The House at the End of Hope Street - By Menna van Praag Page 0,90

male hands until I can trust my instincts.” Slowly she sits up to gaze at her magical wardrobe; simply seeing it always lifts her spirits. Its clothes give her comfort. In fact, right now, they are the only things that do. Lately she holds them like safety blankets. Last night she fell asleep in a pile of blue satin ball gowns.

Greer pulls herself off the bed, pads across the floor, and walks in through the wardrobe’s open doors. There she spends the rest of the day, sitting among her clothes, rubbing fabrics across her face. Then, when Greer buries her head in her favorite little black Audrey Hepburn dress, something falls through the air and lands with a thump at her feet.

It’s a book, two inches thick and bound with brown leather. Greer picks it up to find it’s actually a collection of papers, hundreds of dress patterns ripped from magazines, much like the one she found a week ago. Greer flicks through the pictures, wondering if they’re supposed to be a clue to something. But she can’t find a sequence or connection; they seem random, unorganized.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Greer mutters, self-pity clouding good sense. “You want me to make dresses? When I’m nearly forty and will soon have nowhere to live?” She stands. “If I’m going to do anything, I’m going to raise a child. And for that, I need a real job. All right?”

With that, she drops the papers and marches out of the wardrobe.

—

Walking up the path, Edward hesitates. He stops a few feet before the door, glancing up at the dozens of windows above him. It’s a magnificent house, as big as a church, and he can’t believe he never noticed it when he was a student at Trinity. Not that it matters now, because as he rings the bell, Edward’s feeling torn in half. He’s overjoyed Alba has invited him over, having feared after their last meeting that she’d never want to see him again, but now, at some point he’ll have to tell her the truth, and he’s dreading it.

An hour later, after the exchange of a great deal of small talk, Edward sits at the kitchen table with Alba, drinking coffee and eating ginger biscuits. Stella watches them from her favorite spot in the sink.

“Do you want something else?” Alba asks, wondering why her brother seems so distracted. “I could make toast and jam.”

“What?” Edward fiddles with his watch strap. “No, I’m fine.”

“But you don’t seem to like the biscuits.”

“Oh, they’re fine. I’m just a little distracted, that’s all.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing, just work stuff.” Edward shrugs. “It’s okay.”

They shift to talking about their childhood memories: the tree house with two floors the gardener built in a three-hundred-year-old oak, the secret cupboard under the stairs in the south wing they’d both used as a hiding place. They talk about Tilly, who’s not visiting with him because she’s still recovering from the flu, and they even talk about Edward’s late wife, much to Alba’s surprise. She talks about Peggy, and tells her brother a little about Albert, but stops short of mentioning Stella.

“It’s not really work,” Edward blurts out at last. “I’m not fine. I’m sorry, I lied to you. When you asked me about father’s disappearance and . . .”

“And you told me you didn’t know where he was.” Alba waits.

Stella, watching them both, leans forward in the sink. Edward slowly snaps five ginger biscuits in half, one by one, releasing little puffs of dusky orange vapor that float between them. He takes a deep breath. “He was living in Italy—Sicily. Until two years ago we visited him every year in spring.”

“We?” Alba sits up and stares at her brother.

“Lotte, Charlie and I.”

Alba can’t quite make sense of what he’s saying. She hears the words but their meaning—the implications—momentarily elude her. “Why two years?”

“He died, the Christmas before last. Heart attack.” Edward gazes down at his plate, at the discarded biscuits.

“Oh.” Alba’s still confused. “So, wait . . . he didn’t leave us, he only left me.” She grips her coffee cup. “But I thought . . . I even . . . but, how the hell could he do that? And how could you not tell me, after all these years, how could you not?”

“I’m so sorry, Al, I really am.” Edward is on the verge of tears. He wishes he could reel back his words, unsay them, have them disappear. It was too soon, too fast. He