The Family Remains(15)

But then she shook the thoughts from her head. Nobody ever knew what had happened inside a marriage apart from the two people in it. It was no business of hers. She looked up at Michael and she allowed her face to soften and she said, ‘Fine. Fine. Dinner tonight. Yes. But you’d better be on your best behaviour.’

Michael put the palm of his hand to his chest and said, ‘I swear, I will now be on my best behaviour forever.’





14




June 2019


Stella skips to keep up with Lucy as they walk back to Henry’s apartment. ‘Why are we walking so fast?’

Lucy holds her key card to the panel outside the block and ushers Stella through the heavy chrome doors into the foyer. ‘I just need to make some calls, that’s all.’

‘Calls to who?’

‘To Clemency.’

Clemency is Phin’s younger sister and Lucy’s best friend.

‘Why is it so important? What’s happening?’

‘Nothing’s happening, baby. It’s fine.’

They exit the lift and enter Henry’s apartment, then Lucy gives Stella the bowl she’d made the butter icing in to lick and takes her phone into her bedroom.

‘Clem. It’s me. Listen. Something weird’s going on. Phin’s left the reserve and nobody knows where he’s gone.’

There’s a small, brittle silence and Lucy feels a jolt of understanding pass through her.

‘Oh my God. Clem! Was it you? Did you call him?’

‘Of course I called him! He is my brother, after all.’

‘But the trip was meant to be a surprise. We agreed that we weren’t going to say anything to him.’

‘No. You agreed. But I know Phin and he would have hated a surprise. Hated it with a passion. And the thought of Henry being there too …’

‘You told him Henry was coming?’

‘Of course. He had the right to know. I just – I’m sorry, Lucy, but I thought the whole thing was a terrible idea. I know Phin, and I can guarantee that he doesn’t want to be found by anyone, let alone Henry.’

‘Henry? Why do you say that?’ Lucy asks tentatively.

‘Oh, come on. You know why. The way Henry was with Phin, back then. The way he was obsessed with him. Then what happened. At the end.’

They fall silent, then. Their shared history is so big that it’s sometimes as if mere words cannot contain it and that it exists only in the pauses and the silences and the unfinished sentences. Twenty-six years is long enough for memories to grow cobwebby, abstract. Twenty-six years is long enough to doubt your recollection of things, to wonder if maybe things really did happen the way you think they happened. And in the house of horrors that Lucy, Henry, Clemency and Phin were brought up in, the truth was constantly warped and distorted through the filters of their parents, the people who were supposed to care for them and protect them and the people who instead allowed them to suffer abuse and depravity.

Was Phin in danger from Henry back then, Lucy wonders, and is he in danger now?

Lucy sighs. ‘So, do you know where Phin went?’

‘I have no idea. I didn’t even speak to him. He was out on the range when I called so I just left a message for him.’

‘Saying?’

‘The Lambs have tracked you down. They’re coming to see you.’

‘And you don’t have any inkling where he might have gone?’

‘None. No. I’ve given him my number, given him Mum’s number. Haven’t heard a word from him yet. And who knows if I ever will. He was always a loner, my brother. Never a pack animal. Maybe that’ll be it for another twenty-six years …’ She sighs, loudly. ‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d do a runner. I just wanted to warn him, that’s all. I just wanted him to be prepared. Not to disappear. Is Henry really fucked off?’

Lucy clears her throat, then says, ‘Henry’s gone.’

She hears Clem’s sharp intake of breath. ‘To where? To Africa?’

‘I guess.’

‘But what for? If he doesn’t know where Phin is?’

‘I have no idea. I mean, maybe he got a lead? A clue? But he’s on his way there now. He sent me a text just now. Him on a plane. And I tried to call him, tried to message him, but he’s blocked my number.’

‘He blocked you? Oh my God.’

‘Yes.’ She pauses. ‘What shall I do?’

‘I have no idea. Have you searched his apartment? For clues?’

‘No. No, not properly. But even if I did find out where he was, then what?’

‘Well, maybe you could … I don’t know, go?’

Lucy laughs hoarsely. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘With two kids, a dog and a fake passport.’

‘Yes. Maybe not. But I’ll keep calling the reserve. See if anyone knows anything more. And hopefully, maybe, Phin might call. You never know. Fuck, Luce, what a fucking mess. I’m so sorry. I really am.’

They end the call and Lucy goes back into the living room where Stella has blue butter icing all over her chin. She opens drawers and cupboards. She goes through the pockets of Henry’s clothes in his bedroom, the pockets of his coats in the hallway. She calls his office, and they tell her that he’s told them he’s not coming back for at least a week, but that they don’t know where he is. She asks Oscar in the foyer of the apartment building if he knows where Henry might have gone, and he says no. She goes on to an app that shows her which flights left London at 7.45 a.m. and turns it off when she discovers that at least twenty flights leave London every fifteen minutes. She tries to message him, but her message is bounced back. She thinks of her first sighting of Henry last year, the strange, smiling man waiting for her in the empty shell of their childhood home with his hair made blond, his face made pretty, leaving her to guess if he was Henry or Phin, and an image floods her consciousness, bright as a flash: Phin, somewhere in this world, opening a door to Henry, a pair of hands pushing him hard across the room, and a chill runs through the core of her.