The Family Upstairs Read online

  ‘I have no idea,’ says Miller. ‘Maybe they’re still here?’

  Libby looks at the big wooden table in the middle of the room with its two sets of drawers on each side. She holds in her breath and pulls them open in turn. The drawers are empty. She sighs.

  ‘Police evidence,’ says Miller. ‘They may well have destroyed them.’

  ‘What else did they take as police evidence?’ Dido asks.

  ‘The robes. Bedclothes. All the apothecarial stuff, the bottles and trays and what have you. Soap. Face cloths. Towels. Fibres, of course, that sort of thing. But really, there was nothing else. No art on the walls, no toys, no shoes.’

  ‘No shoes?’ Dido repeats.

  Libby nods. It was one of the most shocking of all the details in Miller’s Guardian article. A house full of people and not one pair of shoes.

  Dido glances around. ‘This kitchen’, she says, ‘would have been the absolute height of kitchen chic back in the seventies.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it just?’ agrees Miller. ‘Top of the range, too. Virtually everything that had been in the house – before they sold everything – was bought from Harrods. The archivist in their sales department let me see the sales invoices, going back to the date Henry bought the house. Appliances, beds, light shades, sofas, clothes, weekly flower deliveries, hair appointments, toiletries, towels, food, everything.’

  ‘Including my cot.’

  ‘Yes, including your cot. Which was bought, if I recall, in 1977, when young Henry was a newborn.’

  ‘So I was the third baby to sleep in it?’

  ‘Yes. I guess so.’

  They head towards the small room at the front of the house and Dido says, ‘What’s your theory? What do you think happened here?’

  ‘In a nutshell? Strange people move in with wealthy family. Strange things happen and everyone dies, apart from some teenage children who are never heard of again. And of course, the baby. Serenity. And there was evidence that someone else lived here once. Someone who developed the herb garden. I spent an entire month tracking down every apothecary in the UK and abroad who might have been living in London at that time. Nothing. Not a trace.’

  The room in which they stand is wood-panelled and wood-floored. There is a huge stone fireplace on the far wall and the remains of a mahogany bar on the other.

  ‘They found equipment in here,’ Miller says gravely. ‘The police thought it was torture equipment at first, but apparently it was homemade callisthenics equipment. The bodies of two of the suicide victims were found to be very lean and hyper-muscled. This was clearly the room where they exercised. Possibly to mitigate against the negative effects of never leaving the house. So again, I spent a month hunting down every teacher of callisthenics I could find, to see if anyone knew about this technique being used in Chelsea in the eighties and early nineties. Again – nothing.’ He sighs, and then turns suddenly to Libby. ‘Did you find the secret staircase? To the attic?’

  ‘Yes, the solicitor showed me when he brought me here.’

  ‘Did you see the locks? On the children’s doors?’

  Libby feels a tremor pass through her. ‘I hadn’t read your article then,’ she says, ‘so I didn’t look. And last time I came …’ She pauses. ‘Last time, I thought I heard someone up there and freaked out and left.’

  ‘Shall we go and look?’

  She nods. ‘OK.’

  ‘There’s one of these secret staircases in my parents’ house,’ says Dido, clutching the handrail as they ascend the narrow staircase. ‘Always used to give me the heebie-jeebies when I was little. I used to think that a cross ghost was going to lock both doors and I’d be trapped in there forever.’

  At this, Libby quickens her pace and emerges slightly breathlessly on to the attic landing.

  ‘You OK?’ Miller asks kindly.

  ‘Mm,’ she murmurs. ‘Just about.’

  He puts his hand to his ear. ‘Hear that?’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That creaking?’

  She nods, her eyes wide.

  ‘That’s what old houses do when they get too hot, or too cold. They complain. That’s what you heard the other day. The house complaining.’

  She contemplates asking him if houses also cough when they get hot, and decides against it.

  Miller takes his phone from his pocket and fixes the camera ahead of him, filming as he goes. ‘God,’ he says in a loud whisper. ‘This is it. This is it.’

  He angles his camera towards the door of the first room on the left. ‘Look,’ he says.

  She and Dido both look. There is a lock attached to the outside of the room. They follow him to the next door. Another lock. And another and another.

  ‘All four rooms, lockable from the outside. This is where the police think the children slept. This is where they found some traces of blood and the marks on the walls. Look,’ he says, ‘even the toilet had a lock on the outside. Shall we?’

  He has his hand on the handle of one of the rooms.

  Libby nods.

  When she’d first read Miller’s article, she’d skimmed over the paragraphs about the attic rooms, unable to stomach the thought of what it suggested. Now she just wants to get it over with.

  It’s a good-sized room, painted white with flashes of yellow around the skirting boards, bare floorboards, tattered white curtains at the windows, thin mattresses in the corners, nothing more. The next room is the same. And the next. Libby holds her breath when they get to the fourth bedroom, convinced that behind the door there will be a man. But there is no man, just another empty, white room with white curtains and bare floorboards. They are about to close the door behind them when Miller stops, takes his camera to the furthest end of the room and aims it at the mattress.

  ‘What?’

  As he nears the mattress, he pulls it away from the wall slightly and zooms in on something wedged there.

  ‘What is it?’

  He picks it up and shows it first to his camera and then to himself. ‘It’s a sock.’

  ‘A sock?’

  ‘Yes. A man’s sock.’

  It’s a red and blue sock, an odd blast of colour upon the blank canvas of the attic bedrooms.

  ‘That’s weird,’ says Libby.

  ‘It’s more than weird,’ says Miller. ‘It’s impossible. Because look.’ He turns the sock over and shows it to Libby and Dido.

  The sock bears the Gap logo.

  ‘What?’ says Dido. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘That’s the current Gap logo,’ he says. ‘They’ve only been using that logo for the past couple of years.’ He locks his gaze with Libby’s. ‘This sock is new.’

  22

  Lucy calls Michael at five o’clock on Friday afternoon from a payphone around the corner. He answers immediately. ‘I thought it might be you,’ he says, and she can hear the lascivious smile behind his voice.

  ‘How are you?’ she asks brightly.

  ‘Oh, I’m just great, and how are you?’

  ‘I’m just great too.’

  ‘Did you buy yourself a phone yet? This is a landline number, no?’

  ‘Someone I know is getting me one,’ she lies smoothly. ‘Something reconditioned. Should be getting it tomorrow.’

  ‘Good,’ says Michael, ‘good. And since I realise that this is not a social call, I guess you’ll want to know how I got on with your little request.’

  She laughs lightly. ‘I would quite like to know,’ she says.

  ‘Well,’ he continues, ‘you are going to fucking love me, Lucy Lou, because I have got you the full monty. Passports for you, for Marco, your girl and even your dog. In fact, I paid so much for the passports that they threw the dog’s in for free!’

  She feels the ever-present bile curdle her lunch. She doesn’t want to think about how much money Michael spent on the passports and how much he will want in return. She forces a laugh and says, ‘Oh! How kind of them!’

  ‘Kind, my ass,’ he says. And then he says, ‘S
o, wanna come over? Come and collect them?’

  ‘Sure!’ she says. ‘Sure. Not today. But maybe tomorrow, or Sunday?’

  ‘Come Sunday,’ he says. ‘Come for lunch. It’s Joy’s day off Sunday so we’ll have the place to ourselves.’

  She feels the bile rise from her stomach to the base of her throat. ‘What time?’ she manages to ask breezily.

  ‘Let’s say one. I’ll put some steaks on the barbecue. You can make that thing you used to make, what was it? With the bread and tomatoes?’

  ‘Panzanella.’

  ‘That’s the one. God, you used to make that so well.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘thank you. I hope I’ve still got the magic touch.’

  ‘Yeah. Your magic touch. I really, really miss your magic touch.’

  Lucy laughs. She says goodbye, she says she’ll see him on Sunday at 1 p.m. Then she puts down the phone, runs to the toilet and throws up.

  23

  CHELSEA, 1990

  In the summer of 1990, when I had just turned thirteen, I came upon my mother one afternoon on the landing. She was placing piles of clean bedding in the airing cupboard. Once upon a time we’d had our laundry taken away once a week in a small van with gold lettering on the side and then returned to us a few days later in immaculate bales wrapped in ribbon or hanging from wooden hangers under plastic sheets.

  ‘What happened to the laundry service?’ I asked.

  ‘What laundry service?’

  Her hair had grown long. She had not, as far as I was aware, had it cut in the two years since the other people had moved in with us. Birdie wore her hair long, and so did Sally. My mother had worn her hair in a bob. Now it was past her shoulder blades and parted in the middle. I wondered if she was trying to be like the other women, in the same way that I was trying to be like Phin.

  ‘Remember? That old man who came in the white van to collect our laundry, and he was so tiny you used to worry that he wouldn’t be able to carry it all?’

  My mother’s gaze panned slowly to the left, as though remembering a dream, and she said, ‘Oh yes. I forgot about him.’

  ‘How come he doesn’t come any more?’

  She rubbed her fingertips together, and I looked at her with alarm. I knew what the gesture meant, and it was something I’d long suspected, but this was the first time I’d had it confirmed to me. We were poor.

  ‘But what happened to all Dad’s money?’

  ‘Shhh.’

  ‘But I don’t understand.’

  ‘Shhh!’ she said again. And then she pulled me gently by the arm into her bedroom and sat me on her bed. She held my hand in hers and she stared hard at me. I noticed she wasn’t wearing any eye make-up and wondered when that had stopped. So many things had changed so slowly over such a long period of time that it was hard sometimes to spot the joins.

  ‘You have to promise, promise, promise,’ she said, ‘not to talk to anyone else about this. Not your sister. Not the other children. Not the grown-ups. Nobody, OK?’

  I nodded hard.

  ‘And I’m only telling you because I trust you. Because you’re sensible. So don’t let me down, OK?’

  I nodded even harder.

  ‘Dad’s money ran out a long time ago.’

  I gulped.

  ‘What, like, all of it?’

  ‘Basically.’

  ‘So, what are we living on?’

  ‘Dad’s been selling stocks and shares. There’s still a couple of savings accounts. If we can live on thirty pounds a week we’ll be OK for at least a couple of years.’

  ‘Thirty pounds a week?’ My eyes bulged. My mother used to spend thirty pound a week on fresh flowers alone. ‘But that’s impossible!’

  ‘It’s not. David’s sat down with us and worked it all out.’

  ‘David? But what does David know about money? He doesn’t even have a house!’

  ‘Shhh.’ She put her finger to her lips and glanced warily at the bedroom door. ‘You’ll have to trust us, Henry. We’re the grown-ups and you’re just going to have to trust us. Birdie’s bringing money in with her fiddle lessons. David’s bringing money in with his exercise classes. Justin’s making loads of money.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not giving any to us, are they?’

  ‘Well, yes. Everyone is contributing. We’re making it work.’

  And that was when it hit me. Hard and clear.

  ‘Is this a commune now?’ I asked, horrified.

  My mother laughed as though this was a ridiculous suggestion. ‘No!’ she said. ‘Of course it isn’t!’

  ‘Why can’t Dad just sell the house?’ I asked. ‘We could go and live in a little flat somewhere. It would be really nice. And then we’d have loads of money.’

  ‘But this is not just about money, you do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Then what?’ I said. ‘What is it about?’

  She sighed, softly, and massaged my hand with her thumbs. ‘It’s, well, it’s about me, I suppose. It’s about how I feel about myself and how I’ve felt so sad for so long and how all of this’ – she gestured around her grand bedroom with its swagged curtains and glistening chandelier – ‘doesn’t make me happy, it really doesn’t. And then David came and he’s shown me another way to live, a less selfish way. We have too much, Henry. Can you see that? Way, way too much, and when you have too much it drags you down. And now the money has virtually gone it is a good time to change, to think about what we eat and what we use and what we spend and how we fill our days. We have to give to the world, not keep taking from it. You know, David …’ I heard her voice ring like a spoon against a wine glass when she said his name. ‘… he gives nearly all his money to charity. And now, with his guidance, we are doing the same. To give to needy people is so good for the soul. And the life we lived before, it was wasteful. So wrong. Do you see? But now, with David here to guide us, we can start to redress the balance.’

  I allowed myself a moment to absorb the full meaning of what had been said.

  ‘So, they’re staying,’ I said eventually. ‘Forever?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied with a small smile. ‘Yes. I hope so.’

  ‘And we’re poor?’

  ‘No. Not poor, darling. We’re unburdened. We’re free.’

  24

  Libby, Miller and Dido search the house from top to bottom looking for a possible means of entry for the mystery sock man. There is a large glazed door at the back of the house, which opens on to stone stairs down to the garden. It is bolted from the inside and, it transpires when they try to open it, also locked. Wisteria grows thickly across the cracks between the door and the doorframe, indicating that it has not been opened in many weeks, maybe even years.

  They push at the dusty sash windows, but they’re all locked. They peer into dark corners looking for secret doors but there are none.

  They go through all the keys on Libby’s bunch one by one and finally find the one that unlocks the glazed door. But still the door doesn’t budge.

  Miller peers downwards through the glass to the outside of the door. ‘It’s been padlocked,’ he says, ‘from the outside. Do you have a small key on that bunch?’

  Libby finds the smallest key that she can and passes it to Miller.

  ‘How would you feel if I were to take out a pane of glass?’

  ‘Take it out?’ she says. ‘With what?’

  He shows her his elbow.

  She winces. ‘Go on then.’

  He uses the tattered chintz curtain to soften the impact. The glass cracks and comes out in two perfect pieces. He puts his arm through the hole and unlocks the padlock with the tiny key. Finally the door opens, ripping apart the knots of wisteria.

  ‘Here,’ says Miller, striding out on to the lawn. ‘This is where the drugs were grown.’

  ‘The drugs that killed Libby’s parents?’ asks Dido.

  ‘Yes. Atropa belladonna. Or deadly nightshade, in other words. The police found a big bush of the stuff.’

  They walk
to the bottom of the garden, shady and cool under the canopy of a tall acacia tree. There is a bench here, curved, to follow the shadow of the tree, and facing the back of the house. Even during the hottest summer that London has known in over twenty years, the bench is damp and mildewed. Libby lays her fingertips gently on to the armrest. She pictures Martina Lamb sitting here on a sunny morning, a mug of tea resting where Libby’s fingers lie, watching the birds wheel overhead. She pictures her other hand going to cup her pregnant bump, smiling as she feels her baby kick and roll inside her.

  And then she pictures her a year later taking poison with her dinner, then lying down on the kitchen floor and dying for no good reason at all, leaving her baby all alone upstairs.

  Libby snatches her hand back and turns abruptly to look at the house.

  From here they can see the four large windows that span the back of the drawing room. They can see another four smaller windows above, two in each of the back bedrooms, plus a smaller window in the middle that sits at the top of the landing. Above that are eight narrow windows with eaves, two for each attic bedroom, and a tiny circular window in between where the bathroom is. And then a flat roof, three chimney stacks and the blue sky beyond.

  ‘Look!’ says Dido, reaching on to her tiptoes and pointing wildly. ‘Look! Is that a ladder there? Or a fire escape?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There! Look! Just tucked behind that chimney stack, the red one. Look.’

  Libby sees it, a glint of metal. She follows it down with her eyes to a brickwork ledge, then a lip above the eaves, then a drainpipe that attaches itself to another brickwork promontory on the side of the house, a short hop across to the adjoining garden wall, then down to a kind of concrete bunker, then to the garden.

  She spins round. Behind is dense foliage, bounded by an old brick wall. She pushes an obvious path through it, her feet finding the bare patches in the weeds. The growth is laced with old spider webs which catch on her clothes and in her hair. But she keeps moving. She can feel this course, it’s already in her, she knows what she’s looking for. And there it is, a battered wooden gate, painted dark green, hanging off its hinges, and leading into the overgrown back end of the garden of the house behind.