The Family Upstairs(34)

She looks at Dido, who puffs out her cheeks and says, ‘Oh, come on.’

They head back into the house and back up to the attic rooms. And there it is, a small wooden trapdoor in the ceiling in the hallway. Miller puts Libby on his shoulders and she pushes at it.

‘What can you see?’

‘A dusty tunnel. And another door. Push me up higher.’

Miller grunts and gives her another boost. She clings on to a wooden slat and pulls herself up. The heat is intense up here, and she can feel her clothes sticking to her body with sweat. She crawls along the tunnel and pushes the next wooden trapdoor and is immediately hit by full, glorious sunshine. She’s on a flat roof, where there are some dead plants in pots and two plastic chairs.

She puts her hands on her hips and surveys the view from up here: in front is the sun-baked greenery of Embankment Gardens, beyond that the dark belt of the river. Behind her she can see the grid of narrow streets that stretches between here and the King’s Road; a beer garden filled with drinkers, a patchwork of back gardens and parked cars.

‘What can you see?’ she hears Dido bellow from below.

‘I can see everything,’ she says, ‘absolutely everything.’





25


Marco looks at Lucy through narrowed eyes. ‘Why can’t we come?’ he says. ‘I don’t understand.’

Lucy sighs, adjusts her eyeliner in the small hand mirror she’s using and says, ‘Just because, OK? He’s done me a huge favour and he’s asked me to come alone and so I’m going alone.’

‘But what if he hurts you?’

Lucy stops herself flinching. ‘He’s not going to hurt me, OK? We had a very twisted marriage but we’re not in that marriage any more. Things move on. People change.’

She can’t look at her son while she lies to him. He would see the fear in her eyes. He would know what she was about to do. And he would have no idea why she was about to do it because he had no idea about her childhood, about what she’d run away from twenty-four years ago.

‘You need a code,’ says Marco authoritatively. ‘I’ll call you and if you’re scared you just say, How’s Fitz? OK?’

She nods and smiles. ‘OK,’ she says. She pulls him to her and kisses him behind his ear. He lets her.

Stella and Marco stand in the kitchen and watch her leave a few minutes later.

‘You look pretty, Mama,’ says Stella.

Lucy’s stomach sinks. ‘Thank you, baby,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back at about four. And I will have passports and we can start planning our trip to London.’ She smiles broadly, showing all her teeth. Stella hugs her leg. Lucy detaches her after a moment and leaves the building without turning back.

Fitz’s shit is still there. It has twice as many bluebottles on it. She finds it strangely reassuring.

Michael opens the door; he has sunglasses on his head and is wearing loose shorts and a bright white T-shirt. He takes her bag of groceries from her, the tomatoes and bread and anchovies she picked up on the way over, and he swoops in to kiss her on both cheeks. Lucy can smell beer on his breath.

‘Don’t you look pretty?’ he says. ‘Wow. Come in, come in.’

She follows him into the kitchen. Two steaks sit on paper on the counter, a bottle of wine sits in a silver wine bucket. He’s listening to Ed Sheeran on the Sonos sound system and seems to be in very high spirits.

‘Let me get you a drink,’ he says. ‘What would you like? G & T? Bloody Mary? Wine? Beer?’

‘I’ll have a beer,’ she says, ‘thank you.’

He passes her a Peroni and she takes a sip. She should have had a big breakfast, she realises, feeling the first mouthful already heading straight to her head.

‘Cheers,’ he says, holding his bottle to hers.

‘Cheers,’ she echoes. There is a bowl of his favourite ridged crisps on the counter and she takes a large handful. She needs to be sober enough to stay in control but drunk enough to go through with what she came here to do.

‘So,’ she says, finding a chopping board in one of the drawers and a knife in another, taking the tomatoes out of the shopping bag. ‘How’s the writing going?’

‘God, do not ask,’ he says, rolling his eyes. ‘It has not been a productive week, let’s put it that way.’

‘I guess that’s how it goes, isn’t it? It’s a psychological thing.’

‘Hm,’ he says, passing her a serving dish. ‘On the one hand. On the other hand, all the best writers just get on with it. It’s like deciding not to go for a jog because it’s raining. It’s just an excuse. So, I must try harder.’ He smiles at her and for a moment he seems almost humble, almost real, and for a moment she thinks maybe today won’t pan out how she thought it would pan out, that maybe they will simply have lunch and talk and then he will give her the passports and let her go with nothing more than a hug on his doorstep.

‘Fair enough,’ she says, feeling Michael’s hyper-sharpened knife sliding through the soft tomatoes like they are butter. ‘I suppose it’s just a job, like any other. You have to show up and get it done.’

‘Exactly,’ he says, ‘exactly.’ He downs the second half of his beer and drops the empty bottle in the recycling bin. He pulls another from the fridge and then holds one out to Lucy. She shakes her head and shows him her bottle, still nearly full.