by Lisa Jewell
Even my father enjoyed Christmas. He had a Father Christmas outfit which he used to don every Christmas Eve when we were little, and I still can’t explain how I could both know it was him, but also have no idea it was him, at the same time. Looking back on it now, I can see that it was the same sort of terrible self-deception that played a part in the way everyone felt about David Thomsen. People could look and see just a man, but in the same glance, the answer to all their problems.
My father didn’t wear the outfit that Christmas Eve. He said we were all too old for it, and he was probably right. But he also said he didn’t feel too well. My mother laid on the usual Christmas Eve celebration anyway. We sat around a (smaller than usual) Nordic pine and unwrapped our (fewer than usual) gifts while Christmas carols played on the radio and a fire crackled in the grate. After about half an hour, just before dinner, my father said he needed to go and lie down, he had a terrible headache.
Thirty seconds later he was on the floor of the drawing room, having a stroke.
We didn’t know it was a stroke at the time. We thought he was having some kind of fit. Or a heart attack. Dr Broughton, my father’s private physician, came to look him over, still in his Christmas Eve outfit of red woollen V-neck and holly-print bow tie. I remember his face when my father said that he no longer had private health cover, how quickly he left the house, how he dropped his unctuous demeanour like a brick. He sent him straight to hospital in an NHS ambulance and left without saying goodbye.
My father came home on Boxing Day.
They said he was fine, that he’d have some cognitive challenges for a while, some motor problems, but that his brain would fix itself, that he would be back to normal within weeks. Maybe sooner.
But, as with his first stroke, he never recovered properly. There was an even greater vacancy there. He used the wrong words. Or couldn’t find any words at all. He spent whole days sitting in the armchair in his bedroom eating biscuits, very slowly. Sometimes he’d laugh at inappropriate junctures. Other times he wouldn’t get the joke.
He moved slowly. He avoided stairs. He stopped leaving the house entirely.
And the weaker my father became, the closer to the mark David Thomsen stepped.
By the time I turned fourteen in May 1991, we had rules. Not just normal family rules like no feet on the furniture, or do your homework before you watch TV. Not the sort of rules we’d had for all our lives.
No, now we had crazy, despotic rules, written out in black marker on a large poster that was taped to the kitchen wall. I can still remember them to this day:
No haircuts WITHOUT PERMISSION of David and/or Birdie
No television
No visitors WITHOUT PERMISSION of David and/or Birdie
No vanity
No greed
Nobody to leave the building without the EXPRESS PERMISSION of David and/or Birdie
No meat
No animal products
No leather/suede/wool/feathers
No plastic containers
No more than four pieces of rubbish per day per person, including food waste
No unnatural coloured clothes
No pharma
No chemicals
One wash or shower PER PERSON PER DAY
One shampoo per week
ALL RESIDENTS must spend a minimum of two hours a day with David in the exercise room
ALL CHILDREN must spend a minimum of two hours a day with Birdie in the music room
All food must be homecooked from organic ingredients
No electric or gas heating
No shouting
No swearing
No running
This list of rules had started quite short and was added to at intervals as David’s control of our household got stronger and stronger.
Sally, at this stage, still used to come to the house once or twice a week, to take the children out for tea. She was sleeping on a friend’s sofa in Brixton and desperately trying to find some kind of accommodation big enough for them all to live in. Phin would be extra sullen after spending time with his mother. He would lock himself in his room and miss the next couple of meals. It was because of Phin, in fact, that a lot of the rules were put in place. David found his moods untenable. He could not bear the wasted food, or the door which he was unable to open at will. He could not bear anyone doing anything that did not directly correspond with his own view of the world. He could not bear teenagers.
Two new rules were added:
No locked doors
ALL MEALS to be attended by ALL members of the household
One morning, shortly after the fifth time Phin had come back from spending the afternoon with his mother and broken the rule about ‘No locked doors’, I went upstairs to find David removing the locks from inside Phin’s room, his jaw clenched, his knuckles tight around the handle of the screwdriver.
Phin sat on his bed, watching with his arms folded hard across his chest.
When at dinnertime Phin was still sitting on his bed with his arms folded, silent and deathly, David dragged him down by his – still folded – arms and threw him into a chair.
He forcibly pushed the chair into place and served Phin a large bowl of curried marrow and rice. Phin’s arms remained crossed. David got to his feet, piled some curry on to a spoon and forced it to Phin’s lips. Phin locked his lips together. I could hear the spoon hitting his teeth. The atmosphere was shocking. Phin, at this stage, was fifteen and a half, but looked much older. He was tall and he was strong. The situation looked as though it could turn violent very easily. But Phin stood his ground, his eyes boring a hole into the wall opposite, his whole face rigid with anger and determination.
Eventually David gave up trying to feed the spoon into his son’s mouth and hurled it across the room, the curry forming an ugly yellow crescent across the wall, the spoon making an angry metallic scream as it hit the floor.
‘Get to your room!’ David shouted. ‘Now!’ A vein throbbed on his temple. His neck was tensed and puce. I had never before seen a human being as engorged with rage as David at that moment.
‘With pleasure,’ hissed Phin.
David’s hand appeared; then, almost in slow motion, as Phin passed him it connected with the back of his head. Phin turned; his eyes met his father’s eyes, I saw true hatred pass between them.
Phin carried on walking. We heard his footsteps, sure and steady up the staircase. Someone cleared their throat. I saw Birdie and David exchange a look. Birdie’s look, pinched and disapproving, said, You’re losing control. Do something. David’s look, dark and furious, said, I intend to.
The moment the meal was over I went to Phin’s room.
He sat on his bed with his knees drawn tight to his chin. He glanced up at me. ‘What?’
‘Are you OK?’
‘What do you think?’
I edged a little closer into the room. I waited for him to ask me to leave but he didn’t.
‘Did it hurt?’ I asked. ‘When he hit you?’
My parents, strange as they both were, had never hit me. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing.
‘Not really.’
I edged closer again.
Then, suddenly, Phin looked up at me and it was there again. He was seeing me. Properly.
‘I can’t stay here,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve got to get out.’
My heart skipped a beat. Phin was the only thing that kept any sense of possibility alive.
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. To Mum’s.’
‘But—’
I was about to say that his mum was sleeping on a sofa in Brixton. But he interjected. ‘I don’t know, all right? I just have to get out of this place. I can’t be here any more.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
He looked at me through his ridiculous eyelashes. I tried to read his expression. I felt I saw a challenge there.
‘Do you … Should I … come with you?’
‘No! Fucking hell. No.’
I shrunk back into myself. No. Of course not.
‘What shall I say? When the adults ask?’
‘Nothing,’ he hissed. ‘Just nothing. Don’t say anything.’
I nodded, my eyes wide. I watched him throw things into a drawstring bag: pants and socks, a T-shirt, a book, a toothbrush. He turned and saw me looking at him.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Please.’
I left the room and walked slowly to the back staircase where I sat on the third step down and closed the top door to just a crack, through which I watched Phin disappear through the hatch into the attic space with his bag. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing or where he was going. For a moment I thought maybe he was planning to live on the roof. But although it was May, it was still cold: he couldn’t possibly. Then I heard scuffling noises outside and dashed into Phin’s bedroom, cupped my hands to the glass of his dormer window and watched the back garden. There he was: darting across the dark garden into the ink-black shadows of the trees. And then suddenly he was gone.
I turned to face his empty room. I picked up his pillow and held it to my face. I breathed him in.
35
It’s still dark when Lucy leaves the Blue House the next morning. The children are wall-eyed and silent. She holds her breath as she hands over the cash for the train tickets to Paris to a woman who looks like she knows all of Lucy’s deepest secrets. She holds it again as they board the train, and she holds it again when the inspector enters their carriage and asks to see their tickets. Every time the train slows down she holds her breath and scans the sidings for a flash of blue light, for the navy képi of a gendarme. At Paris she sits with the children and the dog in the quietest corner of the quietest café as they wait for their train to Cherbourg. And then it starts again: the stultifying fear at every stage, at every juncture. At lunchtime, as they board their next train, she imagines Joy at Michael’s house starting to wonder where he is, and the adrenaline pumps so hard and fast around her body that she feels she might die of it. She mentally pans around Michael’s house, looking for the thing she forgot, the huge red flag that will tell Joy to look in the cellar immediately. But no, she’s certain, absolutely certain, she left not a clue, not a trace. She has bought herself time. At least a day. Maybe even three or four days. And even then, would Joy tell the police anything about her, the nice woman called Lucy, the mother of Michael’s son, that would lead them to suspect her in any way? No, she would tell them about Michael’s shady underworld connections, the rough-looking men who sometimes came to the door to discuss ‘business’. She would lead them in an entirely different direction and when they eventually realised it was a dead end, Lucy would be nowhere to be found.
By the time the train pulls into Cherbourg that evening her heart rate has slowed and she finds enough appetite to eat the croissant she bought in Paris.
At the taxi rank they climb into the back of a battered Renault Scenic and she asks the driver to take them to Diélette. The dog sits on her lap and rests his chin on the half-open window. It is late. The children both fall asleep.
Diélette is a tiny harbour town, green and hilly. The only people catching the late ferry to Guernsey are British holidaymakers, mostly families with small children. Lucy clutches the passports hard inside sweaty hands. Her passports are French, but she is English. Both children have different surnames to her on their passports. Stella is a different colour to her. They have huge grubby rucksacks and are so tired that they look unwell. And their passports are fake. Lucy is certain, utterly convinced that they will be stopped, pulled aside, asked questions. She planned this long and meandering journey back to London to dilute her trail, but still, as she shows the passports to the inspector at the ferry port her heart beats so hard she imagines he can hear it. He flicks through the passports looking from photo to person and back again, hands the passports back, gestures them through with his eyes.
And then they are on the sea, the churning, navy grey froth of the English Channel, and France is soon behind them.
She holds Stella on her knee at the back of the ferry so that the little girl can watch the country of her birth, the only home she has ever known, recede to a fairy-lit wreath on the horizon.
‘Bye bye, France,’ says Stella, waving her hand, ‘bye bye France.’
36
Libby stares at Phin.
He stares at her. ‘I used to live here,’ he says, although no one has asked him to explain who he is. Then quickly, before Libby can form a response, he says, ‘You’re really pretty.’
Libby says, ‘Oh.’
Then he looks at Miller and says, ‘Who are you?’
‘Hi.’ Miller offers him a big hand. ‘I’m Miller Roe.’
Phin peers at him questioningly. ‘Why do I recognise that name?’
Miller makes a strange noise under his breath and shrugs.
‘You’re that journalist, aren’t you?’
‘Yup.’
‘That article was such shit. You were wrong about everything.’
‘Yup,’ says Miller again, ‘I kind of know that now.’
‘I can’t believe how pretty you are,’ he says, turning back to Libby. ‘You look so like …’
‘My mother?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Like your mother.’
Libby thinks of the photos of her mother with her dyed black Priscilla Presley hair, her dark kohled eyes. She feels flattered.
Then she says, ‘What are you doing here?’
Phin says, ‘Waiting for you.’
‘But I was here the other day. I heard you upstairs. Why didn’t you come down then?’
He shrugs. ‘I did. But by the time I’d got to the bottom of the stairs, you’d gone.’
‘Oh.’
‘Shall we …?’ Phin gestures at the staircase.
They follow him down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Phin sits on one side of the table; Miller and Libby sit on the other. Libby studies Phin’s face. He must be in his early forties, but he looks much younger. He has extraordinarily long eyelashes.
‘So,’ he says, spreading his arms wide, ‘this is all yours.’
Libby nods. ‘Although, really, it should have been my brother and sister’s, too?’
‘Well, more fool them. Oh, and I suppose I should wish you a happy birthday. A little belated.’
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘How long since you were last here?’
‘Decades.’
There is a long and very brittle silence. Phin breaks it by saying, ‘I imagine you have some questions.’
Miller and Libby exchange a brief glance. Libby nods.
‘Well,’ says Phin, ‘shall we get out of this place? I live just across the river. I have cold wine. And a terrace. And cats that look like cushions.’
They exchange another glance.
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ says Phin. ‘And neither will my cats. Come. I’ll tell you absolutely everything.’
Twenty minutes later, Libby and Miller follow Phin out of a sleek lift and into a marble-floored corridor.
His apartment is at the other end.
Lights turn on automatically as he leads them down his hallway to a living room with glass doors on to a terrace overlooking the river.
Everything is pale and just so. A huge white sheepskin is draped over the back of a very long cream sofa. There is an extravagant arrangement of lilies and roses in a vase that wouldn’t look out of place in the showroom of Northbone Kitchens.
Phin uses a small remote control to open the doors on to the terrace and invites them to sit on a pair of sofas around a low table. While he goes to fetch wine, Libby and Miller exchange a look.
‘This place must be worth a couple of million,’ says Miller.
‘At least,’ says Libby. She stands up and takes in the view across the river. ‘Look!’ she says. ‘It’s the house. We’re completely bang opposite it.’
Miller joins her. ‘W
ell,’ he says drily, ‘I think we can assume that that is not a coincidence.’
‘Do you think he’s been watching?’
‘Yes, I totally think he’s been watching. Why else would you choose an apartment with this view?’
‘What do you think of him?’ she whispers.
Miller shrugs. ‘I think he’s a bit …’
‘Weird?’
‘Yes, a bit weird. And a bit …’
But then Phin returns, a bottle of wine and three glasses in an ice bucket in one hand, a cat held against his chest with the other. He puts the bucket down on the table but keeps the cat in his arms. ‘Meet Mindy,’ he says, holding the cat’s paw up in an approximation of a salute. ‘Mindy, meet Libby and Miller.’
The cat ignores them and tries to wriggle out of Phin’s embrace. ‘Oh,’ he says to the cat’s retreating form, ‘fine. Be a bitch, see if I care.’
Then he turns to them again and says, ‘She’s my favourite. I always fall in love with the ones who can’t bear me. It’s why I’m single.’
He opens the wine and pours them each a large glass.
‘Cheers,’ he says, ‘to reunions.’
They touch glasses and a slightly weighted silence follows.
‘This is an incredible view,’ says Miller. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Not long. I mean, they only just finished building these apartments last year.’
‘Amazing, isn’t it, being right opposite Cheyne Walk.’
Phin nods. ‘I wanted to be close,’ he says to Libby, ‘for when you came back.’
Another Persian cat appears on the terrace. This one is horribly overweight and has bulging eyes. ‘Ah,’ says Phin, ‘here he is. Mr Attention-seeker. He’s heard I have visitors.’ He scoops up the gigantic cat and rests it on his lap. ‘This is Dick. I called him that because it was the only way I could make sure I got some.’