The Family Upstairs(46)
We were no longer, it seemed, free.
33
It doesn’t get dark until nearly ten. Libby and Miller talk to each other across the garden table in the encroaching darkness, not noticing that it has come until they can no longer see the whites of each other’s eyes. Then they light candles which jump and dance in the breeze. They’d spent the last hour of daylight searching the house and this is what they talk about: the things they have found.
Apart from the words ‘I AM PHIN’ scrawled on the inside of the table drawer, they found the same words scrawled on the underside of the bath on the attic floor, on the skirting around one of the bedroom doors and inside a fitted wardrobe in one of the bedrooms on the first floor. They found a handful of musical strings in one of the smaller reception rooms downstairs and a music stand crammed into a corner cupboard. They found a pile of clean terry nappies, safety pins, nappy cream and Babygros in the wardrobe in the room where Libby had been found in her cot. They found a pile of books in a trunk in the back hallway, mouldy and grey, books about the healing properties of herbs and plants, books about medieval witchcraft, books of spells. The books were wrapped in an old blanket and covered over with upholstered cushions that must have once adorned a set of garden furniture.
They found a thin gold band ring wedged between the wooden floor and the skirting board. It had a hallmark which Miller photographed with his camera and then zoomed in on to. When they googled it they discovered that it was hallmarked in 1975, the year of Henry and Martina’s wedding. A tiny thing, lost to the world, saved from the eyes of looters and detectives in its dark hiding place for twenty-five years or more.
Libby wears the ring now, on the ring finger of her left hand. Her mother’s ring. It fits her perfectly. She twirls it as they talk.
They pause every couple of minutes, listening for the sound of footsteps in the undergrowth. Miller goes to the back of the garden now and then, looking for shadows, for signs of someone entering through the gate in the back wall. They bring out the upholstered cushions they’d found in the trunk and they blow out the candles and sit on the corner of the lawn furthest from the back door. They are talking in whispers when Miller suddenly stares at her with wide eyes and his finger to his lips. ‘Shh.’ Then his eyes swivel towards the back of the garden. There is something there. She sits up straight. There, at the back of the garden. And as they watch they see a man stalk across the lawn, a tall, slim man, with short hair, glasses reflecting the moonlight, white trainers, a shoulder bag. They watch him sling his shoulder bag on to the top of the bunker and then follow suit. They hear him shimmy up the drainpipe to the promontory on the first floor. Then they both move very quietly and watch him as he disappears up on to the roof.
Libby’s heart hammers. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispers, ‘oh my God. What do we do?’
‘I haven’t got a fucking clue,’ Miller whispers back.
‘Shall we confront him?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think?’
She shakes her head. She’s half terrified and half desperate to see this man face to face.
She looks at Miller. He will keep her safe. Or he will at least give the impression of being able to keep her safe. The man they saw was smaller than him and wearing glasses. She nods now and says, ‘Yes, let’s go in. Let’s talk to him.’
Miller looks vaguely petrified but quickly rallies and says, ‘Yes. Right.’
The house is dark, lit only by the blur of streetlights from outside and the silver shimmer of the moon on the river. Libby follows Miller, reassured by the solid width of him. They stop at the foot of the staircase. Then they take each step slowly and surely, until they are on the first-floor landing. Here it is lighter, the moon visible through the large window overlooking the street. They both glance upwards and then at each other.
‘OK?’ whispers Miller.
‘OK,’ replies Libby.
The hatch in the ceiling of the attic floor is open and the bathroom door is shut. They can hear the sound of pee hitting a toilet bowl, the stop-start of it as it comes to an end, the tap running, a throat being cleared. Then the door is open and a man walks out and he is cute. That is Libby’s first thought. A cute guy, with neatly cut fair hair, a youthful, clean-shaven face, toned arms, a grey T-shirt, narrow black jeans, trendy glasses, nice trainers.
He jumps a foot in the air and clutches his chest when he sees them standing there. ‘Oh my fucking God,’ he says.
Libby jumps too. And so does Miller.
They all stare at each other for a moment.
‘Are you …?’ asks the man eventually, at the precise moment that Libby says, ‘Are you …?’
They point at each other and then both turn to look at Miller as though he might have an answer for them. Then the man turns back to Libby and says, ‘Are you Serenity?’
Libby nods. ‘Are you Henry?’
The man looks at them blankly for a moment but then his face clears and he says, ‘No, I’m not Henry. I’m Phin.’
II
34
CHELSEA, 1990
My mother, being German, knew how to do a good Christmas. It was her speciality. The house was festooned from the beginning of December with homemade decorations made of candied oranges and red gingham and painted pine cones and filled with the aroma of gingerbread, stollen and mulled wine. No tacky tinsel or paper garlands for her, no tin of Quality Street or Cadbury’s selection boxes.