them all to the kitchen where her children sit waiting nervously.
‘Kids,’ she says, ‘this is Serenity. Or actually Libby. And Libby is …’
‘The baby?’ says Marco, his eyes wide.
‘Yes, Libby is the baby.’
‘Which baby, Mama?’ says Stella.
‘She’s the baby I had when I was very young. The baby I had to leave in London. The baby I never told anyone about, ever. She’s your big sister.’
Marco and Stella both sit with their jaws hanging open. Libby sort of waves at them. For a moment it is awkward. But then Marco says, ‘I knew it! I knew it all along! From the minute I saw it on your phone! I knew it would be your baby. I just knew it!’
He gets to his feet and runs across the kitchen and for a moment Lucy thinks he is running away, that he is angry with her for having a secret baby, but he runs towards Libby and throws his arms around her waist, squeezes her hard, and over the top of his head Lucy sees Libby’s eyes open with surprise but also with pleasure. She touches the top of his head and smiles at Lucy.
Then, of course, because Marco has done it, Stella follows suit and clings to Libby’s hips. And there, thinks Lucy, there they are. Her three babies. Together. At last. She stands with her hands clasped to her mouth and tears fall down her cheeks.
62
CHELSEA, 1994
I’m not completely heartless, Serenity, I promise.
Remember how I let you hold my finger the day you were born, how I looked at you and felt something bloom inside me? I still felt that, when you and I came face to face here two nights ago. You were still that baby to me; you still had that innocence about you, that total lack of guile.
But you had something else.
You had his blue eyes, his creamy skin, his long dark eyelashes.
You don’t look much like Lucy.
You don’t look anything like David Thomsen.
You look just like your dad.
And it’s ridiculous looking back on it that I couldn’t see it when it was right there under my nose. When your blond curls came through and your bright blue eyes and your full lips. How did David not see it? How did Birdie not see it? How did anyone not see it? I guess because it was impossible to believe. Impossible even to conceive.
That my sister was sleeping with David and Phin at the same time.
I didn’t find out until the day after Birdie’s birthday party.
Lucy and I had not decided what to do yet. Phin was thrashing about in his room, so I tied him to a radiator, to keep him safe. For his own good.
Lucy was appalled.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried.
‘He’s going to hurt himself,’ I said righteously. ‘It’s just until we decide what to do with him.’
She was holding you in her arms. You and she had not been apart for a moment since she’d taken you out of Birdie’s arms the night before.
‘We need to get him some help.’
‘Yes. We do. But we also need to remember that we’ve killed people and that we could go to prison.’
‘But it was an accident,’ she said. ‘None of us meant to kill anyone. The police would know that.’
‘No. They wouldn’t. We have no evidence of any abuse. Of anything that happened here. We only have our version of events.’
But then I stopped. I looked at Lucy and I looked at you and I thought: There it is. There’s the proof we need, if we did decide to ask for help, the evidence of the abuse is there. Right there.
I said, ‘Lucy. The baby. The baby is proof that you were abused. You’re fifteen. You were fourteen when the baby was born. They can do a DNA test. Prove that David was her father. You can say he raped you, over and over again, from when you were a young child. You can say that Birdie encouraged him. And then they stole your baby. I mean it’s virtually true anyway. And then I can say … I can say I found the grown-ups like that. I could leave a faked note, saying that they were so ashamed of what they’d done. Of how they’d treated us.’
I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that we could get out of this. We could get out of here and not go to jail and Phin could get better and Lucy could keep her baby and everyone would be nice