The Other Half of Augusta Hope
This is a story for anyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong. ‘I really enjoyed this book … great observational comic gems within a fast moving story full of the reality of despair and hope in everyone’s lives’ MIRANDA HART ‘Keep the tissues close’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING ‘A beautifully written debut novel with unforgettable characters and an irresistible message of redemption and belonging’ RED magazine‘This gem of a novel entertains and moves in equal measure’ DAILY MAIL‘Heartening and hopeful’ JESS KIDD, author of Things in Jars‘Mesmerizingly beautiful’ SARAH HAYWOOD, author of The Cactus‘An extraordinary masterpiece’ ANSTEY HARRIS, author of The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton‘Gutsy, endearing and entertaining’ DEBORAH ORR‘Absolutely brilliant’ GAVIN EXTENCE, author of The Universe Versus Alex Woods_____________________________________________________________ Augusta Hope has never felt like she fits in. At six, she’s memorising the dictionary. At seven, she’s correcting her teachers. At eight, she spins the globe and picks her favourite country on the sound of its name: Burundi. And now that she's an adult, Augusta has no interest in the goings-on of the small town where she lives with her parents and her beloved twin sister, Julia. When an unspeakable tragedy upends everything in Augusta's life, she's propelled headfirst into the unknown. She's determined to find where she belongs – but what if her true home, and heart, are half a world away?_____________________________________________________________ AUGUSTA MAY NOT FEEL LIKE SHE FITS IN, BUT READERS HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH HER… ‘What a brilliant, brave, clever book’ Maddy P ‘A beautiful tale of family, of loss, of the awkward relationships we build with those we love the most…a must read!’ Amelia D ‘A powerful novel about fitting in, loss, & the people you really have connections with’ Siobhan D ‘The story made me laugh & cry in equal measure, and now it's finished I'm at a slight loss as what to read next’ Laura W
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The Borough Press
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London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Joanna Glen 2019
Jacket design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Joanna Glen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Excerpt from The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith, ed. by Will May reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpt from The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, ed. by Archie Burnett reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpt from Los Puentes Colgados, 1921, Fundación Federico García Lorca. Translation and transcription to music, 2007, reprinted by permission of Keith James.
Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders. If there are any inadvertent omissions we apologise to those concerned and will undertake to include suitable acknowledgements in all future editions.
A catalogue copy of 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 author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008314156
Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008314170
Version: 2019-05-02
For Mark, Charlie and Nina.
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them …
Ecclesiastes 3:4–5
Contents
My parents didn’t seem the sort of people who would end up killing someone. Everyone would say that – except the boy who died, who isn’t saying anything. He carried his story with him off the edges of the earth, like the others who died along the way.
This story, my story, belongs to them too.
My story starts, like all stories do, with a mother and a father, and here they are – Stanley and Jilly Hope.
Stanley, tall, and stooping to apologise for this, liked to wear a dark wool suit, which, when he sat down, would rise to reveal two white and entirely hairless shins. Jilly was well below his eyeline, squashy as marshmallow and keen on aprons. She had pale curly hair, cut to just above the shoulder, which she patted, to little effect.
My parents put down a deposit on the house in Willow Crescent, in Hedley Green, before there was a house there at all. The riskiest thing they ever did. Empty out their bank account for a pile of mud.
From then on, no more risks to be taken. Life best lived within the crescent, which was circular, and round and round they went with their lives, contented, with no desire for exit.
I, as soon as I was out of my mother’s womb, looked to be out of anywhere I was put in, striving, with some success, to exit the cot, the playpen or the pram.
My first exit (out of my mother) was fraught. I’d turned the wrong way up and wrapped the umbilical cord around my neck, whilst Julia slid serenely into the world shortly before midnight on 31 July. I didn’t appear until some minutes later, by which time it was August, and we were twins with different birthdays.
My sister, born in July, was named Julia; I, born in August, would be Augusta. A thematic and paired approach, as advised by the library of books on naming babies which my mother had stacked on her bedside table throughout the long months of our gestation. Our double exit was complete. Exit was a word I liked, ex meaning out in Latin, and x meaning anything at all in maths, and exit signs in green and white everywhere at school, but with limited opportunities to do so.
Stanley and Jilly Hope were much more inclined towards the in than the out, the staying than the going. They were the first to move into the crescent, and they wore this like a badge amongst the neighbours. We live at
