Libby nods. She thinks of her mother, with the man she calls her toyboy (although he’s only six years younger than her), stretched out on the tiny terrace of her one bed apartment in Dénia (no room for Libby to stay when she comes to visit) in a hot pink kaftan, explaining over Skype that she’d been too busy to book flights to come and see Libby for her birthday and that by the time she’d looked online all the cheap ones had gone. She thinks of the day they buried her father, her hand in her mother’s, looking up into the sky, wondering if he’d got there safely or not, worrying about how she was going to get to school now as her mother couldn’t drive.
‘It’s been fine,’ she says. ‘I was adopted by lovely people. I’ve been very lucky.
Clemency’s face brightens. ‘So, where do you live now?’
‘St Albans,’ she replies.
‘Oh! That’s nice. And – are you married? Any children?’
‘No. Just me. Single. Live alone. No kids. No pets. I sell designer kitchens for a living. I’m very … Well, there’s not really a lot to say about me. At least, there wasn’t until …’
‘Yes,’ says Clemency. ‘Yes. I should imagine it’s all been a bit of a shock to the system.’
‘Putting it mildly.’
‘And how much do you know?’ she asks circumspectly. ‘About the house. About all of it.’
‘Well,’ Libby begins, ‘it’s all a bit complicated. First of all there was what my parents had always told me, which was that my birth parents had been killed in a car crash when I was ten months old. Then there was what I read in Miller’s article, which was that my parents were members of a cult and there’d been some kind of suicide pact and I’d been looked after by gypsies. And then, well, two nights ago Miller and I were at the house, in Cheyne Walk, and this guy appeared. Quite late at night. He told us …’ She pauses. ‘He told us he was called Phin.’
Clemency’s eyes open wide and she gasps. ‘Phin?’ she says.
Libby nods uncertainly.
Clemency’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Are you sure?’ she says. ‘Are you sure it was Phin?’
‘Well, he told us that was his name. He said you were his sister. That he hadn’t seen you or your mother for years.’
She shakes her head. ‘But he was so ill when I left him in the house. So ill. And we looked everywhere for him, me and my mum. Everywhere. For years and years. We went to every hospital in London. Wandered round parks looking at rough sleepers. Kept waiting and waiting for him to suddenly appear on our doorstep. And he never did and eventually … well, we assumed that he must have died. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he come back? Why wouldn’t he come to find us? I mean, he would have, wouldn’t he?’ She pauses. ‘Are you absolutely sure it was Phin?’ she asks yet again. ‘Tell me what he looked like.’
Libby describes the horn-rimmed glasses, the blond hair, the long eyelashes, the full mouth.
Clemency nods.
And then Libby tells her about the luxury apartment, the Persian cats. She repeats the joke about the cat called Dick, and Clemency shakes her head.
‘No,’ she says. ‘This doesn’t sound like Phin at all. It really doesn’t.’ She pauses for a moment, her eyes roaming around the room as she thinks. ‘You know what I think?’ she says eventually. ‘I think it might be Henry.’
‘Henry?’
‘Yes. He was in love with Phin. Totally unrequited. Obsessive almost. He would just stare and stare at him. He dressed like him. Copied his hairstyles. He even tried to kill him once. Pushed him in the river. Held him under. Luckily Phin was stronger than Henry. Bigger. He managed to fight him off. Henry killed Birdie’s cat, you know?’
‘What?’
‘He poisoned her. Cut off her tail. Threw the rest of her body into the river. So the signs were there all along. It’s a terrible thing to say about a child, it really is, but in my opinion Henry had a streak of pure evil.’
55
CHELSEA, 1993
I did not kill Birdie’s cat. Of course I didn’t. But yes, she did die because of me.
I was working on something with the belladonna, another sleeping draught, something a little stronger than the draught I’d given David and Birdie to get into their room. Something to bring about a slightly less temporary stupefaction. I tested it on the cat figuring if it didn’t harm the cat then it was probably safe on humans. Sadly it did harm the cat. A lesson learned. I made the next draught much, much weaker.
As for the cat’s tail, well, it sounds harsh when put like that: cut off her tail. I took it. It was beautiful, so soft and full of remarkable colours. I had nothing then, remember, nothing soft, it had all been taken. She didn’t need it any more. So yes, I took the cat’s tail. And – fake news – I did not throw the cat in the Thames. How could I have? I wasn’t able to leave the house. The cat, in fact, remains to this day interred in my herb garden.
As for it being me who had pushed Phin into the Thames rather than the other way around: well, that is categorically not true. What might be true is that Phin pushed me in during a struggle that had ensued after I attempted to push him in. Yes. That might have been the case. He told me I was staring at him. I said, ‘I am staring at you because you are beautiful.’
He said, ‘You’re being weird. Why do you always have to be so weird?’