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.

Miller and Dido stand behind her, peering across her shoulder through the wooden gate. She pushes the gate as hard as she can and peers into the neighbour’s garden.