And I loved Phin more than I have ever loved any other person since.
I untie his wrist from the radiator, and I lay down next to him.
I said, ‘Did you ever like me? Even for a minute?’
He said, ‘I always liked you. Why wouldn’t I like you?’
I paused to consider the question. ‘Because of me liking you? Too much?’
‘Annoying,’ he said, and there was a note of wry humour in his fading voice. ‘Very annoying.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can see that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting your dad think you’d pushed me in the Thames. I’m sorry for trying to kiss you. I’m sorry for being annoying.’
The house creaked and groaned around us. You were asleep. Lucy had set you down in the old cot in my parents’ dressing room. I had been awake for thirty-six hours by this point and the silence, the sound of Phin’s breathing, lulled me into an immediate and rapturous sleep.
When I awoke, two hours later, Lucy and Phin had gone, and you were still asleep in your cot.
63
Libby looks at Lucy, this woman surrounded by loving children whom she has brought all the way from France to England. She has even brought her dog. She clearly is not the sort of woman to leave behind people she loves. She says, ‘Why did you leave me?’
Lucy immediately starts to shake her head.
‘No,’ she says, ‘no. No. I didn’t leave you. I never left you. But Phin was so ill and you were so healthy and well. So I put you down in your cot, waited until you fell asleep, and I went back to Phin’s room. Henry was asleep and I managed to persuade Phin to stand up, finally. He was so heavy; I was so weak. I got him out of the house and we went to my father’s doctor’s house. Dr Broughton. I remembered being taken there when I was small, just around the corner. He had a bright red front door. I remembered. It was about midnight. He came to the door in a dressing gown. I told him who I was. Then I said’ – she laughs wryly at a memory – ‘I said, “I’ve got money! I can pay you!”
‘At first he looked angry. Then he looked at Phin, looked at him properly and said, “Oh my, oh my, oh my.” He went upstairs quickly, grumbling under his breath; then he came back down fully dressed in a shirt and trousers.
‘He took us into his surgery. All the lights were off. He turned them on, two rows of strip lights, all coming on at once. I had to shield my eyes. And he laid Phin on a bed and he checked all of his vitals and he asked me what the hell was going on. He said, “Where are your parents?” I had no idea what to say.
‘I said, “They’re gone.” And he looked at me sideways. As if to say, We’ll get to that later. Then he called someone. I heard him explaining the situation to them, lots of medical jargon. Half an hour later a young man appeared. He was Dr Broughton’s nurse. Between them they did about a dozen tests. The nurse went off into the middle of the night with a bag of things to take to a lab. I hadn’t slept for two days. I was seeing stars. Dr Broughton made me a cup of hot chocolate. It was … crazy as it sounds, it was the best hot chocolate of my life. And I sat on the sofa in his consulting rooms and I fell asleep.
‘When I woke up it was about five in the morning and the nurse was back from the lab. Phin was on a drip. But his eyes were open. Dr Broughton told me that Phin was suffering from severe malnutrition. He said that with plenty of fluids and some time to recover, he’d be fine.
‘I just nodded and said, “His father’s dead. I don’t know where his mother lives. We have a baby. I don’t know what to do.”
‘When I told him that we had a baby, his face fell. He said, “Good Lord. How old are you exactly?”
‘I said, “I’m fifteen.”
‘He gave me a strange look and said, “Where is this baby?”