suspected that someone might have gone to the authorities by now. I knew it was time for me to go. I added a few lines to the suicide note. ‘Our baby is called Serenity Lamb. She is ten months old. Please make sure she goes to nice people.’ I placed the pen I’d written the note with into my mother’s hand, removed it and then left it on the table next to the note. I fed you and put you in a fresh Babygro.
And then, as I was about to leave, I felt in the pocket of my jacket for Justin’s rabbit’s foot. I’d put it in there for luck, not that I believe in such things, and it had clearly brought me no luck at all since I’d taken it from Justin’s room. But I wanted the best for you, Serenity. You were the only truly pure thing in that house, the only good thing to come out of any of it. So I took the rabbit’s foot and I tucked it in with you.
Then I kissed you and said, ‘Goodbye, lovely baby.’
I left through the back of the house, in one of my father’s old Savile Row suits and a pair of his Jermyn Street shoes. I’d tied the bootlace tie around the collar of one of my father’s old shirts and combed my hair into a side fringe. My bag was filled with cash and jewels. I strode out into the morning sun, feeling it golden upon my tired skin. I found a phone box and I dialled 999. In a fake voice I told the police that I was worried about my neighbours. That I hadn’t seen them for a while. That there was a baby crying.
I walked up to the King’s Road; all the shops were still shut. I kept walking until I got to Victoria Station and there I sat outside a scruffy café in my Savile Row suit and I ordered a cup of coffee. I had never had a cup of coffee before. I really wanted a cup of coffee. The coffee came and I tasted it and it was disgusting. I poured two sachets of sugar into it and made myself drink it. I found an anonymous hotel and paid for three nights. Nobody asked my age. When I signed the register I used the name Phineas Thomson. Thomson with an O. Not Thomsen with an E. I wanted to be almost Phin. Not completely Phin.
I watched the TV in my hotel room. There was a small news article at the end of the bulletin. Three bodies. A suicide pact. A cult. A baby found healthy and cared for. Children believed to be missing. Police search under way. The photos they had were our school photos from our last year at primary school. I was only ten and had a short back and sides. Lucy was eight and had a pageboy cut. We were unrecognisable. There was no mention of Phin or of Clemency.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
And so then what? What happened between then, sixteen-year-old me in my underwear on a nylon coverlet in a cheap hotel room watching the news, and middle-aged me now?
Do you want to know? Do you care?
Well, I got a job. I worked in an electrical repair shop in Pimlico. It was owned by a mad Bangladeshi family who couldn’t care less for my back story so long as I turned up to work on time.
I moved into a bedsit. I bought coding books and a computer and studied at home alone at night.
By then there was a proper internet and mobile phones and I left the electrical repair shop and got a job at a Carphone Warehouse on Oxford Street.
I moved into a one-bedroom flat in Marylebone, just before Marylebone became unaffordable. I started to dye my hair blond. I worked out. I built some bulk. I went to clubs at night and had sex with strangers. I fell in love, but he hit me. I fell in love again, but he left me. I got my teeth whitened. I got tropical fish. They died. I got a job at a new internet company. There were five of us at first. Within three years there were fifty of us and I was earning six figures and had my own office.
I bought a three-bedroom flat in Marylebone. I fell in love. He told me I was ugly and that no one would ever love