The House of New Beginnings Page 19

  HELLO! My name is Rosa and I live in Flat 1. I’ve been here a few months now and have been working such unsociable hours I’ve hardly met any of you. But that’s about to change! Would you like to come round for dinner? I am training as a chef and would love the chance to practise . . . you would be doing me a favour, really. If you are free this Friday evening at eight p.m., please come along, it would be great to get to know as many of you as possible.

  Let me know either way by knocking on my door to say hello or by leaving me a note in reply. And do also let me know if you have any dietary restrictions to help me decide on a menu.

  Hope to see you on Friday!

  Love Rosa x

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘You busy today, darling?’ Viv’s voice came down the phone. It was the morning after the ill-fated Stonefield trip and Georgie was still in bed, having slept through Simon’s departure for work. This was probably just as well, seeing as he’d been in a thunderous mood ever since vile Chloe had gone and grassed her up in front of everyone. ‘Um . . .’ she said, wondering what Viv’s question might be leading to. Maybe some feat of telepathy had compelled her editor to send her to try out a relationship counselling session. Frankly Georgie could do with all the help she could get right now, if she ever hoped to thaw the icy mood currently crackling around her boyfriend. How could you do that to me? he’d said on reading her problem page. It made her cringe even now.

  ‘Only I was meant to be doing an interview but I’ve hurt my back,’ Viv was saying in her ear. ‘Can barely move. Anyway the job’s yours if you want to earn some extra cash. Interested?’

  Mere moments earlier, Georgie had been squinting at her bank balance online and trying not to vomit in fear (she so shouldn’t have bought all those clothes with the girls on Saturday) and therefore this could not have been a more welcome question. ‘Of course,’ she replied at once, then felt bad for sounding so eager. ‘I mean – are you okay? Is someone looking after you?’

  Viv barked a laugh. ‘No. But I’m hoping to survive the day. All right, got a pen? It’s the House of the Fallen Women – have you heard of it?’

  ‘No,’ Georgie admitted, frowning. ‘Fallen Women? That sounds a bit archaic.’

  ‘Yeah, it is. It’s a big old Victorian house out along the coast that was an actual home for so-called fallen women, a hundred years or so ago. Unmarried mothers, women of the night, any destitute woman, down on her luck, basically,’ Viv said. ‘Oof. Ow. Jesus.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just the – ow – fucking sofa,’ Viv said irritably. She must be one of those people who got very bad-tempered when they felt rough, Georgie decided. Simon was exactly the same. When he’d had the flu last winter, she’d come in to find him watching an old Tom and Jerry cartoon and calling Jerry an annoying little shit. ‘What? I hate rodents,’ he’d said defensively when she’d started laughing at him. ‘Tom should rip his stupid smirking head off and be done with it.’

  ‘So the house became derelict some time ago,’ Viv went on, ‘back when women were no longer expected to feel shame for circumstances out of their control, and when better resources became available. In recent years, it’s been squatted by a load of women who’ve used it as a refuge and drop-in centre; have you seriously never heard of it? They’ve got a good activist scene going on there. They call themselves the House of Women now – no longer “fallen”, see.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Georgie, although the closest she’d ever come to being involved with any kind of activist scene was when she had started a petition about one of the libraries closing down, two towns away from where she worked. Things had been so cosy up in safe happy Stonefield, her social conscience had become rather dusty through its lack of use.

  ‘Yeah. Well, it was, anyway. But now the site has been bought by some rich developer and they’re all getting turfed out,’ Viv said grimly. ‘Only they’re not going without a fight, of course. They’re determined to stay and preserve a piece of the city’s history, particularly in terms of women’s history. And that’s where you come in.’

  ‘You want me to go and interview them?’ Georgie’s eyes lit up. This did sound like a good story, far more interesting than ordinary local news items. Proper journalism! She could go and stand in solidarity with these women, give them a voice in the magazine, maybe even help them make banners . . .

  ‘You got it, kid. They want to spread word of their campaign out to the public, as well as to local historians and women’s groups, anyone who might be able to help them. So I want you to go there and meet Tasha and Cleo, who are part of the collective, to find out more. I’m sending along a photographer too. Would you be able to do eleven o’clock this morning? The site is out in the Ovingdean direction.’

  Georgie gulped. It was already half-past nine and she was still wearing her pyjamas, the laptop on her knee in bed. She needed to shower and blow-dry her hair and try to find some clothes that might make her look like a serious interviewer as well as find this house, wherever it might be. ‘Absolutely,’ she said with as much confidence as she could muster. She would do it for the women, she vowed, putting the phone down and leaping out of bed.

  It was only as she was turning off the main road a short while later and up towards what looked like a building site that Georgie felt the first warning prickles of something being amiss, her sixth sense telling her that life might be playing a trick on her. Then, as she slowed to read some hoardings proclaiming the new development due to spring into life there by the new year, the horrible feeling of premonition grew stronger. Macaulay Developments, proclaimed the company name above the computer-generated image. Coming soon: a luxury 5-star hotel with breathtaking views!

  She had seen that image before on Simon’s laptop, on print-outs spread across their kitchen table; she knew that name from the letters and contract that had plopped through their letterbox in Stonefield. Because, as bad luck and shit-stirring Fate would have it, this redevelopment was the very same one that Simon was working on; the hotel he had so painstakingly designed, whose progress he was overseeing. This place was why the two of them were in Brighton at all.

  Oh knickers, she thought, braking to a complete stop, and remembering his comments the other week about protestors on site, whipping up opposition to the build. By sending her here to interview those same protestors, Viv had unwittingly given Georgie a whole new brick to lob against her increasingly fragile relationship. ‘No more secrets,’ Simon had said to her crossly after the excruciating Hey Em letter reveal. ‘I promise!’ she’d cried in reply. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die!’ But now what was she getting herself into?

  As she took a right turn and went through some open gates onto the site itself, she saw the extent of the building work that was already taking place. Although the old Victorian house had been cleverly incorporated into the design, the main shell of the hotel was going up a short distance away; gigantic steels being manoeuvred into place by a team in hard hats and a yellow JCB, while an excavator was noisily flattening the land around it. A massive car park in the making, she thought, seeing it ripping up turf, soil speckling the air. There were two Portakabins at the side of the site and Georgie hunched low in the car as she drove past, wondering if her beloved was currently inside one of them. Imagine the look on Simon’s face if he walked out and saw her on his territory – he’d probably assume she’d come to appease him by bringing something nice for his lunch. How his jaw would drop when he realized she was actually going in to meet with the women’s group. You traitor, George. What the hell . . . ?

  As she neared the Victorian house, she was able to read the banners swathing its exterior. SAVE THE HOUSE, SAVE THE WOMEN, read one. DON’T BULLDOZE HISTORY, pleaded another. The door and windowframes had been painted in purple, white and green – suffragette colours – and someone had stuck faces of women and children at each window, some wearing mobcaps, as if representing former residents gazing out. Carved into the stone above the front door were the wo
rds IN THIS HOUSE YOU SHALL FIND MERCY, and Georgie felt unexpectedly moved as she parked the car.

  Outside, you could still hear the rumble of traffic from the main road below, the crash and rush of the sea beyond that further still, but there was birdsong up here too, wild flowers in the hedgerow, and a long lush lawn in front of the building. Georgie couldn’t help thinking of all those women who’d come to this place before her – lonely, desperate women, perhaps with a child on one hip, a hand on a swelling belly, an ache in their hearts. The house must have been a beacon of hope for its broken, luckless residents all those years ago. The stories those walls could tell; the women and children who’d sheltered within, the kindness and comfort they must have hungered for, and hopefully found. Then she imagined the bulldozers coming in and knocking the whole thing down, the air thick with brick dust, a piece of history reduced to rubble. ‘A bunch of sanctimonious twats with nothing better to do,’ Simon had scathingly called the protestors. Was it sanctimonious to want to protect a building which had been important to so many people, though? she wondered, ringing the old-fashioned doorbell. Was it really so wrong to care?

  Two women appeared at the door moments later: one slender and ethereal in a white column dress and bare feet, the other stockier with black jeans and a black T-shirt with some band logo Georgie had never heard of, hair in ginger bunches and her nose pierced. ‘Georgie? Hi, I’m Tasha and this is Cleo,’ said Ginger Bunches, her piercing glittering silver in a shaft of sunlight. ‘Thanks for coming. We’ve set up in the library, it’s along here. Follow us!’

  Georgie hadn’t been sure what to expect in terms of the women’s centre when Viv had given her the brief that morning – she’d imagined it might have a studenty kind of vibe, perhaps, with posters and daubed slogans everywhere, the smell of mildew, an angry sort of militancy – but she was proved wrong almost immediately. Instead, she found herself stepping into an elegant hallway, painted a soft calm grey, with a central staircase sweeping up ahead. Light spilled through the generous-sized windows, and from distant rooms she could hear the sound of conversation, the burble of a radio, the occasional laugh. It was more country-house hotel than shoestring amateur-hour, she thought, gazing up at the high ceiling, and around at the colourful tapestries on the walls – one reading ‘Welcome’ in ten or so different languages – and arty black and white framed photographs of women and children. ‘It’s so peaceful in here,’ she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out how much she’d love to come and stay until she realized how crass a comment that was. Like any woman ever wanted to go to a refuge.

  ‘It’s a sanctuary,’ agreed Cleo, who had long dark hair and a soft sweet voice.

  ‘So we’ve got the therapy rooms along here,’ Tasha said, gesturing as she led them down a corridor past a series of doors. ‘We have a couple of counsellors who help with emotional issues, and a lawyer who comes in one afternoon a week for more practical problems. The rooms can be used for meditation or group counselling too, whatever’s needed.’

  ‘And people can still stay here as temporary residents?’ Georgie asked, scribbling a couple of notes as she followed. ‘Or are you more of a drop-in centre now?’

  ‘Women can stay,’ Cleo said. ‘Any woman, whatever her circumstances, if we have the space, she’s welcome. The bedrooms are upstairs.’

  They had paused in front of a door marked ‘Library’ but Tasha was pointing further down the corridor. ‘Our kitchen is along there – plus the vegetable garden, what’s left of it – and there’s also a children’s play room and an art room, all of which we can show you later. The library is a quiet area, where people can work or just sit and read any of the books in our collection. It’s also where we keep our archive – come and have a look.’

  An hour or so later, Georgie said her goodbyes and wandered back to the car, her mind buzzing with all that she’d seen, with the numerous women she’d met and spoken to. Some were victims of domestic violence who didn’t want their photographs taken, some were volunteers who mucked in while their children were at school; there was one beautiful older woman she saw with long white hair in a plait and the kindest face who had been locked out of her house two days ago by her abusive husband and didn’t have anywhere else to go. Maybe they’d felt themselves to have ‘fallen’ once upon a time – hadn’t everyone – but these women had helped each other back up again, given one another their dignity back, and good on them.

  The archive had been fascinating too – documents dating from over one hundred and twenty years ago, listing the women who had come seeking shelter in the house, with their names, ages and occupations. Elsie Marks, housemaid; Martha Cartwright, governess; Florence Henry, seamstress; name after name, woman after woman, their arrivals charted in sloping black ink. There were some grateful letters stored in the archive, some from benefactors, who had originally been helped by the house and whose fortunes had greatly improved upon leaving. ‘I was going to ask where your funding came from,’ Georgie said, leafing through. ‘Are you a registered charity, or do you rely on wealthy donors, or . . . ?’

  ‘We ask the women to contribute if they can,’ Cleo replied.

  ‘Not everyone who suffers domestic abuse is poor,’ Tasha said, arching an eyebrow. ‘It can happen to anyone, even the richest person.’

  This element of the house had been sobering – that there still had to be safe places set up for women, that abuse and cruelty were still going on – but the visit, overall, was incredibly inspiring. These women were tremendous! she kept thinking in awe. They were strong, tireless, compassionate. In fact, she was starting to feel bad about how little she did for others, how that very morning she’d been loafing around in her pyjamas, until Viv’s call to action.

  Neutral and professional, Georgie reminded herself, as she made her way back to the front door, visit over. Her job was to present the facts rather than take sides – but how would that even be possible when fundamentally she loved what the women were doing and was wholeheartedly behind them? She had seen for herself how the developers had carved into their beautiful kitchen garden. ‘Out of spite,’ Cleo had said, voice trembling, ‘when they’re not even planning to do anything in this area.’ She had heard, too, the builders’ catcalls and derogatory remarks when one of the residents went out to peg up some washing. ‘And this used to be the one place women could feel protected from wankers like that,’ Tasha said, bristling with rage as she defiantly gave the builders the Vs, to a round of jeering in return. ‘The one refuge they could come to, and be healed. Now we have to put up with these dickheads, trying to bully us out, and they don’t seem to care.’

  ‘I’ll tell your story, I’ll do what I can,’ Georgie promised them, as they said goodbye. Then she had to walk right past Simon’s car in the car park and immediately felt like the most double-dealing girlfriend in the world. But she cared about this place now, that was the problem; she agreed with these women rather than Simon’s hotel. Plus, she was itching to write up a proper piece like this, a serious campaigning story rich with history and injustice, rather than an agony column.

  No more secrets, warned Simon in her head as she unlocked the car and she sighed. No more secrets, she had promised. But if she told him what she wanted to do, it might be the end of them. Was any story worth that?

  ‘This is what you call a no-win situation,’ she complained to the green-haired gonk as she clambered into the driver’s seat. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  As usual, the gonk didn’t deign to reply, merely smiling its mysterious beatific smile back at her in response. Its bloody useless and unhelpful smile, frankly. ‘Fat load of good you are,’ Georgie muttered, releasing the handbrake and turning the car around. ‘I’ll just deal with this myself then, shall I?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  The day Charlotte met Jim, she’d recently moved into a damp basement flat in west Reading which had a tiny courtyard garden. Charlotte had been much more of an optimist back then, a romantic even, capable of project
ing visions of domestic beauty and wonder onto the most tired cold rooms and cat-shit-decorated flowerbeds – hence she’d slaved tirelessly, slapping paint onto the walls, running up curtains for the windows and buying a load of bargain cushions and throws to brighten up the living room and bedroom. It was a veritable transformation, though she said so herself.

  Now for the garden, she’d thought, driving to the nearest garden centre, imagining the small narrow flowerbeds a riot of colour come the summer months: sunflowers as tall as she was, scented roses and hollyhocks and carnations bringing in bees and butterflies from miles around. No matter that she’d never planted so much as a cress seed in her life, by the time she’d finished with it, the tiny outdoor space would be a wildlife haven, just wait, she thought, as she parked the car. And definitely not just a haven for all the shitting cats in the neighbourhood either.

  All this home and garden improvement, it did really make you feel like a grown-up. A proper job-and-mortgage grownup, who took control of their own life, who made things happen, who paid bills and stripped wallpaper and owned their own new drill bits and garden tools. Well . . . so she thought anyway, but then she’d hauled her trolley back to the car and realized she couldn’t actually lift all the heavy compost bags she’d just bought into the boot. Er . . . Ahh. Now what? A strapping male assistant had lumped them onto the trolley in the first place but it had somehow slipped her mind that she would have to then a) heave them into her own car and also b) heave them out again when she got home, not to mention down the side alley and into her actual garden. Oh dear. And now she felt really stupid and feeble, and if there was one thing positive-thinking Charlotte hated, it was feeling stupid and feeble.