They spent the next hour helping to carry in boxes, which Zoe was sure had bred in the van on the journey from Swiss Cottage. They were meant to be travelling light – most of their furniture and possessions in storage as they’d be living in a building site for months. They also had to deal with a man from across the road spitting with fury that the removal van was blocking him from parking his massive Land Rover on their drive, which apparently he’d been doing for years.
It was gone six by the time the removal men left. The house was in darkness, Zoe and Win’s only light source a couple of LED lanterns bought from a camping supply shop the day before. It was now that they took stock and came to the awful realisation that they were unable to make tea. ‘I refuse to accept this,’ Win kept saying as he peered under the sink to see if there was any way they might be able to turn on the water while Zoe dug around in one of the boxes for a saucepan.
‘After you’ve done that, we’ll have to figure out how to turn the gas on so we can light the stove,’ Zoe said cheerfully as if these were small tasks that were easy to achieve. ‘Or we could just go out and find somewhere that serves tea.’
‘A nice cup of tea in your own home; it’s a basic human right,’ Win said mutinously when they heard a knock on the door.
‘If it’s that man with his bloody Land Rover again…’ Zoe muttered as she hurried to answer it.
It wasn’t the man from across the road. For one thing the three people standing on the doorstep actually looked pleased to see her. ‘We come bearing gifts,’ said Ed, Win’s brother, as he shifted a cardboard box in his hands. ‘Torch, batteries, bottled water, biscuits.’
‘Everything you might need when you move in to a crumbling old house or when you’re facing a zombie apocalypse. Also, hot food and alcohol,’ added Amanda, Ed’s wife, holding up a bag so Zoe caught a heavenly whiff of fish and chips. ‘Are you going to let us in, then?’
‘I’m so pleased to see you,’ Zoe said as Ed kissed the top of her head. ‘You’ll have to feel your way, I’m afraid.’
Bringing up the rear was Jackie, Win’s mother. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked as Ed and Amanda fumbled in the box for torch and batteries.
Everything was all right. It was a fresh start, a new beginning, let the good times roll, etc., but Zoe couldn’t help the plaintive, ‘Not really,’ that leaked out of her mouth. ‘We’re desperate for a cup of tea but we don’t know how to light the boiler.’ She rested her head on Jackie’s shoulder. ‘We’re not even sure if it is a boiler or a water heater or what the difference is. Win’s tried to Google it, but we can hardly get a signal and who knows when we’ll get our Wi-Fi set up?’
Win poked his head round the kitchen doorway, at the end of the hall. ‘Hello. Did you bring Gavin with you? Why isn’t Gavin here?’ he asked his mother. Gavin was Win and Ed’s stepfather but, more importantly, he’d been in the building trade since he was sixteen.
‘Because he’s at the football and he doesn’t start working for you til Monday morning. Let the poor sod enjoy his last weekend of freedom,’ Jackie told Win.
‘Anyway, we don’t need Gav. Between the two of us, we should be able to figure it out,’ Ed said eagerly. ‘I’ve brought my toolkit. I figured you probably wouldn’t have one.’
‘We do have a toolkit.’ Win frowned. ‘Except I have no idea where it is.’
All five of them screamed in genuine fright when the contraption in the kitchen lit with a ferocious whooshing sound and a jumping blue flame. Then they drank champagne out of the disposable glasses Jackie had brought. ‘From Ken and Nancy,’ she told Zoe. ‘Your mum asked me to get a bottle so you could toast your new home.’
Tomorrow Zoe would Skype her parents who were spending a post-retirement gap year in South-East Asia, but for now it was comforting to sip champagne, let the bubbles tickle her nostrils, and know that her parents were thinking of her on what they knew would be a stressful day.
After dinner, eaten standing up in the kitchen, Zoe gave them the tour. ‘Wow!’ Amanda kept saying, as she looked around. ‘Wow. I really like what they haven’t done with the place.’ Jackie, who’d redecorated six times in the twelve years that Zoe had known her, was already talking colour schemes and something she called ‘modern deco’, while Ed made all sorts of dire warnings about woodworm eating away at the roof joists, silt clogging up their drainage pipes and, worst of all, mice.
‘Why would any self-respecting mouse want to set up shop in this house?’ Zoe demanded, though she wanted to peer into every corner and crevice to see if there were any droppings. ‘They’d choose a house that was nice and warm, where they could gorge on toast crumbs and spilt cereal.’
‘Anyway, we’re going to get a dog once the house is sorted out,’ Win said. ‘We’ll get a terrier. Chase away all the mice.’ He caught sight of Zoe’s horrified face. ‘The mice that we absolutely don’t have.’
‘I wouldn’t want to sleep here tonight, with no electricity, no heating, maybe with mice, not if you paid me. It’s creepy,’ Jackie said with a shudder. Zoe loved her mother-in-law. Whereas Amanda was always a little prickly – she and Zoe were sisters-in-law rather than best friends – Jackie had the kindest heart though she’d be the first to admit she didn’t believe in sugar-coating things, or even putting a light sugar glaze on them. ‘Are you sure you won’t sleep in our spare room?’
‘No, we’re good, and anyway, it’s not creepy at all,’ Win insisted, as Zoe tried not to look disappointed because actually staying in Jackie’s spare room sounded amazing. ‘Or it won’t be when we’ve done the place up…’
‘Painted it cheery colours, knocked down a couple of walls, opened it out a bit…’
‘Unpacked all our things, laid down carpets, hung pictures. It will look great,’ Win said firmly as if he were back on-message. ‘It’s all going to be great.’
‘I still wouldn’t want to live here,’ Amanda said as they hurried down the stairs. ‘But look at the size of your dining room! I wish we had a dining room.’
‘Four bedrooms too,’ Ed reminded them, though they weren’t likely to forget. ‘Even if you use one as your studio, Zoe, you’ve still got two spare bedrooms.’
Two spare bedrooms didn’t seem quite as exciting as it had done, not when they could see their breath curling in front of them as they talked. ‘Yeah, it is a lot of bedrooms,’ Zoe said – it was starting to sink in that they really had bought a house.
This house.
Oh God, what had they done?
‘And the little room at the front would make a perfect nursery,’ Amanda said, blundering blindly into what Zoe and Win had already designated as forbidden territory. ‘I’m not pushing or anything, I know you need time, but sooner or later you’ve got to get back on the horse…’
‘I can’t. We’re not.’ She could say the words in her head, but when it came to saying them out loud, Zoe choked on them. ‘I had surgery. Major surgery. It’s too soon.’
Win put a stiff arm round Zoe’s stiffer shoulders. ‘We’re not even thinking about that,’ he said. ‘Not when we’re going to be paying off this house until we’re in our sixties, so we can’t afford to start dropping sprogs. Talking of which, where are my beloved nephews?’
Amanda and Ed had four sons between the ages of eight and two and spent most of their time ferrying them between football games and soft-play centres.
Ed didn’t bother to hide his sigh of relief at the change of subject. ‘We decided to let them loose to fend for themselves. They’ve probably been adopted by the local foxes by now.’
Amanda jabbed her husband in the ribs with her elbow. ‘They’re at my mum’s.’
‘Same difference.’
‘And on that cheery note, we should probably get going.’ Jackie pulled Zoe in for a hug. ‘I’m glad you and Win got this house. You deserved some good luck after what happened last year. And you’re looking so much better – you’ve got a bit of colour to your face these days.’
Zoe refrained from pointing out that she always had a bit of colour to her face. Her ruddy complexion, inherited from her father, was at odds with her wide-set blue eyes, delicate features and fair hair that had never lost its baby fineness. Also, being cursed with permanently rosy cheeks meant that no matter if Zoe was struck down by illness, even when she had literally been hammering at death’s door, she always looked in rude health. One of her ex-boyfriends had mockingly called her Heidi because he said she looked like she should be tending a flock of Alpine goats. So Zoe smiled weakly. ‘I feel better. Honestly, that’s all behind me now.’
Amanda squeezed Zoe’s arm. ‘I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ Zoe said. She ran one freezing cold hand along the curved wood of the staircase. ‘Even if I am losing the feeling in my fingers and toes.’
They took the hint, or else the three of them couldn’t wait to hurry back to their centrally heated houses. Zoe and Win waved them off from the front door. It was bitterly cold outside, but only marginally less cold inside.
‘We should go to bed,’ Win said, but he didn’t have a lascivious glint in his eye as though he wanted to make a start on christening every room in the house, which Zoe was grateful for because that was the very last thing she wanted to do either. ‘We’ve got no telly, we can’t unpack anything other than essentials and I think there’s a real danger of hypothermia if we don’t warm up soon.’
Getting ready for bed was an adventure too. Or at least that’s what Zoe told herself as they hunted down the boxes that contained duvets, pillows and bedclothes, and blew up their air mattress because they’d decided not to risk their proper, comfortable bed getting trashed if the roof suddenly caved in. Then there was a frantic search for the holdall Zoe had packed with all their essential bathroom kit.
Zoe bagsied the bathroom first. The water had a strange brackish taste when she cleaned her teeth and she had to hop from one foot to the other to try and keep warm, which made putting on her pyjamas tricky. Then she pulled on her thick woollen hiking socks, her baggy sick-day cardigan and scurried into the large back bedroom, which was lit only by the camping lights, desperate for that moment when she could dive into bed, though she’d have sold one of her kidneys for a hot water bottle.
‘It’s all yours,’ she said to Win, who was peering into one of the cupboards built into the recesses on either side of the fireplace. ‘I think Ed was right about silt in the pipes. The water tastes foul. What are you looking at? Oh God, is it mouse droppings?’
‘No.’ Win sounded distracted. ‘Pass me a light, will you?’
‘Is it a spider’s nest?’ There wasn’t much to choose between spiders and mice. Probably, spiders were the better option, but not by much. Zoe handed Win one of the torches they’d brought upstairs. ‘Here you go.’
Win shone the torch on the top shelf of the cupboard then stretched up to grab at something. ‘It’s been pushed right to the back,’ he grunted.
‘What has?’
He didn’t answer but with torch tucked under one arm, he groped with the other hand then pulled at something that came away from its resting place in a cloud of dust that made them both sneeze.
It was a suitcase. Scuffed brown leather covered in old-fashioned labels from far away places. Paris. New York. Los Angeles. Zoe had seen similar luggage selling for stupid amounts of money in the chicest vintage shops of West London.
‘What on earth is it doing here?’ she asked, squatting down to peer at the case. There was a tag tied to the handle, the handwriting erased by time.
‘Should we open it?’ Win asked but he had already snapped open the clasps and lifted up the lid before Zoe could tell him that they should drop it off at the vendor’s solicitor. Still, she leaned closer, intrigued, even though she recoiled slightly from the cloying smell as Win took out a parcel wrapped in tissue paper, which disintegrated beneath his fingers. He shook out the folded fabric that was nestled inside.
It was a bottle-green dress cut on the bias. Zoe reached out a hand to gently touch the material. It was made of rayon or crêpe, one of those old fabrics slightly rough to the touch, and there wasn’t enough Febreeze in the world to get rid of the dank stench that had permeated it over the years.
‘Dead people’s clothes,’ Win said. ‘Amanda was right. Never not creepy.’
‘But you can’t help wonder who wore the dress, and why it’s been left in a suitcase in a deserted house,’ Zoe said, her head already full of stories of an unknown woman in a dark green dress. ‘It’s like the start of a novel.’
‘Not one I’d want to read,’ Win muttered, and in a way he was right. Zoe wanted to shut the case and stash it at the back of the cupboard again but another part of her, a much larger part, was suddenly consumed by curiosity to see what was inside a large cardboard box, the lettering on it faded, but still distinguishable from the time it had held cakes from Maison Bertaux on Greek Street in Soho, where Zoe had stopped for a coffee countless times herself. Now Zoe could imagine a woman in her pretty green dress, staring at the pastries on display in the window, thinking about what would go best with a pot of tea, then opening the door, greeting the girl behind the counter. She had to know what happened next.
‘Let’s open the box,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s do it.’
Win laughed. ‘Hang on, Pandora.’
‘All the best adventures start with a mystery, a puzzle. And we both agreed that we were going to treat this, the house, as an adventure,’ Zoe said as she lifted the lid off the box and scrunched up her nose as she dislodged more dust.
Inside there was a yellowed, folded-over copy of The Times dated 17 December 1936, which Zoe quickly discarded in favour of a treasure trove of theatre memorabilia, curling up at the edges, colours faded: programmes, playbills and a handful of identical black-and-white photos. Headshots of a pretty young woman, her hair swept up to one side. She had impossibly doe eyes, an enigmatic smile playing around her lips, her features smoothed and bleached out by the flattering lighting and overzealous retouching. ‘Elizabeth Edwards – Contact: Withers & Withers Talent Agency, Greek Street, London W1 Telephone: GERrard 2853.’
‘Elizabeth Edwards, who are you?’ Zoe murmured as Win pulled out the next item in the suitcase. A diary. Not a large desk diary or a tiny appointment book that would fit into a handbag, but somewhere in between. It bulged temptingly with random pieces of paper and card, lists and letters, stuffed between its pages. ‘Now, this does feel a bit like snooping.’
It did but Zoe had already taken the black leather-bound book from Win. She let it fall open at a yellowed page covered in dense spidery writing in smudged and faint pencil, impossible to decipher any of the words in the dim light of the room. The next page simply had a couple of appointments noted down and a to-do list, just like the to-do lists that Zoe typed into the Notes section of her phone every Monday morning then promptly ignored.
Did the diary belong to the enigmatic Elizabeth Edwards? Zoe flicked to the start, hoping for an address, a clue, instructions on how to light the boiler. Instead, a letter fluttered to the floor. The paper was worn thin, soft as feathers, but written in a different hand to the crabbed scrawl of the diary, this script graceful and looped. As Zoe squinted down, words floated up at her.
It’s impossible to love you the way you wish to be loved.
I don’t believe that I’ve ever managed to give you one single moment of the true, pure happiness that you deserve.
If only I were a better man, but I’m not and you always knew that, old girl.
Zoe shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. ‘You’re right,’ she said to Win. She scooped up the discarded letter and slotted it back into the diary. ‘I’d hate it if someone read my diary.’
‘You don’t keep a diary,’ Win pointed out, as he gathered up the theatre keepsakes and put them back in the box. ‘Or if you do, you’ve managed to hide it from me for the last ten years. Is it full of dark secrets?’
‘The very darkest. All those torrid reminders about dentist appointments and birthdays.’
‘Anyway, that’s all there is, just more clothes at the bottom.’ Win was already unfolding the tissue paper to reveal a heart-stopping collection of tiny woollen garments. Booties, a little hat, a cardigan fastened with cherry buttons, now brittle and cracked, everything hand-knitted and yellowed with age.
Zoe put a hand to her mouth to force back the sobs that immediately rose up.
When would it stop hurting?
She kept quiet, even as she saw the pain on Win’s face. His expression grave and intent as he stroked the little hat with one impossibly gentle finger.
‘It’s a sign. An omen. We should never have bought this house.’ He pushed the clothes away. ‘I should stop putting off the inevitable,’ he continued, his voice now loud and hearty. ‘Time to brave the Arctic wastes of the bathroom.’
‘Do we need to talk about this?’ Zoe wanted to touch Win’s hand, the same hand that had touched those tiny clothes made with such care and love, but even that small gesture was beyond her.
‘I didn’t mean it about the house. I just got spooked. It’s the lack of lighting in here. It makes everything seem sad when there’s nothing to be sad about.’ Win still looked as if he was in pain but he stood up, walked away from her. ‘I’ll meet you in bed in five minutes, all right?’
‘All right.’ Zoe could feel Win’s eyes on her as she kept her head lowered and placed everything carefully in the suitcase.
Win sighed from the doorway. ‘So, we’re good then, Zo?’
‘Better than good.’ Zoe forced herself to raise her head and look Win in the eye though now she was glad of the muted lamplight. ‘This is our fresh start. Our new beginning. I couldn’t be happier.’