The Family Upstairs(42)

He was wet from the shower, his bottom half wrapped in a towel, his chest bare. I stared at his nipples. They were dark and leathery.

‘What are you two up to?’ he asked, his eyes switching forensically from Phin to me and back again. His voice was like a low rumble of thunder. He was tall and absolutely hard, like a statue. I felt my blood turn cold in his presence.

‘We’re taking pillows,’ said Phin. ‘To up.’

‘Up?’

‘Up,’ repeated Phin. ‘This is down.’

‘Down.’

‘Down,’ said Phin.

‘What the hell is wrong with you two?’ said David. ‘Look at me.’ He grabbed Phin’s jaw hard with his hand and stared into his eyes. ‘Are you high?’ he asked, turning his gaze to me. ‘God, both of you. What the hell have you taken? What is it? Hash? Acid? What?’

Soon we were being ordered downstairs and my parents were being summonsed, and Phin’s mum, and David was still in his towel and I still stared at his leathery nipples and felt my breakfast start to roil inside my gut. We were in the drawing room surrounded by staring oil portraits, looming dead animals nailed to the wall, four adults asking questions, questions, questions.

How? What? Where from? How did you pay for it? Did they know how old you are? You could have died. You’re too young. What the hell were you thinking?

And it was at that precise moment that Birdie walked into the room.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘Oh, go away,’ said Phin, ‘this is nothing to do with you.’

‘Don’t you dare talk to a grown-up like that,’ said David.

‘That’, said Phin, pointing at Birdie, ‘is not a grown-up.’

‘Phin!’

‘She is not a grown-up. She is not even a human. She is a pig. Look. Look at her pink skin, her tiny eyes. She is a pig.’

A gasp went around the room. I stared at Birdie and tried to picture her as a pig. But she looked more like a very old cat to me, one of those bony cats with patchy fur and rheumy eyes.

Then I looked at Phin and saw that he was staring at his father and I saw him open his mouth wide and laugh and then I heard him say, ‘So, that makes you a pig-kisser!’

He laughed uproariously.

‘She’s a pig and you are a kisser of pigs. Did you know that, when you kissed her, did you know she was a pig?’

‘Phin!’ Sally grimaced.

‘Henry saw Dad kissing Birdie. Last week. That’s why we took all Dad’s money and went out without asking. Because I was cross with Dad. But now I know why he kissed her. Because …’ Phin was now laughing so hard he could barely speak. ‘… he wanted to kiss a pig!’

I wanted to laugh too because Phin and I were the same person, but I couldn’t feel it any more, that intense connection had gone, and now all I could feel was cold, hard horror.

Sally ran from the room; Phin followed her, then David, still in his bath towel. I looked at Birdie awkwardly.

‘Sorry,’ I said, for some strange reason.

She just gawped at me, before leaving the room too.

Then it was just me and my mother and my father.

My father got to his feet. ‘Whose idea was it?’ he said. ‘The drugs?’

I shrugged. I could feel the trip passing from my being. I could feel myself drifting back to reality. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It was him, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I repeated.

He sighed. ‘There will be repercussions, young man,’ he said gruffly. ‘We will need to discuss them. But for now, let’s get you a glass of water and something to eat. Something stodgy. Some toast, Martina?’

My mother nodded, and I followed her sheepishly to the kitchen.

I could hear voices raised overhead: Sally’s glassy vowels, David’s boom, Birdie’s whining. I could hear footsteps, doors opening and closing. My mother and I exchanged a glance as she posted bread into the toaster for me.

‘Is that true?’ asked my mother. ‘What Phin said about David and Birdie?’

I nodded.

She cleared her throat but said nothing.

A moment later we heard the front door bang shut. I peered into the hallway and saw Justin, his hands filled with hessian bags, returning from his Saturday market stall. Soon enough his voice was added to the symphony of shouting coming from above.

My mother passed me the toast and I ate it silently. I remembered the strange dread I’d felt seeing Birdie and David kissing the week before, the sense of something putrid being unleashed into the world, as though they were keys and they’d unlocked each other. And then I thought of the feeling of Phin’s hand in my hand on the roof, and thought that we were also keys unlocking each other, but letting out something remarkable and good.

‘What’s going to happen?’ I asked.

‘I have no idea,’ said my mother. ‘But it’s not good. It’s not good at all.’





30


Michael is in the cellar and Lucy has cleaned for over an hour. She collects a bin bag from the front door; it’s filled with blood-sodden paper towels, a pair of Joy’s latex gloves and every last trace of their meal: empty wine bottles, beer bottles, napkins, uneaten panzanella. She has dressed the cuts on her back with plasters from Michael’s en suite and in her bag are three thousand euros taken from a drawer in his bedside cabinet.