The Room Beyond Read Free

stories about the missing
number? And neither of them had really seemed to want to talk about it either.
    I peered over to the other side of the road, but there was no
similar discrepancy in the numbering: 33 and 35 were very much there, although
the style of the houses on that side was slightly different, upsetting the
symmetry of the road. No, for some reason number 34 had definitely been left
out.
    I limped along a little further down the road and dug out my phone.
    ‘Serena?’ came Jessica’s familiar low voice at the end of the line.
    ‘Yes it’s me. And I got the job.’
    ‘Congratulations! Are you going to take it? I know you didn’t really
see yourself as a nanny.’
    The topiary hedges and chandeliered ceilings glided past me along
the road.
    ‘Yes, but I think it’ll do. Might be slumming it a bit though...’
    ‘Oh really? In Kensington? Now that does surprise me.’
    ‘No, I’m only joking. It almost feels like a filmset here; loads of
stuff to get my creative juices flowing.’
    And it was true. I could actually feel my fingers twitching for the
touch of a pencil, my heart beating with the urgency to get it all down on
paper whilst the image was still fresh: the doorway with its stucco details,
Arabella Hartreve’s faultless skin, the snake-like curve of the banister.
    ‘You know what, I think I might do a bit of sketching in the park
before I get the train back. You haven’t planned anything have you?’
    She chuckled softly down the phone. ‘No no darling, you take your
time. I haven’t heard you sound so jolly in ages. I’m glad you’ve found some
new inspiration.’
    Back at the beginning of the road again I turned for a final look at
the place that was going to be my new home. The rose covered wall at the end
had shrunk to the size of a postcard and the houses that framed it seemed to
heave with history and grandeur. I could barely blink.
    A montage of all the crummy bedsits and flat-shares I’d lived in
over the years flashed through my mind; one place so small that it had been
easy enough to make a reasonable meal from the comfort of my own bed.
    ‘Convenient though,’ Jessica had said on her visit and we’d both
hugged our sides with laughter.
    A black car with darkened windows edged round me and purred down the
road. Could that be the Portuguese Ambassador arriving early? I would draw him
thin and sleek with a little black moustache, perhaps kissing Arabella’s long
fingers whilst she twisted a scarf about with her other hand.
    ‘Come up to my room and tell me about your childhood,’ she’d whisper
through confiding lips.
    Just the idea of it sent little cooling thrills up my spine.
    Marguerite Avenue. That’s what it was called. I paused at the
signpost and tried to stop myself from touching it. Even the name felt like
poetry. Closing my eyes I drew in a deep breath of freshly cut grass and
honeysuckle. Yes, Marguerite Avenue was already in my bones.

 
    1892
     
    Miranda skirted around the corner and walked the length of the road
with brisk strides. The new rose was settling in nicely, already spurting out
fresh green shoots across that eyesore of a wall at the end. She let her front
door float past her for a closer inspection. Yes, masses of new tendrils
gripping at those dusty bricks and some tiny pink buds.
    Her eyes swept across number 36, the last house in the road, and in
an upstairs window the silhouette of a woman flinched away. It was enough to
take the warmth out of the air for a moment. She hurried back past her
neighbour’s door, snatching a glance at its chipped yellow paint. Jane would be
getting fractious.
     
    ‘Hello there. I think I just caught Mrs Eden staring at me through
an upstairs window.’
    ‘Is that so?’
    ‘Yes. Is everything alright dear?’
    Tristan seemed to be hovering half in, half out of the library and
he had something of the startled rabbit expression about him. Her eyes slipped
down his arm and found a large glass of brandy cupped in