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.