“Thank you. Credit Angela. It’s an American specialty, apparently, though it certainly has French antecedents. Now I think of it, it’s not unlike a good country pâté. I imagine it will be good cold in a sandwich tomorrow. Now what about the children? I wonder if I should offer to go along and teach them till someone is sent out?”

  “You?”

  “Don’t say ‘you’ in that tone of voice. I have a degree from Oxford, you know. There must be something they can learn from me.”

  “You can read Shakespeare to them,” Darling suggested mildly. “Something useful.” He picked up the bottle of wine and held it over her glass. “More wine? You’ll need it.”

  THE RESIDENTS OF King’s Cove were unequal to resisting the urge to see what was going on at the old Anscomb house, so named because of the last family that had ever lived there. It had been abandoned before the Great War, sometime in 1913, leaving behind a reek of sorrow, poverty, and failure. Only Lane and the police had been in the house since, and it still had the detritus of the unfortunate family, along with, as Gladys Hughes said, mouldering walls and rising damp.

  Consequently, Gladys’s middle-aged daughters Mabel and Gwen found a reason to walk the dogs there, strolling past the Bertollis’ and then continuing up the hill until the fix-it van was visible. They could see that a large pile of rubbish was accumulating on the overgrown lawn.

  “I suppose they’ll want to fill our garbage dump with that lot,” Mabel said. “As if it wasn’t full enough already.”

  “Why don’t they just take the whole place down and start again? It’s an absolute horror, that place. I’d forgotten it was still on the market. I know Lane said it was offered to her, along with the Lady Armstrong house. Get rid, I say.”

  “I don’t know,” Mabel said. “It’s probably got good bones. Waste not, want not.”

  Gwen turned to look at her sister. “Is that some sort of joke? How can you talk about bones after what we’ve been through?” She turned back to the house, and muttered nearly under her breath, “You’ve been through, more like.” The finding of a child’s skeleton in their own root cellar the previous spring had unleashed all the pain of an episode in Mabel’s adolescence she would sooner forget.

  Mabel coloured. “What are you saying? That any of that was my fault?”

  “No, I’m not saying anything was your fault. Anyway, didn’t you go in there when we were girls? Get out of there, you stupid dogs!” The spaniels had plunged into the underbrush beside the road, shaking piles of accumulated snow off the bushes. “Having them find a carcass is all we need!”

  “I never went into the house. I was terrified of Mr. Anscomb and was sure I’d catch something horrible. Bob had a shed he lived in. I went into that,” Mabel said. “For a moment. The old man found me and sent me packing.” She had never told anyone about that visit.

  Gwen turned and looked at her sister with a raised eyebrow and then looked back up at the activity by the van. A man came around the side of the house and threw some boards out onto the growing pile and caught sight of Gwen and Mabel. He brushed off his gloves and lifted his hand in a friendly wave, and then turned to go back into the house.

  “Can we have a look inside?” Gwen called, ignoring Mabel swatting at her arm.

  The builder smiled but shook his head. “Sorry. Orders. Place is locked up. Just clearing out this lot.”

  ROBIN HARRIS DECIDED he’d take his tractor out of the barn where it wintered over and make the slow, noisy trip up to the old Anscomb house to have a look. It took a couple of tries to get the thing going, but, belching smoke, it lumbered out of the barn and down his driveway.

  Gladys, who had stopped at the post office to drop off some letters to be mailed, was walking back along the road rather than the narrow, steep, snow-covered path that climbed directly from the Armstrongs’ to her house. She heard the racket and arrived at the intersection in time to see Robin, wrapped up in his grimy winter jacket and a hat with the earflaps tied down tightly under his chin, bumping up the road. He had a floppy, hand-rolled cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, as usual.

  “Now, what the devil is he doing?” she asked out loud. Maybe her daughters would know. They’d been out with the dogs, and she suspected they’d have made for the abandoned house. Was that what he was up to as well?

  Robin trundled right up to the Anscomb house and parked on the road in front of the van. He surveyed the scene and then heard the banging around the back of the house. It was true, then. He climbed down and, putting his hands in his pockets, strolled toward the pile containing splintered boards, an old bedstead, and some broken chairs heaped up outside the house.

  “Where do you think you’re going to dump that lot?” he asked by way of greeting. The builder had a wooden box with a chipped enamel basin tilted into it and had thrown it onto the pile. He pulled off his woollen hat and wiped his brow.

  “Afternoon,” he said. “You live around here?”

  “None of your bloody business,” Robin said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Natives are friendly, I see,” the builder said. He nodded at the house. “Just doing my job. Fixing it up for the new owner. Getting rid of the rubbish now and bringing in materials. You should get along like a house on fire with the new owner. Of a friendly disposition like yourself.”

  “What new owner?” Robin asked, ignoring the dig.

  “Wouldn’t be happy to see me standing around gabbing, so I’ll wish you a good day.”

  Being treated breezily by the builder did not improve Robin’s mood. Swearing under his breath, he got back onto his tractor and, after a couple of false starts, made his way back down the road. He could have gone down the narrow one-way that led directly to his own house, but instead he elected to turn right, past the Bertolli cabin, and head to the post office. The Bertolli collies were barking to raise the dead off the front porch just through the rise of leafless birch trees, and Angela came out to have a look.

  Seeing it was Robin, far from his usual haunts in the winter with the tractor, she raised her arm and waved vigorously. “Hello, Robin!”

  He didn’t hear the greeting over the noise of his engine, but he saw the wave, so on a whim he stopped the tractor at the drive and waited for her to come to him. He hadn’t any real use for the American Bertolli family, but this was a special case. He watched dogs and mistress come down the stairs and wade through the snow on the path until they reached him.

  “How are you, Robin? You don’t usually put that thing on the road in the middle of winter.”

  “Someone’s bought that place,” he responded, scowling. “Some upstart. Bound to be trouble.” He didn’t, strictly speaking, know the newcomer was bound to be trouble, but he hadn’t mistaken the builder’s meaning about the personality of the new owner.

  “You don’t know he’s an upstart. He might be a nice man with a family. Maybe some kids.” Robin could hear Angela’s three shouting to each other somewhere behind the house.

  “We don’t need any more kids. Why aren’t yours in school?”

  “The teacher didn’t turn up yesterday, haven’t you heard? Apparently Miss Scott, the old teacher who was leaving to get married, got knocked on the head and the new one disappeared. We have to wait for a new teacher.”

  He hadn’t heard. “That’s what comes of having all sorts coming in from outside. We’ll all be murdered in our beds in the end.”

  “But, Robin, why should the new people murder us in our beds? They’ll have a nice renovated house to live in.”

  Robin harrumphed and pulled out his little metal box of cigarettes. He didn’t offer one to Angela. Neither prospect was appealing: a murderer or a family with more children.

  “Should have set that house alight after the Great War. A misery of a place.” He lit his cigarette and tossed the match into the snow.

  Angela tilted her head noncommittally and said, “Well then, let’s hope it’s a nice new family.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” grumbled Robin. He started up his tractor without another word. Angela watched him retreating up the road, black smoke trailing out of his exhaust chimney, and shook her head. Whoever it was could certainly not be worse than Robin, she thought.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Vancouver, July 1923

  DENISE IRVING STOOD ON THE street outside Woodward’s Department Store where she worked, and waited for the streetcar. She tried not to feel self-conscious in the queue. After all, no one could guess just by looking at her.

  When the car stopped, she waited her turn and then found a seat near the back, next to a large man in a dark suit. Perfect. Even on the nearly impossible chance of her being seen, she would be invisible to anyone on the outside. Heat poured in the windows and seemed to emanate from the man, who was smoking. She was glad of her light tea dress. She had bought it in the ladies’ department and had been keeping it in her locker at work.

  Impatiently she counted the stops, feeling her heart turn over. She had thought when love finally came into her life it would be a joyful matter. That she would feel young and fizzy, filled with the carefree laughter of two people sharing a special joke. That it would provide warmth, comfort, and refuge. What she felt now was far from that. What she felt instead was a sick anxiety and powerful, draining longing. What if he was not there? What if he was, and Zeke found out?

  This thought caused her to look anxiously out the window, past the large man’s paper. But the street in this part of town was full of the bustle of business: men in suits, women in dark, serious hats. She unconsciously touched the brim of her own hat, as if to bring it down farther, shading her eyes. She felt herself smile at that. She was like a child who covers her own eyes and thinks no one can see her. This momentary relaxation only released a flood of anxiety. At Granville she got off and walked purposefully up the hill toward the hotel, hoping the aura of sweat and cigarette smoke from the man on the bus would dissipate.

  He’d said he would meet her at a corner table in the Palm Court.

  The doorman who opened the brass and dark oak door wore white gloves. She tried to pretend she belonged there, had a room somewhere with a view of the water. She glanced at the doorman, and he looked friendly, as if he opened the door to all kinds of people and made no judgment.

  “The Palm Court?”

  “Just through there, madam. Lovely at this time of day.” He smiled and touched his hat.

  He was at a corner table. He stood up the moment he saw her, as if he too had been in the grip of anxiety. He took her gloved hands when she sat down, and looked down at them, stroking her fingers.

  “My father would kill me,” he said. His dark eyes conveyed sadness, as if they knew, before even he did, that their enterprise was fated for tragedy.

  She’d be killed, too, she thought. Her husband would come home from wherever he was, most of his paycheque gone, his mood fractious. He would demand things, the length of his list of expectations directly proportional to his own sense of powerlessness. Her money, her body, her labour.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she said.

  “You’re beautiful. Denise. It’s a name I dream about now. I’ve ordered champagne. And then tea. And then we can dance. The orchestra will start in a couple of minutes.” He punctuated these sentences with little silences, as if she might say something. Finally she did. He was so young, and so beautiful.

  “I’m all for dancing. And champagne. Is your father likely to see us here? I’d like to think you will survive our first real date.”

  The man smiled, exhaling, as if with relief. “My God, I do love you. Here we are.” He leaned back slightly while the champagne was poured and thanked the waiter with a nod. The waiter bowed, giving his head a tiny twist of acknowledgement. “To us!” The young man said this almost gaily, holding his glass out toward her. But Denise had seen that acknowledgement from the waiter.

  “Do they know you here?” she asked, anxious again.

  “Oh, do relax. I’m the scion of a great family on a date. The point is, they don’t know you.”

  “So they are used to you coming in with women.”

  “No, they are used to me coming in with my father and his cronies. I work for him, you know. He’s a bootstraps kind of man. I work in the mailroom, just like the cliché. I can’t normally afford to bring anyone here. But I wanted something beautiful for you. You’re . . . extraordinary to me.”

  He looked so stricken as he said this that she gave way entirely to her desire to believe him, to believe in this new miracle.

  She smiled and held up her glass. “To us, then,” she said. She hadn’t told him she had a husband, but she thought he must know, if only because of the way she insisted she meet him, rather than having him call on her at home. Perhaps not. It wasn’t that usual for a married woman to work, but she, like many, removed her ring as she went in every morning. She hadn’t believed him when he told her that the perfume was for his mother. Looking at him now, she realized he had probably been telling the truth. And that he was in love. She should allow herself to be in love too, she thought.

  They ate little sandwiches and danced. She could feel his arm around her waist, pressing, reassuring, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was looking at her, uncertainty gone.

  “You know it was meant to be,” he said. “You can’t doubt it.”

  “I’m married.”

  He nodded. “I know that, but you don’t care about those old-fashioned bourgeois notions.”

  In a room on the fifth floor, with a view of Stanley Park and afternoon sunlight glinting off the water, he held her as they both lay facing the window. “Why even go back? Stay here with me.”

  “You’re impractical. Follow your logic through. There would be a divorce. Your name, your father’s name, in all the papers. Bourgeois notions they may be, but flout them and any chance you have at a career would be doomed.”

  “I love the way you say ‘doomed,’” he said, laughing. “That long ‘oo’ sound. So resonant of the end of days. Tell me about your husband. What’s his name?”

  She turned and looked at him. “Zeke. Why does he have to come into it?”

  “Not a soft or reassuring name. I assume he’s a bastard or you wouldn’t be here. Is it short for Ezekiel? That would be a name that screams biblical disapproval.”

  She turned back to gaze at the sky. “It is Ezekiel. His family belongs to some sort of religious group. Very strict. No dancing, no drinking. He came here to get away from them, and now he drinks enough for all of them. He doesn’t care to be happy.”

  “Why in God’s name did you marry him? You’re beautiful, educated. You could have had anyone. You could have had me.”

  “I was convinced by his desire to be his own man. I felt his sincerity. I don’t think I ever experienced sincerity before that.” I couldn’t have had you, she thought but didn’t say. Some society girl would have him. She was sure there must be something in the works even now.

  ONE AFTERNOON, ON an early September day, they met to sit on a bench at the beach and eat ice cream. School was in and the beach was quiet, waves lapping gently on English Bay.

  “We’re like normal people,” he said. “Like a couple sharing an ice cream on the beach.”

  “We are sharing ice cream, but we are far from normal.” Denise put a hand to her mouth suddenly. She had wanted to do this without crying. “I’m pregnant,” she said, pulling herself together. She didn’t look at him. She looked across the bay. His silence was what she had expected. She was now, she supposed, someone who “knew the ways of the world,” and this would go as expected. “I don’t expect you to concern yourself. I brought it on myself. It does mean the end, of course. We cannot go on pretending the world doesn’t exist. It turns out I do believe in the old bourgeois notions. I am married, so this baby will have a home and a family.” She looked at him finally. That is what “dumbstruck” must look like in real life, she thought. “We won’t have a fuss. I’ll be leaving my job soon and you can return to your life.”

  “You cannot, you cannot, imagine that you can stay with that man, and have a child of mine brought up by him?”

  “Don’t be dramatic. What will you do? Be the correspondent in a public divorce and then marry your pregnant lover? I should think your father really would kill you. And Zeke would demand the child, think it’s his. It would be given to him. You know what the courts are like.”

  She amazed herself with her own practical sangfroid. She did not say what she felt: that leaving him would be the end of all happiness for her, the end of her delusion that love would conquer anything at all.

  THE SCHOOLHOUSE WAS freezing on the Tuesday morning. Frost had gathered on the inside corner of the five long windows. Like morning in a Scottish country house shooting weekend in December, Lane thought. It was still almost dark when she arrived, hoping to start the fire in the stove and warm the place up by the time the children got there. After supper she’d got hold of as many students as she could through a sort of telephone tree of the few parents she knew, to say the school would be open. Angela had agreed to let the local officials know that Lane would provide temporary instruction and reassure them with her degree from Oxford. If there were misgivings, Angela would say that Lane was just providing care for the children until the situation was resolved.

  Lane flicked on the light switch and was relieved that the four bowl-shaped light fixtures that hung in the centre of the ceiling from the back of the room to the front all worked and brightened the place up considerably. Fourteen desks were lined up facing the blackboard, and several more were pushed against the back wall, obviously unneeded. A low bookshelf between the two north-facing windows had a neat pile of exercise books, some readers, and some copies of the Nelson Daily News, at which Lane nodded approvingly. Miss Scott and Miss Keeling were clearly interested in teaching the children some practical skills. Three wooden trays sat on the top of the bookcase. One contained rows of ink bottles, another pencils, and a third red pen holders and boxes of nibs.