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  By the same author:

  A Week in Paris

  The Silent Tide

  A Gathering Storm

  A Place of Secrets

  The Glass Painter’s Daughter

  The Memory Garden

  The Dream House

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Rachel Hore 2016

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Rachel Hore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-47113-078-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-080-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  From THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Published by Jonathan Cape. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

  Typeset in the UK by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and supports the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.

  David’s

  ‘Most people in our culture have lives clogged up with superfluities: habits, activities, goods. Most of us are bound hand and foot, not physically but by our dreams, our prejudices, our fears.’

  GRETA MCDONOUGH, THE CLARY GHOST

  ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay his head.’

  ST MATTHEW

  ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

  They have to take you in.’

  ROBERT FROST, THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Acknowledgements

  Hidden behind a busy street in north London, Camden way, is a tranquil garden square. You might pass it without suspecting its existence. Its terraced houses are white-iced like giant wedding cakes. At some point in its history an unknown individual named it Bellevue Gardens. Many of the houses have been divided into flats. Their glory days are long past, but once they were the homes of well-to-do middle-class families whose fathers were lawyers or bankers, whose children played on the trim back lawns or in the square’s wild garden, under the vigilant eyes of their nannies, whilst their mothers took tea in one another’s drawing rooms and organized dinners or charity whist drives and changed their gowns several times a day. The bourgeois world of an age long gone.

  There’s not much more to say. In the Eighteen Nineties, Oscar Wilde visited friends at Number 13. A blue plaque states that a famous Edwardian actress once lived at Number 34. A row of three houses on the north side still bears scars of the Blitz – misshapen chimneys, patchwork roofs, angles twisted out of true.

  Sometimes, when Leonie Brett arrives home late on a warm summer’s night, she finds it easy to forget the ranks of parked cars, the distant grumble of London traffic, and imagines instead sparks flying from horses’ hooves as they strike the flagstones, bright clinks of harness and the rumble of carriage wheels. The music and laughter drifting through an open window might be a party from another century, when young girls with stars in their eyes danced in white dresses with coloured sashes, as fresh and lovely as flowers.

  Despite its current shabbiness, Leonie believes that her house, Number 11, must once have been the most splendid in the square. It stands at the centre of the left-hand terrace, its single doorbell an indication that it hasn’t been turned into flats. It also has a grandiose portico, which makes it look particularly welcoming. She remembers one day, over forty years ago, sheltering under this from the rain as a frightened runaway, of setting her bags down in the hall and wandering the spacious, high-ceilinged rooms with their neat square fireplaces and shiny parquet floors. How grand the house was then, with its ornate mirrors and damask sofas, its heavy mahogany furniture, such a nuisance to polish. There used to be old paintings on the walls, but over the years these have gone to pay bills.

  The kitchen is still the heart of the house, but now splashes of paint and tea stains mar the lovely oak table, and candles jammed into empty wine bottles that drip stalactites of wax. The garden was landscaped in an Italianate design. Now it’s a blissful wild paradise, with only a series of hedges to remember its formal past.

  How safe the place made her feel, how quickly it became home. Over the decades her feelings for it have grown deep roots. Through everything that’s happened since she arrived, the tears, the joys, the things lost and the things found, all the people who have come and departed, it’s still her sanctuary, her foxhole, and she hopes it will be always.

  One

  Leonie

  2015

  It had been a day of memories, so many of them crowding in, a day of laughter, but sadness, too. It was always like that with Trudi, Leonie reflected as she walked home from the tube station. She loved seeing her old friend, which happened only infrequently, Trudi being always impossibly busy, off visiting her married daughter in New York or holidaying in Florida, but her company, though invigorating, could also be exhausting.

  As she turned down the street of shops and offices that would bring her eventually to Bellevue Gardens, Leonie smiled at the thought of something said once by one of Trudi’s ex-husbands – there had been three of them. It was that Trudi saw herself as the star in her own show, and everyone else was simply the audience. He had spoken with bitterness, and although it wasn’t the full story – Leonie had usually experienced Trudi’s considerate and generous side – there was more than a grain of truth in it. Trudi had always been a drama queen. Even now she was in her seventies her life lurched from intrigue to crisis – or so she liked to make out. Today, for instance, at lunch in her Chelsea duplex, with its wonderful views over the river, Trudi, her green eyes bright with excitement, had told her that her new downstairs neighbour – who with iron-grey hair slicked back must be a retired gangster – had been sending her flowers and chocolate truffles from Fortnum’s, and simply wouldn’t be put off. When Leonie enquired wickedly whether Trudi had tried hard enough, her friend’s green gaze turned dragonish. ‘And how is that old crosspatch you keep in your basement? Really, darling, you and your lame ducks.’

  ‘They’re not lame,’ Leonie retorted. ‘They walk perfectly well.’ Except Bela, perhaps, the ageing Kashmiri lady who shuffled about in slippers because of her bunions. ‘Some of them are down on their luck, that’s all.’

  Leonie frowned as she walked along. Although she and Trudi were still very fond of one another, it was funny how differently their lives had turned out since the time they’d shared lodgings together with another girl over a shop on the Edgware Road all those years ago. There was T
rudi, well-heeled and well-travelled, recently installed in her new luxury apartment overlooking the yachts of the marina, and here was she, Leonie Brett, rounding the corner into her Georgian garden square, as she must have done thousands of times before, and never tired of doing, coming home to the house she had shared with so many friends over the years.

  This evening the square was scorched by the flames of a spectacular sunset. So beautiful. She stopped to admire the shapes of the budding plane trees against the sky, the stately houses glowing a peachy orange in the dying sun. It was always so peaceful, this secluded square. From the garden in the middle came the lush warbling of a black-bird, no doubt assuring the other avian residents that everything was all right with their world.

  As she crossed the road towards Number 11 her heart gave a little jolt of satisfaction to see its bohemian tattiness; the house was like a louche Cinderella between more splendidly attired sisters. The neighbours – mostly young professionals who had snapped up the converted flats – might frown at its dilapidated paintwork and the weeds growing from its gutters, but she loved the house with all its faults. It had become her home at a time of crisis in her life and, in turn, she’d opened it to others who’d needed a safe place.

  She squeezed between two closely parked cars and paused on the pavement in surprise. For a fox was trotting along towards her, a vixen by the slightness of her. It stopped dead a few feet away, its obsidian eyes shining in the gathering dusk. For a lasting second they stared at one another, the lady and the fox, before the animal turned tail and fled.

  There were far more foxes than she remembered there being in the past. They played extravagantly and noisily at night and left their toys on the lawns, old shoes, bits of tennis ball, once a pigeon’s wing. Gardens were their playgrounds, dustbins their food baskets, burrows under sheds or brambles their homes. Just as her house had been a bolthole for many people. Leonie watched with sadness the vixen’s brush vanish through the railings of the square’s garden. It was as though the beautiful creature with its wildness had taken something of hers with it, and for a moment she thought of her grandson Jamie. Another wild creature who’d run from her and disappeared.

  She searched her handbag for her keys as she climbed the steps of Number 11, scooped up a plump packet propped in the porch, and wrested open the door. Oh the sense of relief that always arose when she stepped inside. She sniffed the air as she pressed the door shut behind her. She loved the old-wood-and-polish scent overlaid by the fragrance of the lilies in their vase on the heavy hall stand and, today, a strong top note of turpentine.

  Studying the label on the parcel she saw it was for Bela’s husband, Hari. More of his bewildering range of health supplements, no doubt, by the lumpy feel of its contents. She set it down on the stand and leafed through the fresh pile of mail. The electricity bill and some circulars, a letter for Peter, the ‘crosspatch’ who occupied the basement flat, and, as ever, post for inhabitants long gone. A clothes catalogue for Jennifer, the resting actress with her silent small daughter, who had moved to Cornwall a year ago. A postcard of the seafront at Frinton for sweet old Norman, who’d retired from his hospital portering a few weeks back and gone to his brother’s in Newcastle. She set these aside for forwarding and looked for something from Jamie. It had been her birthday last week and she’d hoped that he might have remembered. Perhaps he had, she tried to reassure herself, but the effort of getting together a card and a stamp was more than she could expect of him.

  She sighed and turned over a stiff manila business envelope, then tutted under her breath on seeing the solicitor’s name printed across the top. It would be another complaint from next door. She knew what it would say. A structural repair to the party wall, blah, blah, blah, and how would she pay for that, she’d like to know? She swept the other unwanted post into the top drawer and slammed it shut, but the manila envelope she dropped down the back of the stand in a gesture of defiance. Out of sight, out of mind, she told her reflection in the mottled mirror. Yet as she hung her coat on a hook and went through to the kitchen something troubled her. I’ll think about the letter later, she told herself. It was her tried and tested way of dealing with impossible problems. Sometimes if you left them to stew for long enough they solved themselves one way or the other. As she filled the kettle, her thoughts moved again to Jamie. Sometimes they didn’t.

  Rosa

  When Rosa stepped down from the coach into the early morning gloom of the coach station forecourt, the hot stench of diesel fumes and the grinding of engines reminded her of home and the terminus she’d started from twenty-six hours ago. Dragging tiredness and anxiety about the task ahead gave her a feeling of unreality, as if she was having a bad dream.

  The driver was hauling luggage from the dark belly of the vehicle, and she waited patiently until he lifted out the small wheeled case that had belonged to her mother. She took it from him and exclaimed in surprise.

  ‘There’s something the matter?’ he said in their own language.

  ‘It’s cold, that’s all.’

  He gave a smoky laugh. ‘All part of the great British welcome. That tunnel went under the sea, don’t forget.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she stammered. She thanked him and moved quickly away, drawing her handbag more securely across her chest and examining the confusion of people and vehicles all around. On the far side of the concourse, beyond the barriers, a familiar symbol on a door met her eye. Tipping the case up onto its wheels she made her way towards it.

  Once inside the washroom, she joined a queue of women and children, just off the morning coaches, heavy-eyed from lack of sleep. When a cubicle became free, she locked herself in, dug wipes and clean underwear from her case and freshened up as best she could.

  Afterwards, at one of the basins, the tang of toothpaste stinging her to full wakefulness, she looked into the mirror, and for one disturbing moment fancied it was her brother who was staring back. Her eyes, like Michal’s, were deep-set, a sea captain’s blue, only today, instead of their usual grave expression, it was his heart-tugging vulnerability she saw. The rest of her features – wide mouth, defiant chin and short, straight nose – were reassuringly her own. She stroked concealer over the shadows beneath her eyes, but others were waiting for the basin, so she bit her lips into redness, feathered her dark fringe with quick fingers and gathered her possessions. A final glance in the mirror at Michal’s pleading eyes. I’m coming to find you, she promised him silently before moving away.

  Back in the arrivals hall, she studied the signs until the words Exit and Underground asserted themselves, then steered her case in the direction indicated and joined the flow of humanity swimming towards daylight.

  Outside, it was the cleanness of the London street that impressed her first after the grimy part of Warsaw she’d left behind. She liked the gracious silhouettes of the old buildings here, their subtle greys and browns, pushing up into a sky washed the airiest of blues. Across the road, a cream-coloured limousine slid away from the kerb to expose a colourful shop front, where tight bundles of daffodil buds stood in buckets beneath trays of dewy apples, oranges and bananas. She was hungry suddenly. Breakfast had been a cold-meat sandwich, eaten hours ago as the coach waited at Calais. She thought of the chocolate in her shoulder bag. Once that was gone she’d have to break into her carefully hoarded cash. London, she knew, was expensive.

  She unfolded a scrap of paper she’d taken from her coat pocket then crossed the road at the lights. As she followed the signs to the Underground, her trepidation mounted. It couldn’t be long now, then she’d find out. Find out what though? Something at least. That would be better than the silence, the terrible uncertainty she’d endured for so many months.

  Sitting in the swaying train as it rushed north through the tunnels she cast covert glances at her fellow passengers. A girl in a black headscarf was bending over a pushchair. A scholarly-looking Asian man had to stretch full height to reach the handrail overhead. Sitting next to her was a grandmother a
s round as a hen cuddling a toddler who watched Rosa with eyes like dark stars. A pair of pale-faced youths in tracksuits lounged against the end wall of the carriage, like a couple of panthers. It astonished her that so many different people could be confined together in this small space, yet not speak to or show curiosity about one another. Instead the youths listened through ear-buds to music only they could hear. Some passengers read the blue-topped newspapers tossed about the carriage. Others stared at their smartphones. She checked her own phone again in case Michal had replied to the text she’d sent at Dover, but it wouldn’t connect down here in the blue-white glare, hundreds of feet below London.

  The train stopped at half a dozen stations before the name she was searching for glided into view. She waited for the doors to spring open then lifted her case through and manoeuvred it along a passage with white-tiled walls, up several echoing flights of stairs, and out between the jaws of a ticket barrier.

  At the station entrance she stopped and stared in confusion at the busy road junction. No signs were visible. Should she turn left or right? ‘The High Street, which way?’ she asked the bored-looking attendant at the barrier. The woman pointed towards a map screwed onto the station wall.

  It took twenty minutes to walk to her father’s house. The road took her up a hill past modern apartment blocks with threadbare communal lawns, then a row of box-like shops and a church of dark brick, its stubby tower a far cry from the ethereal English spires she’d seen on the television. Rosa recognized none of it, but then she’d left London more than twenty years ago now, when she was still small. A red-and-blue swing in a garden overgrown by brambles. Rough wooden steps disappearing down into cold and damp-smelling darkness. A tortoiseshell cat which glared at her with yellow eyes before leaping through a cat flap. These were her only memories of the house.

  A wheel on her case kept sticking, making it prone to flipping over at kerbs. She was light-headed with lack of sleep and hunger, and nervous anticipation had settled as a tightness in her throat, so her heart seemed to beat faster at every step. When she reached the turning she needed, left, into a street of pastel-painted houses, she rested on a low wall for a moment to catch her breath and eat the last bit of chocolate. Nearby a pigeon picked at the remains of a chicken drumstick in the gutter and her stomach turned.