votive candles and hung them at varying heights underneath the pergola.
It has become a house others describe as magical. Tiny lights twinkle from the dogwood tree in the front garden and the two apple trees in the back. It is a house that feels happy, feels like it is home to a happy family, and everyone who comes over immediately feels comfortable.
This has always felt like Gabby’s haven, a place where she is safe from the world. It is the quietest, most peaceful house she can imagine, a world away from the house in which she spent her childhood.
Gabby grew up in England. She moved to the States after university, at the age of twenty-one, initially coming just for the summer, to work as a counsellor at a girls’ camp in Maine. But life seemed so filled with possibility here that she never went home. First, she applied for a student visa, working as a nanny and studying in the evenings, then she met and married Elliott.
The London house in which she grew up was always filled with people. Her mother, once well-known as astage actress, had, in later years, retrained as a therapist. Never a woman who fully understood boundaries, Natasha de Roth (no one is sure where the ‘de’ came from – Gabby’s father went only by the surname of Roth) offered up their home as a sanctuary to waifs and strays, anyone who had nowhere else to go, including an assortment of rather scruffy dogs and unhappy cats.
Living in the large and once rather grand Roth/de Roth house at the top of Belsize Park Gardens always felt a bit like a game of Russian Roulette to Gabby – opening the front door after school you never knew what you were going to get.
There might be a woman standing shouting in the kitchen, being coached through a bipolar rage by her mother, who would smile cheerily and wave Gabby along as if this was perfectly normal and she should come back later.
Impromptu group-therapy sessions were normal round the kitchen table. Gabby would walk home, longing for a quiet hot chocolate and some digestive biscuits, only to find the larder empty, the biscuits having been eagerly consumed by the seven people currently weeping as they slumped on chairs pulled up to the old scrubbed pine table next to the Aga.
Gabby learned to stop at the newsagent’s in Belsize Village on her way home from school to buy some crisps, or cookies, then go straight up to her bedroom to avoid the mayhem.
She’d sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning back onher beanbag, plugged into her Sony Walkman and surrounded by posters of The Police, Madness, The Specials. She’d eat two or three Jaffa Cakes then put the rest away for another time.
It was peaceful in her large, sun-filled bedroom at the back of the house, with views over the tree tops. Occasionally she’d hear a door slam downstairs, or the bark of laughter, but mostly, when plugged in, she was able to lose herself in daydreams.
She dreamed, even then, of a peaceful life. She dreamed of a life when she wouldn’t be surrounded by drama and chaos, by a mother who needed so desperately to be needed herself that she couldn’t possibly be there for the one person who truly did need her: her daughter.
Her father, a quiet scholarly man, who made his living as an editor on one of the broadsheets, had little to do with either of them. His way of dealing with the chaos was to remove himself, if not entirely physically, then certainly emotionally. He worked late hours at the newspaper, and would, when home, drift through the house or spend hours sitting in a cracked leather wing chair by the bay window in the living room, methodically working his way through a large pile of newspapers on the floor next to him, cigarette always in hand, bottle of Scotch resting on the table.
Gabby adored him, even though she had little to do with him. He would always light up in delight when he saw her, and might, if in the mood, briefly engage her in a discussion about politics, or Ethiopia, or what herthoughts might be
It has become a house others describe as magical. Tiny lights twinkle from the dogwood tree in the front garden and the two apple trees in the back. It is a house that feels happy, feels like it is home to a happy family, and everyone who comes over immediately feels comfortable.
This has always felt like Gabby’s haven, a place where she is safe from the world. It is the quietest, most peaceful house she can imagine, a world away from the house in which she spent her childhood.
Gabby grew up in England. She moved to the States after university, at the age of twenty-one, initially coming just for the summer, to work as a counsellor at a girls’ camp in Maine. But life seemed so filled with possibility here that she never went home. First, she applied for a student visa, working as a nanny and studying in the evenings, then she met and married Elliott.
The London house in which she grew up was always filled with people. Her mother, once well-known as astage actress, had, in later years, retrained as a therapist. Never a woman who fully understood boundaries, Natasha de Roth (no one is sure where the ‘de’ came from – Gabby’s father went only by the surname of Roth) offered up their home as a sanctuary to waifs and strays, anyone who had nowhere else to go, including an assortment of rather scruffy dogs and unhappy cats.
Living in the large and once rather grand Roth/de Roth house at the top of Belsize Park Gardens always felt a bit like a game of Russian Roulette to Gabby – opening the front door after school you never knew what you were going to get.
There might be a woman standing shouting in the kitchen, being coached through a bipolar rage by her mother, who would smile cheerily and wave Gabby along as if this was perfectly normal and she should come back later.
Impromptu group-therapy sessions were normal round the kitchen table. Gabby would walk home, longing for a quiet hot chocolate and some digestive biscuits, only to find the larder empty, the biscuits having been eagerly consumed by the seven people currently weeping as they slumped on chairs pulled up to the old scrubbed pine table next to the Aga.
Gabby learned to stop at the newsagent’s in Belsize Village on her way home from school to buy some crisps, or cookies, then go straight up to her bedroom to avoid the mayhem.
She’d sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning back onher beanbag, plugged into her Sony Walkman and surrounded by posters of The Police, Madness, The Specials. She’d eat two or three Jaffa Cakes then put the rest away for another time.
It was peaceful in her large, sun-filled bedroom at the back of the house, with views over the tree tops. Occasionally she’d hear a door slam downstairs, or the bark of laughter, but mostly, when plugged in, she was able to lose herself in daydreams.
She dreamed, even then, of a peaceful life. She dreamed of a life when she wouldn’t be surrounded by drama and chaos, by a mother who needed so desperately to be needed herself that she couldn’t possibly be there for the one person who truly did need her: her daughter.
Her father, a quiet scholarly man, who made his living as an editor on one of the broadsheets, had little to do with either of them. His way of dealing with the chaos was to remove himself, if not entirely physically, then certainly emotionally. He worked late hours at the newspaper, and would, when home, drift through the house or spend hours sitting in a cracked leather wing chair by the bay window in the living room, methodically working his way through a large pile of newspapers on the floor next to him, cigarette always in hand, bottle of Scotch resting on the table.
Gabby adored him, even though she had little to do with him. He would always light up in delight when he saw her, and might, if in the mood, briefly engage her in a discussion about politics, or Ethiopia, or what herthoughts might be
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