My herbal teas were much loved. I told David and Birdie that I’d been experimenting with a new blend: chamomile and raspberry leaves. They looked at me fondly and said that sounds delicious.

I apologised to Birdie as she drank hers that it was maybe a little sweet; I told her it was just a touch of honey, to balance out the rather bitter edge of the raspberry leaves. The spell had specified that the recipient of the spell needed to drink at last half a cup. So I sat and watched with an affectionate look on my face, as if I was desperately seeking their approval, so that they would keep drinking, even if they did not like the taste.

But they did like the taste and both of them drank their full cup.

‘Well,’ said Birdie a while later as we put away the washing up. ‘That tea was super, super relaxing, Henry. I feel I could … In fact …’ I saw her eyes roll back slightly in her head. ‘I might have to go to bed,’ she said.

I could see David struggling now, too, to keep his eyes open. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just a little nap.’

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let me help you both. Gosh, I’m so sorry. Maybe that tea had too much chamomile in it. Here, here.’ I allowed Birdie to hold on to my arm.

She rested her cheek against my shoulder and said, ‘I love your tea, Henry. It’s the best tea ever.’

‘Really, really good tea,’ David agreed.

David fumbled for the key to their bedroom in the folds of his tunic. I saw as he did so that beneath his tunic, he wore a cross-body leather purse. I assumed that this must be where he kept all the keys to all the rooms in the house. He was having trouble putting the key in the lock so I helped him. Then I got them both on to the bed where they fell instantaneously into a deep sleep.

And there I stood. In David and Birdie’s bedroom. I had not set foot in this room for years, not since David and Sally had still been together.

I looked around the room and could barely absorb what I was seeing. Piles of cardboard boxes over the tops of which spilt suggestions of clothing, of books, of possessions, the possessions we had been told were evil and bad. I saw two pairs of shoes in the corner of the room, his and hers. I saw alcohol, a half-drunk bottle of wine with the cork replaced, a glass with a dark sticky residue at the bottom, some of my father’s very expensive whiskey. I saw a box of biscuits, a Mars Bar wrapper. I saw a slip of silky underwear, a bottle of Elvive shampoo.

But I ignored all this for now. I had no idea how long this state of ‘temporary stupefaction’ would last. I needed to find my father’s paperwork and get out of there.

As my hands passed through the boxes I came upon my pencil case, not seen since my last day of primary school. I held it briefly in my hand and stared at it as a relic from another civilisation. I thought briefly of that boy in the brown knickerbockers, skipping from his last day at school, a triumphant tip to his chin as he imagined the brave new world about to be presented to him. I unzipped it, held it to my nose, inhaled the smell of pencil shavings and innocence; then I tucked it into my leggings to be secreted later in my own room.

I found a ballgown of my mother’s. I found my father’s shotguns. I found my sister’s ballet leotard and tutu, the reason for the keeping of which I could not fathom.

And then, in the third box, I found my father’s files: grey marbled box files with fierce metal clips inside. I pulled one out that had written on the side ‘Household Affairs’ and flipped quickly through the contents.

And there it was, the last will and testament of Henry Roger Lamb and Martina Zeynep Lamb. I slipped this too into the waistband of my leggings. I would read it quietly, in my own room. I heard Birdie’s breathing grow quicker and saw her leg twitch. I quickly pulled another box towards me. In here I saw passports. I picked them up and flicked to the back pages: mine, my sister’s, my parents’. I felt a flame of fury build up inside of me. Our passports! This man had taken our passports! This seemed almost to surpass the sheer evil of locking us into our own home. To steal another human being’s passport, their means to escape, to adventure, to explore, to learn, to take full advantage of the world – my heart pounded with rage. I noted that my own passport had expired, that my sister’s had another six months to go. Useless to us now.

I heard David mumble under his breath.

The temporary stupefaction had been slightly too temporary and I wasn’t sure I’d ever persuade them to drink a special ‘new tea’ again. This could be my one and only opportunity to uncover the secrets buried away in this room.

I found a packet of paracetamol. A packet of cough sweets. A packet of condoms. And I found, buried underneath all of this, a pile of cash. I ran my fingers down the sides. It riffled satisfyingly, suggesting a good amount. A thousand, I estimated. Maybe more? I pulled a few ten-pound notes from the top of the pile and folded them into the paperwork held inside my elasticated waistband.

Birdie groaned.

David groaned.

I got to my feet, my father’s will, my pencil case and five ten-pound notes clutched tightly against my stomach.

I left the room on tiptoe, shutting the door silently behind me.

52

Lucy’s mind is spinning. The man’s features come in and out of focus. For a moment he looks like one person, the next, another. She asks him who he is.

‘You know who I am,’ he says.

The voice is both familiar yet strange.

Stella has crossed the room and is clinging on to Lucy’s leg with her arms.

Lucy can see Marco standing tall and strong beside her.

The dog accepts the man’s affection happily, rolling now on to his back to allow him to tickle his belly.

‘Who’s a good boy,’ says the man. ‘Who’s a very, very good boy.’

He glances up at Lucy and pushes his glasses up his nose with tip of his index finger. ‘I would so love a dog,’ he says. ‘But you know, it’s not fair, is it, leaving them at home all day when you’re working. So, I make do with cats instead.’ He sighs and then he stands up straight and looks her up and down. ‘I love your look, by the way. I would never have thought you’d turn out so, you know, bohemian.’

‘Are you …?’ she squints at him.

‘I’m not going to tell you,’ says the man playfully. ‘You have to guess.’

Lucy sighs. She is so tired. She has travelled so far. Her life has been so long and so hard and nothing has ever, ever been easy. Not for one second. She has made terrible decisions and ended up in bad places with bad people. She is, as she has so often felt, a ghost, the merest outline of a person who might one day have existed but had been erased by life.

And now here she is: a mother, a killer, an illegal immigrant who has broken and entered into a property that does not belong to her. All she wants is to see the baby and to close the circle of her existence. But now there is a man here and she thinks he might be her brother, but how can he both be her brother and yet not be her brother? And why is she scared of him?

She glances up at the man, sees the shadow of his long eyelashes against his cheekbones. Phin, she thinks. This is Phin. But then she glances down at his hands: small and delicate, with narrow wrists.

‘You’re Henry,’ she says, ‘aren’t you?’

53

CHELSEA, 1992

I went to my mother after the announcement and said, ‘You let your daughter have sex with a man the same age as you. That is just sick.’

She merely responded, ‘It was nothing to do with me. All I know is that a baby is coming and that we should all be very happy.’

I had never and still to this day have never felt so entirely alone. I no longer had a mother nor a father. We had no visitors to the house. The doorbell never rang. The phone had been disconnected many months before. There was a time, in the days after my mother lost her baby, when someone came to our house and banged on the door, solidly, for half an hour every day for nearly a week. We were kept in our rooms while the person banged on the door. Afterwards my mother said it was her brother, my uncle Karl. I liked Uncle Karl, he was the type of boisterous young uncle who would throw children into swimming pools and tell off-colour jokes that would make all the adults tut. The last time we’d seen him was at his wedding in Hamburg when I was about ten years old. He’d worn a floral three-piece suit. The idea that he’d been at our door and that we had not let him in broke another small part of my heart. ‘Why, though?’ I asked my mother. ‘Why didn’t we let him in?’

‘Because he wouldn’t understand the way we choose to live. He is too frivolous and lives a life without meaning.’