me again and then he left me. I had a nose job. I had eyelash extensions. A tiny bit of filler in my lips.
Then in 2008, I went to the solicitor named on the letterhead of my parents’ original last will and testament. For so long I’d tried to put Cheyne Walk and what happened there to the back of my mind, tried to forge a new life with a new (if slightly borrowed) identity. I wanted nothing to do with pathetic little Henry Lamb or his history. He was dead to me. But as I got older and more settled, I started to think of you, more and more; I wanted to know where you were and who you were and whether or not you were happy.
I knew from the news reports that it had been assumed you were the child of Martina and Henry Lamb. My ‘suicide note’ had been taken at face value and no DNA tests had been run to disprove the assumption. And remembering the terms of my parents’ will it occurred to me that maybe one day you would come back into my life. But I had no idea if the trust was still lodged with the solicitors. And if it was, whether David had done anything to alter its terms during the time he had my mother entirely under his control.
I was in my thirties by now. I was tall, blond, buff and tanned. I introduced myself as Phineas Thomson. I said, ‘I’m looking for some information about a family I used to know. I believe you were their solicitors. The Lambs. Cheyne Walk.’
A young woman shuffled through some papers, clicked some buttons on her keyboard, told me that they managed a trust for the family but that she was not at liberty to tell me any more.
There was a cute boy there. I’d caught his eye when I sat in reception. I waited outside the office until lunchtime and then I caught up with him as he left the office. His name was Josh. Of course. Everyone’s name is Josh these days.
I took him back to my flat and cooked for him and fucked him and, of course, because I was only using him, he fell totally in love with me. It took less than a month of pretending I loved him too, to get him to find the paperwork, copy it and bring it to me.
And then there it was, in black and white, just as my parents had decreed when I was a tiny baby and Lucy was not yet even in existence. Number sixteen Cheyne Walk and all its contents to be held in trust for the descendants of Martina and Henry Lamb until the oldest reaches the age of twenty-five. David had not managed to get his hands on it after all and neither, it seemed, had Lucy reappeared to make a claim. The trust was still sitting there, ready and waiting, waiting for you to turn twenty-five. Someone more cynical than you might think I came to find you simply as a way to get my hands on my own inheritance. After all, I had no proof I was Henry Lamb so there was no way I’d be able to claim it for myself, and with you in my life I’d stand a chance to get what was rightfully mine. But you know, it really wasn’t about the money. I have plenty of money. It was about closure. And it was about you, Serenity, and the bond I shared with you.
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?’