I didn’t respond to that because there was no response to be made. He would not understand. No one would understand. At least she could see that much.

Vegetables were delivered in a cardboard box once a week; cash was left in a hidden envelope by the front door. Once or twice the vegetable delivery man would ring on the bell and my mum would open the letterbox and the vegetable delivery man would say, ‘No parsnips today, miss, replaced them with swedes, hope that’s OK?’ And my mother would smile and say, ‘That is fine, thank you so much,’ and after the bodies were found, this man would come to the police and tell them that he thought it was a closed convent and that my mother was a nun. He referred to this drop-off on his route as the ‘nunnery’. He said he’d had no idea there were children living in the house. He’d had no idea there was a man.

I was very lonely by now. I tried to rekindle my friendship (or what semblance there had ever been of a friendship) with Phin, but he was still so angry with me for betraying him the night he pushed me into the river. And yes, I know I should have been angry with him for pushing me into the river in the first place, but we’d taken drugs, and I was annoying, I could see that I was annoying, and in a way I’d deserved to be pushed into the river and my fury afterwards was more to do with hurt pride and feelings than any sense that he’d put me in mortal danger. And also, I was in love with him and when you’re in love, you’ll forgive almost anything. It’s a trait that I’ve carried with me into adult life, unfortunately. I always fall in love with people who hate me.

I came upon Clemency in the kitchen one afternoon shortly after the announcement of my sister’s pregnancy.

‘Did you know?’ I said.

She flushed a little as obviously we’d barely spoken over the years and now we were talking about her best friend having sex with her father.

She said, ‘No. I had no idea.’

‘But you’re so close. How could you not have known?’

She shrugged. ‘I just thought they were exercising.’

‘What do you think about it?’

‘I think it’s disgusting.’

I nodded, vehemently, as if to say we are on the same page, good.

‘Has your father ever done anything like this before?’

‘You mean …?’

‘The babies. Has he ever got people pregnant before?’

‘Oh,’ she said softly. ‘No. Only my mum.’

I told her to come to my room and she looked scared for a minute, which hurt my feelings, but then I thought it was good. It was good to be scary if I was going to overthrow David and get us all out of this house.

In my room I pulled my mattress away from the wall and pulled out the objects I’d found in David and Birdie’s room. I spread them across the floor and let her look at them. I told her where I’d found them.

‘But how did you get in there?’ she asked.

‘I can’t tell you,’ I said.

I saw confusion sluice through her as she looked at the objects. ‘Your pencil case?’

‘Yes. My pencil case. And there was so much other stuff.’ I told her about the silky underwear and the whiskey and the piles of cash. And as I told her I saw that I was breaking her. It was like the day I’d told Phin about seeing his dad kissing Birdie. I’d forgotten that I was talking to a child about her father, that there was a deep seam of shared genetic material, memories, connection there and that I was ripping it all apart with my words.

‘He’s been lying to us all along!’ she said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I thought we were doing all of this for the poor people! I don’t understand. I don’t understand!’

I looked her firmly in the eye. ‘It’s simple,’ I said. ‘Your father’s taken everything of value from my parents and now he wants their house. Legally this house is held in trust for me and my sister until we’re twenty-five. But look.’ I showed her the will I’d pulled out of the box. It had a codicil added in David’s handwriting. The house, he’d stated in cod legal language, was in the event of the deaths of my parents now to pass directly to David Sebastian Thomsen and his descendants. This codicil had been witnessed and countersigned by my mother and Birdie. It wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of making it through a court of law but its intent was clear.

‘And he’s having a baby to secure his stake in the house.’

Clemency didn’t say anything for a while. Then she said, ‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ I said, rubbing my chin as though there might be a wise man’s beard there, but of course there was nothing of the sort. I didn’t grow a beard until I was in my twenties and even then it was pretty unimpressive. ‘But we are going to do something.’

She looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘OK.’

‘But’, I said firmly, ‘you have to promise me that this is our secret.’ I gestured at the objects I’d purloined from David and Birdie’s room. ‘Do not tell your brother. Do not tell my sister. Do not tell anyone. OK?’

She nodded. ‘I promise.’ She was silent for a minute and then she looked up at me and said, ‘He’s done this before.’

‘What?’

She dropped her gaze to her lap. ‘He tried to get his grandmother to sign her house over to him. When she was senile. My uncle found out and kicked us out. That’s when we moved to France.’ She looked up at me. ‘Do you think we should tell the police?’ she said. ‘Tell them what he’s been doing?’

‘No,’ I said instantly. ‘No. Because, really, he hasn’t broken the law, has he? What we need is a plan. We need to get out of here. Will you help me?’

She nodded.

‘Will you do whatever it takes?’

She nodded again.

It was a fork in the road, really. Looking back on it there were so many other ways to have got through the trauma of it all, but with all the people I loved most in the world facing away from me I chose the worst possible option.

54

Libby and Miller leave Sally’s office ten minutes later.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks her as they emerge into the sweltering heat.

She manages a smile but then realises that she is about to cry and can do nothing to stop it.

‘Oh God,’ says Miller. ‘Oh dear. Come on, come on.’ He guides her towards a quiet courtyard and to a bench under a tree. He feels his pockets. ‘No tissues, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I have tissues.’

She pulls a packet of travel tissues from her bag and Miller smiles.

‘You are so exactly the sort of person who would carry a packet of travel-sized tissues around.’

She stares at him. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘It means … It just means …’ His features soften. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘It just means you’re very organised. That’s all.’

She nods. This much she knows. ‘I have to be,’ she says.

‘And why is that?’ he asks.

She shrugs. It’s not in her nature to talk about personal things. But given what they’ve been through in the last two days she feels the boundaries that define her usual conversational preferences have been blown apart.

She says, ‘My mum. My adoptive mum. She was a bit – well, is a bit chaotic. Lovely, lovely, lovely. But it was my dad who kept her on track. And he died when I was eight and after that … I was always late for everything. I never had the right stuff for school. I didn’t used to show her the slips for trips and things because there was no point. She booked a holiday in the middle of my GCSEs. Emigrated to Spain when I was eighteen years old.’ She shrugs. ‘So I just had to be the grown-up. You know.’

‘The keeper of the tissues?’

She laughs. ‘Yes. The keeper of the tissues. I remember this one time I fell over in the playground and cut my elbow and my mum was just sort of flapping about looking for something in her handbag to clean it up with and this other mum came over with a handbag exactly the same size as my mum’s and she opened it and pulled out an antiseptic wipe and a packet of plasters. And I just thought: Wow, I want to be the person with the magic handbag. You know.’

He smiles at her. ‘You’re doing really well,’ he says. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

She laughs nervously. ‘I’m trying,’ she says. ‘Trying to do the best I can.’

For a moment they sit in silence. Their knees touch briefly and then spring apart again.

Then Libby says, ‘Well, that was a waste of time, wasn’t it?’

Miller throws her a devious look. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘not entirely a waste of time. The girl. Lola? She’s Sally’s granddaughter.’

Libby gasps. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because I saw a photo on Sally’s desk of Sally with a younger woman holding a newborn. And then I saw another photo on her wall of Sally with a young girl with blond hair. And then I saw a child’s drawing framed on the wall that said “I Love You Grandma”.’ He shrugs. ‘I put it all together and hey presto.’ Then he leans towards Libby and shows her something on the screen of his phone.

‘What is it?’ she asks.

‘It’s a letter addressed to Lola. It was poking out of her handbag under her desk. I performed the classic kneeling-to-tie-my-shoelace manoeuvre. Click.’