The Family Upstairs Read online

  ‘Where will you sleep?’

  ‘I’m not going to sleep.’

  His face is set with resolve.

  Libby nods. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘That’s OK.’

  They walk back to the house and Libby unlocks the padlock again, pulls back the wooden hoarding again; they enter the house again. They stand for a moment, eyes cast upwards, listening out for movement. But the house is silent.

  ‘Well,’ says Libby, glancing at Dido, ‘I guess we should get back.’

  Dido nods and Libby takes a step towards the front door. ‘Are you going to be OK?’ she says. ‘Here? All by yourself?’

  ‘Hey,’ says Miller, ‘look at me. Do I look like I’d be creeped out all alone in a dark, empty house where three robed cult members died?’

  ‘Do you want me to stay too?’

  ‘No. You go home, to your nice comfy bed.’ He has his fingers splayed over his beard and looks at her with appealing puppy eyes.

  Libby smiles. ‘You want me to stay, don’t you?’ she says.

  ‘No. No no no.’

  Libby laughs and looks at Dido. ‘Do you mind?’ she asks. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow morning. I promise.’

  ‘Stay,’ says Dido. ‘And come in whenever tomorrow. No rush.’

  It’s just starting to get dark as Libby meanders back to the house after walking Dido to the tube station. She absorbs the atmosphere of a hot summer’s night in Chelsea, the throngs of blond teens in ripped denim hot pants and oversized trainers, the views through sash windows of beautiful rooms. For a moment she fantasises about living here, being part of this rarefied world, being, indeed, a Chelsea girl. She imagines the house on Cheyne Walk filled with antiques, with dripping crystal chandeliers and modern art.

  But the moment she opens the door to number sixteen the fantasy dissipates. The house is tainted, blighted.

  Miller is sitting in the kitchen at the big wooden table. He glances up as she walks in and says, ‘Quick, look at this. Look.’

  He is using his phone as a torch and looking at something inside the drawer. She peers inside.

  ‘Look,’ says Miller again.

  At the very back of the drawer, in black pencil, someone has scrawled the words: ‘I AM PHIN’.

  32

  CHELSEA, 1990

  Sally moved out of our house a few weeks later. Then a few days after that, Birdie moved into David’s room. But Justin did not move out. He kept the bedroom he’d shared with Birdie.

  I was never punished for the acid trip incident, and neither was Phin. But it was clear that Phin felt that the loss of his mother was worse than any punishment his father could have concocted. He blamed himself, first and foremost. Then after that he blamed Birdie. He despised her and referred to her as ‘it’. Then he blamed his father. And then, unfortunately, and mainly subliminally, he blamed me. After all, I was the one who’d imparted unto him the terrible, fatal bullet of knowledge which he’d used to inadvertently destroy his parents’ marriage. If I hadn’t told him then none of it would have happened: the shopping trip, the acid, the hideous afternoon of the pig-kissing revelations. And so that bond we’d made up on the roof that day, it didn’t just fade, it kind of combusted in a cloud of toxic smoke.

  It was hard not to agree that I’d brought it all upon myself. When I think of my intention when I told him what I’d seen, my keenness to scandalise and impress, my lack of empathy or appreciation of the way it might make him feel, I felt, yes, a sense of personal liability. And I did pay the price for that, I really did. Because in unwittingly destroying his parents’ marriage, I’d unwittingly destroyed my entire life.

  Shortly after Sally moved out, I came upon Justin sitting at the table on the terrace in the garden, sorting through piles of herbs and flowers. The fact that he had stayed under the same roof as his adulterous girlfriend struck me as sad and a little subversive. He carried on much as before, tending and harvesting his plants, turning them into little canvas bags of powder, tiny glass phials of tincture, tying on his little tags that said ‘The Chelsea Apothecary’. He wore the same clothes and trundled about in the same way; there were no external tell-tales of any inner turmoil or heartbreak. Suffering as I was with my own sense of heartbreak at the end of my brief relationship with Phin, I was curious to get inside his head a little. And with the departure of Sally and the mating of Birdie and David, not to mention my own parents becoming smaller and smaller shadows of their former selves, he seemed oddly like one of the more normal people in the house.

  I sat opposite him and he looked up at me genially.

  ‘Hello, boy. How are things?’

  ‘Things are …’ I was about to say that things were fine, but then remembered that they were not fine at all. So I said, ‘Weird.’

  He looked at me more closely. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That’s for sure.’

  We fell silent for a moment. I watched him delicately picking buds from branches and laying them on to a tray.

  ‘Why are you still living here?’ I said eventually. ‘Now that you and Birdie …?’

  ‘Good question,’ he said, not looking up at me. He laid another bud down on the tray, rubbed his fingertips together and then laid his hands in his lap. ‘I guess, because even though I’m no longer with her, she’s still a part of me? You know, the part of love that isn’t about sex, it doesn’t automatically die. Or at least it doesn’t have to.’

  I nodded. This was certainly true for me. Although there was a large probability that I might never get the chance to hold Phin’s hand again, or even have another meaningful conversation with him, that did not diminish my feelings for him.

  ‘Do you think you might get back together with her?’

  He sighed. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Maybe. But maybe not.’

  ‘What do you think of David?’

  ‘Ah.’

  His body language changed subtly. He drew his shoulders closer together, entwined his fingers.

  ‘Jury’s out,’ he said finally. ‘In some ways I think he’s awesome. In other ways …’ He shook his head. ‘He freaks me out.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said louder and more fervently than I’d intended. ‘Yes,’ I said again, quietly. ‘He freaks me out too.’

  ‘In what way, exactly?’

  ‘He’s …’ I cast my eyes to the sky, looking for decent vocabulary. ‘Sinister.’

  Justin emitted a rumble of laughter. ‘Ha, yeah,’ he said. ‘Exactly spot on. Yeah. Sinister.

  ‘Here.’ He passed me a handful of small yellow daisy-shaped flowers and a roll of string. ‘Tie them into little bundles, by their stalks.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘It’s calendula. For soothing skin complaints. Brilliant stuff.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ I gestured towards the tray of tiny yellow buds.

  ‘This is chamomile. For making tea. Smell that.’ He passed me a bud. I put it to my nose. ‘Isn’t that just the nicest smell?’

  I nodded and looped some string around the stems of the calendula, tying it in a bow. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Brilliant. Yeah. So,’ he opened. ‘I heard about you and Phin. The other week. You know, tripping.’

  I flushed pink.

  ‘Man,’ he said, ‘I didn’t touch drugs ’til I was almost eighteen! And what are you? Twelve?’

  ‘Thirteen,’ I replied firmly. ‘I’m thirteen.’

  ‘So young!’ he said. ‘Hats off to you.’

  I didn’t understand this sentiment. It was so clearly a bad thing I’d done. But I smiled anyway.

  ‘You know,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘I can grow anything out here. Virtually. Do you know what I mean?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t just grow stuff that’s good for you. I can grow other stuff. Anything you like.’

  I nodded seriously. And then I said, ‘Like drugs, you mean?’

  He laughed his belly rumble laugh again. ‘Well, yeah, I guess. Good ones.’ He tapped his nose. ‘And bad ones too.’


  The back door opened at that moment. We both turned to see who it was.

  It was David and Birdie. They had their arms looped around each other’s waists. They glanced briefly in our direction and then went and sat at the other end of the garden. The atmosphere shifted. It felt like a cloud passing over the sun.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I mouthed at Justin.

  He nodded. ‘I’m cool.’

  We sat for a while in the muffling blanket of their presence, chatting about different herbs and plants and what they could do. I asked Justin about poisons and he told me about Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade, which, legend has it, was used by Macbeth’s soldiers to poison the incoming English army, and hemlock, used to kill Socrates at his execution. He also told me about using enchanting herbs, with spells, and aphrodisiacs like Gingko biloba.

  ‘How did you learn all this?’ I asked.

  Justin shrugged. ‘From books. Mainly. And my mum likes to garden. So you know, I was brought up around plants and the soil. So … natural progression, really.’

  At this point we had not been given a day’s teaching since Sally had left. We children had been freewheeling around the house, bored and restless. ‘Read a book,’ was the refrain to anyone complaining of having nothing to do. ‘Do some sums.’

  So I was ripe, I suppose, to learn something new and all that was on offer elsewhere was David’s weird exercises or Birdie’s fiddling.

  ‘Are there any plants that can make people, you know, do things – against their will?’

  ‘Well, there are hallucinogenics, of course, magic mushrooms and the like.’

  ‘And you can grow these?’ I asked. ‘In a garden like this?’

  ‘I can grow virtually anything, boy, anywhere.’

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked. ‘Can I help you grow things?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Justin. ‘You can be my little apprentice buddy. It’ll be cool.’

  I do not know what sort of pillow talk occurred behind the dreadful door of David and Birdie’s room; I didn’t like to think too hard about anything that happened beyond that door. I heard things which even now, nearly thirty years later, make me shudder to think about. I slept with my pillow over my head every night.

  In the mornings they would descend the stairs together, looking self-satisfied and superior. David was obsessed with Birdie’s waist-length hair. He touched it constantly. He twisted it around his fingers and bunched it up in his hands; he ran his hands down it, twirled shanks as he talked to her. I once saw him pick up a strand and hold it to his nostrils, then breathe in deeply.

  ‘Isn’t Birdie’s hair wonderful,’ he said once. He looked across at my sister and Clemency who both wore their hair on their shoulders. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have hair like this, girls?’ he asked.

  ‘You know,’ said Birdie, ‘in many religions it is seen as highly spiritual for women to wear their hair long.’

  Despite not being at all religious David and Birdie talked a lot about religion in the early days of their relationship. They talked about the meaning of life and the terrible disposability of everything. They talked about minimalism and feng shui. They asked my mother if it was OK if they repainted their bedroom white, if they could move their antique metal bedframe into another room and have their mattress on the floor. They abhorred aerosol cans and fast food and pharmaceuticals and man-made fibres and plastic bags and cars and aeroplanes. They were already talking about the threat of global warming and worrying about the impact of their carbon footprints. They were, looking back on it from the point of view of the end-of-days scenario currently playing out during this ominous heatwave of 2018, with the ocean full of plastic-choked sea creatures and polar bears sliding off melting ice caps, well ahead of their time. But in the context of 1990, when the world was just waking up to all that modern technology and throwaway culture had to offer and embracing it, they were an aberration.

  And I might have had some respect for David and Birdie and the strength of their commitment to the planet if it hadn’t been for the fact that David expected everyone else to live according to his will. It wasn’t enough for him and Birdie to sleep on mattresses on the floor. We all must sleep on mattresses on the floor. It wasn’t enough for him and Birdie to eschew cars and aspirin and fish fingers. We all must eschew cars and aspirin and fish fingers. It had become very clear to me that what I had predicted subliminally all those weeks ago when I saw David and Birdie kissing had come to pass. She had unlocked something terrible in David and now she wanted David to control everything.

  We were no longer, it seemed, free.

  33

  It doesn’t get dark until nearly ten. Libby and Miller talk to each other across the garden table in the encroaching darkness, not noticing that it has come until they can no longer see the whites of each other’s eyes. Then they light candles which jump and dance in the breeze. They’d spent the last hour of daylight searching the house and this is what they talk about: the things they have found.

  Apart from the words ‘I AM PHIN’ scrawled on the inside of the table drawer, they found the same words scrawled on the underside of the bath on the attic floor, on the skirting around one of the bedroom doors and inside a fitted wardrobe in one of the bedrooms on the first floor. They found a handful of musical strings in one of the smaller reception rooms downstairs and a music stand crammed into a corner cupboard. They found a pile of clean terry nappies, safety pins, nappy cream and Babygros in the wardrobe in the room where Libby had been found in her cot. They found a pile of books in a trunk in the back hallway, mouldy and grey, books about the healing properties of herbs and plants, books about medieval witchcraft, books of spells. The books were wrapped in an old blanket and covered over with upholstered cushions that must have once adorned a set of garden furniture.

  They found a thin gold band ring wedged between the wooden floor and the skirting board. It had a hallmark which Miller photographed with his camera and then zoomed in on to. When they googled it they discovered that it was hallmarked in 1975, the year of Henry and Martina’s wedding. A tiny thing, lost to the world, saved from the eyes of looters and detectives in its dark hiding place for twenty-five years or more.

  Libby wears the ring now, on the ring finger of her left hand. Her mother’s ring. It fits her perfectly. She twirls it as they talk.

  They pause every couple of minutes, listening for the sound of footsteps in the undergrowth. Miller goes to the back of the garden now and then, looking for shadows, for signs of someone entering through the gate in the back wall. They bring out the upholstered cushions they’d found in the trunk and they blow out the candles and sit on the corner of the lawn furthest from the back door. They are talking in whispers when Miller suddenly stares at her with wide eyes and his finger to his lips. ‘Shh.’ Then his eyes swivel towards the back of the garden. There is something there. She sits up straight. There, at the back of the garden. And as they watch they see a man stalk across the lawn, a tall, slim man, with short hair, glasses reflecting the moonlight, white trainers, a shoulder bag. They watch him sling his shoulder bag on to the top of the bunker and then follow suit. They hear him shimmy up the drainpipe to the promontory on the first floor. Then they both move very quietly and watch him as he disappears up on to the roof.

  Libby’s heart hammers. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispers, ‘oh my God. What do we do?’

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue,’ Miller whispers back.

  ‘Shall we confront him?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  She shakes her head. She’s half terrified and half desperate to see this man face to face.

  She looks at Miller. He will keep her safe. Or he will at least give the impression of being able to keep her safe. The man they saw was smaller than him and wearing glasses. She nods now and says, ‘Yes, let’s go in. Let’s talk to him.’

  Miller looks vaguely petrified but quickly rallies and says, ‘Yes. Right.’

  The house is dark, lit only
by the blur of streetlights from outside and the silver shimmer of the moon on the river. Libby follows Miller, reassured by the solid width of him. They stop at the foot of the staircase. Then they take each step slowly and surely, until they are on the first-floor landing. Here it is lighter, the moon visible through the large window overlooking the street. They both glance upwards and then at each other.

  ‘OK?’ whispers Miller.

  ‘OK,’ replies Libby.

  The hatch in the ceiling of the attic floor is open and the bathroom door is shut. They can hear the sound of pee hitting a toilet bowl, the stop-start of it as it comes to an end, the tap running, a throat being cleared. Then the door is open and a man walks out and he is cute. That is Libby’s first thought. A cute guy, with neatly cut fair hair, a youthful, clean-shaven face, toned arms, a grey T-shirt, narrow black jeans, trendy glasses, nice trainers.

  He jumps a foot in the air and clutches his chest when he sees them standing there. ‘Oh my fucking God,’ he says.

  Libby jumps too. And so does Miller.

  They all stare at each other for a moment.

  ‘Are you …?’ asks the man eventually, at the precise moment that Libby says, ‘Are you …?’

  They point at each other and then both turn to look at Miller as though he might have an answer for them. Then the man turns back to Libby and says, ‘Are you Serenity?’

  Libby nods. ‘Are you Henry?’

  The man looks at them blankly for a moment but then his face clears and he says, ‘No, I’m not Henry. I’m Phin.’

  II

  34

  CHELSEA, 1990

  My mother, being German, knew how to do a good Christmas. It was her speciality. The house was festooned from the beginning of December with homemade decorations made of candied oranges and red gingham and painted pine cones and filled with the aroma of gingerbread, stollen and mulled wine. No tacky tinsel or paper garlands for her, no tin of Quality Street or Cadbury’s selection boxes.