The House at the End of Hope Street - By Menna van Praag Page 0,5

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.

—

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