I said, ‘Lucy. The baby. The baby is proof that you were abused. You’re fifteen. You were fourteen when the baby was born. They can do a DNA test. Prove that David was her father. You can say he raped you, over and over again, from when you were a young child. You can say that Birdie encouraged him. And then they stole your baby. I mean it’s virtually true anyway. And then I can say … I can say I found the grown-ups like that. I could leave a faked note, saying that they were so ashamed of what they’d done. Of how they’d treated us.’
I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that we could get out of this. We could get out of here and not go to jail and Phin could get better and Lucy could keep her baby and everyone would be nice to us.
And then Lucy said, ‘Henry. You know Serenity isn’t David’s, don’t you?’
My God, what a gullible idiot, I still didn’t see it. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, well, then whose could it possibly be?’
And then it fell into place. I laughed at first. And then I wanted to be sick. And then I said, ‘Really? You? And Phin? Really?’
Lucy nodded.
‘But how?’ I asked. ‘When? I don’t understand.’
She dropped her head and said, ‘In his room. Only twice. It was like, I don’t know, a comfort thing. I went to him because I was worried about him. Because he seemed so ill. And then we just found ourselves …’
‘Oh my God. You whore!’
She tried to placate me, but I pushed her away. I said, ‘Get away from me. You’re disgusting. You are sick and you are disgusting. You are a slut. A dirty, dirty slut.’
Yes, I laid it on with a trowel. I have rarely been as disgusted by another human being as I was by Lucy that day.
I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t think straight. Every time I tried to think about something, tried to decide what to do next, my mind would fill with images of Lucy and Phin: him on top of her, him kissing her, his hands, the hands that I had held that day on the roof, all over my sister’s body. I had never felt a rage like it, never felt such hatred and hurt and pain.
I wanted to kill someone. And this time I wanted to do it on purpose.
I went to Phin’s room. Lucy tried to stop me. I pushed her away from me.
‘Is it true?’ I screamed at him. ‘Is it true that you had sex with Lucy?’
He looked at me blankly.
‘Is it?’ I screamed again. ‘Tell me!’
‘I’m not telling you anything,’ he said, ‘until you untie me.’
He sounded exhausted. He sounded as if he was fading away.
I immediately felt my rage start to dissipate and went and sat down at the foot of his bed.
I dropped my head into my hands. When I looked up his eyes were closed.
There was a moment of silence.
‘Are you dying, Phin?’ I asked.
‘I don’t. Fucking. Know.’
‘We need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘You have to get it together. Seriously.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But you have to.’
‘Fucking just leave me here. I want to die.’
It did occur to me, I have to confess, that I could put a pillow over his face and push down, hold my face next to his to draw in his dying breath, whisper soothing words into his ear, overpower him, snuff his life force, take his power for myself. But, remember, apart from my mother’s unborn baby – and I have googled this extensively over the intervening years and really, it would be very hard to abort a healthy pregnancy using parsley – I never killed anyone deliberately. I am a dark person, Serenity, I know that. I don’t feel the way that other people feel. But I am capable of great compassion and great love.