She looked at me suspiciously but then left the room. ‘Be quick,’ she called through the door. ‘I’m busy.’
I climbed out of my clothes as fast as I could and folded them roughly into a pile.
‘Am I allowed to keep my underwear?’ I called through the door.
‘Yes, of course you can,’ she replied impatiently.
I stepped into the stupid black robe and leggings and observed myself in the mirror. I looked like a very small, very thin monk. I stifled the desire to laugh out loud. Then very quickly I ran my hand around the backs of my drawers, searching for something. My fingers found it and I stared at it for a moment. The bootlace tie I’d bought in Kensington Market two years ago. I’d never worn it. But I could not bear the thought that I never would. I slipped it under my mattress with Justin’s witchcraft books and his rabbit’s foot and then I opened the door. I passed my folded clothes to Birdie.
‘Good boy,’ she said. She looked, for a moment, as though she might touch my hair. But then she smiled instead and repeated, ‘Good boy.’
I paused for a moment, wondering, as she seemed momentarily soft, if I could possibly ask the question I desperately wanted to ask. I drew in my breath and then blurted it out. ‘Aren’t you jealous?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t you jealous about the baby?’
She looked broken then, for just a split second. I felt as if I suddenly saw right inside her, right into the runny yellow yolk of her. She flinched and then she rallied. She said, ‘Of course I’m not. David wants a baby. I’m grateful to your mother for letting him have one.’
‘But didn’t he have to have … sex with her?’
I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever said the word sex out loud before and I felt my face begin to flush red.
‘Yes,’ she said primly. ‘Of course.’
‘But he’s your boyfriend?’
‘Partner,’ she said, ‘he’s my partner. I don’t own him. He doesn’t own me. All that matters is his happiness.’
‘Yes,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But what about yours?’
She didn’t reply.
My sister had turned thirteen a few days after my mother’s pregnancy announcement. I would say, although it is not particularly my area of expertise, that she was blossoming into a very pretty girl. She was tall, like my mother, and now, a year since the ‘no haircut’ rule had been implemented, her dark hair hung to her waist and unlike Clemency’s hair and Birdie’s hair, which grew thin and scraggy at the ends, hers was thick and shiny. She was thin, as we all were, but she had a certain shape to her. I could imagine (not that I spent very long at all doing such a thing, I can assure you) that with another stone on her, she would have had a knock-out figure. And there was an interesting face with a certain impish charm to it starting to emerge from beneath the baby face I’d been used to seeing all her life. Almost beautiful.
I mention all of this, not because I think you need to know what I thought about my sister’s looks, but because you may still be envisaging a little girl. But she was no longer a little girl.
She was, when the next thing happened, much closer to being a woman.
44
Libby arrives at work, breathless, two minutes late for her meeting with Cerian Tahany. Cerian is a local DJ and minor celebrity who is spending fifty thousand pounds on a new kitchen and every time she walks into the showroom a kind of low-level electric buzz starts up. Usually Libby would have been ultra-prepared for seeing her, would have had the paperwork ready, coffee cup set up, she would have checked her reflection and eaten a mint and tidied her skirt. Today Cerian is already seated and staring tensely at her phone when Libby arrives.
‘I am so, so sorry,’ she says. ‘So sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ says Cerian, turning off her phone and sliding it into her handbag. ‘Let’s crack on, shall we?’
For an hour, Libby has no time to think about the events of the past day. All she can think about is Carrara marble worktops and cutlery drawers and extractor hoods and copper pendant lights versus enamel pendant lights. It’s comforting to her. She loves talking about kitchens. She’s good at kitchens. Then suddenly it’s over and Cerian’s putting her reading glasses back in her handbag and hugging Libby goodbye and as she leaves the atmosphere in the showroom deflates and diffuses and everyone kind of flops.
Dido beckons her into the back office.
‘So,’ she says, clicking the tab on a can of Diet Coke. ‘What the hell happened?’
Libby blinks. ‘I’m not entirely sure. It was all completely bizarre.’
Libby talks her through coming upon Phin on the top landing and walking across Albert Bridge to his stunning riverfront apartment in Battersea with its view directly across to the house. She tells Dido what she can remember of the story that Phin recounted to them on the terrace. And then she tells her about awaking this morning to find herself top to toe with Miller in a big double bed and Dido says, ‘Well, I could have told you that was going to happen.’
Libby looks at her askance. ‘What?’
‘You and Miller. You have a connection.’
‘We do not have a connection.’
‘You do have a connection. Trust me. I’m brilliant at this stuff. I’ve predicted three marriages from virtually before the couples had even met each other. Seriously.’
Libby waves this nonsense away. ‘We were drunk and rolled into bed with all our clothes on. Woke up this morning still with all our clothes on. Oh, and he has a tattoo and I do not like tattoos.’
‘I thought everyone liked tattoos these days.’
‘Yes, I’m sure they do, but I don’t.’
Her phone vibrates then and she picks it up. ‘Talk of the devil,’ she says, seeing Miller’s name flash up.
‘Hi!’
‘Listen,’ he begins urgently. ‘Something weird. I just opened up my file from last night, the recording of Phin’s story. It’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yes. It’s been deleted.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in a café in Victoria. I was just about to start transcribing it and it’s not there.’
‘But – are you sure it was there? Maybe you hadn’t pressed record properly?’
‘I totally pressed record properly. I remember, last night, I checked it. I listened to it. It was there. I’d even given the file a name.’
‘So, you think …?’
‘It must have been Phin. Remember you said you thought you had your phone with you when you came to bed? Well, so did I. And my phone has a thumbprint recognition. I mean, he must have come into our room, when we were sleeping, and opened up my phone using my actual thumb, while I was sleeping. And taken your phone too. Then locked us in. And there’s more. I’ve googled him. Phin Thomsen. No trace of him anywhere on the internet. I googled the flat he’s living in. It’s an Airbnb. According to their booking system it’s been booked since the middle of June. Basically since …’
‘Since my birthday.’
‘Since your birthday.’ He sighs and runs his hand down his beard. ‘I have no clue who that guy is. But he is dodgy as fuck.’
‘The story,’ she says. ‘Can you remember the story? Enough to work out the truth.’
He pauses, briefly. ‘It’s hazy,’ he says. ‘I can remember most of it. But the bits towards the end are really …’
‘Me too,’ she says. ‘Really hazy. And I slept …’
‘Like a dead person,’ he finishes.
‘And all day I’ve felt …’
‘Really, really strange.’
‘Really strange,’ she agrees.
‘And I’m starting to think—’
‘Yes,’ she interjects, ‘me too. I think he drugged us. But why?’
‘That,’ says Miller, ‘I do not know. But you should check your phone. Do you have a passcode?’
‘Yes,’ she replies.
‘What is it?’
She sighs. Her shoulders slump. ‘It’s my birth date.’
‘Right,’ says Miller. ‘Well, check your phone for anything weird. He might have left something on it. Spyware or something.’
‘Spyware?’
‘God, hell knows. He’s odd. Everything about last night was odd. He broke into your house. He drugged us—’
‘Might have drugged us.’
‘Might have drugged us. At the very least he snuck into our room while we slept, used my fingerprint to access my phone, took your phone from your bag and then locked us in. I wouldn’t put anything past this guy.’
‘No,’ she says softly. ‘No, you’re right. I will. I’ll check it. I mean, he might even be listening to us now.’
‘Yes. He might. And, buddy, if you’re listening, we’re on to you, you creepy fuck.’ She hears him draw in his breath. ‘We should meet up again. Soon. I’ve been researching Birdie Dunlop-Evers. She’s got an interesting back story. And I think I might have found out more about the other guy who lived here: Justin, Birdie’s boyfriend. When are you free?’
Libby’s pulse quickens at the prospect of developments in the story. ‘Tonight,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I mean, even …’ She looks up at Dido who is staring intently at her. ‘Now?’ She aims the question at Dido who nods at her furiously and mouths go, go.
‘I can meet you now. Anywhere.’
‘Our café?’ he says.