The Family Upstairs(65)
Adrenaline courses through her.
‘Is it the baby?’ Marco asks in an urgent whisper, his eyes wide with terror.
‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘I don’t know who it is.’
Footsteps come up the landing and then there is someone breathing on the other side of the door. The dog goes quiet, his ears pinned back, his lips open over his teeth. Lucy moves away from the door and pulls it open a crack. Then the dog leaps out of her arms and forces his way through the crack of the door and there’s a man standing outside their room and the dog barks and snaps around his ankles and the man looks down at the dog with a small smile, offers him his hand to sniff. Fitz quiets and sniffs his hand and then lets him stroke the top of his head.
‘Hello, Lucy,’ says the man. ‘Nice dog.’
III
49
Libby lies stretched out on the hotel bed with its familiar strip of aubergine-coloured fabric draped across the foot. A Premier Inn hotel room is a happy place for Libby; she associates them with hen nights and city breaks and weddings in distant cities. A bed in a Premier Inn is familiar and comforting. She could stay here all day. But she has to meet Miller in the lobby at 9 a.m. She glances now at the time on her phone. Eight forty-eight. She pulls herself off the bed and has a very quick shower.
It had been a long journey from London the night before and she’d learned a lot about Miller in the five hours they’d spent together.
He’d been in a car accident when he was twenty-two and spent a year in a wheelchair and being rehabilitated. He’d been very thin and sporty when he was younger but never regained his former lithe physique. He has two older sisters and a gay dad and was brought up in Leamington Spa. He studied politics at university where he met his ex-wife, whose name was Matilda, or Mati for short. He showed Libby a photo of her on his phone. She was extraordinarily pretty with dark red hair and full lips and a blocky, hipster haircut that would look dreadful on 99 per cent of other people.
‘Why did you split up?’ she’d said. Then added, ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Oh, my fault,’ he’d said, putting a hand to his heart. ‘My fault entirely. I prioritised everything over her. My friends, my hobbies. But mainly my job. And mainly’ – he pauses to smile wryly – ‘the Guardian article.’ He’d shrugged. ‘Lesson learned though. I will never put my work before my personal life again.
‘And what about you?’ he’d asked. ‘Is there a Mr Libby somewhere in the picture?’
‘No,’ she’d replied. ‘No. That is an ongoing project.’
‘Ah, but you’re still young.’
‘Yes,’ she’d agreed, forgetting for once her usual sense of running out of time to achieve all her arbitrary goals. ‘I am.’
She redresses in yesterday’s clothes and gets to the lobby at two minutes past nine where Miller is already waiting for her. He has not changed or, it seems, showered. He looks dishevelled, every bit like a man who has not seen his own bed for forty-eight hours. But there is something pleasing to behold about his shagginess and his carewornness and she has to resist the temptation to arrange his hair for him, to straighten the neck of his T-shirt.
He has, of course, partaken of a hearty Premier Inn breakfast and is just downing the dregs of a coffee when she appears. Now he smiles at her, puts down his cup and together they leave the hotel.
Sally’s practice is on the high street of Penreath in a small stone building. The shopfront houses a spa called the Beach. Sally’s rooms are up a flight of stairs on the first floor. Miller rings the bell and a very young girl answers.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello,’ says Miller. ‘We’re looking for Sally Radlett.’
‘I’m afraid she’s with a client at the moment. Can I help?’
The girl is pale and naturally blonde and shares the same well-formed bone structure as Sally. For a moment Libby thinks that this must be Sally’s daughter. But that can’t be right. Sally must be at least sixty, probably older.
‘Erm, no, we really do need to speak to Sally,’ says Miller.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No,’ he says, ‘sadly not. It’s something of an emergency.’
The girl narrows her eyes slightly and then turns her gaze to a leather Chesterfield sofa and says, ‘Would you like to take a seat, while you’re waiting? She won’t be much longer.’
‘Thank you so much,’ says Miller and they sit side by side.
It’s a tiny room; they are close enough to the girl, who is back behind her desk, to hear her breathing.
A phone call breaks the awkward silence and Libby turns to Miller and whispers, ‘What if it’s not her?’
‘Then it’s not her,’ he says, shrugging.
Libby gazes at him for a split second. She realises that he doesn’t see life the way she sees it. He’s prepared to be wrong; he doesn’t always need to know what’s going to happen next. The thought of living life as Miller lives his life is strangely appealing to her.
A tall woman appears. She is wearing a grey short-sleeved dress and gold sandals. She says goodbye to a middle-aged man and then catches their eyes, giving them an uncertain look. She turns to the girl behind the desk and says, ‘Lola?’