The House at the End of Hope Street - By Menna van Praag Page 0,28

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.

Zoë has often thought she ought to try to do something useful with her pain, like channeling it into a bestseller. But whenever she tries, she can’t get past page one. Because when she writes it down, it’s the same tale shared by a hundred thousand others, not worth the waste of paper or ink. So instead she absently fills the little hearts with A’s.

Admiring her handiwork, Zoë thinks of another “A” in her life, her colleague Andy, with whom she had a rather strange encounter last summer, one that momentarily knocked Zoë out of the monotonous ache of her own unrequited love. It began when Andy accidentally brushed against Zoë’s breasts in the rare-book room while reaching for a first edition of Salomé. He apologized, laughing, expecting Zoë to slap him. But she didn’t. Instead she shocked herself by kissing him. Bemused by it, but never one to reject a pretty girl, Andy shrugged and kissed her back. It was an interaction they repeated once or twice a week for three months, until the students returned at the end of the summer and the library was too crowded to risk such encounters. After which they never touched or spoke about it again.

Zoë can’t say she actually enjoyed it. It was an experiment, a foray to the other side. And even the shock of sexual experimentation didn’t stop Zoë from thinking about the one she loved. For, even while she had allowed another “A” to touch her lips, Alba Ashby remained firmly lodged in her heart.

—

The desire to run the hundred and fifty miles back to Hope Street wraps its fingers around Alba’s heart and squeezes hard. She shivers with that fever all night, and the next day she doesn’t go down to breakfast, lunch or dinner. Whiffs of color float up to her room but she blows them away. She hears Charlotte, Edward and Charles arguing over funeral arrangements—their words black and spiked as they drift past her window. Alba wonders what her mother would have wanted.

Since visiting Elizabeth’s bedroom, Alba hasn’t slept well. She wonders who Ella was, why her father left and