She follows Mr Royle into a big room on the first floor. Here there are two large sash windows overlooking the river; the air is stagnant and dense, the high corners of the room filled with thick curtains of cobweb and dust. There is an opening at the other end of the room and they turn the corner into a small room. It’s fitted as a dressing room, three walls of wardrobes and drawers decorated with ornate beading and painted white. In the centre of the room is a cot.
‘Is that …？’
‘Yes. That’s where you were found. Gurgling and chirruping by all accounts, happy as Larry.’
The cot is a rocking design with metal levers for pushing back and forth. It is painted a thick buttermilk cream with a scattering of pale blue roses. There is a small metal badge on the front with the Harrods logo on it.
Mr Royle reaches for a shelf on the back wall and picks up a small box. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘this was tucked away inside your blankets. We assumed, we all assumed, us and the police, that it was meant for you. The police held it as evidence for years then sent it back to us when the case ran dry.’
‘What is it?’
‘Open it and see.’
She takes the little cardboard box from him and pulls the flaps apart. It is filled with shreds of torn newspaper. Her fingers find something solid and silky. She brings it from the box and lets it dangle from between her fingertips. It’s a rabbit’s foot hanging from a gold chain. Libby recoils slightly and the chain slithers from her grasp and on to the wooden floor. She reaches down to pick it up.
Her fingers draw over the rabbit’s foot, feeling the cold deathliness of its sleek fur, the sharp nibs of its claws. She runs the chain through her other hand. Her head, which a week ago had been filled with new sandals, a hen night, her split ends, the houseplants that needed watering, was now filled with people sleeping on mattresses and dead rabbits and a big, scary house, empty but for a large rocking crib from Harrods with strangely sinister pale blue roses painted on the sides. She puts the rabbit’s foot back into the box and holds it, awkwardly. Then slowly she lowers her hand on to the mattress at the base of the crib, feels for the echo of her small, sleeping body, for the ghost of the person who last laid her down there, tucked her in safe with a blanket and a rabbit’s foot. But there is nothing there of course. Just an empty bed, the smell of must.
‘What was my name?’ she says. ‘Did anyone know?’
‘Yes,’ says Mr Royle. ‘Your name was written on the note that your parents left behind. It was Serenity.’
‘Serenity?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Pretty name. I think. If a little … bohemian?’
Suddenly she feels claustrophobic. She wants to run dramatically from the room, but it is not her way to be dramatic.
Instead she says, ‘Can we see the garden now, please? I could do with some fresh air.’
5
Lucy turns off her phone. She needs to keep the charge in case Samia tries to get in touch. She turns to Marco, who is looking at her curiously.
‘What?’ she says.
‘What was that message? On your phone?’
‘What message?’
‘I saw it. Just now. It said The baby is twenty-five. What does that mean?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘It must mean something.’
‘It doesn’t. It’s just a friend’s baby. Just a reminder that they turned twenty-five. I must send a card.’
‘What friend?’
‘A friend in England.’
‘But you haven’t got any friends in England.’