The Family Upstairs

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The door is locked. That is not the same thing at all. Now, shall we?’

  I stamped up the back stairs to the attic floor, David following behind.

  I heard the sound of the lock on my bedroom door turning.

  I wailed and I cried like a terrible pathetic overgrown baby.

  I heard Phin shouting at me through his bedroom wall: ‘Shut up! Just shut up!’

  I screamed for my mother but she didn’t come.

  Nobody came.

  That night my face ached from where David had hit me and my stomach growled and I couldn’t sleep and lay awake all night staring at the clouds passing over the moon, watching the dark shapes of birds in the treetops, listening to the house creaking and gasping.

  I went a little mad, I think, over the course of the week that followed. I scratched marks into my walls with my fingernails until my nailbeds bled. I banged my head against the floor. I made animal noises. I saw things that weren’t there. I think David’s idea was that I would emerge from my imprisonment feeling subdued and ready to start afresh. But this was not the case.

  When the door was finally unlocked a week later and I was once more allowed to roam around the house, I did not feel subdued. I felt monstrously consumed with righteous ire. I was going to finish David off for good.

  There was something else in the air when I finally got my freedom back, a huge secret wafting about in the atmosphere, carried along by the dust motes and the sun rays, stuck in the strands of the spider webs in the high corners of the rooms.

  As I joined everyone at the breakfast table that first morning out of isolation I asked Phin, ‘What’s going on? Why is everyone acting so weird?’

  He shrugged and said, ‘Isn’t that how everyone always acts round here?’

  I said, ‘No. Weirder than usual. Like there’s something going on.’

  Phin was already ill by now, it was clear to me. His skin, once so smooth and flawless, looked grey and patchy. His hair flopped greasily to one side. And he smelled a little off, a little sour.

  I mentioned it to Birdie. ‘Phin seems ill,’ I said.

  She replied prissily, ‘Phin is absolutely fine. He just needs more exercise.’

  I would hear his father through the door of the exercise room imploring him to try harder. ‘More – you can do it. Push back. Really push back. Come on! You’re not even trying!’ And then I’d see Phin leaving the exercise room looking wan and agonised, taking the steps up to the attic floor slowly as if each one caused him pain.

  I said, ‘You should come into the garden with me. The fresh air will help.’

  He said, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to come with me. Go into the garden alone.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘Nothing in this house will make me well. The only thing that will make me well is not being in this house. I need to leave. I need’, he said, his eyes boring into mine, ‘to leave.’

  The house, it felt to me, was dying. First my father had faded, then my mother, now Phin. Justin had abandoned us. The baby was dead. I couldn’t really see what the point of any of it was any more.

  And then one afternoon I heard the sound of laugher coming from below. I peered down into the hallway and saw David and Birdie leaving the exercise room. They were both glowing with health. David swung an arm around Birdie’s shoulders and drew her to him, kissed her hard on the lips with a sickening mwah noise. And it was them; I knew it clearly. It was them, draining the house, like vampires, of all of its decent energy, of all of its love and life and goodness, draining it all for themselves, feasting on our misery and our broken spirits.

  Then I looked around myself at the bare walls where the oil paintings had once hung, at the empty corners where the fine pieces of furniture had once stood. I thought of the chandeliers that had once sparkled in the sunlight. The silver and the brass and the gold that had gleamed on every surface. I thought of my mother’s wardrobe of designer clothes and handbags, the rings that used to adorn her fingers, the diamond earrings and sapphire pendants. All gone now. All gone to so-called ‘charity’, to help the ‘poor people’. I estimated the value of all these lost possessions. Thousands of pounds, I suspected. Many thousands of pounds.

  And then I looked down again at David, his arm circling Birdie, the two of them so free and unburdened by the things going on in this home. And I thought: You are not a messiah or a guru or a god, David Thomsen. You are not a philanthropist or a do-gooder. You are not a spiritual man. You are a criminal. You have come to my house and you have plundered it. And you are not a man of compassion. If you were a man of compassion, you would be sitting now with my mother while she grieves for your lost baby. You would find a way to help my father out of his living hell. You would take your son to the doctor. You would not be laughing with Birdie. You would be too weighed down by everyone else’s unhappiness. So, if you have no compassion then it follows that you would not have been giving our money to the poor. You would have been keeping it for yourself. And that must be the ‘secret stash’ that Phin had told me about all those years ago. And if that is the case, then where is it? And what are you planning to do with it?

  51

  CHELSEA, 1992

  Two weeks after David released me from my room, he announced my sister’s pregnancy around the dinner table. She was barely fourteen.

  I saw Clemency recoil from my sister, spring apart from her as though burned with hot oil. I saw my mother’s face, the blank death look, and it was clear that she already knew. I saw Birdie. She smiled at me. And at the sight of those tiny little teeth I exploded. I leapt across the table and threw myself at David. I tried to hit him. Well, in fact, I tried to kill him. That was my main intent.

  But I was small and he was big and Birdie of course came between us and I was somehow pulled away and back to my side of the table. I looked at my sister, at the strange smile playing on her lips, and I could not believe that I had never seen it before, had not seen that my stupid little sister had fallen for the whole thing, that she saw David as my mother saw David, as Birdie saw David. That she was proud that David had chosen her, and proud to be carrying his child.

  And then it hit me.

  David didn’t just want our money. David wanted the house.

  That was all he’d ever wanted from the moment he’d first set foot in it. And having a baby with my sister would secure his stake in it.

  I went to my parents’ bedroom the next day. I opened the cardboard boxes into which all their non-valuable possessions had been emptied when the furniture was given away. I could sense my father’s eyes on me.

  ‘Daddy,’ I said, ‘where’s the will? The will that says what happens to the house when you die?’

  I could see the suggestion of words forming in the base of his throat. He opened his mouth a millimetre or two. I moved closer to him. ‘Dad? Do you know? Do you know where all the paperwork is?’

  His gaze went from my face to the bedroom door.

  ‘It’s out there?’ I asked. ‘The paperwork?’

  He blinked.

  He did this sometimes when he was being fed. If Mum said, ‘Is that nice, darling?’ he would blink and Mum would say, ‘Good. Good,’ and give him another mouthful.

  ‘Which room?’ I asked. ‘Which room is it in?’

  I saw his eyes move to the left a fraction. Towards David and Birdie’s room.

  ‘In David’s room?’

  He blinked.

  My heart plummeted.

  I could not possibly go into David and Birdie’s room. They kept it locked, for a start. And even if they didn’t, the consequences of being caught in there were unthinkable.

  I referred once again to Justin’s enormously useful book of spells.

  ‘A Spell for Temporary Stupefaction’.

  That sounded like exactly what I needed. It promised a few moments of general befuddlement and sleepiness, a ‘small and unnoticeable fugue’.
>
  It involved the use of deadly nightshade, Atropa belladonna, the poisonous plant that Justin had told me about all those months before. I’d been growing it, secretly, after finding some seeds in Justin’s apothecarial chest. The seeds had needed to be soaked in water in the fridge for two weeks. I’d told the grown-ups I was experimenting with a new herb for Phin’s ennui.

  Then I’d taken the seeds and planted them in two large pots. It had taken three weeks for the seedlings to show and the last time I’d looked they’d been in full bloom. According to the literature, Atropa belladonna was very difficult to grow and I’d felt incredibly pleased with myself when the first purple flowers had blossomed. Now I snuck to the garden and plucked a couple of sprigs, tucked them into the waistband of my leggings and ascended quickly. In my room I made up the tincture with chamomile leaves and sugar water. It was also supposed to contain two hairs from the back of a red cat and a puff of breath from an old woman’s mouth, but I was an apothecary, not a wizard.

  My herbal teas were much loved. I told David and Birdie that I’d been experimenting with a new blend: chamomile and raspberry leaves. They looked at me fondly and said that sounds delicious.

  I apologised to Birdie as she drank hers that it was maybe a little sweet; I told her it was just a touch of honey, to balance out the rather bitter edge of the raspberry leaves. The spell had specified that the recipient of the spell needed to drink at last half a cup. So I sat and watched with an affectionate look on my face, as if I was desperately seeking their approval, so that they would keep drinking, even if they did not like the taste.

  But they did like the taste and both of them drank their full cup.

  ‘Well,’ said Birdie a while later as we put away the washing up. ‘That tea was super, super relaxing, Henry. I feel I could … In fact …’ I saw her eyes roll back slightly in her head. ‘I might have to go to bed,’ she said.

  I could see David struggling now, too, to keep his eyes open. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just a little nap.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let me help you both. Gosh, I’m so sorry. Maybe that tea had too much chamomile in it. Here, here.’ I allowed Birdie to hold on to my arm.

  She rested her cheek against my shoulder and said, ‘I love your tea, Henry. It’s the best tea ever.’

  ‘Really, really good tea,’ David agreed.

  David fumbled for the key to their bedroom in the folds of his tunic. I saw as he did so that beneath his tunic, he wore a cross-body leather purse. I assumed that this must be where he kept all the keys to all the rooms in the house. He was having trouble putting the key in the lock so I helped him. Then I got them both on to the bed where they fell instantaneously into a deep sleep.

  And there I stood. In David and Birdie’s bedroom. I had not set foot in this room for years, not since David and Sally had still been together.

  I looked around the room and could barely absorb what I was seeing. Piles of cardboard boxes over the tops of which spilt suggestions of clothing, of books, of possessions, the possessions we had been told were evil and bad. I saw two pairs of shoes in the corner of the room, his and hers. I saw alcohol, a half-drunk bottle of wine with the cork replaced, a glass with a dark sticky residue at the bottom, some of my father’s very expensive whiskey. I saw a box of biscuits, a Mars Bar wrapper. I saw a slip of silky underwear, a bottle of Elvive shampoo.

  But I ignored all this for now. I had no idea how long this state of ‘temporary stupefaction’ would last. I needed to find my father’s paperwork and get out of there.

  As my hands passed through the boxes I came upon my pencil case, not seen since my last day of primary school. I held it briefly in my hand and stared at it as a relic from another civilisation. I thought briefly of that boy in the brown knickerbockers, skipping from his last day at school, a triumphant tip to his chin as he imagined the brave new world about to be presented to him. I unzipped it, held it to my nose, inhaled the smell of pencil shavings and innocence; then I tucked it into my leggings to be secreted later in my own room.

  I found a ballgown of my mother’s. I found my father’s shotguns. I found my sister’s ballet leotard and tutu, the reason for the keeping of which I could not fathom.

  And then, in the third box, I found my father’s files: grey marbled box files with fierce metal clips inside. I pulled one out that had written on the side ‘Household Affairs’ and flipped quickly through the contents.

  And there it was, the last will and testament of Henry Roger Lamb and Martina Zeynep Lamb. I slipped this too into the waistband of my leggings. I would read it quietly, in my own room. I heard Birdie’s breathing grow quicker and saw her leg twitch. I quickly pulled another box towards me. In here I saw passports. I picked them up and flicked to the back pages: mine, my sister’s, my parents’. I felt a flame of fury build up inside of me. Our passports! This man had taken our passports! This seemed almost to surpass the sheer evil of locking us into our own home. To steal another human being’s passport, their means to escape, to adventure, to explore, to learn, to take full advantage of the world – my heart pounded with rage. I noted that my own passport had expired, that my sister’s had another six months to go. Useless to us now.

  I heard David mumble under his breath.

  The temporary stupefaction had been slightly too temporary and I wasn’t sure I’d ever persuade them to drink a special ‘new tea’ again. This could be my one and only opportunity to uncover the secrets buried away in this room.

  I found a packet of paracetamol. A packet of cough sweets. A packet of condoms. And I found, buried underneath all of this, a pile of cash. I ran my fingers down the sides. It riffled satisfyingly, suggesting a good amount. A thousand, I estimated. Maybe more? I pulled a few ten-pound notes from the top of the pile and folded them into the paperwork held inside my elasticated waistband.

  Birdie groaned.

  David groaned.

  I got to my feet, my father’s will, my pencil case and five ten-pound notes clutched tightly against my stomach.

  I left the room on tiptoe, shutting the door silently behind me.

  52

  Lucy’s mind is spinning. The man’s features come in and out of focus. For a moment he looks like one person, the next, another. She asks him who he is.

  ‘You know who I am,’ he says.

  The voice is both familiar yet strange.

  Stella has crossed the room and is clinging on to Lucy’s leg with her arms.

  Lucy can see Marco standing tall and strong beside her.

  The dog accepts the man’s affection happily, rolling now on to his back to allow him to tickle his belly.

  ‘Who’s a good boy,’ says the man. ‘Who’s a very, very good boy.’

  He glances up at Lucy and pushes his glasses up his nose with tip of his index finger. ‘I would so love a dog,’ he says. ‘But you know, it’s not fair, is it, leaving them at home all day when you’re working. So, I make do with cats instead.’ He sighs and then he stands up straight and looks her up and down. ‘I love your look, by the way. I would never have thought you’d turn out so, you know, bohemian.’

  ‘Are you …?’ she squints at him.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you,’ says the man playfully. ‘You have to guess.’

  Lucy sighs. She is so tired. She has travelled so far. Her life has been so long and so hard and nothing has ever, ever been easy. Not for one second. She has made terrible decisions and ended up in bad places with bad people. She is, as she has so often felt, a ghost, the merest outline of a person who might one day have existed but had been erased by life.

  And now here she is: a mother, a killer, an illegal immigrant who has broken and entered into a property that does not belong to her. All she wants is to see the baby and to close the circle of her existence. But now there is a man here and she thinks he might be her brother, but how can he both be her brother and yet not be her brother? And why is she scared of him?

  She glances up at the man, sees the shadow
of his long eyelashes against his cheekbones. Phin, she thinks. This is Phin. But then she glances down at his hands: small and delicate, with narrow wrists.

  ‘You’re Henry,’ she says, ‘aren’t you?’

  53

  CHELSEA, 1992

  I went to my mother after the announcement and said, ‘You let your daughter have sex with a man the same age as you. That is just sick.’

  She merely responded, ‘It was nothing to do with me. All I know is that a baby is coming and that we should all be very happy.’

  I had never and still to this day have never felt so entirely alone. I no longer had a mother nor a father. We had no visitors to the house. The doorbell never rang. The phone had been disconnected many months before. There was a time, in the days after my mother lost her baby, when someone came to our house and banged on the door, solidly, for half an hour every day for nearly a week. We were kept in our rooms while the person banged on the door. Afterwards my mother said it was her brother, my uncle Karl. I liked Uncle Karl, he was the type of boisterous young uncle who would throw children into swimming pools and tell off-colour jokes that would make all the adults tut. The last time we’d seen him was at his wedding in Hamburg when I was about ten years old. He’d worn a floral three-piece suit. The idea that he’d been at our door and that we had not let him in broke another small part of my heart. ‘Why, though?’ I asked my mother. ‘Why didn’t we let him in?’

  ‘Because he wouldn’t understand the way we choose to live. He is too frivolous and lives a life without meaning.’

  I didn’t respond to that because there was no response to be made. He would not understand. No one would understand. At least she could see that much.

  Vegetables were delivered in a cardboard box once a week; cash was left in a hidden envelope by the front door. Once or twice the vegetable delivery man would ring on the bell and my mum would open the letterbox and the vegetable delivery man would say, ‘No parsnips today, miss, replaced them with swedes, hope that’s OK?’ And my mother would smile and say, ‘That is fine, thank you so much,’ and after the bodies were found, this man would come to the police and tell them that he thought it was a closed convent and that my mother was a nun. He referred to this drop-off on his route as the ‘nunnery’. He said he’d had no idea there were children living in the house. He’d had no idea there was a man.