So, in June this year I rented the Airbnb across the river. I bought a pair of binoculars and I kept watch from the terrace.
One morning I scaled the back of the house on Cheyne Walk and spent a whole day on the roof dismantling Birdie’s skeleton from its mummified casing. Pulling apart her tiny little bones. Dropping them into a black plastic bag. By the dark of night, I dropped the bag into the Thames. It was surprisingly small. I spent the night on my old mattress and returned to the Airbnb the following morning. And then, four days later, there you were. You and the solicitor. Heaving back the hoarding. Opening the door. Closing it behind you again.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Finally.
The baby was back.
65
Libby stares at Lucy. ‘What happened to Phin? After you left him at Dr Broughton’s? Did he, I mean, did he get better?’
‘Yes,’ says Lucy. ‘He got better.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘As far as I’m aware. Yes.’
Libby covers her mouth with her hands. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since I was about eighteen. We were in France together for a few years. And then we lost touch.’
‘How did you both end up in France?’ asks Libby.
‘Dr Broughton took us. Or at least, he got someone he knew to take us. Dr Broughton seemed to know everyone. He was one of those people – a facilitator, I suppose you’d call him. He always had a number he could ring, a favour he could call in, a man who knew a man. He was the private physician to some very high-profile criminals. I think he’d been woken in the middle of the night before, stitched up some gunshot wounds in his rooms.
‘And once he saw that we were on the news he just wanted us gone and away. A week after I’d knocked on Dr Broughton’s door, he said we were well enough to leave. A man called Stuart squashed us into the back of a Ford Transit van and took us through the Eurotunnel, all the way to Bordeaux. He took us to a farm, to a woman called Josette. Another contact of Dr Broughton’s. She let us stay for months in return for working the farm. She didn’t ask who we were or why we were there.
‘Phin and I, we didn’t … you know. What happened between us, before, it was only because of the situation we were in together. Once we were free from all of that we fell back into being just friends. Almost like brother and sister. But we talked about you all the time, wondering how you were, who was looking after you, how pretty you were, how good you were, how amazing you’d grow up to be, how clever we were to have made you.’
‘Did you ever talk about coming back for me?’ asks Libby, pensively.
‘Yes,’ replies Lucy. ‘Yes. We did. Or at least, I did. Phin was more circumspect, more worried about his future than the past. We didn’t talk about the other stuff. We didn’t talk about our parents, about what had happened. I tried to, but Phin wouldn’t. It was like he’d just completely blanked it all out. Shut down. It was as if none of it had ever happened. And he got so well over that first year. He was tanned and fit. We both were. And Josette had an old fiddle she didn’t play, and she let me use it. I’d play for her, in the winter, and then in the summer when her farm filled up with students and itinerants, I’d play for them too. She let me take the fiddle into the local town and I’d play on Friday nights and Saturday nights and I started to earn some money. I saved it up thinking that I’d use it to get Phin and me back to London, to come and find you.’
‘Then one morning, about two years later, I woke up and Phin was gone. He left me a note that said, “Off to Nice”。’ Lucy sighs. ‘I stayed in Bordeaux for the rest of that summer, saved up until I had enough money for a coach to Nice. I spent weeks sleeping on the beach at night and trying to find Phin by day. Eventually I gave up. I had Josette’s fiddle. I played every night. I made enough money for a room in a hostel. I turned nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. And then I met a man. A very rich man. He swept me off my feet. He married me. I had a baby. I left the very rich man and met a very poor man. I had another baby. The poor man left me and then—’ She stops then and Libby studies her expression. There’s something unknowable, almost unthinkable in it. But the look passes and she continues.