Lucy opens a small can of gin and tonic. Marco opens a can of Fanta. They knock their cans together and say Cheers to London.
‘So,’ he says quietly. ‘Are you going to tell me about the baby now?’
She sighs. ‘Oh God.’ She draws her hands down her face. ‘I don’t know. It’s all so …’
‘Just tell me. Please.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she says, stifling a yawn. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. I promise.’
Marco finally falls asleep a few minutes later and then it is just Lucy, awake, in this blighted house that she swore she would never return to. She carefully lifts Marco’s head from her lap and stands. At the window she watches the sun setting in the windows of the shiny new apartment blocks on the other side of the river. They weren’t there when she lived here. Maybe if they had been, she ponders, someone might have seen them, someone might have known, someone might have rescued them and spared them all their sorry fates.
She falls asleep some time after 3 a.m., her mind stubbornly refusing to shut down for hours before, suddenly, she is in her dreams.
And then, just as suddenly, she is awake again. She sits up straight. Marco sits up too. Her phone tells her that they have all slept late into the morning.
There are footsteps overhead.
Lucy puts one hand over Marco’s and touches her lips with tip of her index finger.
It’s silent again and she begins to relax. But then she hears it again, the definite sound of footsteps, floorboards creaking.
‘Mum …’
She squeezes his hand and gets slowly to her feet. She tiptoes across the room towards the door. The dog awakes and raises his head, uncurls himself from Stella’s body and follows her to the door. His claws are loud against the wooden floorboards and she picks him up. She can feel a growl forming in the back of his throat and shushes at him.
Marco stands behind her and she can hear his breathing hard and heavy.
‘Stay back,’ she hisses.
The growl in Fitz’s throat is building and building. There’s another creak overhead and then Fitz lets rip.
The creaking stops.
But then there comes the sound of footsteps, sure and steady, coming down the wooden staircase that leads to the attic bedrooms. She stops breathing. The dog starts barking again and struggling to get out of her arms. She pushes the door shut and throws her body against it.
Stella is awake now and stares at the door with wide eyes. ‘What’s going on, Mama?’
‘Nothing, darling,’ she whispers across the room. ‘Nothing. Fitz is just being silly.’
The door on to the first-floor landing creaks, then bangs shut.
Adrenaline courses through her.
‘Is it the baby?’ Marco asks in an urgent whisper, his eyes wide with terror.
‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘I don’t know who it is.’
Footsteps come up the landing and then there is someone breathing on the other side of the door. The dog goes quiet, his ears pinned back, his lips open over his teeth. Lucy moves away from the door and pulls it open a crack. Then the dog leaps out of her arms and forces his way through the crack of the door and there’s a man standing outside their room and the dog barks and snaps around his ankles and the man looks down at the dog with a small smile, offers him his hand to sniff. Fitz quiets and sniffs his hand and then lets him stroke the top of his head.
‘Hello, Lucy,’ says the man. ‘Nice dog.’
III
49
Libby lies stretched out on the hotel bed with its familiar strip of aubergine-coloured fabric draped across the foot. A Premier Inn hotel room is a happy place for Libby; she associates them with hen nights and city breaks and weddings in distant cities. A bed in a Premier Inn is familiar and comforting. She could stay here all day. But she has to meet Miller in the lobby at 9 a.m. She glances now at the time on her phone. Eight forty-eight. She pulls herself off the bed and has a very quick shower.