The House at the End of Hope Street - By Menna van Praag Page 0,60
and now he’s poisoning everything around him.
As Carmen digs she prays to a Catholic God she no longer worships that she’s doing the right thing—not burying her problems but facing them. She thinks of the night it all went wrong, the night their love turned sour. Tiago had invited Carmen up on stage to sing a duet with him, something he wanted to serenade her with. But when she sang, the audience fell silent, totally enchanted. And when she stopped they cheered so loudly, begging for an encore, that Tiago couldn’t hear himself singing his part. He stared at her. A light had flicked on inside Carmen, one he’d never seen before, not even when they made love. But it went out the moment she saw his face. That night he slapped her, warning her not to take on airs or think she was anything special to anyone but him. Carmen never sang after that. Indeed, she hardly ever left the house again.
“Foda!” Carmen’s knuckles hit the box and she winces, pulling her hand out of the ground and rubbing away the pain. She glances up at the sky and the black shadows of the trees as the last patch of light slips away. She doesn’t have any more time. Carmen wraps her fingers around the wooden edges of the box and pulls it out of the soil. She places it next to her on the grass, hurriedly fills the hole, stamps down the dirt, spits on it, then turns back toward the house with the box in her hand.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning Carmen wakes feeling lighter than she has in years. And she knows, before she even opens her eyes that, for doing as it asked, the house has given her a gift. She has no idea what it is, but she has a sense of where. Slipping out of bed, Carmen pads across the room, steps into the corridor and hurries into the living room. And there, by the bay windows overlooking the front garden, stands a baby grand piano.
She walks to it slowly, postponing the moment of joy, savoring every juicy second. She slides her fingers along the smooth golden wood, sending sparks of excitement through her hands. Carmen smoothes the back of her nightdress and sits on the black leather bench. The moment she touches her fingers to the keys she begins riffing chords, jumping octaves, speeding up and down the notes.
At last she stops, her hands held in midair as a shaft of sunlight slips across the wood. She stares at the line of dust motes that dance in and out of the light, mesmerized by the way they move. Gradually a memory rises up inside her, a flicker, the shadow of a dream. And as she starts to play again, Carmen sings a song remembered from long ago. And then she thinks of Alba, knowing what she has to do now.
—
“I need help.”
“With what?”
“Writing,” Alba admits. There isn’t any point in keeping her desire a secret anymore, since she can’t seem to do it anyway. And today is the first of July. She can’t wait for too long; in six weeks she’ll never see Stella again. This thought brings tears to Alba’s eyes and she blinks them back.
“Well, okay. What do you want to write?”
“I don’t know.” Alba holds the pen between her fingers, clicking the lid. “I wanted it to take my mind off . . . things. But it’s not really working.”
“That’s because you need some inspiration first,” Stella says. “You need to live a little. You need to get into mischief, fall in love . . .”
“Mischief?” Alba repeats, as if the ghost is speaking a foreign language she’s not sure she wants to learn. “Love?”
“Exactly.”
“Did you do that, then?” Alba shifts the subject. “When you were alive?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Stella smiles. “All the time.”
Alba snaps on the pen lid with a triumphant click. “You said you couldn’t remember anything.”
“Did I?” Stella asks, unabashed. “Well, maybe some of it’s starting to come back to me now.”
Alba sits up. “Like what?”
“Just things.”
“What things?”
“You don’t want to hear debauched tales of my misspent youth. It’s all too sordid. It’d shock you.” But Stella smiles, knowing it’s time.
“Please,” Alba says, “stop teasing me.”
“Oh, all right, then.” Stella feigns a sigh of surrender. “So, I grew up rather like you, amidst a great deal of material wealth but very little love. I was sent to Cheltenham Ladies’ College just after my sixth birthday—”