‘We’ve only been here the once,’ Arthur explained, as they walked along Elysian Place. ‘To see what state it was in before we put it on the market. We decided to leave it as it was, apart from clearing the garden. There were rumours of Japanese knotweed, which turned out to be unfounded.’
‘My mother-in-law thanks you for that, by the way,’ Win said as they reached their gate so they could see what Nancy had done in the front garden. Then, because the days were so short and the light was almost gone, they showed Marisa and Arthur straight through to the back garden.
Zoe would never grow bored with showing people around the house but Arthur and Marisa were mostly silent, though Marisa made an approving noise when she saw that of all the rooms, the bathroom was the one that had had the least amount of work done to it; the original tiles and sanitaryware still intact. ‘I’ll be back to poke through your bathroom cabinet later.’
At last they came to Zoe’s studio. Arthur and Marisa looked at her draughtsman table and the old archive desk with its narrow but deep drawers, which Clive had given her as a housewarming gift, her prized collection of battered Ladybird books stacked on the shelves along with editions of Zoe’s own books. The old jam jars and scented-candle glasses filled with pencils and pens in every colour, the festive-themed sketches pinned to one wall.
‘Someone likes robins,’ Arthur said jovially as Zoe opened the cupboard door and reached in to take down the suitcase.
They went back downstairs for tea and the apple cake Win had baked the day before. To have Arthur and Marisa walk through the house had been daunting enough, but to see them touching Libby’s things was harder still.
Or perhaps it was just seeing those items again. The sad things that made up a life: a dress to get married in, a layette for a baby that had never been worn, faded photos of an actress whose work now languished in obscurity. ‘This is the diary,’ Libby said, taking it out of the sideboard and peeling away the bubble wrap.
When Marisa picked it up, Zoe wanted to snatch it back. ‘I’ve kept everything, all the letters and clippings and things, exactly how it was left,’ she said quickly, in case Marisa decided to start pulling pieces of paper out at random. There had been a time when Zoe had debated the ethics of reading someone’s diary and made her peace with it, but now, as she saw Libby’s spiderweb scrawl marching faintly across the pages and Marisa put her glasses on to squint at the words, it felt like the worst kind of trespass.
‘This copy of The Times, what’s the significance of it?’ Arthur asked, picking up the yellowed newspaper, which was in the suitcase along with everything else, though Zoe had never given it much thought.
‘I have no idea,’ Zoe said. ‘I suppose it belonged to whoever left the suitcase behind. Shall I make some more tea?’
There was no reply. Marisa had removed one of Freddy’s letters and was reading it, her brow knitted together, and Win and Arthur were looking through the newspaper.
‘It’s dated seventeenth of December, nineteen thirty-six,’ Win reported, as he traced a finger along the masthead.
Zoe cleared away the tea things. Libby was more elusive than ever. As if she’d never really existed. A trick of the light.
‘Morton! Oh, well spotted, Win,’ she heard Arthur say. It was his turn to take out a pair of half-moon spectacles from the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘Now, let me see. “Morton, eleventh December, nineteen thirty-six in London, Elizabeth (née Edwards) late of Hampstead, actress and teacher. Deeply regretted by her husband Frederick, family and friends. Private funeral. Family request no flowers.” Oh dear, I did hope this story might have a happy ending.’
‘What? Let me see that!’ Zoe all but ripped the paper away from Arthur. How could the answer have been there all the time? It wasn’t possible. This was not what Libby’s ending was meant to be.
‘Zoe!’ Win got up from the table so he could stand behind her, his arm a solid comforting weight around her middle as he pointed out the right column. ‘I’m sorry, Zo. There must have been complications with her pregnancy again.’
Zoe shook her head. ‘There was no death certificate,’ she insisted. ‘If she’d died there would have been a record of her death. The eleventh of December is the same date as the note Hugo wrote asking her to meet him here. No! I refuse to accept this!’
‘But it’s The Times!’ Marisa looked up from her letter. ‘The Times would never get a death announcement wrong. My dear girl, why are you crying?’
Zoe shook her head, tried to mop up the tears that were streaming down her face. It was irrational, because whether it had happened eighty or eighteen years ago, Zoe knew that Libby was dead. Despite what Win said, there had always been a symmetry between the two of them, Libby and Zoe, so that the promise of Zoe having a baby seemed impossible now if Libby’s second pregnancy had ended so badly. Fatally. More than that, she was grieving for a woman she’d never met but whom she’d known so well, had loved in a strange kind of way.
She tried to explain it to Marisa when the older woman took her upstairs so she could wash her face.
‘I lost a baby too. Hardly a baby. I was only eight or so weeks along.’ It still hurt to say the words out loud but, at the same time, it was easier to say them too after so much time had passed. ‘We’re trying for another baby and when I found out that Libby was pregnant again, I thought… oh, I hoped…’ Zoe stopped to let a fresh wave of tears crash against the breakers.
Marisa perched next to Zoe on the side of the bath. ‘I’m sorry you lost the baby,’ she said. ‘But you mustn’t think that this house is a conduit to events that happened a long time ago. I happen to think houses take on the personality of their current owners, like people resembling their pets.’
‘What about houses where people have been murdered or tortured, so they have mysterious cold spots or stains appearing on the walls?’ Zoe asked. It was a ridiculous question; she knew that as soon as the words popped out of her mouth, and not just because Marisa snorted. ‘Or poltergeists,’ she couldn’t help adding.
‘Does this house have all sorts of other-worldly things going on in it?’ Marisa asked and Zoe was forced to admit that it didn’t, although their blighted radiators rattled when the central heating first came on.
‘The house in Hampstead, when my grandmother lived there, was the gloomiest place imaginable. As far as I can gather, a couple of aged aunts died in situ and Daddy used to talk of this man called Potty…’
‘Potts,’ Zoe corrected. ‘His name was Potts. He was always borrowing money off Libby and never paying it back. She kept a running tally in her diary.’
‘That sounds very much like the fellow Daddy described. Raging alcoholic. Got shellshock in the First World War apparently and fancied himself as a medium. Claimed to regularly commune with the spirits, then one day he saw my late grandfather, Arthur, sitting in his chair in the drawing room, though he’d been dead several years, and this Potts fellow dropped down dead himself of a heart attack. It’s hardly surprising the atmosphere in that house was funereal. I used to hate staying there when I was a child but when Granny Morton eventually died, I moved in there with my husband Philip as newly-weds.’ Marisa smiled fondly. ‘We got rid of all the dark, Victorian furniture, painted everything bright colours. I’ve never been as happy anywhere as I was in that house.’
‘It’s been a long, hard expensive slog, but I think Win and I are beginning to be happy living here,’ Zoe said. ‘We’re not quite there yet.’
She and Win weren’t completely there yet either; back to normal. Or their new version of normal, but instead of being stressed and leaden-bellied about it, Zoe knew it wouldn’t be long before the last few pieces of them slotted back into place.
‘This is precisely why we chose you and Win,’ Marisa said. ‘You showed us how happy this house could be with a little love and lots of imagination. That it could be a home for a family, though we were grateful that you didn’t mention school catchment areas once.’
‘We did think about it,’ Zoe said but it would be a long, long time, if ever, that they needed to worry about being in the catchment area for a good school. Before she could feel that piercing ache of loss again, though, she heard Win calling.