We seem to stare at Poppins for a long time before anyone says anything else. She blinks back in our direction, peering out from behind the two little plaits that keep her hair away from her eyes. Looking a smidgen guilty, if I’m honest. But it doesn’t seem rational – even to my irrational family – that an Old English Sheepdog could be behind everything that has happened here tonight. Rose bends down to remove the key from the collar. It’s hard to see anything in the dim light, and it takes her a while to untie it.
‘Hurry up!’ says Lily.
‘I’m trying my best,’ Rose replies calmly. When she finally removes the key, she slots it into the locked door and we hold our breath. We were all afraid of this cupboard as children. We knew that there were mice and cobwebs in there. I used to imagine a family of giant spiders living in the shadows, waiting to feed on anyone foolish enough to enter.
Rose turns the key, and the door creaks as she slowly pulls it open.
It’s too dark to see inside. There was never a light.
The rest of us peer over her shoulder from the imagined safety of the hallway as Rose steps forward, shining the torch.
The first thing I register is the smell; bad things happen when people die. The first thing I see is Nana. She’s sitting on the floor of the cupboard, leaning against the exposed brick wall in the gloom. She would look like someone taking a nap – in a cupboard – if it weren’t for the grey colouring of her skin, the giant bloody gash on her head, and the blood that has spilled all down her cheek and onto the shoulder of her white cotton nightdress. The piece of chalk she was holding when we first found her has been replaced with a pen and paintbrush, tied to her hand with a red ribbon. My father’s body has been moved in here too, with his broken conductor’s baton still tied to his right hand in the same way. It hovers in mid-air, presumably thanks to rigor mortis, as if he is conducting an invisible orchestra in the cupboard under the stairs. The surreal image creates a flashback in my mind, one I would rather not picture. I think it must have been early 1983. The third time I died was the first time I lied about it.
My dad had a series of ornamental girlfriends after my parents parted company. They were almost always the same person in my memory: someone pretty and half his age who played in his orchestra. Men are infinitely more predictable than women, and the way my father behaved before and after the divorce was borderline clichéd. But there is really no telling what an angry woman will do. My mother stored up her anger until it was as much a part of her as we were.
I don’t think my sisters or Nancy took any of Dad’s ‘relationships’ with his musicians – mostly violinists, who I’ve always been suspicious of ever since – seriously. They never lasted more than a few months. Until Rebecca. She. Was. Beautiful. And funny, and clever, and kind. Even now I can still picture her long blonde hair, pale skin and blue eyes, perhaps because she looked so different from all of us with our Darker family features. Rebecca encouraged Dad to spend more time with his daughters, taking us on trips to Thorpe Park and Madame Tussauds in the school holidays. She took us to McDonald’s for Happy Meals – which I confess did make us happy – and she plaited our hair in ways we’d never seen before. We adored Rebecca. My mother did not. I can only imagine how awful it must have been when we came home beaming, and full of stories about how wonderful Dad’s new girlfriend was. Children can be so indiscreet.
I was happy with the whole arrangement, until the night my father was asked to conduct a special evening of music at the Royal Albert Hall. It was his life’s ambition, and all of us – including Nana and Nancy – were invited to witness the momentous occasion. We had our own box to watch the performance of a lifetime, and were allowed in early to have a tour of the concert hall before anyone else arrived. Lily hated the whole thing, she thought it was boring, and I always remember what she said that day. It was one of the only times I can recall my sister being genuinely funny, and the memory still makes me smile now:
‘I’d rather he was a bus conductor, at least then we could get free rides.’
When Dad came to meet us, an hour or so before the show was due to start, he walked into the box with Rebecca. She was smiling and appeared to glow with happiness, and I noticed – despite being only seven – how her presence seemed to make my mother shrink into the shadows.
‘We have some news!’ My father beamed at his first family.
Rebecca held out her hand for us all to see, and I didn’t understand the significance until she spoke. ‘Your dad has asked me to marry him, and I’ve said yes.’