The Family Upstairs(48)

Eventually David gave up trying to feed the spoon into his son’s mouth and hurled it across the room, the curry forming an ugly yellow crescent across the wall, the spoon making an angry metallic scream as it hit the floor.

‘Get to your room!’ David shouted. ‘Now!’ A vein throbbed on his temple. His neck was tensed and puce. I had never before seen a human being as engorged with rage as David at that moment.

‘With pleasure,’ hissed Phin.

David’s hand appeared; then, almost in slow motion, as Phin passed him it connected with the back of his head. Phin turned; his eyes met his father’s eyes, I saw true hatred pass between them.

Phin carried on walking. We heard his footsteps, sure and steady up the staircase. Someone cleared their throat. I saw Birdie and David exchange a look. Birdie’s look, pinched and disapproving, said, You’re losing control. Do something. David’s look, dark and furious, said, I intend to.

The moment the meal was over I went to Phin’s room.

He sat on his bed with his knees drawn tight to his chin. He glanced up at me. ‘What?’

‘Are you OK?’

‘What do you think?’

I edged a little closer into the room. I waited for him to ask me to leave but he didn’t.

‘Did it hurt?’ I asked. ‘When he hit you?’

My parents, strange as they both were, had never hit me. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing.

‘Not really.’

I edged closer again.

Then, suddenly, Phin looked up at me and it was there again. He was seeing me. Properly.

‘I can’t stay here,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve got to get out.’

My heart skipped a beat. Phin was the only thing that kept any sense of possibility alive.

‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know. To Mum’s.’

‘But—’

I was about to say that his mum was sleeping on a sofa in Brixton. But he interjected. ‘I don’t know, all right? I just have to get out of this place. I can’t be here any more.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

He looked at me through his ridiculous eyelashes. I tried to read his expression. I felt I saw a challenge there.

‘Do you … Should I … come with you?’

‘No! Fucking hell. No.’

I shrunk back into myself. No. Of course not.

‘What shall I say? When the adults ask?’

‘Nothing,’ he hissed. ‘Just nothing. Don’t say anything.’

I nodded, my eyes wide. I watched him throw things into a drawstring bag: pants and socks, a T-shirt, a book, a toothbrush. He turned and saw me looking at him.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Please.’

I left the room and walked slowly to the back staircase where I sat on the third step down and closed the top door to just a crack, through which I watched Phin disappear through the hatch into the attic space with his bag. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing or where he was going. For a moment I thought maybe he was planning to live on the roof. But although it was May, it was still cold: he couldn’t possibly. Then I heard scuffling noises outside and dashed into Phin’s bedroom, cupped my hands to the glass of his dormer window and watched the back garden. There he was: darting across the dark garden into the ink-black shadows of the trees. And then suddenly he was gone.

I turned to face his empty room. I picked up his pillow and held it to my face. I breathed him in.





35


It’s still dark when Lucy leaves the Blue House the next morning. The children are wall-eyed and silent. She holds her breath as she hands over the cash for the train tickets to Paris to a woman who looks like she knows all of Lucy’s deepest secrets. She holds it again as they board the train, and she holds it again when the inspector enters their carriage and asks to see their tickets. Every time the train slows down she holds her breath and scans the sidings for a flash of blue light, for the navy képi of a gendarme. At Paris she sits with the children and the dog in the quietest corner of the quietest café as they wait for their train to Cherbourg. And then it starts again: the stultifying fear at every stage, at every juncture. At lunchtime, as they board their next train, she imagines Joy at Michael’s house starting to wonder where he is, and the adrenaline pumps so hard and fast around her body that she feels she might die of it. She mentally pans around Michael’s house, looking for the thing she forgot, the huge red flag that will tell Joy to look in the cellar immediately. But no, she’s certain, absolutely certain, she left not a clue, not a trace. She has bought herself time. At least a day. Maybe even three or four days. And even then, would Joy tell the police anything about her, the nice woman called Lucy, the mother of Michael’s son, that would lead them to suspect her in any way? No, she would tell them about Michael’s shady underworld connections, the rough-looking men who sometimes came to the door to discuss ‘business’. She would lead them in an entirely different direction and when they eventually realised it was a dead end, Lucy would be nowhere to be found.

By the time the train pulls into Cherbourg that evening her heart rate has slowed and she finds enough appetite to eat the croissant she bought in Paris.

At the taxi rank they climb into the back of a battered Renault Scenic and she asks the driver to take them to Diélette. The dog sits on her lap and rests his chin on the half-open window. It is late. The children both fall asleep.