by Lisa Jewell
She sounded entirely like a cow.
This went on for some time. She was in the spare bedroom, which had been readied for her. Clemency and I were ushered away from the door of the room and ordered to stay in our own rooms until we were told we could come back.
The mooing continued for many hours.
And then, at around ten minutes past midnight, there was the sound of a baby crying.
And yes. It was you.
Serenity Love Lamb. Daughter of Lucy Amanda Lamb (14) and David Sebastian Thomsen (41).
I didn’t get to see you until later that day and I must confess that I quite liked the look of you. You had a face like a baby seal. And you stared at me unblinkingly in a way that made me feel seen. I had not felt seen for a long time. I let you hold my finger in your little hand and it was strangely nice. I’d always thought I hated babies, but maybe I didn’t, after all.
And then, a few days later, you were taken away from my sister and moved to David and Birdie’s room. My sister was brought upstairs and put back in the room she shared with Clemency. At night I could hear you crying downstairs and I could hear my sister crying next door. She was brought downstairs during the day to pump breast milk into a medieval-looking contraption which was then poured into medieval-looking milk bottles and then told to go back to her room.
And so everything changed again: the lines between the thems and the usses shifted a few degrees and my sister was once more one of us and it was this final act of cruelty that brought us back together.
57
Lucy steps towards him.
Her brother.
Her big brother.
She can see it now.
She stares deep into his eyes and says, ‘Where’ve you been, Henry? Where’ve you been?’
‘Oh, you know, here and there.’
A wave of fury starts to engulf her. All these years she has been alone. All these years she has had no one. And here is Henry, tall and fresh-faced and handsome and glib.
She punches him in the chest with two furled fists.
‘You left her!’ she cries. ‘You left her! You left the baby behind!’
He grabs hold of her hands and he says, ‘No! You left! It was you! I was the one who stayed. The only one who stayed! I mean, you ask where I’ve been. Where on earth have you been?’
‘I’ve been …’ she begins, and then she lets her fists unfurl and her arms drop. ‘I’ve been in hell.’
They fall silent for a moment. Then Lucy steps back and calls Marco to her. ‘Marco,’ she says. ‘This is Henry. He’s your uncle. Henry, this is my son. Marco. And this is Stella, my daughter.’
Marco looks from his mother to Henry and back again. ‘I don’t understand. What does this have to do with the baby?’
‘Henry was—’ she begins. She sighs and starts again. ‘There was a baby. She lived here with us all when we were children. We had to leave her here because … well, because we had to. And Henry is here, like me, to see the baby, now that she’s grown up.’
Henry clears his throat and says, ‘Um.’
Lucy turns to look at him.
‘I’ve met her already,’ he says. ‘I’ve met Serenity. She was here. At the house.’
Lucy gasps softly. ‘Oh my God. Is she OK?’
‘She is,’ he replies. ‘Hale and hearty, pretty as a picture.’
‘But where is she?’ she asks. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Well, she is currently with our old friend Clemency.’
Lucy inhales sharply. ‘Clemency! Oh my God. Where is she? Where does she live?’
‘She lives, I believe, in Cornwall. Here, look.’ Henry switches on his phone and shows her a little flashing dot on a map. ‘There’s Serenity,’ he says, pointing at the dot. ‘Number twelve, Maisie Way, Penreath, Cornwall. I popped a little tracking device on her phone. Just so we wouldn’t lose her again.’
‘But how do you know that’s where Clemency is?’
‘Aha,’ he says, closing down the app displaying Serenity’s location and opening up another app.
He presses an arrow on an audio bar. And suddenly there are voices. Two women, talking, quietly.
‘Is that her talking?’ asks Lucy. ‘Is that Serenity?’
He listens. ‘Yes, I believe it is,’ he says, turning up the volume.
Another voice breaks in.
‘And that,’ he says, ‘is Clemency. Listen.’
58
Clemency has asked Miller to leave them alone. She wants to tell Libby the story in private. So Miller takes the dog for a walk and Clemency tucks her long legs under her on the sofa and slowly begins.
‘The plan was that we would rescue the baby. Henry would drug the grown-ups with this sleeping draught he’d made and we would steal the shoes that were in the boxes in David and Birdie’s room, steal some normal clothes, take the money and the baby and then we’d take the key from my dad’s pouch and run into the street and stop a policeman or a trustworthy-looking grown-up and we’d tell them there were people in the house who’d kept us prisoners for years. Then somehow we’d all find our way down here to my mum. We hadn’t quite worked out how we’d contact her. A phone box, reverse the charges, a wing and a prayer.’ Clemency smiles wryly. ‘As you can see, we hadn’t really thought it through very well. We just wanted to be gone.
‘And then one day my dad announced he was going to throw a party for Birdie’s thirtieth birthday. Henry called us into his room. He was kind of our unofficial leader by this point, I suppose. And he said we were going to do it then. During Birdie’s birthday party. He said he’d offer to cook all the food. He asked me to make a little pocket for him to tuck into his leggings so that he could put his bottles of sleeping draught in there. And then we’d all need to act as if we were really very enthusiastic about Birdie’s birthday party. Lucy and I even learned a special piece on the fiddle for her.’
‘And Phin?’ asks Libby. ‘Where was Phin involved in all of this?’
Clemency sighs. ‘Phin kept himself to himself generally. And Henry didn’t want him involved. Those two …’ She sighed. ‘It was kind of toxic between them. Henry loved Phin. But Phin hated Henry. Plus of course, Phin was ill.’
‘What was wrong with him?’
‘We never really found out. I wondered if maybe he’d had cancer or something. It’s why Mum and I always thought he might have, you know, passed away.
‘Anyway,’ she continues. ‘The day of the party we were tense. All three of us. But we kept up the pretence of excitement about the stupid bloody party. And in some ways of course we were excited about the party. It was our freedom party. At the other end of the party lay a normal life. Or at least a different life.
‘And we played our fiddle piece for Birdie, distracting the grown-ups while Henry cooked the food and it was so bizarre, the contrast between my father and Birdie and everyone else. We all looked so sickly, you know. But Birdie and my dad, they were both glowing with vitality and satisfaction. My dad sat with his arm slung around her shoulder, this look of absolute and utter dominion on his face.’ Clemency kneads at the cushion on her lap. Her gaze is hard and tight. ‘It was like,’ she continues, ‘like he’d “allowed” his woman a party, out of the bountiful depths of his heart, as if he was thinking: Look at the happiness I have created. Look how I can do whatever I want and yet people still love me.’
Her voice begins to break and Libby touches her knee gently. ‘Are you OK?’ she asks.
Clemency nods. ‘I’ve never, ever told anyone any of this before,’ she says. ‘Not my mother, not my husband, not my daughter. It’s hard. You know. Talking about my father. About the sort of man he was. And about what happened to him. Because in spite of everything, he was my father. And I loved him.’
Libby touches Clemency’s arm gently. ‘Are you sure you’re OK to carry on?’
Clemency nods and straightens her shoulders. She continues. ‘Normally we placed dishes in the centre of the table and served ourselves but that night Henry said he
wanted to serve everyone as though they were customers in a restaurant. That way he could make sure that each plate ended up in front of the right person. Then my dad made a toast. He raised his glass around the table to each person and he said, “I know that life hasn’t always been so easy for us all, particularly for those of us who have experienced a loss. I know sometimes it must feel hard to keep the faith, as it were, but the fact that we are all here, after all these years, and we are still a family, and now, in fact, a bigger family” – and as he said that he touched the crown of your head – “just shows how good we all have it and how lucky we all are.” And then he turned to Birdie and he said …’ Clemency pauses and pulls in her breath. ‘He said, “My love, my life, mother of my child, my angel, my reason for living, my goddess. Happy birthday, darling. I owe everything to you,” and then they kissed and it was long and wet and it made noises and I remember thinking …’ She stops for a moment and throws a rueful look at Libby. ‘I thought: I really really hope you both die.
‘It took about twenty minutes for the draught to start to take effect. Three or four minutes later all the grown-ups were unconscious. Lucy grabbed you from Birdie’s lap and we moved into action. Henry told us we had about twenty minutes, half an hour, tops, before the draught wore off. We laid the grown-ups down on the kitchen floor and I searched through my dad’s tunic for the leather pouch. At the top of the stairs I fumbled and fumbled through the bunch until I found the one that opened the door to David and Birdie’s room.
‘And, oh God, it was shocking. Henry had told us what to expect, but still, to see it there; what remained of Henry and Martina’s beautiful things, hoarded away, the antiques and perfumes and beauty products and jewellery and alcohol. Henry said, “Look. Look at all this stuff. While we had nothing. This is evil. You are looking at evil.”
‘We were five minutes into the estimated thirty minutes. I found nappies, baby suits, bottles. Then I realised that Phin was standing behind me. I said, “Quick! Find some clothes. You need to be warm. It’s cold out there.”
‘He said, “I don’t think I can. I think I’m too weak.”
‘I said, “But we can’t leave you here, Phin.”
‘He said, “I can’t! I just can’t. OK?”
‘We were nearly ten minutes in by then so I couldn’t spend any more time trying to persuade him. I watched Henry filling a bag with cash. I said, “Shouldn’t we leave that as evidence? For the police?”
‘But he said, “No. It’s mine. I’m not leaving it.”
‘You were crying now, screaming. Henry was shouting, “Make her shut up! For God’s sake!”
‘And then there was the sound of footsteps on the staircase behind us. A second later the door opened and Birdie appeared. She looked absolutely crazy and was barely coordinated. She stumbled into the room, her arms outstretched towards Lucy, going, “Give me my baby! Give her to me!”’
‘And Birdie just lunged,’ says Clemency. ‘Straight at you. And Henry was losing the plot. Massively screaming at everyone. Phin was standing there looking as if he was about to pass out. And I just froze, really. Because I thought that if Birdie was awake then everyone else must be awake. That my father must be awake. That any moment everyone was going to appear and we were going to be locked in our rooms for the rest of our lives. My heart was racing. I was so terrified. And then, I don’t know, I’m still not entirely sure what really happened, but suddenly Birdie was on the floor. She was on the floor and there was blood sort of dripping out of the corner of her eye. Like red tears. And her hair, just here.’ Clemency points to a spot just above her ear. ‘It was dark and sticky. And I looked at Henry and he was holding a tusk.’
Libby looks at her questioningly.
‘It looked like a tusk. From an elephant. Or an antler. Something like that.’
Libby thinks of the pop video Phin had showed them. She thinks of the animal heads looming off walls and the stuffed foxes posed as though still alive atop enormous mahogany desks.
‘And it had blood on it, like a streak of blood. And it was in Henry’s hand. And we all stopped breathing. For some seconds. Even you. And it was just completely silent. We were listening for the others. We were listening to Birdie’s breathing. It had been rattly. Now it had stopped. A tiny little dribble of blood ran from her hair, down her temple, into her eye …’ Clemency describes it on her own face with a fingertip. ‘I said, “Is she dead?”
‘Henry said, “Shut up. Just shut up and let me think.”
‘I went to check her heartbeat and Henry pushed me. Pushed me so hard I fell backwards. He yelled, “Leave her, leave her!”
‘Then he went downstairs. He said, “Stay here. Just stay here.” I looked at Phin. He was clammy-looking. I could see he was about to faint. I moved him towards the bed. Then Henry came back. He was ashen. He said, “Something’s happened. Something’s gone wrong. I don’t understand. The others. They’re all dead. All of them.”’
Clemency’s last word comes out as a gasp. Her eyes fill with tears and she brings her hands to her mouth. ‘All of them. My father. Henry’s mum and dad. Dead. And Henry kept saying, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand. I hardly gave them anything. Such a tiny amount, not enough to kill a cat. I don’t understand.”
‘And suddenly this whole thing, this amazing rescue mission, this thing we were going to do that was going to set us free, had totally trapped us. How could we run down the street looking for a friendly policeman now? We had killed four people. Four people.’
Clemency stops for a moment and catches her breath. Libby notices that her hands are trembling. ‘And we had a baby to look after and the whole thing – the whole thing was just … God, do you mind if we go out in the back garden. I need a cigarette.’
‘No. No, of course,’ says Libby.
Clemency’s back garden is all chipped slate beds and rattan sofas. It’s late morning and the sun is moving overhead, but it’s cool and shady at the back of the house. Clemency pulls a packet of cigarettes from a drawer in the coffee table. ‘My secret stash,’ she says.
There’s a photo on the side of the packet of someone with mouth cancer. Libby can hardly bear to look at it. Why, she wonders, why do people smoke? When they know they might die of it? Her mother smokes. ‘Her boys’, she calls them. Where are my boys?
She watches Clemency hold a match to the tip of the cigarette, inhale, blow it out. Her hands immediately stop shaking. She says, ‘Where was I?’
59
CHELSEA, 1994
I know it sounds like it was all just a terrible disaster. Of course it does. Any situation involving four dead bodies is clearly far from ideal.
But what nobody seems to realise is that without me, Christ almighty, we might all still be there, middle-aged skeletons, having missed out on our entire lives. Or dead. Yes, let’s not forget we could all be dead. And yes, absolutely, things did not go exactly according to plan, but we got out of there. We got out of there. And nobody else had a plan, did they? Nobody else was prepared to step up to the line. It’s easy to criticise. It’s not easy to take control.
Not only did I have four dead bodies to deal with, a baby and two teenage girls, I had Phin to deal with, too. But Phin was behaving deliriously and felt like a liability so, just to make things easier, I locked him in his bedroom.
Yes, I know. But I needed to think straight.
We could hear Phin wailing from his room upstairs. The girls wanted to go to him, but I said, ‘No, stay here. We need to work together. Don’t go anywhere.’
The first priority to me seemed to be Birdie. It was bizarre to see her there, so small and broken, this person who had controlled our lives for so long. She was wearing the top that Clemency had made her for her birthday, and a chain that David had given her. Her long hair was twisted up in a bun. Her pale eyes stared hard at the wall. One eyeball was brilliant red. Her feet were bare and bony, her toenails overlong and slightly yellow. I unclipped the chain from around her neck and put
it in my pocket.
Clemency was crying. ‘It’s so sad,’ she said. ‘It’s so sad! She’s someone’s daughter! And now she’s dead!’
‘It’s not sad at all,’ I said, harshly. ‘She deserved to die.’
Clemency and I got her on to the attic floor and then the roof. She was very light. On the other side of the flat roof where I’d once sat holding Phin’s hand, there was a sort of gulley. It was filled with dead leaves and led to the guttering that ran down the side of the building. We wrapped her in towels and sheets and rammed her in there. Then we covered her over with handfuls of dead leaves and then some pieces of old scaffolding wood that we found up there.
In the kitchen afterwards I stared dispassionately at the three dead bodies. I could not let my mind dwell on the reality of the situation. I had killed my own parents. My beautiful, stupid mother and my poor, broken father. I had to distance myself from the fact that because of me, my mother would never again run her hand through my hair and call me her beautiful boy, that I would never again sit in a members’ club with my father silently drinking lemonade. There would be no family to return to for Christmas Day, no grandparents for any children I might have, no people to worry about as they got older, no one to worry about me as I got older. I was an orphan. An orphan and an inadvertent murderer.
But I didn’t panic. I kept a check on my emotions and I looked at the three figures stretched out on the kitchen floor and I thought: They look like members of a cult. I thought: Anyone walking in here now would look at them in their matching black tunics and think they had killed themselves.
And it was obvious then what I needed to do. I needed to set the stage for a suicide pact. We arranged the party paraphernalia into something that looked a little less ‘frivolous thirtieth birthday party’ and more ‘very serious last supper’. We got rid of the extra plates. We washed up all the pots and pans and threw away all the old food. We arranged the bodies so that they all lay in the same direction. I pressed their fingertips against the empty phials and then placed them on the table, one by each place setting as though they had taken the poisons in unison.