The Family Upstairs(63)
‘Nothing. A couple of mentions of him during his brief phase as a percussionist on the two Original Version hit singles. But nothing else.’
Libby pauses to absorb this. How can it be possible for people to slip off the edge of existence like that? How can it be possible for no one to notice?
He turns the screen back to himself and types something in. ‘So,’ he says, ‘then I started looking into Phin. I got in touch with the Airbnb owner and said I was investigating a murder case and needed the name of the last person to rent his apartment. He was very forthcoming, clearly wanted in on the excitement. Justin Redding.’
Libby looks at him, startled. ‘What?’
‘Phin, or whoever that guy was, used the name of Birdie’s ex-boyfriend to check into an Airbnb.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Wow.’
‘Yeah, right?’ He types something else into his laptop. ‘And last, but by no means least, I give you Sally Radlett.’
He turns the screen towards her again. There is an older woman, silver hair cut into a helmet, horn-rimmed glasses, watery blue eyes, a suggestion of a smile, a light blue blouse unbuttoned to the third button, a pale collarbone, echoes of beauty in the angles of her face. Underneath her photograph are the words ‘Life Therapist and Coach. Penreath, Cornwall’.
‘Right town. Right age. Looks like the right career area generally – you know, life therapist. Kind of bullshit thing you’d end up doing, isn’t it? If you were in fact Sally Thomsen?’
He looks at her triumphantly. ‘What do you think?’ he says. ‘It’s her, isn’t it?’
She shrugs. ‘Well, yeah, I guess it could be.’
‘And there’s her address.’ He points at the screen and she can see the question in his eyes.
‘You think we should go?’
‘I think we should, yes.’
‘When?’
He raises an eyebrow, smiles and presses a number into his phone. He clears his throat and says, ‘Hello, is that Sally Radlett?’
She can hear a voice down the line saying yes.
Then, as suddenly as he’d made the call, Miller ends it. He looks at Libby and says, ‘Now?’
‘But—’ She’s about to start foraging for a reason why she cannot possibly go now, but remembers that she has no reason. ‘I need a shower,’ she manages.
He smiles, turns the laptop back to face him again and starts to type. ‘B and B?’ he says. ‘Or Premier Inn?’
‘Premier Inn.’
‘Excellent.’ With a few more clicks he’s booked them two rooms at a Premier Inn in Truro. ‘You can shower when we get there.’ He closes his screen and unplugs his laptop, slides it into a nylon case. ‘Ready?’
She gets to her feet feeling strangely excited at the prospect of spending the rest of the day with him.
‘Ready.’
47
I decided that the oncoming baby was the cause of all our ills. I saw my mother getting fatter, the rest of us getting thinner. And I saw David fluffing out his tail feathers, preening and strutting. Every pound my mother gained, every time the baby kicked or wriggled, David developed another layer of sickening self-belief. I tried to keep hold of what Phin had told me the day we went to Kensington Market, about David being thrown out of the last home he tried to infiltrate and take control of. I tried to imagine the humiliation for him of being caught red-handed stealing from his hosts. I tried to remind myself that the man who’d turned up homeless and penniless on our doorstep four years earlier, was the same man swaggering now about my house like a puffed-up turkey.
I could not bear the thought of that baby coming into existence. I knew that David would use it to cement his role as the god of our warped little universe. If the baby didn’t come, my mother could stop eating all the time, and we’d be able to bring germs into the house again. And, more importantly, there’d be absolutely no reason whatsoever for us to have anything more to do with David Thomsen. There’d be nothing to connect us, nothing to link us.
I knew what I had to do and it does not cast me in a good light. But I was a child. I was desperate. I was trying to save us all.
The drugs were surprisingly easy to administer. I made sure to cook for my mother as much as possible. I made her herbal teas and vegetable juices. I laced everything I gave her with the things listed in the chapter in Justin’s book entitled ‘Natural Termination of Unwanted Pregnancies’. Tons of parsley, cinnamon, mugwort, sesame seeds, chamomile and evening primrose oil.
As I passed her a glass of juice she would stroke my hand and say, ‘You are being such a good boy, Henry. I feel very blessed to have you taking care of me.’ And I would flush a little and not reply because in some ways I was taking care of her. I was making sure that she didn’t get shackled to David for evermore. But in other ways I was not taking care of her in the least.
And then one day, when she was about five months pregnant and the baby was proper and real and had begun kicking and wriggling and moving about, my mother came downstairs and I heard her talking to Birdie in the kitchen and she said, ‘The baby has not moved. Not today at all.’
The consternation grew over the course of the day and I felt a terrible dark sickness in the pit of my belly, because I knew what was coming.