The Family Upstairs(28)

Michael rolls his eyes and says, ‘Joy loves dogs. She’d love having him around. And so would I.’

Of course, thinks Lucy, Michael has people to pick up dog shit.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’d rather take him with me. The children are attached to him, and so am I …’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he says. ‘I think dog passports are pushing the remit just a tad. But I’ll try.’

‘God,’ she says, eyes wide with feigned gratitude. ‘Thank you so much, Michael. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I literally just got the message about my friend last night and I couldn’t sleep all night for worrying about how I was going to get to her. Thank you.’

‘Well, I haven’t done it yet.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know you haven’t. But still, I’m so grateful.’

She sees his face turn from genial to creepy. ‘Really, really grateful?’

She forces a smile. She knows where this is going; she was prepared for it. ‘Really, really, really grateful,’ she says.

‘Ah.’ He leans back into his chair and smiles. ‘I like the sound of that.’

She returns his smile and runs her hand down her hair.

His eyes reach to the shuttered windows overhead, towards the master bedroom suite, location of multiple marital rapes. Then they return to her and she stifles a shudder. ‘Maybe next time,’ she says.

He cocks an eyebrow and slings one arm across the back of the chair to his right. ‘Are you incentivising me?’

‘Possibly,’ she says.

‘I like your style.’

She smiles. And then she sits straight and picks up the straps of her handbag. ‘But right now,’ she says, ‘I need to get back to my sleeping children.’

They both get to their feet. ‘When do you think …’ she says hesitantly.

‘I’ll get on the case right now,’ he says. ‘Let me have your number, and I’ll call you when I’ve got news.’

‘I don’t have a phone right now,’ she says.

He grimaces. ‘But you just said you got a message last night, about your friend?’

If sleeping on the beach for a week did anything for a person, it taught them to think on their feet. ‘Oh, that was on the landline, in the hostel. Someone left it for me. On a piece of paper.’

‘Right then, how will I get hold of you? Shall I call you at the hostel?’

‘No,’ she says coolly. ‘No. Give me your number. I’ll call you from the payphone. I’ll call on Friday?’

He scribbles down his number and hands it to her. ‘Yes, call me Friday. And here …’ He puts his hand into his pocket and pulls out a folded wad of notes. He pulls off a few twenties and passes them to her. ‘Get yourself a phone. For the love of God.’

She takes the twenties and says thank you. She has nothing left to lose now. She’s just signed her soul away for a passport.





20




CHELSEA, 1989


Months and months passed. Phineas turned thirteen and grew an Adam’s apple and a small blond moustache. I grew an inch and finally got my hair long enough to flop. My sister and Clemency became more and more insanely bonded, sharing a secret language and spending hours in a den made of bedsheets and upturned chairs in the empty bedroom on the attic floor. Birdie’s band released a terrible single which got to number 48 in the charts, she left the band in a huff, nobody in the music press appeared to notice or care and she began to teach fiddle professionally in the music room.

Meanwhile, Justin turned my father’s garden into a commercial enterprise, selling his herbal remedies through classified adverts in the backs of newspapers, Sally taught us all, for four hours every day, around the kitchen table and David ran three weekly classes for his alternative therapies in a church hall in World’s End and came home with pockets full of cash.

Phin had been absolutely correct in his prediction all those months earlier.

The Thomsens were going nowhere.

I can look back at those years in the house on Cheyne Walk with the Thomsens and see exactly the tipping points, the pivots upon which fate twisted and turned, upon which the storyline warped so hideously. I remember the dinner at the Chelsea Kitchen and seeing my father already losing a power struggle he was too weak to realise had begun. And I remember my mother holding herself back from David, refusing to shine for fear of him desiring her. I remember where it started, but I have no idea how we’d got from that night to the point nine months later when strangers had taken over every corner of our home and my parents had let them.

My father feigned an interest in the various goings-on. He’d potter around the garden with Justin, pretending to be fascinated by his rows of herbs and plants; he’d pour two fingers of whiskey into two big tumblers every night at 7 p.m. and sit with David at the kitchen table and have strained conversations about politics and world affairs, his eyes bulging slightly with the effort of sounding as if he had a clue what he was talking about. (All my father’s opinions were either black or white; things were either right or wrong, good or bad: there was no nuance to his world view. It was embarrassing.) He’d sit in on our classroom lessons in the kitchen sometimes and look terribly impressed by how clever we all were. I could not work out what had happened to my father. It was as though Henry Lamb had vacated the house but left his body behind.