The Family Upstairs(77)

We didn’t speak.

It felt strangely holy.

I kissed my mother’s cheek. She was very cold.

I kissed my father’s forehead.

And then I looked at David. There he lay, the man who, just as Phin had predicted months earlier, had broken my life. The man who’d destroyed us, beaten us, denied us food and freedom, taken our passports, impregnated my mother and my sister, tried to take our house. I had snuffed out his pathetic existence and I felt triumphant. But I also felt a terrible sense of disgust.

Look at you, I wanted to say, just look at you, what an absolute loser you turned out to be.

I wanted to stamp my foot into David’s face and grind it to a bloody pulp, but I resisted the urge and made my way back up to Birdie and David’s room.

We cleared out all the boxes. In one we found a stash of Birdie’s stupid drawstring bags that she’d made to take to Camden Market and we filled them with as much stuff as we could conceivably fit in them. We found nearly seven thousand pounds in cash and divided it four ways. We also found my mother’s jewellery and my father’s gold cufflinks and platinum collar bones and a whole box full of whiskey. We poured the whiskey down the sinks and put the empty bottles with the champagne bottle by the front door. We put the jewels in our bags. Then we broke the boxes down and left them in a pile.

Once the house was clear of anything that might cast doubt upon the idea of it being a cult, we quietly left the house, by the front door, and we made our way to the river. It was early morning by now. It must have been around 3 a.m. A few cars passed by, but no one slowed or seemed to notice us. We stood by the river, at the very spot where Phin and I had tussled all those years before, where I’d ended up under water seeing apparitions in the murk. I was calm enough to appreciate my first moments of freedom in two years. After tossing the empty bottles, the silk underwear, the bottles of perfume and evening gowns into the river, in bags weighted down with stones, we stood for a moment and I could hear us all breathing, the beauty and peace of the moment briefly overshadowing the horror of it all. The air coming off the steely black surface of the river was thick with diesel and life force. It smelled of all the things we’d missed since the moment David Thomsen had walked into our house, since the day he and his family had come to live upstairs.

‘Smell that,’ I said, turning to the girls. ‘Feel that. We did it. We really did it.’

Clemency was crying silently. She sniffed and wiped the tip of her nose against the heel of her hand. But I could tell that Lucy felt it too, the power of what we’d done.

If it wasn’t for you, Serenity, she would have been weaker. She would have been mourning for her mummy, sniffing into the heel of her hand like Clemency. But because she had you, she knew that there was more at stake here than our identities as beloved children of a mother and father. She had a brave, almost rebellious tilt to her chin. I felt proud of her.

‘We’re going to be OK,’ I said to her. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

She nodded and we stood for a minute or two until we saw the lights of a tug boat heading towards us and we dashed, fleet-footed, back across the road and towards the house.

And that was when it happened.

Clemency ran.

She was not wearing shoes. Only socks. She had large feet and the shoes belonging to my mother that Birdie had kept were far too small, David’s shoes far too big.

For a moment I watched her run. I let a beat or two of indecision and inaction pass, then I whispered loudly to Lucy: ‘Get back in the house, get back in the house.’ And I turned on my heel and I gave chase.

But I quickly realised that in doing so I was drawing attention to myself. A few souls wandered the streets: it was a Thursday night, young people were making their way home from night buses on the King’s Road. What explanation would I give for myself, in a black robe, chasing a young terrified girl, also in a black robe, with no shoes on her feet?

I stopped on the corner of Beaufort Street. My heart, which had not experienced the shock of running for a very long time, thumped under my ribs like a piston until I thought I was going to throw up. I collapsed in upon myself, heard my breath enter and leave my body like a strangled farm animal. I turned and headed slowly back to the house.

Lucy was waiting for me in the hallway. You sat on her lap, feeding from her breast. ‘Where is she?’ she said. ‘Where’s Clemency?’

‘Gone,’ I said. Still somewhat out of breath. ‘She’s gone …’





60


Libby stares at Clemency. ‘Where?’ she asks. ‘Where did you go?’

‘I went to the hospital. I followed the signs to the A & E department. I saw people looking at me. But you know, at that time of night, in an emergency department, no one really notices. It’s all just so mad, everyone drunk or off their heads. Everyone scared and preoccupied. I went to the desk and I said, “I think my brother’s dying. He needs medical help.”

‘The nurse looked at me. She said, “How old is your brother?”

‘I said, “He’s eighteen.”

‘She said, ‘And where are your parents?’ And I just sort of clammed up. I can’t really explain it. I tried to say some words, but they literally wouldn’t leave my mouth. I just had this image in my mind of my father, dead, laid out like a freakish holy man. And Birdie on the roof wrapped up like a mummy. I thought: How can I tell people to come to that house? What would they say? What would happen to the baby? What would happen to Henry? And I just turned then, and I walked away. I spent the night moving from chair to chair in the hospital. Every time someone gave me a strange look or seemed like they were about to say something to me, I’d move on.