The Family Upstairs(73)

‘Henry?’

‘Yes. He was in love with Phin. Totally unrequited. Obsessive almost. He would just stare and stare at him. He dressed like him. Copied his hairstyles. He even tried to kill him once. Pushed him in the river. Held him under. Luckily Phin was stronger than Henry. Bigger. He managed to fight him off. Henry killed Birdie’s cat, you know?’

‘What?’

‘He poisoned her. Cut off her tail. Threw the rest of her body into the river. So the signs were there all along. It’s a terrible thing to say about a child, it really is, but in my opinion Henry had a streak of pure evil.’





55




CHELSEA, 1993


I did not kill Birdie’s cat. Of course I didn’t. But yes, she did die because of me.

I was working on something with the belladonna, another sleeping draught, something a little stronger than the draught I’d given David and Birdie to get into their room. Something to bring about a slightly less temporary stupefaction. I tested it on the cat figuring if it didn’t harm the cat then it was probably safe on humans. Sadly it did harm the cat. A lesson learned. I made the next draught much, much weaker.

As for the cat’s tail, well, it sounds harsh when put like that: cut off her tail. I took it. It was beautiful, so soft and full of remarkable colours. I had nothing then, remember, nothing soft, it had all been taken. She didn’t need it any more. So yes, I took the cat’s tail. And – fake news – I did not throw the cat in the Thames. How could I have? I wasn’t able to leave the house. The cat, in fact, remains to this day interred in my herb garden.

As for it being me who had pushed Phin into the Thames rather than the other way around: well, that is categorically not true. What might be true is that Phin pushed me in during a struggle that had ensued after I attempted to push him in. Yes. That might have been the case. He told me I was staring at him. I said, ‘I am staring at you because you are beautiful.’

He said, ‘You’re being weird. Why do you always have to be so weird?’

I said, ‘Don’t you know, Phin? Don’t you know that I love you?’

(Remember, please, before you judge me too harshly, that I had taken LSD. I was not of sound mind.)

‘Stop it,’ he said. He was embarrassed.

‘Please, Phin,’ I implored. ‘Please. I’ve loved you since the minute I saw you …’ And then I tried to kiss him. My lips brushed his and for a minute I thought he was going to kiss me back. I can still remember the shock of it, the softness of his lips, the tiny puff of breath that passed from his mouth into mine.

I put my hand to his cheek and then he broke away from me and looked at me with such undisguised disgust that it felt like a sword passing through my heart.

He pushed me and I nearly fell backwards. So I pushed him and he pushed me and I pushed him and he pushed me and in I went, and I know it wasn’t deliberate. Which is why it was so much worse that I’d allowed his father to think that he’d pushed me in on purpose, that I let him be locked in his room for all those days and never told anyone that it was an accident. He never told anyone it was an accident either, because to have done so would have been to tell them that I’d kissed him. And, well, clearly there was no worse confession to make than that.





56




CHELSEA, 1993


One summer’s night, towards the middle of June, I heard my sister begin to moo.

There was no other word for it.

She sounded entirely like a cow.

This went on for some time. She was in the spare bedroom, which had been readied for her. Clemency and I were ushered away from the door of the room and ordered to stay in our own rooms until we were told we could come back.

The mooing continued for many hours.

And then, at around ten minutes past midnight, there was the sound of a baby crying.

And yes. It was you.

Serenity Love Lamb. Daughter of Lucy Amanda Lamb (14) and David Sebastian Thomsen (41).

I didn’t get to see you until later that day and I must confess that I quite liked the look of you. You had a face like a baby seal. And you stared at me unblinkingly in a way that made me feel seen. I had not felt seen for a long time. I let you hold my finger in your little hand and it was strangely nice. I’d always thought I hated babies, but maybe I didn’t, after all.

And then, a few days later, you were taken away from my sister and moved to David and Birdie’s room. My sister was brought upstairs and put back in the room she shared with Clemency. At night I could hear you crying downstairs and I could hear my sister crying next door. She was brought downstairs during the day to pump breast milk into a medieval-looking contraption which was then poured into medieval-looking milk bottles and then told to go back to her room.

And so everything changed again: the lines between the thems and the usses shifted a few degrees and my sister was once more one of us and it was this final act of cruelty that brought us back together.





57


Lucy steps towards him.

Her brother.

Her big brother.

She can see it now.

She stares deep into his eyes and says, ‘Where’ve you been, Henry? Where’ve you been?’

‘Oh, you know, here and there.’

A wave of fury starts to engulf her. All these years she has been alone. All these years she has had no one. And here is Henry, tall and fresh-faced and handsome and glib.