by Lisa Jewell
‘So, like, a stranger’s car?’
‘Not quite. No.’
‘But what was the plan? If they’d asked you for a passport, what would you have done?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So how have you been living? I mean …’
‘Well, like you found me,’ she’d replied tersely, ‘playing a fiddle for cents. Paying by the night for lodgings.’
‘Since you were a child?’
‘Since I was a child.’
She’d trusted him then, the tall, genial American with the winning smile. Back then he’d been her hero, the man who’d come to watch her play every single night for almost a month, who’d told her she was the most beautiful fiddler he’d ever seen, who’d brought her to his elegant rose-pink house and handed her soft towels to dry herself with after half an hour in a shower cubicle tiled with gold mosaic, who’d combed out the wet strands of her hair and made her shudder when his fingertips brushed against her bare shoulders, who’d handed her grimy clothes to his maid to be washed and pressed and returned to her in an origami fan upon the counterpane of her bed in the guest suite. Back then he’d been nothing but soft touches and awe and gentleness. Of course she’d trusted him.
So she’d told him everything, the whole story, and he’d looked at her with shining hazel eyes and said, ‘It’s OK, you’re safe now. You’re safe now.’ And then he’d got her a passport. She had no idea how or from whom. The information on it was not entirely accurate: it was not her correct name, nor was it her correct date of birth or her correct place of birth. But it was a good passport, a passport that had got her to the Maldives and back, that had got her to Barbados and back, to Italy and Spain and New York and back without anyone ever asking any questions.
And now it has expired and she has no means of getting another one and no means of getting back to England. Not to mention the fact that there are no passports for the children nor a pet passport for the dog.
She closes her passport and sighs. There are two ways around this obstacle and one of them is dangerous and illegal and the other is just plain dangerous. Her only other alternative is not to go at all.
At this thought her mind fills with images of leaving England twenty-four years ago. She replays those last moments as she’s replayed them a thousand times: the sound of the door clicking behind her for the very last time, whispering, I’ll be back soon, I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, under her breath a dozen times as she ran down Cheyne Walk in the dark of the middle of the night, her heart pounding, her breath catching, her nightmare both ending, and beginning.
17
CHELSEA, 1988
It was almost two weeks before Phineas Thomsen deigned to talk to me. Or maybe it was the other way round, who knows. I’m sure he’d have his own take on it. But in my recollection (and this is of course entirely my recollection) it was him.
I was, as ever, hanging around the kitchen with my mother, eavesdropping on her conversation with the women who now seemed to live in our house. I’d subliminally determined at this point that the only way to really know what was going on in the world was to listen to women talk. Anyone who ignores the chatter of women is poorer by any measure.
By now Birdie and Justin had been living with us for almost five months, the Thomsens for nearly two weeks. The conversation in the kitchen on this particular day was one that operated on a kind of forty-eight-hour rotating cycle: the vexing matter of where Sally and David were going to live. At this point I was still clinging pathetically to the fallacy that Sally and David were only staying for a short while. Every few days a possibility would appear on the horizon and be talked about at length and the feeling that Sally and David were about to move on would hang briefly, tantalisingly in the air until, pop, the ‘possibility’ would be found to have an inherent flaw and they’d be back to the drawing board. Right now the ‘possibility’ was a houseboat in Chiswick. It belonged to a patient of David’s who was going backpacking for a year and needed someone to look after her bearded dragons.
‘Only one bedroom, though,’ Sally was saying to my mother and Birdie. ‘And a tiny bedroom at that. Obviously David and I could sleep on the berths in the living room, but it’s a bit cramped because of the vivariums.’
‘Gosh,’ said Birdie, picking, picking at the dry skin around her nails, the flakes landing on the cat’s back. ‘How many are there?’
‘Vivariums?’
‘Whatever. Yes.’
‘No idea. Six or so. We might have to find a way to pile them up.’
‘But what about the children?’ my mother asked. ‘Will they want to share? Especially a double bed. I mean, Phin’s going to be a teenager …’
‘Oh God, it would only be short term. Just until we find somewhere permanent.’
I glanced up. This was the point where the plan usually fell apart. The moment it became clear that it was in fact a stupid plan, Sally would say, stoically, ‘Oh, well, it’s not permanent,’ and my mother would say, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous, we have so much space here. Don’t feel you have to rush into anything.’ And Sally’s body language would soften and she’d smile and touch my mother’s arm and say, ‘I don’t want to stretch your hospitality.’ And my beautiful mother would say, in her beautiful German accent, ‘Nonsense, Sally. Nonsense. Just you take your time. Something will come up. Something perfect.’
And so it came to pass, that afternoon in late September. The houseboat plan was mooted and dispatched within a cool, possibly record-breaking, eight minutes.
I was torn, it must be said, by the presence of the Thomsens. On the one hand they were cluttering up my house. Not with objects, per se, but just with themselves, their human forms, their sounds, their smells, their otherness. My sister and Clemency had come together like an unholy union of loud and louder. They careered about the house from morning to bedtime ensconced in strange games of make-believe that all seemed to involve making as much noise as possible. Not only that, but Birdie was teaching them both to play the fiddle, which was utterly excruciating.
Then, of course, there was David Thomsen, whose charismatic presence seemed to permeate every stratum of our house. As well as his bedroom upstairs he had also somehow commandeered our front room, which housed my father’s bar, as a sort of exercise room where I had once observed him through a crack in the door attempting to raise his entire body from the floor using just his fingertips.
And at the other end of everything was Phin. Phin who refused even to look at me, let alone talk to me; Phin who acted as though I was not even there. And the more he acted as though I was not there, the more I felt like I might die of him refusing to see me.
And then, finally, that day, it happened. I’d left the kitchen after it had been established that Sally and David would be staying and had almost bumped into Phin coming the other way. He wore a faded sweatshirt with lettering on it and jeans with tears in the knees. He stopped when he saw me and for the first time his eyes met mine. I caught my breath. I searched my tangled thoughts for something to say, but found nothing there. I moved to the left; he moved to his right. I said sorry and moved to my right. I thought he’d pass silently onwards, but then he said, ‘You know we’re here to stay, don’t you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Just ignore anything my parents say about moving out. We’re not going anywhere. You know,’ he continued, ‘we ended up in that house in Brittany for two years. We were only supposed to be there for a holiday.’ He paused and cocked an eyebrow.
I was clearly supposed to be responding in some way, but I was stupefied. I had never stood so close to someone so beautiful before. His breath smelled of spearmint.
He stared at me and I saw disappointment flicker across his face, or not even disappointment but resignation, as though I was simply confirming what he’d already suspected of me, that I was boring and pointless, not worth his attention.
‘Why don’t you have your own house?’ I asked finally.
&nb
sp; He shrugged. ‘Because my dad’s too tight to pay rent.’
‘Have you never had your own house?’
‘Yes. Once. He sold it so we could go travelling.’
‘But what about school?’
‘What about school?’
‘When do you go to school?’
‘Haven’t been to school since I was six. Mum teaches me.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘But what about friends?’
He looked at me askance.
‘Don’t you miss having friends?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘Not even slightly.’
He looked as though he was about to leave. I did not want him to leave. I wanted to smell his spearmint breath and find out more about him. My eyes dropped to the book in his hand. ‘What are you reading?’ I asked.
He glanced down and turned the book upwards. It was The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, a novel I had not heard of at the time, but which I have since read roughly thirty times. ‘Is it good?’
‘All books are good,’ he said.
‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I’ve read some really bad books.’ I was thinking specifically of Anne of Green Gables, which we’d been forced to read the term before and which was the most stupid, annoying book I’d ever encountered.
‘They weren’t bad books,’ Phin countered patiently. ‘They were books that you didn’t enjoy. It’s not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a “good book” for someone.’
I nodded. I couldn’t fault his logic.
‘I’ve nearly finished it,’ he said, glancing down at the book in his hand. ‘You can borrow it after me, if you want?’
I nodded again. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
And then he left. But I stood where I was, my head pulsating, my palms damp, my heart filled with something extraordinary and new.
18
Miller Roe stands as Libby approaches him. She recognises him from his photo on the internet, although he has grown a beard since he had his byline photo taken, and also gained some weight. He is halfway through a very messy sandwich and has a speck of yellow sauce in his beard. He wipes his fingers on a napkin before he takes Libby’s hand to shake and says, ‘Libby, wow, so good to meet you. So good to meet you!’ He has a London accent and dark blue eyes. His hand around hers is huge. ‘Here, sit down. What can I get you? The sandwiches are amazing.’
She glances down at his car crash sandwich and says, ‘I only just had breakfast.’
‘Coffee, tea?’
‘A cappuccino would be nice. Thank you.’
She watches him at the counter of the trendy café on West End Lane where he’d suggested they meet as a midway point between St Albans and South Norwood. He’s wearing low-slung jeans and a faded T-shirt, a green cotton jacket and walking boots. He has a big belly and a large head of thick dark brown hair. He’s slightly overwhelming to look at, ursine but not unappealing.
He brings back her cappuccino and places it in front of her. ‘So grateful to you for coming to meet me. I hope your journey was OK?’ He pushes his sandwich to one side as though he has no intention of eating any more.
‘No problem,’ she says, ‘fifteen minutes, straight through.’
‘From St Albans, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice place, St Albans.’
‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘I like it.’
‘So,’ he says, stopping and staring meaningfully at her, ‘you’re the baby.’
She laughs nervously. ‘It seems I am.’
‘And you’ve inherited that house?’
‘I have, yes.’
‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Game changer.’
‘Complete,’ she agrees.
‘Have you been to see it?’
‘The house?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yes, a couple of times.’
‘God.’ He throws himself back into his chair. ‘I tried so hard to get them to let me into that house. I was virtually offering the guy at the solicitors my firstborn. One night I even tried to break in.’
‘So you never actually saw it?’
‘No, I very much didn’t.’ He laughs wryly. ‘I peered through windows; I even sweet-talked the neighbours round the back to be allowed to look out of their windows. But never actually got in the house. What’s it like?’
‘It’s dark,’ she says. ‘Lots of wood panelling. Weird.’
‘And you’re going to sell it, I assume?’
‘I am going to sell it. Yes. But …’ She trails her fingertips around the rim of her coffee cup as she forms her next words. ‘First I want to know what happened there.’
Miller Roe makes a sort of growling noise under his breath and rubs his beard with his hand, dislodging the speck of yellow sauce. ‘God, you and me both. Two years of my life, that article took from me, two obsessed, insane, fucked-up years of my life. Destroyed my marriage and I still didn’t get the answers I was looking for. Nowhere near.’
He smiles at her. He has, she thinks, a nice face. She tries to guess his age, but she can’t. He could be anywhere between twenty-five and forty.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out the keys to Cheyne Walk, places them on the table in front of him.
His gaze drops on to them and she sees a wave of longing pass across his eyes. His hand reaches across the table. ‘Oh my God. May I?’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Go ahead.’
He stares at each key in turn, caresses the fobs. ‘A Jag?’ he says, looking up at her.
‘Apparently.’
‘You know, Henry Lamb, your dad, he used to be quite the Jack the Lad. Used to go screaming off hunting at the weekends, partying at Annabel’s on school nights.’
‘I know,’ she replies sanguinely. ‘I read your article.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Of course you did.’
There is a brief silence. Miller pulls the edge off his sandwich and puts it in his mouth. Libby takes a sip of her coffee.
‘So,’ he says, ‘what next?’
‘I want to find my brother and sister,’ she says.
‘So they’ve never tried to get in touch with you?’
‘No. Never. What’s your theory?’
‘I have a million theories. But the big question is: Do they know the house was held in trust for you? And if they knew, will they know that you’ve inherited it now?’
Libby sighs. ‘I don’t know. The solicitor said that the trust had been drawn up years before, when my brother was born. It was meant to go to him when he turned twenty-five. But he never came to claim it. Then to his sister, but she never came to claim it either … and of course the solicitors had no way of contacting either of them. But yes, I guess there’s a chance they knew it would come to me. Assuming …’ She was going to say they’re still alive, but stops herself.
‘And the guy,’ she says. ‘The man who died with my parents. In the article you said you followed a lot of dead leads. But you never managed to find out who it was?’
‘No, frustratingly not.’ Miller rubs his beard. ‘Although there was one name that came up. I had to give up in my search for him. But it’s nagged at me ever since. David Thomsen.’
Libby throws him a quizzical look.
‘There were initials on the suicide note, remember? ML, HL, DT. So I asked police for names of missing person cases that had involved the initials DT. David Thomsen was one of thirty-eight that they unearthed. Thirty-eight missing persons with the initials DT. Ten within the John Doe’s estimated age range. And one by one I eliminated all of them.
‘But this one fascinated me. I don’t know. There was just something about his story that rang true. Forty-two-year-old guy from Hampshire. Normal upbringing. But no record of him anywhere, not since he arrived back in the UK from France, in 1988, with a wife called Sally, and two children, Phineas and Clemency. The four of them arrive by f
erry from Saint-Malo into Portsmouth in …’ He flicks through a notebook for a moment. ‘… September 1988. And then there is literally no trace of any of them from that point onwards: no doctors’ records, no tax, no school registers, no hospital visits, nothing. Their families described them as “loners” – there were rifts and grudges, a huge falling-out over an inheritance of some sort. So nobody wondered where they were. Not for years and years. Until David Thomsen’s mother, nearing the end of her life, decides she wants a deathbed reconciliation and reports her son and his family as missing persons. The police run some perfunctory searches, find no trace of David or his family, then David’s mother dies and no one asks about David or Sally Thomsen ever again. Until me, three years ago.’ Miller sighs. ‘I tried so hard to track them down. Phineas. Clemency. Unusual names. If they were out there they’d have been easy enough to find. But nothing. Not a trace. And I needed to file the article, I needed to get paid, I had to give up.’ He shakes his head. ‘Can you see now? Can you see why it took two years, why it nearly killed me? Why my wife left me? I was literally a research zombie. It was all I talked about, all I thought about.’
He sighs and runs his fingers across the bunch of keys. ‘But yes. Let’s do it. Let’s find out what happened to all those people. Let’s find out what happened to you.’
He holds his hand out to hers to shake. ‘Are we on, Serenity Lamb?’
‘Yes,’ says Libby, putting her hand in his. ‘We’re on.’
Libby goes straight to the showroom from her breakfast with Miller Roe. It’s only half past nine and Dido barely registers her lateness. When she does, she does a double take and says, in an urgent whisper, ‘Oh God! The journalist! How did it go!’
‘Amazing,’ Libby replies. ‘We’re going to meet at the house this evening. Start our investigation.’
‘Just you,’ says Dido, her nose wrinkling slightly, ‘and him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm. Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s not what he seems.’ Dido narrows her eyes at her. ‘I think I should come too.’