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Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The House of Whispers
  3. Title Page
  4. Note to Readers
  5. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  19. Twelve
  20. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  25. Sixteen
  26. Seventeen
  27. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  28. Eighteen
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  32. Twenty-One
  33. Twenty-Two
  34. Twenty-Three
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  37. Twenty-Five
  38. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  39. Twenty-Six
  40. Twenty-Seven
  41. Twenty-Eight
  42. Twenty-Nine
  43. Thirty
  44. Thirty-One
  45. Thirty-Two
  46. Thirty-Three
  47. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  48. Thirty-Four
  49. Thirty-Five
  50. Thirty-Six
  51. Thirty-Seven
  52. Thirty-Eight
  53. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  54. Thirty-Nine
  55. Forty
  56. Forty-One
  57. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  58. Forty-Two
  59. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  60. Forty-Three
  61. Forty-Four
  62. Forty-Five
  63. Forty-Six
  64. Forty-Seven
  65. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  66. Forty-Eight
  67. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  68. Forty-Nine
  69. Fifty
  70. Fifty-One
  71. Fifty-Two
  72. Fifty-Three
  73. Fifty-Four
  74. Fifty-Five
  75. Fifty-Six
  76. Fifty-Seven
  77. Fifty-Eight
  78. Fifty-Nine
  79. Sixty
  80. Priory Hospital North London: 20 December 2019
  81. Acknowledgements
  82. About the Publisher

She and Alex were already saving up for the honeymoon. They would travel to Goa with backpacks – yes, she even had a folder of those on Pinterest – and stay as long as they could afford; they were going to travel about, ‘see a bit of India’, then come back and get jobs. I didn’t like to ask her how that worked when you were a doctor. If there licensing requirements and so on. Anyway, after a few years, when they’d saved up enough money – she didn’t mention it, but I bet she had a spreadsheet – they were going to have two children, ideally girls. I envied her certainty on that bit. What if they couldn’t have kids? What if they had a boy? Triplets? But the point was there: Grace and Alex had planned out their perfect future. It was decided. Everyone knew.

Eleven

Rohan held my hand as we walked home from the Tube station after the dinner with Meena and Mili, carefully avoiding the shortcut through the graveyard of St Michael’s, as we always did. The sun had finally set but there was still an echo of light in the sky to the west and the warm air slid over my limbs, giving me the smothering sense that I was swimming underwater. The High Street lay on a high point of town and there was a spot opposite Mr Ho’s Chinese from which, if you looked to the right, you could snatch a view down towards the spreadeagled tangle of Central London. It was second nature to face that way as we walked – to take in that view – and, tonight, as we looked, a shard of lightning speared the distant sky, illuminating for a moment the spikes of the skyscrapers that reared like jagged teeth from the urban sprawl below. We both jumped at the flash.

‘Whoa. Finally!’ said Rohan. ‘We need this weather to break.’

I counted in my head, waiting for the crack of thunder, wondering if the drama of a thunderclap was the push I needed to confront Rohan about why he’d taken the number of the fertility specialist from his mum, but the silence dragged on, and we turned into Albert Road, where the trees now added not shade but an extra layer of darkness. The leaves rustled and my insides shrivelled at the thought of bats going about their business just above my head, their veiny wings and bulging eyes swooping over us, their stringy legs and long toes clinging to the branches. Sometimes I’d squint my eyes half closed as I walked in this part of town and try to picture how the road could have looked in Victorian times; sometimes I fancied I heard horses’ hooves echoing across the centuries.