The Family Upstairs(78)

‘The next morning I washed in the toilets and then I went straight to a shoe shop. I had a coat on; I’d tied my hair back. I was as inconspicuous as a child walking around in early April without shoes on could be. I had my bag full of money. I bought some shoes. I wandered around the city. Nobody looked at me. Nobody noticed me. I walked all the way to Paddington Station, just following street signs. Even though I’d been living in London for six years, I had no mental map of how it worked. But I managed to get there. And I bought a train ticket to Cornwall. Which was mad because I didn’t have a phone number for my mother. I didn’t have an address. I didn’t even know the name of her town. But I had memories, things she’d talked about when she came to visit us just after she moved here. The last time we’d seen her. She’d mentioned a restaurant on the beach where she would take us when we came to visit, that sold blue ice cream and slushies. She said there were a lot of surfers, that she watched them from the window of her flat. She mentioned an eccentric artist who lived next door whose garden was full of phallic sculptures made of colourful mosaic. She mentioned fish and chips on the corner of her street and missing the fast train to London and having to go through eighteen stations.

‘And so yes, I found my way to her. To Penreath, to her street, to her flat.’

Her eyes fill with tears at this memory and her fingers go back to the cigarette packet in front of her. She pulls out a fresh one; she lights it and inhales.

‘And she came to the door and she saw me there.’ Her voice cracks on every single word and she breathes in hard. ‘She saw me there and she just pulled me in, pulled me straight in and held me in her arms for, oh, for so long. And I could smell the stale booze on her and I knew she wasn’t perfect and I knew why she hadn’t come for us but I knew, I just knew that it was over. And that I was safe.

‘She took me in and she sat me on her sofa and her flat was, well, it was a mess, stuff everywhere. I wasn’t used to that by now; I was used to living with emptiness, with nothing.

‘She moved things from her sofa so I had somewhere to sit and she said, “Phin? Where is Phin?”

‘And then of course, I stopped. Because the truth was that I’d run away and I’d left him there, locked in his room. And if I explained why he was locked in his room then I’d have to explain everything else. And I looked at her and she was so damaged and I was so damaged and I should have told her everything. But I just couldn’t do it. So I told her that the adults had killed themselves in a pact. That Henry, Lucy and Phin were still at the house with you. That the police were coming. That it would all be OK. And I know it sounds ridiculous. But remember: remember where I’d been, what I’d been through. My allegiances were so skewed. We children had had no one but each other for years. Lucy and I were inseparable, as close as real sisters … well, up until she got pregnant.’

‘Lucy?’ says Libby. ‘Lucy got pregnant?’

‘Yes,’ says Clemency. ‘I thought … Did you not know?’

Libby’s heart starts to race. ‘Know what?’

‘That Lucy was …’

But Libby already knows what she’s about to say. Her hand goes to her throat and she says. ‘Lucy was what?’

‘Well, she was your mother.’

Libby stares hard at the photo of the mouth cancer on Clemency’s cigarette packet, takes in every vile, disgusting detail, to try to block out the wave of sickness coming towards her. Her mother is not a beautiful socialite with Priscilla Presley hair. Her mother is a teenage girl.

‘Who was my father?’ she says after a moment Clemency looks at her apologetically and says, ‘It was … my father.’

Libby nods. She’d been half expecting this.

‘How old was Lucy?’

Clemency’s chin drops into her chest. ‘She was fourteen. My father was in his forties.’

Libby blinks, slowly. ‘And was it …? Did he—?’

‘No,’ says Clemency. ‘No. Not according to Lucy. According to Lucy it was …’

‘Consensual?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she was so young. I mean, that’s still legally rape.’

‘Yes. But my father … he was very charismatic. He had a way, a way of making you feel special. Or a way of making you feel worthless. And it was always better to be one of the special ones. You know, I can see how it happened. I can see … But that’s not to say I didn’t hate it. I did hate it. I hated him for it. And I hated her.’

They fall silent for a moment. Libby lets the revelations of the last few minutes sink in. Her mother was a teenage girl. A teenage girl, now a middle-aged woman lost somewhere in the world. Her father was a dirty old man, a child abuser, an animal. And at this thought, Libby starts at the sound of a notification coming from her phone. It’s a WhatsApp message from a number she doesn’t recognise.

‘Sorry,’ she says to Clemency, picking up her phone. ‘Can I just?’

There’s a photo attached. The caption says, We’re waiting here for you! Come back!

Libby recognises the location of the photo. It’s the house in Cheyne Walk. And there, sitting on the floor, holding up her hands to the camera is a woman: slender, dark-haired, very tanned. She’s wearing a sleeveless vest and has some tattoos encircling her sinewy arms. To her left is a beautiful young boy, also tanned and dark-haired, and a gorgeous little girl with gold-tinged curls, olive skin and green, green eyes. On the floor by their feet is a little brown, black and white dog, panting in the heat.