She texts April.
I’m so so so so sorry. Have an amazing day. Let me know if you’re still going strong this evening and I’ll pop in for a sundowner.
Then she showers and puts on a tropical-print playsuit and open sandals made of gold leather, rubs sun cream into her arms and shoulders, sits her sunglasses on her head, checks her bag for the door keys to the house, and gets the train into London.
Libby puts the key into the padlock on the wooden hoarding and turns it. The padlock slides open and she puts another key into the front door. She half expects a hand on her shoulder, someone to ask her what she’s doing, if she has permission to open this door with these keys.
Then she is in the house. Her house. And she is alone.
She closes the door behind her and the sound of the morning traffic dies away immediately; the burn on her neck cools.
For a moment she stands entirely still.
She pictures the police here, where she stands. They are wearing old-fashioned helmets. She knows what they look like because there were pictures of them in the Guardian article. PCs Ali Shah and John Robbin. They were following up on an anonymous call to the station from a ‘concerned neighbour’。 The concerned neighbour had never been traced.
She follows Shah and Robbin’s vanished footsteps into the kitchen. She imagines the smell growing stronger now.
PC Shah recalled the sound of flies. He said he thought someone had left a pair of clippers running, or an electric toothbrush. The bodies, they said, were in the very earliest stages of decay, still recognisable as an attractive, dark-haired, thirty-something woman and an older man with salt and pepper hair. Their hands were linked. Next to them lay the corpse of another man. Fortyish. Tall. Dark hair. They all wore black: the woman a tunic and leggings, the men a kind of robe. The items, it transpired, had been homemade. They’d later found a sewing machine in the back room, remnants of black fabric in a bin.
Apart from the buzzing flies, the house was deathly quiet. The police said they wouldn’t have thought to look for a baby if it hadn’t been for the mention of her on the note left on the dining table. They’d almost missed the dressing room off the master bedroom, but then they’d heard a noise, an ‘ooh’， PC Shah had said.
An ‘ooh’。
Libby steps slowly up the staircase and into the bedroom. She peers around the corner of the door into the dressing room.
And there she’d been! Bonny as anything! That’s what PC Robbin had said. Bonny as anything!
Her flesh crawls slightly at the sight of the painted crib. But she breaks through the discomfort and stares at the crib until she is desensitised. After a moment she feels neutral enough to lay a hand upon it. She pictures the two young policemen, peering over the top of the crib. She imagines herself, in her pure white Babygro, her hair already a full helmet of Shirley Temple curls even at only ten months old, her feet kicking up and down with excitement at the sight of the two friendly faces staring down at her.
‘She tried to stand up,’ said Robbin. ‘She was pulling up at the sides of the cot. Desperate to be taken out. We didn’t know what to do. She was evidence. Should we touch her? Should we call for back-up? We were flummoxed.’
Apparently, they’d decided not to pick her up. PC Shah sang songs to her while they waited to hear what they should do. Libby wished she could remember it; what songs had he sung to her, this kind young policeman? Had he enjoyed singing her the songs? Had he felt embarrassed? According to the article, he’d gone on to have five children of his own, but when he found Serenity Lamb in her crib, he’d had no experience of babies.
A crime scene team soon arrived in the house, including a special officer to collect the baby. Her name was Felicity Measures. She was forty-one at the time. Now she is sixty-five and newly retired, living in the Algarve with her third husband. ‘She was the dearest baby,’ the article quoted her. ‘Golden curls, well fed and cared for. Very smiley and cuddly. Incongruous given the setting in which she’d been left. Which was gothic, really. Yes, it was quite, quite gothic.’