The Family Upstairs(56)

‘Just getting some water,’ I said, though nobody really cared. I pretended to leave but skulked quietly just inside the pantry door.

Sally was crying, silently, a handkerchief pressed to her face. I heard her say, ‘Please keep them safe. Please keep them safe for me. I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to …’ The rest of her words were swallowed up by a river boat honking its horn beyond the front door. ‘I’m so worried. Phin told me about being locked in his room and I can see, yes, that he did a bad thing. I mean God, I know, Henry could have died. But it’s just so … cold? Isn’t it? To lock a child away like that? He’s such a cold man …’

‘You know what David is like,’ replied my mother. ‘It’s his way of keeping everything together. He saved us, Sally. He really did. Before he came, I could not see the point of living each day. But now I wake up each morning and I feel happy about my existence. About myself. I am not taking from the planet. I am not plundering the earth. I am not contributing to global warming. My children are not going to end up sitting behind glass-topped desks taking money from the poor. I just wish’, she said, ‘that David had come into our lives many years before.’





41


Libby bangs her fists against the door. Miller bangs his too. The door is a solid fire door. He goes to the window to see if there are any means of escape there, but it is sealed shut and leads only to a sheer ten-floor drop.

They search the room once again for their phones but fail to unearth them.

After half an hour they stop banging and sit defeated on the floor with their backs against the foot of the bed.

‘Now what?’ says Libby.

‘Let’s give it half an hour and then I’ll try and kick it down.’

‘Why don’t you try and kick it down now?

‘I’m not as strong as I look, you know. I’ve got an old back injury. I have to be careful.’

‘Ten minutes then,’ she says.

‘OK, ten minutes.’

‘What the hell do you think he’s playing at?’ she asks.

‘I have literally no clue.’

‘Do you think he’s going to kill us?’

‘Oh, I doubt it.’

‘Then why has he locked us in here?’

‘By accident, maybe?’

Libby glances at him disbelievingly. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ The alarm clock says that it is now 7.37 a.m. She’s still trying to calculate how late she’s going to be for work when they both sit up straight at the sound of a door banging. Then they hear a voice. It’s Phin’s voice and he’s addressing one of the cats. They hear kissy-kissy sounds. They jump to their feet and start to pound on the bedroom door again.

A moment later the door opens and Phin is peering at them.

‘Oh God,’ he says, his hand clamped over his mouth. ‘Oh God. I am so sorry. I have this terrible sleepwalking habit. I’ve walked in on house guests before – actually tried to get into bed with them once. So I locked you in before I went to bed. And then I woke up this morning stupidly early and decided to go for a run. Completely forgot about you two. I am so incredibly sorry. Come on now. Come. Let’s have breakfast.’

‘I can’t have breakfast. I’m late for work.’

‘Oh, just call them up, tell them what happened. I’m sure they’ll understand. Come on. I got fresh orange juice and everything. It’s a beautiful day again. We can eat on the terrace. Please.’

He was doing the thing again, the wheedling thing he’d done the night before. Libby felt trapped.

‘Why didn’t you tell us’, she said, ‘last night? Why didn’t you tell us you were going to lock the door? Or tell us to lock it from the inside?’

‘It was very late,’ he replied, ‘and I was very drunk, and very stupid.’

‘You really freaked us out, you know. I was really scared.’ Libby feels her voice cracking on her words, the tension of the last moments starting to fade.

‘Please forgive me,’ he says. ‘I’m an idiot. I wasn’t thinking. You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you. I just locked it. Mindlessly. Come on. Come and have something to eat.

She and Miller exchange a glance. She can tell he wants to stay. She nods. ‘OK, then, but just a quick one. And Phin?’

He looks at her sweetly.

‘Where are our phones?’

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Are they not in your room?’

‘No,’ she replies. ‘Neither of them.’

‘Well, you must have left them out last night. Let’s find them.’

They follow him down the hallway and back into the open-plan living room. ‘Oh,’ he says lightly. ‘Here they are. You left them charging in the kitchen. We must all have been very, very drunk last night to have been that organised. Go,’ he says, ‘go and sit on the terrace. I’ll bring breakfast out to you.’

They sit side by side on the sofa. The sun is shining on the other side of the riverbank now, picking out the windows of the houses on Cheyne Walk.

She feels Miller move closer to her. ‘It doesn’t wash,’ he hisses in her ear. ‘I don’t buy the “I was drunk so I locked you in your bedroom without telling you” story. And I don’t buy the mobile phone thing either. I was drunk last night, but I remember my phone being in my hand when we went to bed. I smell a rat.’