sees her mistake. The books haven’t moved, they have been replaced. The histories and biographies of great Victorians have become the novels they read: Wuthering Heights, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, North and South, The Picture of Dorian Gray . . . Alba walks across the room to study the titles on the opposite wall. This time they are plays from the same period: The Cherry Orchard, Peter Pan, A Woman of No Importance, Pygmalion, The Woman in White . . . then poems: Tintern Abbey, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Ozymandias, La Belle Dame sans Merci, The Maid of Athens . . .
Alba’s alarm clock beeps. She hurries back to her bed to turn it off—and there on the table is a note, the words curling across the paper in black ink:
Take one step back and two steps forward.
She reads it twice, then once again, but still doesn’t understand. Alba pulls a moth-eaten cardigan off her bedpost and slips it over her pajamas. She’ll have to ask Stella. Opening the bedroom door, she sees a bright yellow notebook on the floor. A lurid color, like radioactive egg yolks. Alba fingers the pen in her pajama pocket, then picks up the notebook and walks slowly toward the stairs. Reaching the first step, she stops. On the wall is a photograph she’s never noticed before.
“Emmeline Pankhurst.” Alba smiles at another of her historical heroes. The suffragette nods at the notebook. “I see you’re about to embark on an adventure.”
“I don’t know,” Alba says. “It’s just something I wanted to do a long time ago. I don’t even . . .”
“Hardly so long ago, you’re still a teenager, a tadpole.” Emmeline laughs. “You’re far too young to give up on yourself or life yet. And my own experiences should certainly teach you never to give up at the first hurdle. Or, indeed, the second. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I’ll bear that in mind.” Alba smiles. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Emmeline says. “Anytime.”
A few minutes later when Alba opens the kitchen door she hears her mother’s butterfly song and stops in her tracks.
“Well.” Stella materializes in the sink. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Very funny.” Alba sits at the table. “But I did just meet one of my idols. I can’t quite believe Emmeline Pankhurst just gave me life advice.” She smiles.
Stella eyes the notebook. “So are you going to start writing now?”
Alba ignores the question. “The song you were singing just now, the one I heard the first night I came here, how do you know it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, I know you do. Why won’t you tell me?”
But Stella just smiles.
Alba scowls. The mystery of the ghost and the particulars of her life gnaw at her like an Agatha Christie novel with the final pages ripped out. She’s been searching for Stella’s picture in the hope that it might yield clues. She’s also been searching for a photograph of Miss Christie. Alba has a theory that, when the author disappeared for eleven days in 1926, she came to Hope Street. She just needs to find the photo to prove it.
“Why are you here?” she persists. “Why have you been here all these years?”
“I told you—I was waiting for you.”
“Yes, there is that great mystery, but I mean, I wasn’t born until twenty-three years after you died. So, for all that time, how did you even know I was coming and why—”
“I told you.” Stella interrupts her. “Time isn’t the same for me as it is for you. Waiting isn’t the point. When I died I wanted to be useful. So I hung around here to help out until you showed up.”
“But why?” Alba frowns. “Why me?”
“Well, now,” Stella says, “if I just told you, what would be the fun in that?”
—
Charles Ashby had been searching for stamps when he found the letters. His wife’s office was open. He strode across the room, disgusted by the mess: papers strewn everywhere, piled up and sandwiched between books. He wasn’t interested in looking at any of it, but when he found a locked box in her desk drawer, he was suddenly intrigued. No one kept secrets from Charles Ashby. At age five he was the first of his friends to uncover the true identity of Father Christmas and was singlehandedly responsible for disillusioning his entire class. He was the only one who knew about all his father’s affairs, the first to discover his mother’s