‘You did a house design for a friend of mine, Wilson James?’
Both men looked taken aback now, like a pair of explorers meeting on an undiscovered continent. All I could think was,Great, I’m on my own here.
‘Oh, the house build down in Epping, I remember.’ Then, with a flash of a look at me, Ross added, ‘Very demanding client. Tookagesfor him to be happy with the staircase. Bit of a diva.’
My heart-bungee slackened and began a small upward swoop. Ross clearly wasn’t as easily entranced as David might have hoped. That little glance told me he’d understood how I would feel too. That was… I wasn’t sure what it was, but it made me feel a little bit steadier.
‘Come and sit down, it can’t be easy standing with Tilly in your arms all the time.’ My mother pushed a chair forward, invitingly. ‘And you can put her down. David and I need to talk to you and the conversation isn’t necessarily one you would like her to overhear. I remember you as a toddler and you’d repeat the most embarrassing things at the most inopportune moments.’
Realising that she was right, that my arm was aching with supporting the weight of Tilly and Brass, and that I couldn’t keep standing there like a lighthouse beaming antagonism around the room, I let Tilly slither to the floor, whereupon she yelled, ‘Balls!’ and headed off to the table where she’d left the silver tray and the bag of diamonds.
‘Balls?’ David looked disconcerted now.
‘A toy.’ I wasn’t about to give him more details. ‘Now, can we make this quick? I have to get Tilly back for her lunch.’
Tilly would quite happily never have eaten again if the food wasn’t yellow, biscuits or ice cream, but they didn’t know that and they didn’tneedto know.
My mother and David exchanged a long look. Finally he made a sort of shrug. ‘I think this is over to you, Juliet. I’ve been rehearsing this for so long that I think I’ve run out of ways to put it.’ His gaze went back to Tilly who had sprawled onto the floor again, encouraged by Isobel, and was plonking diamonds onto silver like a really random jewellery manufacturer.
Mum frowned. So far she’d mostly looked happy and relieved to see me but now she started to pluck at her collar, twisting and adjusting it and I knew from my years of growing up that this meant she was unsettled and distressed. ‘It was all my fault,’ she said faintly.
‘No,’ David interrupted. ‘No. Webothagreed. And we had no way of knowing what would happen.’ He couldn’t take his eyes off his daughter, who had happily tipped the beads out and was rolling them back and forth on the tray with the top of Brass’s head. Isobel was watching her with occasional glances thrown my way. She was wary, which was good. If this all went pear-shaped, at least she could sayI knew something was wrong. Or, at least, she couldn’t say it but she could write it to anyone who cared enough to investigate.
I was trying to keep my eyes on Tilly too, but couldn’t help looking at David and my mother sitting side by side on those rotting chairs, like partners in crime. What the hell was going on here?
‘Why did you leave?’ Mum asked, almost plaintively. ‘Let’s start with that. Why did you leave David and take Tilly?’
I stared at her, genuinely agog. I couldn’t work out whether she was showing signs of dementia, being unable to remember my desperate last phone call. Surely,surelymy sobbing down the phone, almost incoherent with terror and fear, hadn’t been forgotten? If Tilly had ever behaved like that to me – well, I would have been there in a flash. But my mother hadn’t.
‘David was a danger to me and Tilly,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level and not let that dread back in. ‘He was watching me. He was feeding me tablets to make me sleep so he could take Tilly. He wanted to get rid of me so he could have her by himself.’
I’d said those words so many times to myself or to others that they now sounded slightly overused: more like the plot of a psychological thriller than a real-life event.
‘I really wasn’t, you know,’ David said, still watching his daughter play.
‘You would say that though, wouldn’t you!’ I snapped. ‘You’re hardly going to admit it all now! I remember, you know, David. I remember you constantly asking me where I’d been, I remember you giving me those tablets and then me waking up to find you holding Tilly and telling her that you were going to look after her forever!’
‘Libby.’ Mum reached out and put a hand on my arm. ‘Please.’
‘Well he did.’ I subsided into a sulk. Ross and Isobel were watching the three of us as though we were acting a play, turning their heads as we spoke. Everything suddenly felt unreal, as though I reallywereon stage, speaking scripted words.
‘I should have told you,’ Mum said. ‘David and I talked. He asked the doctors and their advice was not to say anything, just in case. Libby, do you remember asking me why you were an only child? You’d have been about ten, I suppose, and your best friend had, I think, four brothers?’
Chloe. That had been her name. I’d forgotten about her.
‘Yes.’ I still sounded sulky, as though I’d reverted to being that ten-year-old, denied sweets and a sister. ‘You said you only ever wanted one baby.’ And they’d surrounded me with dogs and cats and ponies: small animals that needed almost constant attention and larger ones to occupy my time. My siblings had been furry and, from listening to Chloe,farmore understanding about not sharing a bedroom or taking my toys. Why the hell had I ever wanted a brother or sister?
‘That’s… not quite true.’ Mum glanced at David again and acid burned up my gullet. Oh God. This wasn’t going to turn into some weird daytime TV story about an adopted sibling I’d accidentally met and produced a child with, was it? I looked at Tilly, happily dropping diamonds from a height to make the plangent noise of expensive dents.No. No, Tilly was fine. This was stupid.
Mum took a deep breath and wound her fingers together on her lap. ‘I wanted a big family,’ she said, all on the one out breath. ‘Your father and I wanted six children at least.’
‘That’s not a family, that’s a life sentence,’ I said snippily, trying to conceal the way my leg was shaking, up and down, up and down, as though I were playing trotting horses with Tilly on my lap.
‘But when you were born,’ she went on, ignoring me, ‘I mean,afteryou were born… Oh this is so difficult…’ Another deep breath. ‘Libby, do you know what postpartum psychosis is?’
‘Of course. I read the books when I was expecting Tils.’ A tiny creeping chill tiptoed down my spine.
‘Well, I had it. Very, very badly. I was hospitalised, sectioned for a while, when you were only just a newborn. Luckily the doctors recognised it for what it was and they’re very good at treatment these days.’
