Page 8 of Only a Monster

‘Hey!’ Ruth said. She scrambled out of her seat. ‘Where are you going? You’ll want to talk to Gran, okay?’

‘Talk to Gran?’ Joan said, incredulous. ‘I don’t want to talk to any of you.’ She needed to get out of this house. She needed to get away from her family.

‘Joan—’

‘No!’ Joan’s voice cracked. She backed up more. ‘I never want to see any of you ever again!’

THREE

Last night, Joan had run past Mr Solt’s house, afraid of him. Now, as she passed it, she ducked her head, ashamed. He didn’t do something to you, Gran had said. You did something to him.

Joan wished suddenly and desperately that she could go home—really go home. Not to Gran, but to Dad in Milton Keynes. But Dad was on holiday in Malaysia right now, visiting the other side of Joan’s family. A friend of Dad’s was house-sitting for them.

Joan felt as though she’d taken a step outside the real world. Over there in the real world, Dad was in Malaysia. Over there, Joan’s friends were in the middle of their summer break.

And here . . . here, Joan’s family had been stealing human life all this time, and Joan had never known it. Here, Joan had stolen life from someone yesterday too.

Joan turned the corner out of Gran’s street and realised that she had no idea where she was going. If she called Dad, if she tried to go home to Milton Keynes, if she called a friend and asked to stay, there’d be questions. Questions she didn’t know how to answer.

With nowhere else to go, she found herself heading to Holland House, the museum where she’d been volunteering. To Nick.

Holland House was an estate in Kensington that had been restored and transformed into a living museum. Each room was a perfect re-creation of the house’s Georgian heyday. Inside, costumed historians guided tourists around the house and talked about how the occupants had once lived. Outside, there were picnic gardens, and a hedge maze for the kids.

Joan had been volunteering there three days a week since the start of the summer. The work was mostly cleaning and gardening, but Joan loved it. History was her favourite subject at school. Her friends talked about being actors and singers. Joan’s dream was to work in a museum.

She walked the familiar route to Holland House. Around her, the world seemed surreally normal. The empty shells along Earl’s Court Road looked like ordinary shops again. Even the blue skies of yesterday morning had turned back to London’s more usual gloom. It was as though yesterday had never happened.

Joan reached Kensington High Street. On the other side of the road, the wrought-iron gates of Holland House stood open. It was late enough in the afternoon that tourists were leaving for the day, streaming out into Kensington.

It was strange to walk in against the current. Joan felt as if she were going the wrong way. Maybe she was. What would she even say to Nick when she saw him? From his point of view, she’d ignored his messages and stood him up. Then, today, she’d missed her volunteer shift without calling in. What if he didn’t even want to talk to her? Joan swallowed hard at the thought.

As she made her way up the elm-lined path to the house, tourists passed her with empty picnic baskets and souvenirs from the gift shop. Kids ran by, waving foam swords, their parents following more sedately behind.

As always, Holland House came into view in pieces. Red brick broke through the veil of trees, then white trim and shining windows, before the path gave way to smooth lawn and the house was revealed in full.

The living museum of Holland House was a red-brick-and-stone manor draped in ivy. The roofline was gently gabled and turreted, and on the lawn outside there was a fountain and roaming peacocks.

Joan stood on the cusp of the lawn now. She’d somehow expected the house to seem different. But it looked just as it had two days ago. The whole world looked the same: Gran’s kitchen and Earl’s Court Road. It was Joan who’d changed.

Now she knew that underneath the facade of ordinary London, there were monsters.

Joan climbed the back staircase that the staff used. Afternoon light filtered through the windows. The air smelled of sunwarmed polish and wood.

Nick was working in the library. It was a long gallery space that stretched the entire width of the house. Bookshelves and oil paintings filled the walls. At one end of the gallery, windows looked out onto a formal garden; at the other, the front courtyard.

Joan hesitated in the doorway. Nick’s back was to her. He was working alone, wiping down a picture frame with a soft dusting cloth. It was a little warm in the library, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the crooks of his elbows. Joan couldn’t take her eyes off the sliver of bare skin between his collar and his hairline. You touched him here, Gran had said of Mr Solt.

The surreal feeling was even stronger now. Joan remembered the first time she’d met Nick—her first day volunteering here. It had been a sunny Saturday at the start of summer. That morning, the crowds at the house had grown and grown until it seemed as if half of London were picnicking on the grounds, and inching shoulder-to-shoulder through the hedge maze. On Joan’s lunch break, she’d retreated to the house, climbed the back staircase, and found herself alone here in this library. She had closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of paper and books bound in leather. The reprieve had been an intense relief.

A floorboard had creaked, and she’d opened her eyes again to find a boy walking into the library. He’d been a little older than her—seventeen, maybe. Her first thought was that he was classically handsome: clean-cut, with dark hair and a square jaw. And then he’d looked at her, and Joan had felt warmth roll over her, as if she’d stepped into a sunbeam.

Later she would learn that he was kind. That he never lied. That he talked to everyone with the same respect and interest.

Joan shifted her weight now, and the floorboard creaked. For a moment, memory and reality converged as Nick turned.

Joan’s heart skipped a beat as his dark eyes met hers. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t meet up with you yesterday.’

Nick pushed a hand through his hair. In some lights, it was almost black—Mr Darcy black, their friend Astrid called it. The window behind him had lightened it. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. And the words were casual, but there was a vulnerable note underneath. He seemed braced for rejection.

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