The Family Upstairs(80)

Lucy and I had not decided what to do yet. Phin was thrashing about in his room, so I tied him to a radiator, to keep him safe. For his own good.

Lucy was appalled.

‘What are you doing?’ she cried.

‘He’s going to hurt himself,’ I said righteously. ‘It’s just until we decide what to do with him.’

She was holding you in her arms. You and she had not been apart for a moment since she’d taken you out of Birdie’s arms the night before.

‘We need to get him some help.’

‘Yes. We do. But we also need to remember that we’ve killed people and that we could go to prison.’

‘But it was an accident,’ she said. ‘None of us meant to kill anyone. The police would know that.’

‘No. They wouldn’t. We have no evidence of any abuse. Of anything that happened here. We only have our version of events.’

But then I stopped. I looked at Lucy and I looked at you and I thought: There it is. There’s the proof we need, if we did decide to ask for help, the evidence of the abuse is there. Right there.

I said, ‘Lucy. The baby. The baby is proof that you were abused. You’re fifteen. You were fourteen when the baby was born. They can do a DNA test. Prove that David was her father. You can say he raped you, over and over again, from when you were a young child. You can say that Birdie encouraged him. And then they stole your baby. I mean it’s virtually true anyway. And then I can say … I can say I found the grown-ups like that. I could leave a faked note, saying that they were so ashamed of what they’d done. Of how they’d treated us.’

I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that we could get out of this. We could get out of here and not go to jail and Phin could get better and Lucy could keep her baby and everyone would be nice to us.

And then Lucy said, ‘Henry. You know Serenity isn’t David’s, don’t you?’

My God, what a gullible idiot, I still didn’t see it. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, well, then whose could it possibly be?’

And then it fell into place. I laughed at first. And then I wanted to be sick. And then I said, ‘Really? You? And Phin? Really?’

Lucy nodded.

‘But how?’ I asked. ‘When? I don’t understand.’

She dropped her head and said, ‘In his room. Only twice. It was like, I don’t know, a comfort thing. I went to him because I was worried about him. Because he seemed so ill. And then we just found ourselves …’

‘Oh my God. You whore!’

She tried to placate me, but I pushed her away. I said, ‘Get away from me. You’re disgusting. You are sick and you are disgusting. You are a slut. A dirty, dirty slut.’

Yes, I laid it on with a trowel. I have rarely been as disgusted by another human being as I was by Lucy that day.

I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t think straight. Every time I tried to think about something, tried to decide what to do next, my mind would fill with images of Lucy and Phin: him on top of her, him kissing her, his hands, the hands that I had held that day on the roof, all over my sister’s body. I had never felt a rage like it, never felt such hatred and hurt and pain.

I wanted to kill someone. And this time I wanted to do it on purpose.

I went to Phin’s room. Lucy tried to stop me. I pushed her away from me.

‘Is it true?’ I screamed at him. ‘Is it true that you had sex with Lucy?’

He looked at me blankly.

‘Is it?’ I screamed again. ‘Tell me!’

‘I’m not telling you anything,’ he said, ‘until you untie me.’

He sounded exhausted. He sounded as if he was fading away.

I immediately felt my rage start to dissipate and went and sat down at the foot of his bed.

I dropped my head into my hands. When I looked up his eyes were closed.

There was a moment of silence.

‘Are you dying, Phin?’ I asked.

‘I don’t. Fucking. Know.’

‘We need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘You have to get it together. Seriously.’

‘I can’t.’

‘But you have to.’

‘Fucking just leave me here. I want to die.’

It did occur to me, I have to confess, that I could put a pillow over his face and push down, hold my face next to his to draw in his dying breath, whisper soothing words into his ear, overpower him, snuff his life force, take his power for myself. But, remember, apart from my mother’s unborn baby – and I have googled this extensively over the intervening years and really, it would be very hard to abort a healthy pregnancy using parsley – I never killed anyone deliberately. I am a dark person, Serenity, I know that. I don’t feel the way that other people feel. But I am capable of great compassion and great love.

And I loved Phin more than I have ever loved any other person since.

I untie his wrist from the radiator, and I lay down next to him.

I said, ‘Did you ever like me? Even for a minute?’

He said, ‘I always liked you. Why wouldn’t I like you?’

I paused to consider the question. ‘Because of me liking you? Too much?’

‘Annoying,’ he said, and there was a note of wry humour in his fading voice. ‘Very annoying.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can see that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting your dad think you’d pushed me in the Thames. I’m sorry for trying to kiss you. I’m sorry for being annoying.’