The House of Memories

by Monica McInerney

  ‘Shall I suggest some dates to Henrietta?’ he said. ‘Would next Wednesday suit you?’

  Stop being Lucas’s gatekeeper, Charlie had told me. You should be happy he’s so happy.

  I made myself smile. ‘Wednesday would be great,’ I said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: undisclosed recipients

  Subject: It’s Been a Noisy Week in Boston

  The weekly report from the Baum trenches is as follows:

  Sophie (11): Home with a cold. Announced: ‘Being sick is fun because you get servants. I can boss you around all day long.’

  Ed (8) and Reilly (6): Overheard having conversation about birds.

  ‘What are pigeons actually for?’ Reilly asked.

  ‘Racing, mostly,’ Ed said. ‘But also to make the sky look good.’

  Tim (4): Has asked me to stop playing Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs. ‘I don’t get it. He just drives and drives and then it’s finished.’

  Lucy (36): Exam results in. Top of the class! And verily, there was loud rejoicing in the Baum trenches. All the late nights studying instantly worthwhile. Four children and one husband very proud of their clever mother and wife.

  Charlie (36): Phooey to the diet. We’ve been celebrating. With cake and champagne. Who eats salad to celebrate anything??

  Snip the cat (kitten age): One word. Furball.

  Until next week, everyone please stay sane.

  Charlie xx

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Lucy Baum

  Subject: re: Celebrations

  No, we will not stop. We are going to turn it into a year-long festival. The Festival of We Always Knew Lucy Was Clever But Now Everyone Else Does Too. The We Can’t Believe How Proud We Are of You Festival. The I Hope You Realise Now How Amazing You Are Festival. The We’re So Proud I Think We’re Going To Burst Festival. Okay, I may need to work on a catchier title, but the content won’t change.

  Yours, in awe. As always.

  Your husband. xxx

  To: Ella O’Hanlon

  From: Charlie Baum

  Subject: re: Horrid Henrietta

  Horrid Henrietta indeed. Lucas’s love is blind and deaf, it seems. Put her out of your mind for now. You’ve got crimes to solve. Thinking of you.

  Charleston xx

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Lucas Fox

  Subject: A.O’H

  He cancelled. I don’t know why yet. I was about to leave for the train station when I got the message. He hasn’t returned my calls yet. Any clues your end?

  C

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Lucas Fox

  Subject: re: A.O’H

  Finally spoke to him. Said he ‘appreciated your phone call and our concern’ but that the situation is between him and Ella. I said we were only trying to help. Don’t feel bad about calling him. You saved me a wasted train journey. How is Ella? No luck yet with the thief-catching, I hope???

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dear Diary,

  Hi, it’s Jess!!

  I’m here! In London!!!!!!! It’s freeeeeeezing. It’s supposed to be almost spring but it feels like the middle of winter. I heard someone say it might even SNOW!! I hope it does. I’ve never seen snow! The sky is SO grey and everyone is wearing big black coats and they rush along the footpaths with their heads down but I don’t care. It’s LONDON LONDON LONDON.

  At first when I landed I thought it must still be night-time, even though I knew my flight was landing at Heathrow in the morning, because after I’d collected my bags and looked outside, it still looked dark. I got the Heathrow Express to Paddington (and yes, there were Paddington Bears for sale there!!!) and had planned to get the Tube from there to my hotel (I love that I am saying all these really London terms so casually!!) but one of the last things Dad said to me at the airport was he didn’t like to think my first hours in London would be spent underground so I took a black taxi for his sake (and yes, it felt just like in the films!!!). After we’d been stuck in traffic for half an hour I was wishing I was on the Tube. Also, not that I’ll tell Mum and Dad this, but London at first looked pretty terrible. Just like anywhere. It could have been Melbourne in midwinter, houses and trees without leaves and roadworks everywhere and all in this strange half-light as if the day had decided not to be a day but wasn’t sure if it was night yet either, if that makes sense. And the people just looked like people. Office people, teenagers shopping, just normal people doing normal people things, but wearing coats and scarves.

  ANYWAY, I’d thought the hotel Mum and Dad booked me into for my first week might be a kind of youth-hostel place but it turns out it’s a very special hotel right in the centre of Covent Garden! Yes, as in My Fair Lady! They are SUCH sweethearts!! After I got to my room I looked in the guide and found out it’s a hotel that all the big stars stay in when they are in London doing publicity tours or filming! My room is amazing. There’s an actual FOUR-POSTER bed and a huge bathroom. I knew I should have gone right out and started exploring but I felt so grubby and the bath looked so inviting. So I had a one-hour bubble bath, then went for a walk.

  Of course I went STRAIGHT to the West End theatres!!!! My teachers and funnily enough my counsellor too said that a great way to make things happen is to visualise them happening. So I stood there in front of the theatres and I looked up at the names in lights (except they weren’t in lights yet because it was still daytime) and I imagined MY name there, next to MY photo of me in costume, high up on those big posters. And then I imagined turning up for work each night and being so gracious to the doorman and the stagehands. One, because I always am anyway, it’s just good manners, but also because I read once that you should always be careful of the ones you meet going up the ladder as they’ll be the ones who’ll catch you on the way down, or something like that. I’m a bit too jet-lagged at the moment to remember it properly.

  But whatever, I stood there and looked around at all the theatres and it was incredible to see the names of all the musicals that I have spent literally the past ten years learning on the other side of the world!!

  But between us, Diary, even though it was exciting to see it all for real, I was actually a bit disappointed at how ordinary it all looked in that grey kind of light. I didn’t tell Mum and Dad that when I rang to say I’d arrived safely and had already been to the theatres. (‘Of course you have, my Jessie!’ Dad said!!) Maybe it will all look different tonight when I go back again, once the lights are on and there are people everywhere, all dressed up for their night out at the theatre.

  It’s all about the lighting, as Mum would say. She’s big on lighting. She says that the right lighting in photo shoots can take ten years off her. She’s started talking about how old she is all the time lately, and she’s not even that old, only fifty-five or so, but she’s started telling me not to tell people her age. Also, I can put this in here, Diary, even though I’ve been sworn to secrecy. (Mind you, by the time this diary is published Mum will probably be giving magazine interviews about it!) Anyway, the secret is – she had Botox last week. SHE INJECTED POISON INTO HER FACE. Well, she got a doctor to do it. I noticed something was weird about her and asked her outright and she admitted it but said not to tell Dad. She’d told him she’d been to the dentist apparently. (??? How stupid does she think he is??) Anyway, she said she had to have it done because the truth was TV aged you by at least twenty years in her opinion and she had to be especially careful because on a cooking show people stop and start their DVDs or program recordings to follow the recipes. So she comes under more scrutiny than most people, she said.

  I had to stop her there! I laughed and said, ‘Mum, nobody actually cooks anything that we make on MerryMakers. They just watch it and laugh at us.’

  She actually got upset!! ‘They DO follow the recipes,’ she said. ‘They are so easy and also so —’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘nutritionally sound. That’s why the producers make us wear those tight tops, Mu
m. To show the effects of such healthy diets.’ I shouldn’t have said that, she doesn’t like being teased, but I think I was a bit mad at her for doing something as silly as POISONING herself. I am NEVER going to have plastic surgery. I told her as much and she just gave me a kind of glare and said, ‘You just wait. Wait and see how it feels when you get older.’

  Anyway, back to London! After I’d walked around the West End it was still only three p.m. I was going to take one of the open-top bus tours but they looked a bit cold, and I thought, it’s my first time in London, the first day of the rest of my incredible life, I have to mark it properly. So I hopped into another of the black taxis and I asked the driver if he would take me on a kind of tour and tell me about all the sights, like he was my own personal guide. And he didn’t even hesitate and he sounded SOOOO English, like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, and he took me all around the city for more than an hour. It cost a fortune, but it was worth every cent – every PENNY!!

  I got him to take photos of me beside his taxi and all the landmark sites too, like Big Ben (I thought it was the clock that was Big Ben but it’s not, it’s the bell in the tower!) and the London Eye and the River Thames. I’ll put them up on Facebook later, once I’ve caught up on all my emails. I was only on the plane for less than a day and I got dozens of emails. A few spam ones, of course, but mostly from my friends and of course one of Charlie’s funny family ones as well. I love them. I’d better send him an email to let him know I’m here too. Dad was going to tell him but I begged him to let me, because really it was MY big news, not Dad’s, but then I got so busy before I left and it all happened so quickly I didn’t get the chance to tell him so I’ll do that asap.

  I haven’t had any emails back from the London theatre agents yet, but it’s only been a week since I emailed them and they’re probably waiting until they know I’m in London before they write back to me. I gave them lots of contact details, my email address, my phone number, even the name and address of my hotel – and of course THEY would have known how show-businessy it was even if I didn’t, so hopefully that will have made another great impression!!

  I had one strange email today, actually, from my friend Jill in the MerryMakers production office. I don’t understand it, to be honest. She was writing to say bon voyage and to say she’d be keeping an eye out for me on The Graham Norton Show, which was really funny, because he only interviews HUGE stars but that’s how sweet and supportive she is. She’s only a junior assistant at the moment. She goes to all the meetings and takes the minutes and all of that. She’s lovely but that wasn’t what was strange. It was her P.S. which said – I quote – ‘I’m so sorry to hear it didn’t work out with your own show. That would have been hilarious fun working with you, but another time, I hope.’

  I’ve written back and told her what a wonderful first day I’ve had here in London already, how cold it is etc. etc., and just at the end, without making much of a big deal about it, I’ve asked her ‘What do you mean my own show?’ The time difference means I won’t hear back from her now until tomorrow. It’s a bit of a funny feeling to think that they are all fast asleep over there while I’m still up here, and I’ll be asleep while they’re all having their day. It’s like life is happening over there without me, which it is, and I’ll catch up, I know, but it also feels a bit like I’m missing out on something. But it will be great here. I really know that it will. I just need to find my own flat, and get onto the audition circuit, get offered a wonderful part and then West End, here I come!!!!!!

  Love for now,

  Jess xxxxoooo

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two nights after Henrietta’s visit, I was in the kitchen when the front door opened and someone ran in, slamming the door behind them. I heard sobs. It was Peggy. I came out into the hall in time to see her run up the stairs, crying.

  ‘Peggy? Are you okay?’

  ‘He’s a pig,’ she shouted back. ‘A two-timing pig.’

  I waited for ten minutes and then came up the stairs with tea and cake on a tray. I knocked on the door. ‘Peggy? It’s Ella.’

  It opened. She had mascara all over her face, her pink hair was askew. Behind her, clothes and books were flung on the floor.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  She gave a sobbing nod. ‘Come in.’

  I brought it in and put the tray down on her bed. There was no room anywhere else. ‘I’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘Don’t. Please. Talk to me. I need some advice.’

  ‘I’m no good at advice.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do, Ella? Darin tells me he loves me, we talk about moving in together next year, and then today I see him in the library, and he’s not just kissing her, he’s practically undressing her, and he saw me and he didn’t even look embarrassed.’

  It was like listening to a teenager. Here she was, bright and intelligent, destined for greatness in academia, and as upset by a broken heart as any other girl her age.

  ‘What do I do, Ella? And don’t say it’s my own fault for getting mixed up with someone I share a house with. A friend of mine said that’s all it is, just proximity, that I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him if he wasn’t under my nose all the time, and vice versa, and maybe she’s right, but I love him and I really thought he loved me and that we —’ She broke off, crying. ‘I’m stupid, so, so stupid. Imagine falling in love with your flatmate.’

  I had to say something. ‘If it’s any consolation, Peggy, I did the same thing.’

  ‘What?’ she sniffed.

  ‘Fell in love with someone living here.’

  ‘Here? When?’

  ‘Five years ago.’

  She sat up straight. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I met him while we were both living here. He was a tutor too.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We fell in love.’

  She waited.

  ‘We got engaged. We moved to Australia. We got married.’

  ‘And?’

  Say it. ‘We had a baby.’

  She frowned. ‘A baby?’

  The words were caught in my throat.

  ‘Did you get divorced? Did he get custody of your baby?’

  ‘No.’ Say it. ‘Our baby died. We split up.’

  Tears sprang into her eyes again. ‘Oh, Ella, I’m so sorry. There’s me upset about a stupid — Ella, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry. It’s fine.’

  ‘Why didn’t Lucas tell us? We would have been —’

  ‘Different?’

  Peggy nodded.

  ‘That’s why.’

  ‘But we’ve just treated you like our housekeeper.’

  ‘That’s what I am.’

  ‘But it’s so sad. Was your baby sick? Was it leukaemia or something like that?’

  ‘No.’ I’d nearly gone as far as I could. ‘It was an accident.’

  Downstairs, I heard a bell. It was the oven timer. I was baking biscuits. ‘I’d better go.’

  She put her hand on my arm. ‘If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here, okay?’

  ‘Thank you.’ I was at the door when she spoke again.

  ‘Ella, I really hope you don’t mind me asking this —’

  I steeled myself for another question about Felix.

  ‘If Lucas was to —’ Peggy stopped, then started again, speaking in a rush. ‘If you inherited this house, would you keep it as a place for tutors too?’

  I tried to hide my shock at her question. I didn’t succeed.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask. Really. I know how that must have sounded. It’s just, well, I have a little sister. She’s only in high school now, but she’d love to go to university – and she should, she’s cleverer than I am – and after she graduated, I know she’d want to do even more study and maybe she’d get to live here too, if, you know —’ She trailed off.

  I told the truth. ‘I’m sorry, Peggy. I don’t know what Lucas’s plans are.’ The timer was still ringing. ‘I’d better get back
to the kitchen.’

  ‘Ella, I’m sorry again. About —’ She stopped there. I hadn’t told her their names. She was trying, I could see that.

  ‘My husband was Aidan. Our baby was Felix.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ella. About Aidan and Felix.’

  ‘Thanks, Peggy.’

  Back in the kitchen, I took the biscuits from the oven. I felt sick that I’d told her about Felix and Aidan. I wished she hadn’t asked me about Lucas’s inheritance plans either. First Mark, now her. It made me wonder if she was the one who was truly money-minded, if she could be the thief. I started cleaning out the refrigerator, glad of any excuse to distract myself.

  I shouldn’t have been so upset. It wasn’t as if it was the first time I’d been asked about Lucas’s house. Even Charlie had raised the subject when we were teenagers, after a parcel arrived from Lucas, containing more books and a photo of him standing in front of the house proudly pointing out the newly painted blue front door. It was probably still the same paint job now, I realised.

  Charlie had studied the photo closely. ‘That is some house,’ he said.

  ‘It’s incredible,’ I agreed. I’d already told him everything I remembered from my visit as a seven-year-old: the rooms, the books, the foxes. ‘You should see the attic. You can see for miles.’

  ‘So who inherits it when Lucas dies? You or a fox charity?’

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘I’m not being mercenary. I’m being curious. You’re his only living relative, aren’t you? Unless he has a few secret sons or daughters tucked away who’ll insist the house is legally theirs?’

  Jess came in. She was seven or eight at the time. ‘What secret sons or daughters? What house?’

  I didn’t answer. I thought Jess was developing a bad habit of wanting to know everything about everything. Charlie, however, thought curiosity was something to be celebrated.

  ‘We’re talking about Ella’s uncle Lucas and his house in London, Jess,’ he said. ‘About whether he’ll give it to her when he dies.’