by Lisa Jewell
Libby laughs and takes a sip of wine. In another realm, this would constitute a brilliant night out: two handsome men, a warm summer’s night, a glamorous terrace overlooking the Thames, a glass of cold white wine. But in this realm, everything feels warped and vaguely threatening. Even the cats.
‘So,’ says Miller, ‘if you’re going to tell us everything about what really happened in Cheyne Walk, will it be off the record? Or can I be a journalist?’
‘You can be whatever you like.’
‘Can I record you?’ Miller reaches for his phone in his back pocket.
‘Sure,’ says Phin, his fingers raking through the thick fur on the cat’s back. ‘Why not? Nothing to lose any more. Go for it.’
Miller fiddles with his phone for a while. Libby notices his hands shaking slightly, betraying his excitement. She takes another large sip of wine, to calm her own nerves. Then Miller lays his phone on the table and asks, ‘So. You say I got everything wrong in my article. Can we start there?’
‘Certainly.’ The fat cat jumps down from Phin’s lap and he absent-mindedly brushes hairs from his trouser legs with the sides of his hands.
‘So, when I was researching the article, I came upon a man called David Thomsen. Thomsen with an E.’
‘Yes,’ says Phin. ‘My father.’
Libby sees a kind of triumphant relief flood across Miller’s face. He exhales and says, ‘And your mother – Sally?’
‘Yes, Sally is my mother.’
‘And Clemency …?’
‘My sister, yes.’
‘And the third body …’
‘Was my father.’ Phin nods. ‘Spot on. Such a shame you didn’t work all that out before you wrote your article.’
‘Well, I kind of did. But I couldn’t find any of you. I searched for months, without a trace. So, what happened to you all?’
‘Well, I know what happened to me. But I’m afraid I have no idea what happened to my mother and Clemency.’
‘You haven’t stayed in touch?’
‘Far from it. I haven’t seen them since I was a teenager. As far as I’m aware my mother lives in Cornwall and I’m going to assume that my sister does too.’ He shrugs and picks up his wine glass. ‘Penreath,’ he says.
Miller throws him a quizzical look.
‘I’m pretty sure she lives in Penreath.’
‘Oh,’ says Miller. ‘That’s great, thank you.’
‘You are very welcome,’ he replies. Then he rubs his hands together and says, ‘Ask me something else! Ask me what really happened on the night that everybody died.’
Miller smiles grimly and says, ‘OK. So, what really happened then? On the night that everyone died?’
Phin looks at both of them, mischievously, then leans in so that his mouth is directly over the microphone on Miller’s phone and says, ‘Well, for a start, it wasn’t suicide. It was murder.’
37
CHELSEA, 1991
Phin was gone for a week. I could hardly bear the pointlessness of everything without him around. With him in the house, every journey to the kitchen was ripe with the possibility of seeing his face, every morning began with the thought of potential encounters. Without him I was in a dark house full of strangers.
And then, a week later, I heard the front door slam and voices rising from the hallway, and there was Phin, Sally behind him, talking in urgent tones to David, who stood with his arms folded across his stomach.
‘I did not tell him to come. For God’s sake. That’s the last thing I would have done. It’s bad enough me overstaying my welcome at Toni’s. Let alone my teenage son.’
David said, ‘Why didn’t you call?’
‘He told me you knew he was coming! How was I supposed to know? And I called you now, didn’t I?’
‘I thought he’d been killed. We’ve been worried sick.’
‘We? Who the fuck is “we”?’
‘Us,’ said David. ‘All of us. And please don’t use that language in our home.’
‘Phin tells me you hit him.’
‘Oh, I did not hit him. For God’s sake. It was a slap.’
‘You slapped him?’
‘Good God, Sal, you have no idea, no idea at all what it’s like living with this child. He’s rude. He steals. He takes drugs. He disrespects the other housemates …’
Sally put her hand up between them. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘He’s a teenager. He’s a good kid, but he’s a teenager. It comes with the territory.’
‘Well, that might be true in your slightly pathetic view of the world. But the rest of the world would disagree. There’s no excuse for any of it. I would never have dreamed of behaving in such a way when I was his age. It’s diabolical.’
I saw Sally’s hand grip Phin’s shoulder. I saw her cheeks hollow. Then she said, ‘I’m looking at a flat tomorrow. In Hammersmith. Two bedrooms. We can start splitting access to the children.’
David looked sceptical. ‘How are you going to pay for it?’
‘I’ve been working, and saving.’
‘Well, we’ll see. But seriously, I don’t think Phin’s safe in your care. You’re too soft on him.’
‘I am not soft, David, I am loving. You might want to try it sometime.’
Sally stayed for a couple of hours. The atmosphere was toxic. Birdie didn’t come down from her room, but I heard her ostentatiously coughing and sighing and pacing. When Sally finally left, Birdie swept down the stairs and threw herself into David’s arms and whispered melodramatically, ‘Are you OK, my darling?’
David nodded stoically. ‘I’m fine.’
And then, looking straight at Phin, he narrowed his eyes and said the words that signalled the beginning of the nightmare real.
He said, ‘Things are going to change around here. You mark my words.’
The first thing that changed was that Phin was locked into his bedroom whenever David or Birdie were unable to monitor him. Somehow the adults colluded to persuade us that this was normal, explicable, sane, even. It’s for his own safety was the mantra.
He was allowed out to shower, to tend the garden, to help in the kitchen, for fiddle lessons, meals and exercise classes.
Since we already spent most of our free time in our rooms, this didn’t at first feel quite as sinister as it looks written down like this. It’s very odd, looking back, how accepting children can be of the oddest scenarios. But still, seeing it now, in black and white, it really is quite shocking.
I was sitting cross-legged on my bed one day shortly after Phin returned with his mother. I was reading a book that he’d lent me a few weeks earlier. I jumped at the sight of him because it was late evening and I’d assumed his door would be locked for the night.
‘How …?’ I began.
‘Justin brought me up after dinner,’ he said. ‘Accidently on purpose forgot to turn the lock properly.’
‘Good old Justin,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do? You won’t run away, will you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No point now. My mum’s moving into the flat next week and then I’m going to live with her. All this shit will be over.’
I felt as if he’d punched me in the throat. My voice cracked as I replied, ‘But your dad – will he let you?’
‘I don’t give a fuck whether he lets me or not. I’ll be sixteen in December. I want to live with my mum. There’s not much he can do about it.’
‘And what about Clemency?’
‘She’ll come too.’
‘Do you think your dad and Birdie will move out, too? Once you and Clemency are gone?’
He laughed harshly. ‘Er. No. No way. He’s here now. Feet under the table. Got everything going his way.’
A small silence drew out between us. Then Phin said, ‘Remember that night? When we went up on the roof? When we took the acid?’
I nodded effusively. How could I forget?
‘You know there’s another one. Still up there?’
‘Another …?’
‘Tab. Anot
her tab of acid. The guy at Kensington Market gave me two. We only had one.’
I let this fact percolate within me for a moment.
‘Are you saying …?’
‘I guess. I mean, they all think I’m safely locked up. The girls are asleep. No one will come up now. You could go down and tell everyone you’re going to bed, then bring up a glass of water. I’ll wait here.’
Of course I did precisely as I was told.
We grabbed a blanket and put on jumpers. I went first through the hatch, Phin passed me the water and then followed up behind me. It was July but the air was damp and cool. Phin located the little bag where he’d left it in a plant pot. I didn’t really want to take it. I hoped that it had somehow lost its toxicity during the many months it had sat out there, subject to the elements. I hoped that a sudden gust of wind would blow it away. Or that Phin would put it back and say, ‘We don’t need that. We have each other.’
We brushed some dead leaves from the plastic chairs and sat side by side.
Phin tipped the tab into the palm of his hand.
The sky was remarkable. Royal blue, burnt amber, lipstick pink. It doubled itself in the face of the river. In the distance, Battersea Bridge sparkled.
I saw Phin watch the sky too. It felt different from the last time we’d been up here. Phin felt different. More pensive, less rebellious.
‘What do you think you’ll end up doing?’ he asked me. ‘When you’re grown-up?’
‘Something to do with computers,’ I said. ‘Or film-making.’
‘Or both, maybe?’ he suggested.
‘Yes,’ I agreed happily. ‘Making films with computers.’
‘Cool,’ he said.
‘And what about you?’
‘I want to live in Africa,’ he said. ‘Be a safari guide.’
I laughed. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘We did a safari when we were travelling. I was six. We saw hippos having sex. That’s what I mainly remember. But I also just really remember the guide. This really cool English guy. He was called Jason.’
I noticed a hint of longing in his voice at this point. It made me feel closer to him in a way I couldn’t fully process.
‘I remember saying to my parents that that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up. My dad said I’d never make my fortune driving tourists round in a Land Rover. As if money was the only thing that matters …’
He sighed and glanced down into the palm of his hand. ‘So,’ he said, ‘shall we?’
‘Just a tiny bit,’ I said. ‘Like a really tiny bit.’
The next couple of hours unfolded like a beautiful dream. We watched the sky until all the different colours had consolidated to black. We talked remarkable nonsense about the meaning of existence. We giggled until we hiccupped.
At one point Phin said, ‘You’ll have to come, sometimes, when I move to Hammersmith. You’ll have to come and stay.’
‘Yes. Yes please.’
And then at some other point I said, ‘What would you do if I kissed you?’
And Phin laughed and laughed and laughed until he got a coughing fit. He was doubled over with mirth and I watched him with a blind smile, trying to fathom the meaning of his response.
‘No,’ I said, ‘really? What would you do?’
‘I’d push you off this roof,’ he said, still smiling. Then he spread his fingers apart and said, ‘Splat.’
I made myself laugh. Ha-ha. So funny.
Then he said, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
‘And go where?’
‘I’ll show you. Follow me.’
And I did follow him. Stupid, stupid boy that I was. I followed him back on to the attic landing and out of a window and then down the side of the house in some dreadful awe-inducing, nausea-inspiring act of daredevil insanity.
‘What are you doing?’ I kept asking, my fingernails dug into bare brick, my trouser legs breaking apart on juts of masonry. ‘Where are we going?’
‘It’s my secret route!’ he said, looking up at me with wild eyes. ‘Let’s go to the river! No one will know!’
By the time we landed flat-footed on the lawn I was bleeding from three different places, but I didn’t care. I followed him as he stepped through the shadows to a gate that I had no idea existed at the foot of our garden. Suddenly, Narnia-like, we were in someone else’s garden and then Phin grabbed my hand and hoiked me round two corners, through the magical gloom of Chelsea Embankment, across four lanes of traffic and on to the riverside. Here he let my hand drop. For a moment we stood, silently, side by side, and watched gold and silver worms wriggling across the surface of the water. I kept staring at Phin, who looked more beautiful than ever in the dark, moving light.
‘Stop staring at me,’ he said.
I stared at him harder.
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Stop staring.’
But I stared harder still.
And then he pushed me, with both his hands, pushed me hard and into the black water and then I was under and my ears filled with echoing bubbles, and my clothes became heavy and attached themselves to my skin and I tried to scream but swallowed instead and my hands felt for the river wall and my legs kicked against thick, gloopy nothing. And then my eyes opened and I saw faces: a constellation of blackened faces circling mine and I tried to talk to them, tried to ask them to help me but they all turned away and then I was coming up, a pain around my wrist, Phin’s face above, dragging me up the stone steps and on to the bank.
‘You bloody loony,’ he said and laughed, as though I was the one who had chosen to fall into the Thames, as though it was all just high jinks.
I shoved him. ‘You fucking bastard!’ I screamed, my not-yet-broken voice sounding shrill and unbearable. ‘You absolute fucking bastard!’
I stormed past him, across four lanes of traffic, causing someone to hoot their horn at me, and to the front door of the house.
Phin chased me and approached me at the front door, breathlessly.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
I should have stopped there and then, I really should. I should have taken a deep breath and evaluated the situation and made a different decision. But I was so engorged with rage, not born just of being pushed into the freezing, filthy Thames, but of years of Phin blowing hot and cold at me, of giving me titbits of attention when it was in his interests to do so and totally ignoring me when it wasn’t. And I looked at him, and he was dry and beautiful and I was wet and ugly, and I turned and very firmly pressed my fingertip into the doorbell.
He stared at me. I could see him deciding whether to stay or to run. But a second later the door opened and it was David and he looked from me to Phin and back again and his shoulders rose up and his mouth tightened and he looked like a caged animal about to pounce. Very slowly and thunderously he said, ‘Get inside now.’
Phin turned then and began to run, but his father was taller than him, fitter than him; he caught up with him before Phin had even made it to the corner of the street and felled him to the pavement. I watched with my chin tipped up defensively, my teeth chattering inside my child skull, my arms wrapped around my body.
My mother appeared at the door. ‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked, peering over the top of my head. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’
‘Phin pushed me in the river,’ I stuttered through my chattering teeth.
‘Dear Jesus,’ she said, pulling me into the house. ‘Dear Jesus. Get in. Take off those clothes. What the hell …’
I didn’t go in and take my clothes off. I stood and watched David drag his fully grown son across the pavement, like a fresh kill.
That’s it then, I thought to myself, that’s it.
38
On Wednesday morning, after two nights in a rather basic B & B, and a choppy crossing over the remainder of the English Channel, Lucy hires a car at Portsmouth and they begin the drive to London.
It was winter when she’d left England and in her mind it is alwa
ys cold there, the trees are always bare, the people always wrapped up against inclement weather. But England is in the grip of a long hot summer and the streets are full of tanned, happy people in shorts and sunglasses, the pavements are covered in tables, there are fountains full of children and deckchairs outside shops.
Stella stares out of the window in the back of the car with Fitz on her lap. She’s never left France before. She’s never left the Côte d’Azur before. Her short life has been lived entirely on the streets of Nice, between the Blue House, Mémé’s flat and her nursery school.
‘What do you think of England, then?’ Lucy asks, looking at her in the rear-view mirror.
‘I like it,’ says Stella. ‘it’s got good colours.’
‘Good colours, eh?’
‘Yes. The trees are extra green.’
Lucy smiles and Marco gives her the next direction towards the motorway from the Google Maps app.
Three hours later London starts to appear in flashes of shabby high street.
She sees Marco turn to face the window, expecting Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and getting Dixie Fried Chicken and second-hand appliance stores.
Finally they cross the river and it is a glorious sunny day: the river glitters with dropped diamonds of sunlight; the houses of Cheyne Walk gleam brightly.
‘Here we are,’ she says to Marco. ‘This is the place.’
‘Which one?’ he asks, slightly breathlessly.
‘There,’ says Lucy, pointing at number sixteen. Her tone is light but her heart races painfully at the sight of the house.
‘The one with the hoarding?’ says Marco. ‘That one?’
‘Yes,’ she says, peering at the house whilst also keeping an eye out for parking.
‘It’s big,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It certainly is.’
But strangely, it looks smaller to her now, through adult’s eyes. As a child she’d thought it was a mansion. Now she can see it is just a house. A beautiful house, but still, just a house.
It becomes clear that there is no parking to be had anywhere near the house and they end up at the other end of the King’s Road, in a space in World’s End that requires downloading a parking app on to her phone.