The Family Upstairs(72)

A woman comes to the door of the smart bungalow. A well-behaved golden retriever stands at her side and wags his tail lazily at them. The woman is slightly overweight; she has a thick middle and long legs, a heavy-looking bosom. Her hair is very dark and cut into a bob and she wears gold hoop earrings, blue jeans and a pale pink sleeveless linen top.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh,’ says Miller. ‘Hello. Clemency?’

The woman nods.

‘My name is Miller Roe. This is Libby Jones. We’ve just been talking to your mum. In town. She mentioned you lived close by and …’

She looks at Libby and does a double take. ‘You look … I feel like I should know you.’

Libby bows her head and lets Miller do the honours.

‘This is Serenity,’ he says.

Clemency’s hands go to the doorframe and grip it, momentarily. Her head rolls back slightly and for a moment Libby thinks she is about to faint. But then she rallies, puts her hands out to Libby and says, ‘Of course! Of course! You’re twenty-five! Of course. I should have thought – I should have known. I should have guessed you’d come. Oh my goodness. Come in. Please. Come in.’

The bungalow is beautiful inside: hardwood floors and abstract paintings, vases full of flowers, sunlight shining through stained-glass windows.

The dog sits at Libby’s feet as Clemency gets them glasses of water and Libby strokes the crown of his head. He’s panting in the muggy air and his breath smells bad but she doesn’t mind.

Clemency returns and sits opposite them. ‘Wow,’ she says, staring at Libby. ‘Look at you! So pretty! So … real.’

Libby laughs nervously.

Clemency says, ‘You were just a baby when I left. I had no photos of you. No idea where you went or who adopted you or what sort of life you ended up having. And I could not picture you. I just could not. All I could see was a baby. A baby who looked like a doll. Not quite real. Never quite real. And oh …’ Her eyes fill with tears then and she says, in a cracked voice, ‘I am so, so sorry. Are you …? Have you been …? Has everything been OK for you?’

Libby nods. She thinks of her mother, with the man she calls her toyboy (although he’s only six years younger than her), stretched out on the tiny terrace of her one bed apartment in Dénia (no room for Libby to stay when she comes to visit) in a hot pink kaftan, explaining over Skype that she’d been too busy to book flights to come and see Libby for her birthday and that by the time she’d looked online all the cheap ones had gone. She thinks of the day they buried her father, her hand in her mother’s, looking up into the sky, wondering if he’d got there safely or not, worrying about how she was going to get to school now as her mother couldn’t drive.

‘It’s been fine,’ she says. ‘I was adopted by lovely people. I’ve been very lucky.

Clemency’s face brightens. ‘So, where do you live now?’

‘St Albans,’ she replies.

‘Oh! That’s nice. And – are you married? Any children?’

‘No. Just me. Single. Live alone. No kids. No pets. I sell designer kitchens for a living. I’m very … Well, there’s not really a lot to say about me. At least, there wasn’t until …’

‘Yes,’ says Clemency. ‘Yes. I should imagine it’s all been a bit of a shock to the system.’

‘Putting it mildly.’

‘And how much do you know?’ she asks circumspectly. ‘About the house. About all of it.’

‘Well,’ Libby begins, ‘it’s all a bit complicated. First of all there was what my parents had always told me, which was that my birth parents had been killed in a car crash when I was ten months old. Then there was what I read in Miller’s article, which was that my parents were members of a cult and there’d been some kind of suicide pact and I’d been looked after by gypsies. And then, well, two nights ago Miller and I were at the house, in Cheyne Walk, and this guy appeared. Quite late at night. He told us …’ She pauses. ‘He told us he was called Phin.’

Clemency’s eyes open wide and she gasps. ‘Phin?’ she says.

Libby nods uncertainly.

Clemency’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Are you sure?’ she says. ‘Are you sure it was Phin?’

‘Well, he told us that was his name. He said you were his sister. That he hadn’t seen you or your mother for years.’

She shakes her head. ‘But he was so ill when I left him in the house. So ill. And we looked everywhere for him, me and my mum. Everywhere. For years and years. We went to every hospital in London. Wandered round parks looking at rough sleepers. Kept waiting and waiting for him to suddenly appear on our doorstep. And he never did and eventually … well, we assumed that he must have died. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he come back? Why wouldn’t he come to find us? I mean, he would have, wouldn’t he?’ She pauses. ‘Are you absolutely sure it was Phin?’ she asks yet again. ‘Tell me what he looked like.’

Libby describes the horn-rimmed glasses, the blond hair, the long eyelashes, the full mouth.

Clemency nods.

And then Libby tells her about the luxury apartment, the Persian cats. She repeats the joke about the cat called Dick, and Clemency shakes her head.

‘No,’ she says. ‘This doesn’t sound like Phin at all. It really doesn’t.’ She pauses for a moment, her eyes roaming around the room as she thinks. ‘You know what I think?’ she says eventually. ‘I think it might be Henry.’