Clemency nods and straightens her shoulders. She continues. ‘Normally we placed dishes in the centre of the table and served ourselves but that night Henry said he wanted to serve everyone as though they were customers in a restaurant. That way he could make sure that each plate ended up in front of the right person. Then my dad made a toast. He raised his glass around the table to each person and he said, “I know that life hasn’t always been so easy for us all, particularly for those of us who have experienced a loss. I know sometimes it must feel hard to keep the faith, as it were, but the fact that we are all here, after all these years, and we are still a family, and now, in fact, a bigger family” – and as he said that he touched the crown of your head – “just shows how good we all have it and how lucky we all are.” And then he turned to Birdie and he said …’ Clemency pauses and pulls in her breath. ‘He said, “My love, my life, mother of my child, my angel, my reason for living, my goddess. Happy birthday, darling. I owe everything to you,” and then they kissed and it was long and wet and it made noises and I remember thinking …’ She stops for a moment and throws a rueful look at Libby. ‘I thought: I really really hope you both die.

‘It took about twenty minutes for the draught to start to take effect. Three or four minutes later all the grown-ups were unconscious. Lucy grabbed you from Birdie’s lap and we moved into action. Henry told us we had about twenty minutes, half an hour, tops, before the draught wore off. We laid the grown-ups down on the kitchen floor and I searched through my dad’s tunic for the leather pouch. At the top of the stairs I fumbled and fumbled through the bunch until I found the one that opened the door to David and Birdie’s room.

‘And, oh God, it was shocking. Henry had told us what to expect, but still, to see it there; what remained of Henry and Martina’s beautiful things, hoarded away, the antiques and perfumes and beauty products and jewellery and alcohol. Henry said, “Look. Look at all this stuff. While we had nothing. This is evil. You are looking at evil.”

‘We were five minutes into the estimated thirty minutes. I found nappies, baby suits, bottles. Then I realised that Phin was standing behind me. I said, “Quick! Find some clothes. You need to be warm. It’s cold out there.”

‘He said, “I don’t think I can. I think I’m too weak.”

‘I said, “But we can’t leave you here, Phin.”

‘He said, “I can’t! I just can’t. OK?”

‘We were nearly ten minutes in by then so I couldn’t spend any more time trying to persuade him. I watched Henry filling a bag with cash. I said, “Shouldn’t we leave that as evidence? For the police?”

‘But he said, “No. It’s mine. I’m not leaving it.”

‘You were crying now, screaming. Henry was shouting, “Make her shut up! For God’s sake!”

‘And then there was the sound of footsteps on the staircase behind us. A second later the door opened and Birdie appeared. She looked absolutely crazy and was barely coordinated. She stumbled into the room, her arms outstretched towards Lucy, going, “Give me my baby! Give her to me!”’

‘And Birdie just lunged,’ says Clemency. ‘Straight at you. And Henry was losing the plot. Massively screaming at everyone. Phin was standing there looking as if he was about to pass out. And I just froze, really. Because I thought that if Birdie was awake then everyone else must be awake. That my father must be awake. That any moment everyone was going to appear and we were going to be locked in our rooms for the rest of our lives. My heart was racing. I was so terrified. And then, I don’t know, I’m still not entirely sure what really happened, but suddenly Birdie was on the floor. She was on the floor and there was blood sort of dripping out of the corner of her eye. Like red tears. And her hair, just here.’ Clemency points to a spot just above her ear. ‘It was dark and sticky. And I looked at Henry and he was holding a tusk.’

Libby looks at her questioningly.

‘It looked like a tusk. From an elephant. Or an antler. Something like that.’

Libby thinks of the pop video Phin had showed them. She thinks of the animal heads looming off walls and the stuffed foxes posed as though still alive atop enormous mahogany desks.

‘And it had blood on it, like a streak of blood. And it was in Henry’s hand. And we all stopped breathing. For some seconds. Even you. And it was just completely silent. We were listening for the others. We were listening to Birdie’s breathing. It had been rattly. Now it had stopped. A tiny little dribble of blood ran from her hair, down her temple, into her eye …’ Clemency describes it on her own face with a fingertip. ‘I said, “Is she dead?”

‘Henry said, “Shut up. Just shut up and let me think.”

‘I went to check her heartbeat and Henry pushed me. Pushed me so hard I fell backwards. He yelled, “Leave her, leave her!”

‘Then he went downstairs. He said, “Stay here. Just stay here.” I looked at Phin. He was clammy-looking. I could see he was about to faint. I moved him towards the bed. Then Henry came back. He was ashen. He said, “Something’s happened. Something’s gone wrong. I don’t understand. The others. They’re all dead. All of them.”’

Clemency’s last word comes out as a gasp. Her eyes fill with tears and she brings her hands to her mouth. ‘All of them. My father. Henry’s mum and dad. Dead. And Henry kept saying, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand. I hardly gave them anything. Such a tiny amount, not enough to kill a cat. I don’t understand.”

‘And suddenly this whole thing, this amazing rescue mission, this thing we were going to do that was going to set us free, had totally trapped us. How could we run down the street looking for a friendly policeman now? We had killed four people. Four people.’

Clemency stops for a moment and catches her breath. Libby notices that her hands are trembling. ‘And we had a baby to look after and the whole thing – the whole thing was just … God, do you mind if we go out in the back garden. I need a cigarette.’

‘No. No, of course,’ says Libby.

Clemency’s back garden is all chipped slate beds and rattan sofas. It’s late morning and the sun is moving overhead, but it’s cool and shady at the back of the house. Clemency pulls a packet of cigarettes from a drawer in the coffee table. ‘My secret stash,’ she says.

There’s a photo on the side of the packet of someone with mouth cancer. Libby can hardly bear to look at it. Why, she wonders, why do people smoke? When they know they might die of it? Her mother smokes. ‘Her boys’, she calls them. Where are my boys?

She watches Clemency hold a match to the tip of the cigarette, inhale, blow it out. Her hands immediately stop shaking. She says, ‘Where was I?’

59

CHELSEA, 1994

I know it sounds like it was all just a terrible disaster. Of course it does. Any situation involving four dead bodies is clearly far from ideal.

But what nobody seems to realise is that without me, Christ almighty, we might all still be there, middle-aged skeletons, having missed out on our entire lives. Or dead. Yes, let’s not forget we could all be dead. And yes, absolutely, things did not go exactly according to plan, but we got out of there. We got out of there. And nobody else had a plan, did they? Nobody else was prepared to step up to the line. It’s easy to criticise. It’s not easy to take control.

Not only did I have four dead bodies to deal with, a baby and two teenage girls, I had Phin to deal with, too. But Phin was behaving deliriously and felt like a liability so, just to make things easier, I locked him in his bedroom.

Yes, I know. But I needed to think straight.

We could hear Phin wailing from his room upstairs. The girls wanted to go to him, but I said, ‘No, stay here. We need to work together. Don’t go anywhere.’

The first priority to me seemed to be Birdie. It was bizarre to see her there, so small and broken, this person who had controlled our lives for so long. She was wearing the top that Clemency had made her for her birthday, and a chain that David had given her. Her long hair was twisted up in a bun. Her pale eyes stared hard at the wall. One eyeball was brilliant red. Her feet were bare and bony, her toenails overlong and slightly yellow. I unclipped the chain from around her neck and put it in my pocket.

Clemency was crying. ‘It’s so sad,’ she said. ‘It’s so sad! She’s someone’s daughter! And now she’s dead!’

‘It’s not sad at all,’ I said, harshly. ‘She deserved to die.’

Clemency and I got her on to the attic floor and then the roof. She was very light. On the other side of the flat roof where I’d once sat holding Phin’s hand, there was a sort of gulley. It was filled with dead leaves and led to the guttering that ran down the side of the building. We wrapped her in towels and sheets and rammed her in there. Then we covered her over with handfuls of dead leaves and then some pieces of old scaffolding wood that we found up there.

In the kitchen afterwards I stared dispassionately at the three dead bodies. I could not let my mind dwell on the reality of the situation. I had killed my own parents. My beautiful, stupid mother and my poor, broken father. I had to distance myself from the fact that because of me, my mother would never again run her hand through my hair and call me her beautiful boy, that I would never again sit in a members’ club with my father silently drinking lemonade. There would be no family to return to for Christmas Day, no grandparents for any children I might have, no people to worry about as they got older, no one to worry about me as I got older. I was an orphan. An orphan and an inadvertent murderer.