Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(104)

‘Dorothy, throw it out,’ Aunt Ada said. ‘Please.’

‘I like it like this,’ Gran said.

‘It’s burnt!’ Bertie said.

‘I like it burnt.’

When they’d been dead, Joan had dreamed about them. She’d never been able to conjure all the little details, though. Gran’s hair was a grey cloud, frizzier at the ends. Her dressing gown was frayed at the hem. And she may or may not have liked burnt toast, but there was a sly, amused quirk at her mouth as she ate it. She always enjoyed horrifying people.

Beside her, Aunt Ada was spreading Marmite onto a slice of pale toast. She was in a white suit, and there wasn’t a spot of Marmite on the suit or her plate. Joan had asked Ada once how she always stayed so immaculate. Ada had grinned and kissed the top of Joan’s head. It’s just confidence, love.

‘Anyone could steal the Mona Lisa,’ Gus said to Ruth now.

‘I’m not talking about snatching it from the old man’s hand,’ Ruth said.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Gus said. ‘What do you take me for? I’d properly steal it too.’

‘It’s only a copy, anyway,’ Bertie said.

This drew everyone’s attention.

‘One of the Venetian families bought the original,’ Bertie said, as though he was surprised that they didn’t know. ‘Paint was still wet.’

‘You sure?’ Ada said. ‘I heard the Nightingales bought it—same deal. Paint wet.’

‘How many of them did Leo sell?’ Bertie said.

‘Yes, but the point,’ Ruth said, ‘is that I could steal a painting from the Louvre.’ She saw Joan in the doorway then. ‘But I would never do that,’ she added, singsong, ‘because theft is wrong.’

Teacher’s here, Ruth would sometimes say when Joan came into a room. She’d always said it fondly, almost with pride, as if she were saying Joan’s an astronaut, actually.

She jumped off the radiator and slung an arm around Joan’s shoulder. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Last day in London. What do you want to do?’

Joan felt a familiar flash of fondness, along with a pang of something sharper. How many times had she come into a room and felt the conversation halt and change like this? Joan doesn’t like shop talk. Not in front of Joan.

‘I—’ she started.

‘I know, I know. You have to go somewhere first, and you’ll meet me after.’ Ruth bumped Joan’s shoulder gently. ‘Where do you keep going?’

‘Nowhere fun,’ Joan promised. She took a piece of toast from Ruth’s plate. ‘You finished with this?’

‘No,’ Ruth grumbled, but she didn’t really sound grumpy. She’d been more worried than she’d let on by Joan’s illness.

‘Take some fruit if you’re planning to walk,’ Uncle Gus said. He plucked a blood orange from Gran’s fruit basket and gave it to Joan. ‘You need to keep up your vitamin C.’

Joan had forgotten that detail too. Uncle Gus thought that vitamin C could heal everything from the common cold to a broken leg. Her smile wobbled, and she swallowed hard. She’d missed them all so much.

The blood orange was sweet-scented and heavy, red as a sunrise. Perfectly ripe. And out of season, she realised slowly. Oranges were winter fruit. Maybe it was imported. Or maybe someone had travelled to winter. She looked back up at Gus.

‘I’m fusspotting, aren’t I?’ he said.

Joan shook her head. ‘Nah.’ She managed a proper smile. But she put the orange back in the bowl. ‘I’d better get dressed.’

Gran was sitting on the front doorstep when Joan left the house. She shuffled over to let Joan pass her.

‘Geraldine from two doors down just walked past with a cat on a leash,’ Gran said. ‘Big ginger tom with white paws. Woman must be having a midlife crisis.’ She drank her tea. ‘Will you be home for dinner? I’m making treacle pudding.’

On impulse, Joan bent to give her a hug. They weren’t really a hugging family, but after a surprised second Gran put her mug down and hugged Joan back. The formidable Dorothy Hunt, Aaron had called her once, but in Joan’s arms she felt fine-boned and fragile.

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Joan said.

Joan remembered when she’d first returned to Holland House—a week ago now, still so ill that her legs would barely hold her. Her first glimpse of the house had been as much of a shock as seeing her family alive again. The old ruins in Holland Park, Gran had called it. But nothing could have prepared Joan for the reality.

The west wing was gone. The library where Joan had met Nick. Sabine’s Room, where Gran had died. The east wing was still there, but gutted. All that was left was the facade, now wrapped around a hostel. Joan had wandered inside in a daze and found a modern building, unrecognisable in layout. Where the Gilt Room had been, now there was a dormitory in cheerful kindergarten colours.

A pamphlet in the information office had said that the house had been bombed in the war—twenty-two times in one night. Joan took the pamphlet to Roger’s Seat, the hidden alcove overlooking the Dahlia Garden. The house might have changed, but she still knew some of its secret places.

There, curled up and half hidden by a curtain of leaves, she read about the new history of the house. In her own timeline, a private company had bought Holland House in the 1950s and turned it into a museum. In this timeline, the house had been destroyed before that could happen. The burned husk had been sold to the Royal Borough. It was all there on the page, in black and white with citations.