The Family Upstairs(70)

‘You’re Henry,’ she says, ‘aren’t you?’





53




CHELSEA, 1992


I went to my mother after the announcement and said, ‘You let your daughter have sex with a man the same age as you. That is just sick.’

She merely responded, ‘It was nothing to do with me. All I know is that a baby is coming and that we should all be very happy.’

I had never and still to this day have never felt so entirely alone. I no longer had a mother nor a father. We had no visitors to the house. The doorbell never rang. The phone had been disconnected many months before. There was a time, in the days after my mother lost her baby, when someone came to our house and banged on the door, solidly, for half an hour every day for nearly a week. We were kept in our rooms while the person banged on the door. Afterwards my mother said it was her brother, my uncle Karl. I liked Uncle Karl, he was the type of boisterous young uncle who would throw children into swimming pools and tell off-colour jokes that would make all the adults tut. The last time we’d seen him was at his wedding in Hamburg when I was about ten years old. He’d worn a floral three-piece suit. The idea that he’d been at our door and that we had not let him in broke another small part of my heart. ‘Why, though?’ I asked my mother. ‘Why didn’t we let him in?’

‘Because he wouldn’t understand the way we choose to live. He is too frivolous and lives a life without meaning.’

I didn’t respond to that because there was no response to be made. He would not understand. No one would understand. At least she could see that much.

Vegetables were delivered in a cardboard box once a week; cash was left in a hidden envelope by the front door. Once or twice the vegetable delivery man would ring on the bell and my mum would open the letterbox and the vegetable delivery man would say, ‘No parsnips today, miss, replaced them with swedes, hope that’s OK?’ And my mother would smile and say, ‘That is fine, thank you so much,’ and after the bodies were found, this man would come to the police and tell them that he thought it was a closed convent and that my mother was a nun. He referred to this drop-off on his route as the ‘nunnery’. He said he’d had no idea there were children living in the house. He’d had no idea there was a man.

I was very lonely by now. I tried to rekindle my friendship (or what semblance there had ever been of a friendship) with Phin, but he was still so angry with me for betraying him the night he pushed me into the river. And yes, I know I should have been angry with him for pushing me into the river in the first place, but we’d taken drugs, and I was annoying, I could see that I was annoying, and in a way I’d deserved to be pushed into the river and my fury afterwards was more to do with hurt pride and feelings than any sense that he’d put me in mortal danger. And also, I was in love with him and when you’re in love, you’ll forgive almost anything. It’s a trait that I’ve carried with me into adult life, unfortunately. I always fall in love with people who hate me.

I came upon Clemency in the kitchen one afternoon shortly after the announcement of my sister’s pregnancy.

‘Did you know?’ I said.

She flushed a little as obviously we’d barely spoken over the years and now we were talking about her best friend having sex with her father.

She said, ‘No. I had no idea.’

‘But you’re so close. How could you not have known?’

She shrugged. ‘I just thought they were exercising.’

‘What do you think about it?’

‘I think it’s disgusting.’

I nodded, vehemently, as if to say we are on the same page, good.

‘Has your father ever done anything like this before?’

‘You mean …?’

‘The babies. Has he ever got people pregnant before?’

‘Oh,’ she said softly. ‘No. Only my mum.’

I told her to come to my room and she looked scared for a minute, which hurt my feelings, but then I thought it was good. It was good to be scary if I was going to overthrow David and get us all out of this house.

In my room I pulled my mattress away from the wall and pulled out the objects I’d found in David and Birdie’s room. I spread them across the floor and let her look at them. I told her where I’d found them.

‘But how did you get in there?’ she asked.

‘I can’t tell you,’ I said.

I saw confusion sluice through her as she looked at the objects. ‘Your pencil case?’

‘Yes. My pencil case. And there was so much other stuff.’ I told her about the silky underwear and the whiskey and the piles of cash. And as I told her I saw that I was breaking her. It was like the day I’d told Phin about seeing his dad kissing Birdie. I’d forgotten that I was talking to a child about her father, that there was a deep seam of shared genetic material, memories, connection there and that I was ripping it all apart with my words.

‘He’s been lying to us all along!’ she said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I thought we were doing all of this for the poor people! I don’t understand. I don’t understand!’

I looked her firmly in the eye. ‘It’s simple,’ I said. ‘Your father’s taken everything of value from my parents and now he wants their house. Legally this house is held in trust for me and my sister until we’re twenty-five. But look.’ I showed her the will I’d pulled out of the box. It had a codicil added in David’s handwriting. The house, he’d stated in cod legal language, was in the event of the deaths of my parents now to pass directly to David Sebastian Thomsen and his descendants. This codicil had been witnessed and countersigned by my mother and Birdie. It wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of making it through a court of law but its intent was clear.