The Leper House
From the No.1 bestselling author of The American Boy and The Ashes of London comes a gothic novella – perfect for fans of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.One stormy night in Suffolk, a man’s car breaks down following his sister’s funeral. The only source of light comes from a remote cottage by the sea. The mysterious woman who lives there begs him to leave, yet he can’t shake the sense that she somehow needs him. He attempts to return the next day but she is nowhere to be seen. And neither is the cottage.
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ANDREW TAYLOR
The Leper House
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2016
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollâinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008171230
Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780008179762
Version: 2017-06-19
Table of Contents
Somewhere along the way, Mary mislaid her religion. The funeral was a humanist affair in a chapel, or whatever they call it, attached to a crematorium. There must have been nearly two hundred mourners. She had been only thirty-eight when she died, which is why her death touched so many lives â and why there was a sense of outrage in the air, rather than resignation.
Alan himself acted as master of ceremonies. He was used to public speaking and chairing meetings â he was the headmaster of a school about fifteen miles from Norwich. He kept his emotions as firmly in check as the timing.
âHow brave,â whispered one of my neighbours.
âHeâs bearing up wonderfully,â said a friend. âEspecially when you thinkââ
âHe has to be brave for the children.â
The friend nodded. âAt least her poor parents are dead.â
The coffin was at the end of the room. It was one of those environmentally friendly ones, designed to make a posthumous statement of faith in the possibility of a greener world to come, as it slid towards its complete destruction in the furnace. It had nothing to do with the Mary I remembered most vividly: the sideways glances, the grazed knees and the shrill giggles.
Alan took us through Maryâs life at a brisk pace â we had a time slot at the crematorium, and death waits for no one. He described our parents â a nurse and an estate agent, respectively â and the loving upbringing they had given her. He talked about her pet rabbit, Matilda, and our old dog, who recognized her step even when he was old and blind. (Alan did not mention the dogâs incontinence and appallingly bad breath.) He talked about their meeting at university, the rocky road of their romance and the happy years of their marriage. He waxed lyrical about the dedication she had brought to her career as a primary teacher and the devotion her pupils gave her in return. Finally, by way of peroration, he talked of their children, Matthew and Alice, as the crowning joys of her life.
The children were sitting in the front row. I had caught a glimpse of them as they came in. They both looked like Alan, poor kids, all long nose and small chin; there was not a trace of Mary. Maybe that was no bad thing.
What else? We had two readings, one by a teacher colleague of Maryâs (something vaguely uplifting from Kahlil Gibran) and another by an old boyfriend whose face was faintly familiar (Elizabeth Barrett Browningâs âHow do I love thee? Let me count the ways â¦â). We sang, or mouthed, Blakeâs âJerusalemâ, on the tacit understanding that it had somehow been purged of its religious connotations. Then the curtains parted and the coffin slid away into the industrial processing of death.
At no point did Alan mention me. Nor did he meet my eyes. I had been erased from the story of Maryâs life. I was invisible.
There was an order of service, a little booklet with the verses of âJerusalemâ and the texts of the readings. On the front was a vignetted photograph of Mary, which I looked at while the coffin slid between the curtains to the accompaniment of Robbie Williamsâs âAngelsâ.
The picture must have been taken a year or so earlier. She was smiling at the camera. The light caught the angles of her face â the high cheekbones, the dark eyebrows, the full lower lip; my features as well. Her hair covered most of her forehead, so I couldnât see the scar. Something about the photo suggested that she had been one of a group â a birthday celebration, perhaps, or a reunion. She looked older than she was in my memory. Happier, too.
