of the pregnancy and never suspected. Greer hardly showed until the sixth month, and by then she was at university. When she went into labor early, she didn’t call anyone. She met, loved and lost Lily in a single day, all by herself.

  “Mum,” Greer says softly, “I’m doing the best I can, okay?” She can feel her voice crack and has the sudden urge to confess everything. To admit that sometimes she wakes from dreams so vivid she can still feel Lily’s head on her breast, the tuft of soft red hair brushing her skin. She wants to tell her mother the truth: that complications during the birth left her unable to have another child. But then they’d both be without hope.

  “I know, love, I just worry about you, that’s all.” Celia sighs. “And why are you wasting your time in a bar? You should be onstage, that’s where you belong. I can—”

  Greer mumbles something incoherent. She won’t get drawn in. This is one conversation she is determined to avoid today. Her insubstantial acting career has always been an explosive subject between them, almost as much as Greer’s childlessness. Celia, having failed to achieve the stardom she dreamed of, has always invested an intrusive level of interest in Greer’s own career. If Greer admits that she’s all but given up on the idea that she’ll ever be an actress of any significance, she knows she’ll never hear the end of it. Celia will hound her until she promises never to give up. Because if Greer lets her dreams of stardom die, her mother’s dreams die with them.

  The other thing she certainly won’t tell her mother is that, last night, the charming American asked her out and she said no. At the end of their shift he’d offered her a cigarette, then suggested dinner, and had seemed extremely surprised when she turned him down. But she knows Blake is only interested in a fling. Of course, Celia would be furious that she’d passed up a prospect of any kind, no matter how improbable. For it is her mother’s firm belief that a man can always be changed, given incentive enough. Greer does not share this illusion and since she’s reluctant to subject herself to artistic or romantic rejection, she’s rather starting to suspect that she is destined to die a ninety-year-old waitress, single and surrounded by cats.

  —

  Alba sits on the floor of her childhood playroom, leaning against the piano. It’s far from her favorite room—the piano holds particularly painful memories—but it’s also the last place her siblings will look for her. And for that, she’s prepared to endure echoes of sorrow. The playroom has never contained toys because Alba’s father didn’t believe in them. Everything was educational: science kits, maps, globes, an abacus with wooden beads, diagrams of the Pythagorean theorem, exact replicas of major historical battles… Alba spent hours here as a child, before her father disappeared and she was sent to Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

  And, if growing up alone in a cold, silent mansion was bad, then being sent away to boarding school turned out to be even worse. At last, Alba thought, she’d have friends, companions to confide in and share secrets with. But when Alba told the other girls that she could see sounds and smells, they didn’t respond as enthusiastically as she thought they would. Even though Alba promised she couldn’t see their thoughts, the girls in her class were still scared she’d discover their secrets, their hopes and fears, that she’d know when they wet their beds, cried for their mummies, or stole cookies from the kitchen. So they shunned and teased her and called her a liar. When the tormenting spread to the rest of the school, Alba stopped trying to make friends and instead sought refuge in the library. It was there she discovered worlds far more wonderful than hers, populated by characters so captivating and lives so sensational that it was quite easy, after a few pages, to forget about her own life.

  By the time she reached university, A
lba had given up trying to befriend anyone with a beating heart and pretended she was only truly interested in fiction and in historical fact, learning about lives that would reward her with excellent examination marks. So, when she met Dr. Skinner, the first person who seemed to see behind her pretenses and into her heart, it didn’t take Alba long to fall in love.

  At first it didn’t matter that her feelings were unrequited. But as they spent more time together, Alba began trying to win the love she wanted so much. She stole library books so she could stay up all night, uncovering obscure research, creating brilliant and complex theories to convince Dr. Skinner she was someone worth loving. After nearly a year of unfulfilled longing, Alba would do anything for a kind word or suggestive smile. When Dr. Skinner agreed to be her MPhil supervisor, there was nothing she wouldn’t have done in return. So, when her esteemed and beloved supervisor asked for help in writing a paper on marriage in Victorian England, Alba didn’t hesitate to say yes.

  —

  Zoë doodles hearts around the edges of her page. Hearts are so much more clichéd than lightning bolts, but she doesn’t care. Love is a common, unoriginal emotion that turns people into simpering idiots who resort to the same terms of affection, gifts, silly iconography and the same tears when it all goes wrong.

  Zoë has seen the love affairs and mating rituals of hundreds of students, like an anthropologist dedicated to the study of a cliché: how they circle each other, sneaking secret kisses behind the stacks, giggling with an optimistic, all-embracing joie de vivre, gazing out of windows for hours on end with smiles plastered across their faces, unable to focus. She sees how love breaks them when it leaves, splitting them open like pea pods, their hearts exposed, their eyes red, their souls much darker than before.

  Zoë also sees the worst type of love, the sort that never illuminates those it afflicts but renders them perpetually raw: love of the unrequited kind. This is the one she knows best of all. She can identify it at five hundred paces, across a crowded room, behind closed doors. She can see the signs in anyone: the dazed gaze, the hollow eyes, the sallow complexion, the look of resigned despair tinged with the tiniest spark of hope. For it is the love she’s infected with, and fellow sufferers can always recognize one another.