The Family Upstairs(23)
‘What sort of something?’
‘Well, a someone. Someone moving. A cough.’
‘And you’re sure it wasn’t the neighbours?’
‘I suppose it could have been. But it really sounded like it was coming from the top of the house. And now I’m too scared to go back there. I feel like I should just put it on the market and get rid of it and move on. But …’
‘Your brother and sister …?’
‘My brother and sister. The truth. My story. It’s all bound up in that house and if I sell it, I may never find out what really happened.’
Dido stares for a moment at the newspaper article. Then she looks up at Libby.
‘Here,’ she says, tapping at the top of the newspaper article with her fingertip. ‘Him. The journalist.’ She squints at the byline. ‘Miller Roe. He’s your man. You need to get in touch with him. Just imagine how amazed he’ll be after all his months of investigative journalism to suddenly find you in his inbox. Serenity Lamb herself. Complete with actual rabbit’s foot.’
They both fall silent then for a moment and let their gazes drop to the rabbit’s foot where it sits on the garden table in a pool of soft dappled evening light.
Libby takes the article from Dido’s hand and finds the byline. ‘Miller Roe’. An unusual name. Easy enough to google. She pulls her phone from her bag and types it in. In under a minute she has his contact email address at the Guardian. She turns her phone to show it to Dido.
Dido nods sagely. ‘Good work,’ she says. Then she lifts her glass of Prosecco and holds it towards Libby. ‘To Serenity Lamb,’ she says, ‘and to Miller Roe. May one beget the truth about the other.’
16
Lucy is awake at five thirty the next morning. She slides carefully off the bed and the dog jumps down and follows her to the kitchenette, his claws clacking against the linoleum. Giuseppe has put teabags, granulated coffee and a plastic bag of chocolate brioche fingers on the counter. There is also a bottle of milk in the fridge. Lucy puts a pan of water on to boil and then sits for a while on the plastic chair in the corner staring at the curtained window. After a moment she stands and tugs open the curtain, then sits and stares at the building opposite, the dark windows reflecting the orange of the early dawn, the grey walls briefly turned pink. The sky overhead is detergent blue and filled with circling birds. The traffic has not started yet and the only noise is the steady rumble of the water coming to the boil, the whine of the gas flame beneath.
Lucy looks at her phone. Nothing. The dog is staring at her meaningfully. She opens the door to her apartment, quietly opens the back door on to the street and gestures to the dog to go outside. He passes her, lifts his leg against the outside of the building for half a minute, then runs back inside.
Indoors, Lucy pulls her rucksack towards her and unzips an inside pocket. In there is her passport. She flips it open. As she’d suspected, it expired three years earlier. The last time she’d used it was when Marco was two and she and Michael had taken him to New York to meet Michael’s parents. They’d split up shortly afterwards and Lucy hadn’t used it since.
Michael had originally got the passport for her. He’d been booking their honeymoon in the Maldives. ‘Give me your passport, honey,’ he’d said, ‘I need the details.’
‘I don’t have a passport,’ she’d said.
‘Well, you’re going to need to renew it, asap, or there’ll be no honeymoon.’
She’d sighed and looked up at him. ‘Look,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t have a passport. Full stop. I’ve never had a passport.’
He’d stopped then and gazed at her for a moment, the machinations of his mind visible in the space between his top and bottom lips. ‘But …’
‘I came to France as a passenger, in a car. When I was much younger. No one asked to see my passport.’
‘Whose car?’
‘I don’t know. Just a car.’
‘So, like, a stranger’s car?’
‘Not quite. No.’
‘But what was the plan? If they’d asked you for a passport, what would you have done?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So how have you been living? I mean …’
‘Well, like you found me,’ she’d replied tersely, ‘playing a fiddle for cents. Paying by the night for lodgings.’
‘Since you were a child?’
‘Since I was a child.’
She’d trusted him then, the tall, genial American with the winning smile. Back then he’d been her hero, the man who’d come to watch her play every single night for almost a month, who’d told her she was the most beautiful fiddler he’d ever seen, who’d brought her to his elegant rose-pink house and handed her soft towels to dry herself with after half an hour in a shower cubicle tiled with gold mosaic, who’d combed out the wet strands of her hair and made her shudder when his fingertips brushed against her bare shoulders, who’d handed her grimy clothes to his maid to be washed and pressed and returned to her in an origami fan upon the counterpane of her bed in the guest suite. Back then he’d been nothing but soft touches and awe and gentleness. Of course she’d trusted him.
So she’d told him everything, the whole story, and he’d looked at her with shining hazel eyes and said, ‘It’s OK, you’re safe now. You’re safe now.’ And then he’d got her a passport. She had no idea how or from whom. The information on it was not entirely accurate: it was not her correct name, nor was it her correct date of birth or her correct place of birth. But it was a good passport, a passport that had got her to the Maldives and back, that had got her to Barbados and back, to Italy and Spain and New York and back without anyone ever asking any questions.