The Family Upstairs(52)

We brushed some dead leaves from the plastic chairs and sat side by side.

Phin tipped the tab into the palm of his hand.

The sky was remarkable. Royal blue, burnt amber, lipstick pink. It doubled itself in the face of the river. In the distance, Battersea Bridge sparkled.

I saw Phin watch the sky too. It felt different from the last time we’d been up here. Phin felt different. More pensive, less rebellious.

‘What do you think you’ll end up doing?’ he asked me. ‘When you’re grown-up?’

‘Something to do with computers,’ I said. ‘Or film-making.’

‘Or both, maybe?’ he suggested.

‘Yes,’ I agreed happily. ‘Making films with computers.’

‘Cool,’ he said.

‘And what about you?’

‘I want to live in Africa,’ he said. ‘Be a safari guide.’

I laughed. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘We did a safari when we were travelling. I was six. We saw hippos having sex. That’s what I mainly remember. But I also just really remember the guide. This really cool English guy. He was called Jason.’

I noticed a hint of longing in his voice at this point. It made me feel closer to him in a way I couldn’t fully process.

‘I remember saying to my parents that that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up. My dad said I’d never make my fortune driving tourists round in a Land Rover. As if money was the only thing that matters …’

He sighed and glanced down into the palm of his hand. ‘So,’ he said, ‘shall we?’

‘Just a tiny bit,’ I said. ‘Like a really tiny bit.’

The next couple of hours unfolded like a beautiful dream. We watched the sky until all the different colours had consolidated to black. We talked remarkable nonsense about the meaning of existence. We giggled until we hiccupped.

At one point Phin said, ‘You’ll have to come, sometimes, when I move to Hammersmith. You’ll have to come and stay.’

‘Yes. Yes please.’

And then at some other point I said, ‘What would you do if I kissed you?’

And Phin laughed and laughed and laughed until he got a coughing fit. He was doubled over with mirth and I watched him with a blind smile, trying to fathom the meaning of his response.

‘No,’ I said, ‘really? What would you do?’

‘I’d push you off this roof,’ he said, still smiling. Then he spread his fingers apart and said, ‘Splat.’

I made myself laugh. Ha-ha. So funny.

Then he said, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘And go where?’

‘I’ll show you. Follow me.’

And I did follow him. Stupid, stupid boy that I was. I followed him back on to the attic landing and out of a window and then down the side of the house in some dreadful awe-inducing, nausea-inspiring act of daredevil insanity.

‘What are you doing?’ I kept asking, my fingernails dug into bare brick, my trouser legs breaking apart on juts of masonry. ‘Where are we going?’

‘It’s my secret route!’ he said, looking up at me with wild eyes. ‘Let’s go to the river! No one will know!’

By the time we landed flat-footed on the lawn I was bleeding from three different places, but I didn’t care. I followed him as he stepped through the shadows to a gate that I had no idea existed at the foot of our garden. Suddenly, Narnia-like, we were in someone else’s garden and then Phin grabbed my hand and hoiked me round two corners, through the magical gloom of Chelsea Embankment, across four lanes of traffic and on to the riverside. Here he let my hand drop. For a moment we stood, silently, side by side, and watched gold and silver worms wriggling across the surface of the water. I kept staring at Phin, who looked more beautiful than ever in the dark, moving light.

‘Stop staring at me,’ he said.

I stared at him harder.

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Stop staring.’

But I stared harder still.

And then he pushed me, with both his hands, pushed me hard and into the black water and then I was under and my ears filled with echoing bubbles, and my clothes became heavy and attached themselves to my skin and I tried to scream but swallowed instead and my hands felt for the river wall and my legs kicked against thick, gloopy nothing. And then my eyes opened and I saw faces: a constellation of blackened faces circling mine and I tried to talk to them, tried to ask them to help me but they all turned away and then I was coming up, a pain around my wrist, Phin’s face above, dragging me up the stone steps and on to the bank.

‘You bloody loony,’ he said and laughed, as though I was the one who had chosen to fall into the Thames, as though it was all just high jinks.

I shoved him. ‘You fucking bastard!’ I screamed, my not-yet-broken voice sounding shrill and unbearable. ‘You absolute fucking bastard!’

I stormed past him, across four lanes of traffic, causing someone to hoot their horn at me, and to the front door of the house.

Phin chased me and approached me at the front door, breathlessly.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

I should have stopped there and then, I really should. I should have taken a deep breath and evaluated the situation and made a different decision. But I was so engorged with rage, not born just of being pushed into the freezing, filthy Thames, but of years of Phin blowing hot and cold at me, of giving me titbits of attention when it was in his interests to do so and totally ignoring me when it wasn’t. And I looked at him, and he was dry and beautiful and I was wet and ugly, and I turned and very firmly pressed my fingertip into the doorbell.