The Family Upstairs Read online

  He bought our house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea the very same day he got his hands on the money. He’d been house-hunting during Harry’s dying days, had his eye on the place for a few weeks, was terrified that someone else was going to put an offer in on it before he could claim his inheritance.

  The house was empty when he bought it and he spent years and thousands filling it with what he used to call objets: moose heads looming off panelled walls, hunting swords hanging crossed above doorways, mahogany thrones with barley twist backs, a medieval-style banqueting table for sixteen, replete with scars and wormholes, cabinets full of pistols and bullwhips, a twenty-foot tapestry, sinister oil portraits of other people’s ancestors, reams of gold-blocked leather-bound books that no one would ever read and a full-size cannon in the front garden. There were no comfortable chairs in our house, no cosy corners. Everything was wood and leather and metal and glass. Everything was hard. Especially my father.

  He lifted weights in our basement and drank Guinness from his own private keg in his own private bar. He wore £800 handmade suits from Mayfair that barely accommodated his muscles and his girth. He had hair the colour of old pennies and raw-looking hands with tight red knuckles. He drove a Jaguar. He played golf although he hated it because he wasn’t designed to swing a golf club; he was too solid, too unyielding. He went on shoots at the weekends: disappeared on Saturday morning wearing a tight-fitting tweed jacket with a boot full of guns and came home on Sunday evening with a brace of wood pigeons in an ice box. Once, when I was about five, he brought home an English Bulldog he’d bought from a man on the street using the mint-fresh fifty-pound notes he kept rolled up in his jacket pocket. He said it reminded him of himself. Then it shat on an antique rug and he got rid of it.

  My mother was a rare beauty.

  Not my words. My father’s.

  Your mother is a rare beauty.

  She was half-German, half-Turkish. Her name was Martina. She was twelve years younger than my dad, and back then, before they came, she was a style icon. She would put on a pair of dark sunglasses and take herself off to Sloane Street to spend my father’s money on bright silk scarves and gold-encased lipsticks and intense French perfume and she would be photographed sometimes, her wrists encircled with bag handles, and put in the posh papers. They called her a socialite. She wasn’t really. She went to glamorous parties and wore beautiful clothes but when she was at home she was just our mum. Not the best mum, but not the worst, and certainly a relatively soft spot in our big, masculine, machete-adorned Chelsea mansion.

  She’d once had a job, for a year or so, introducing important fashion people to each other. Or at least that was my impression. She had little silver business cards in her purse, printed with the words ‘Martina Lamb Associates’ in hot pink. She had an office on the King’s Road, a bright loft room over a shop, with a glass table and leather chairs and a telex machine, rails of clothes in clear plastic, a vase of white lilies on a plinth. She would take me and my sister into work with her on school holidays and give us crisp piles of tantalisingly white paper from a ream in a box, and a handful of Magic Markers. The phone would ring occasionally, and Mummy would say, ‘Good morning, Martina Lamb Associates.’ Sometimes a visitor would be buzzed in via the intercom – my sister and I fighting over whose turn it was to press the button. The visitors were shrill, very thin women who only wanted to talk about clothes and famous people. There were no ‘associates’, just our mother and the occasional wide-eyed teenage girl on work experience. I don’t know what happened to it all. I just know that the loft office disappeared, and the silver business cards disappeared, and Mummy just carried on being a housewife again.

  My sister and I went to school in Knightsbridge – quite possibly the most expensive school in London. Our father was not afraid of spending money then. He loved spending money. The more the better. Our uniform was shit brown and bile yellow with knickerbocker-style trousers for the boys. Thankfully, by the time I was old enough to be humiliated by the attire, my father had no money left to pay for school fees, let alone for corduroy knickerbockers from the Harrods school uniform department.

  It all happened so slowly, yet so extraordinarily quickly, the change to our parents, to our home, to our lives after they arrived. But that first night, when Birdie appeared on our front step with two large suitcases and a cat in a wicker box, we could never have guessed the impact she would have, the other people she would bring into our lives, that it would all end the way it did.

  We thought she had just come to stay for the weekend.

  4

  Libby can hear the whisper of every moment that this room has existed, feel every breath of every person who has ever sat where she is sitting.

  ‘Seventeen ninety-nine,’ Mr Royle had replied in answer to her earlier question. ‘One of the oldest legal practices in the capital.’

  Mr Royle looks at her now across his heavily waxed desk top. A smile flickers across his lips and he says, ‘Well, well, well. This is some birthday present, no?’

  Libby smiles nervously. ‘I’m still not convinced it’s really true,’ she says. ‘I keep expecting someone to tell me it’s a big wind-up.’

  Her choice of words – big wind-up – feels wrong in this venerable and ancient setting. She wishes she’d used a different turn of phrase. But Mr Royle doesn’t seem concerned. His smile stays in place as he leans forward and passes Libby a thick pile of paperwork. ‘No winding up, I can assure you, Miss Jones.

  ‘Here,’ he says, pulling something from the pile of paper. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to give this to you now. Or maybe I should have sent it to you. With the letter. I don’t know – it’s all so awkward. It was in the file and I kept it back, just in case it didn’t feel right. But it does seem the right thing to do. So here. I don’t know how much your adoptive parents were able to tell you about your birth family. But you might want to take a minute to read this.’

  She unfolds the piece of newsprint and lays it out on the table in front of her.

  Socialite and husband dead in suicide pact

  Teenage children missing; baby found alive

  Police yesterday were called to the Chelsea home of former socialite Martina Lamb and her husband Henry after reports of a possible triple suicide. Police arrived at lunchtime and found the bodies of Mr and Mrs Lamb side by side on the floor of the kitchen. A second man, who has yet to be identified, was also found dead. A baby, believed to be female and ten months old, was found in a room on the first floor. The baby has been taken into care and is said to be in good health. Neighbours have observed that there had been numerous children living in the house in recent years and there are varying reports of other adults living at the property, but no trace was found of any other residents.

  The cause of death is still to be ascertained, but early blood samples tested appear to suggest that the trio may have poisoned themselves.

  Henry Lamb, 48, was the sole beneficiary of the estate of his father, Mr Harry Lamb, of Blackpool, Lancashire. He had suffered from ill health in recent years and was said to be wheelchair-bound.

  Police are now trawling the country for sightings of the couple’s son and daughter who are described as roughly fourteen to sixteen years old. Anyone with any information about the whereabouts of the children is invited to contact the Metropolitan Police at the earliest possible juncture. Anyone who may have spent time living at the property with the family in recent years is also of great interest to the police.

  She stares at Mr Royle. ‘Is that …? The baby left behind – is that me?’

  He nods. She can see genuine sadness in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Such a tragic story, isn’t it? And such a mystery. The children, I mean. The house was in trust for them, too, but neither of them ever came forward. I can only assume, well, that they’re … anyway.’ He leans forward, clutches his tie and smiles, painfully. ‘May I offer you a pen?’

  He tips a wooden pot of expensive-looking ballpoint pens towards her and she
takes one. It has the name of the firm printed on its barrel in gold script.

  Libby stares at it blankly for a moment.

  A brother.

  A sister.

  A suicide pact.

  She shakes her head, very slightly; then she clears her throat and says, ‘Thank you.’

  Her fingers clutch the solid pen tightly. She can barely remember what her signature is supposed to look like. There are sticky plastic arrows attached to the edges of the pages she is expected to sign, pointing her in the right direction. The sound of the pen against the paper is almost excruciating. Mr Royle watches benignly; he pushes his teacup across the desk a few inches, then back again.

  As she signs, she feels very strongly the import of this moment, this invisible turning in her life taking her from here to there. On one side of this pile of papers is careful trolley trips round Lidl, one week away a year and an eleven-year-old Vauxhall Corsa. On the other is the keys to an eight-bedroom house in Chelsea.

  ‘Good,’ he says, almost with a sigh of relief, as Libby passes him back the paperwork. ‘Good, good, good.’ He flicks through it, casting his gaze over the spaces next to the plastic arrows and then he looks up at Libby and smiles and says, ‘Right. I think it’s time for you to take ownership of the keys.’ He pulls a small white jiffy bag from a drawer in his desk. The label on the packet says ‘16 Cheyne Walk’.

  Libby peers inside. Three sets of keys. One with a metal keyring with the Jaguar logo on it. One with a brass keyring with a cigarette lighter built into it. And one set without a keyring.

  He gets to his feet. ‘Shall we go?’ he says. ‘We can walk. It’s only just around the corner.’

  It’s a violently hot summer’s day. Libby can feel the heat of the paving stones through the soles of her slip-on canvas shoes, the glare of the midday sun burning through the thin film of cloud. They walk down a street filled with restaurants, all open to the pavement, fully laid-up tables set on special platforms and protected from the sun by vast rectangular parasols. Women in oversized sunglasses sit in twos and threes drinking wine. Some of them are as young as her and she marvels at how they can afford to sit drinking wine in a posh restaurant on a Monday afternoon.

  ‘So,’ says Mr Royle, ‘this could be your new neighbourhood, I suppose. If you decided to live in the house.’

  She shakes her head and issues a small nervous laugh. She can’t form a proper reply. It’s all just too silly.

  They pass tiny boutiques and antique shops filled with bronzes of foxes and bears, vast twinkling chandeliers the size of her bathtub. Then they are by the river and Libby can smell it before she sees it, the wet-dog tang of it. Wide boats slip by each other; a smaller boat with more rich people on it bubbles past: champagne in a silver cooler, a windswept golden retriever at the prow squinting against the sun.

  ‘It’s just down here,’ says Mr Royle. ‘Another minute or two.’

  Libby’s thighs are chafing and she wishes she’d worn shorts instead of a skirt. She can feel sweat being absorbed by the fabric of her bra where the cups meet in the middle and she can tell that Mr Royle, in his tight-fitting suit and shirt, is finding the heat unbearable too.

  ‘Here we are,’ he says, turning to face a terrace of five or six red-brick houses, all of differing heights and widths. Libby guesses immediately which is hers, even before she sees the number sixteen painted on the fanlight in a curly script. The house is three floors high, four windows wide. It is beautiful. But it is, just as she’d imagined it would be, boarded up. The chimney pots and gutters are overgrown with weeds. The house is an eyesore.

  But such a beautiful eyesore. Libby inhales sharply. ‘It’s very big,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ says Mr Royle. ‘Twelve rooms in total. Not including the basement.’

  The house stands well back from the pavement behind ornate metal railings and an overgrown parterre garden. There is a wrought-iron canopy running towards the front door and to the left is a full-size cannon set on a concrete block.

  ‘Would you like me to do the honours?’ Mr Royle indicates the padlock securing the board over the front door.

  Libby nods and he unlocks it, hefting the hoarding away by looping his fingers around it. It comes away with a terrible groan and behind it is a huge black door. He rubs his fingertips together and then goes through the keys methodically until he finds the one that opens the door.

  ‘When was the last time anyone was in this house?’ she asks.

  ‘Gosh, I suppose a few years back now when something flooded. We had to get in with the emergency plumbers. Repair some damage. That sort of thing. Right, here we are.’

  They step into the hallway. The heat of outdoors, the hum of traffic, the echo of the river all fades away. It’s cool in here. The floor is a soft dark parquet, scarred and dusty. A staircase ahead has a dark wood barley-twist banister, with an overflowing bowl of fruit carved into the top of the newel post. The doors are carved with linen folds and have ornate bronze handles. The walls are half panelled with more dark wood and papered with tatty wine-red flock wallpaper, which has vast bald patches where the moths have eaten it away. The air is dense and full of dust motes. The only light comes from the fanlights above each doorway.

  Libby shudders. There’s too much wood. Not enough light. Not enough air. She feels like she’s in a coffin. ‘Can I?’ She puts her hand to one of the doors.

  ‘You can do whatever you like. It’s your house.’

  The door opens up into a long rectangular room at the back of the house with four windows overlooking a dense tangle of trees and bushes. More wooden panelling. Wooden shutters. More parquet underfoot.

  ‘Where does that go?’ she asks Mr Royle pointing at a narrow door built into the panelling.

  ‘That’, he replies, ‘is the door to the staff staircase. It leads directly to the smaller rooms on the attic floor, with another hidden door on the first-floor landing. Very normal in these old houses. Built like hamster cages.’

  They explore the house room by room, floor by floor.

  ‘What happened to all the furniture? All the fittings?’ Libby asks.

  ‘Long gone. The family sold everything to keep afloat. They all slept on mattresses. Made their own clothes.’

  ‘So they were poor?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose, in effect, they were poor.’

  Libby nods. She hadn’t imagined her birth parents as poor. Of course she had allowed herself to create fantasy birth parents. Even children who aren’t adopted create fantasy birth parents. Her fantasy parents were young and gregarious. Their house by the river had two full walls of plate-glass windows and a wraparound terrace. They had dogs, small ones, both girls, with diamonds on their collars. Her fantasy mother worked in fashion PR, her fantasy father was a graphic designer. When she was their baby they would take her for breakfast and put her in a high chair and break up brioches for her and play footsie with each other under the table where the small dogs lay curled together. They had died driving back from a cocktail party. Most probably in a crash involving a sports car.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ she says. ‘Apart from the suicide note?’

  Mr Royle shakes his head. ‘Well, nothing official. But there was one thing. When you were found. Something in your cot with you. I believe it’s still here. In your nursery. Shall we …?’

  She follows Mr Royle into a big room on the first floor. Here there are two large sash windows overlooking the river; the air is stagnant and dense, the high corners of the room filled with thick curtains of cobweb and dust. There is an opening at the other end of the room and they turn the corner into a small room. It’s fitted as a dressing room, three walls of wardrobes and drawers decorated with ornate beading and painted white. In the centre of the room is a cot.

  ‘Is that …?’

  ‘Yes. That’s where you were found. Gurgling and chirruping by all accounts, happy as Larry.’

  The cot is a rocking design with metal levers for pu
shing back and forth. It is painted a thick buttermilk cream with a scattering of pale blue roses. There is a small metal badge on the front with the Harrods logo on it.

  Mr Royle reaches for a shelf on the back wall and picks up a small box. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘this was tucked away inside your blankets. We assumed, we all assumed, us and the police, that it was meant for you. The police held it as evidence for years then sent it back to us when the case ran dry.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it and see.’

  She takes the little cardboard box from him and pulls the flaps apart. It is filled with shreds of torn newspaper. Her fingers find something solid and silky. She brings it from the box and lets it dangle from between her fingertips. It’s a rabbit’s foot hanging from a gold chain. Libby recoils slightly and the chain slithers from her grasp and on to the wooden floor. She reaches down to pick it up.

  Her fingers draw over the rabbit’s foot, feeling the cold deathliness of its sleek fur, the sharp nibs of its claws. She runs the chain through her other hand. Her head, which a week ago had been filled with new sandals, a hen night, her split ends, the houseplants that needed watering, was now filled with people sleeping on mattresses and dead rabbits and a big, scary house, empty but for a large rocking crib from Harrods with strangely sinister pale blue roses painted on the sides. She puts the rabbit’s foot back into the box and holds it, awkwardly. Then slowly she lowers her hand on to the mattress at the base of the crib, feels for the echo of her small, sleeping body, for the ghost of the person who last laid her down there, tucked her in safe with a blanket and a rabbit’s foot. But there is nothing there of course. Just an empty bed, the smell of must.