It’s still hot when Libby gets up for work and there’s a kind of pearlescent shimmer in the air even at eight in the morning.
She’d slept all night with the bedroom window open even though she knew women were advised not to. She’d arranged glasses in a row along her windowsill so that if a man did break in at least she would have some warning. But still she’d tossed and turned all night, the sheets twisted and cloying beneath her body.
The sun had woken her up from a brief slumber, laser bright through a tiny gap in her curtains, heating the room up again in minutes. For a moment everything had felt normal. And then it hadn’t. Her thoughts switched violently to yesterday. To the dark house and the linen-fold panels, the secret staircase, the rabbit’s foot, the pale blue roses on the side of the crib. Had that really happened? Was that house still there or had it turned to particles in her wake?
She’s the second to arrive at work that morning. Dido, the head designer, is already behind her desk and has got the air conditioner running. The iced air feels exquisite against her clammy skin, but she knows in half an hour she’ll be freezing and wishing she’d brought a cardigan.
‘Good morning,’ says Dido, not looking up from her keyboard. ‘How did it go?’
She’d told Dido yesterday in confidence that she needed the day off to visit a solicitor about an inheritance. She didn’t tell her about being adopted or the possibility of the inheritance being a house. She’d said it was an elderly relative and suggested that she might be in line for a few hundred pounds. Dido had got very excited about the possibility of a few hundred pounds and at the time Libby wasn’t sure she’d be able to face her reaction if she told her the truth. But now that she’s here, and it’s just the two of them and it’s Tuesday morning and she won’t be seeing her best friend April until the weekend and she hasn’t really got anyone else she can tell, she decides maybe it would be good to share, that maybe Dido, who is twelve years older than her, will have something wise or useful to impart to help her make sense of the whole ridiculous thing.
‘I’ve inherited a house,’ Libby says, running water into the Nespresso machine.
‘Ha ha,’ says Dido, clearly not believing her.
‘No. I have. It’s in Chelsea, by the river.’
‘Chelsea, London?’ says Dido, her mouth hanging open.
‘Yes.’
‘As in Made In?’
‘Yes,’ Libby says again. ‘By the river. It’s huge.’
‘Are you winding me up?’
She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says.
‘Oh my God,’ says Dido. ‘So you’re basically a millionaire?’
‘I guess.’
‘And yet here you are, at Northbone Kitchens on a Tuesday morning, acting like a normal person.’
‘I’m letting it sink in.’
‘God, Libby, if I were you I would be letting it sink in right now drinking champagne in the garden at St Michael’s Manor.’
‘It’s twenty to nine.’
‘Well, tea then. And Eggs Benedict. What on earth are you doing here?’
Libby feels her seams loosen and begin to come apart at the thought that she need not be here, that the sturdy ladder she’s been gripping on to for dear life has just dissolved into a heap of golden coins, that everything has changed.
‘I only found out yesterday! I haven’t sold it yet,’ she says. ‘I might not be able to.’
‘Yeah, right, because nobody wants a house in Chelsea overlooking the Thames.’
Roughly six or seven million pounds. That was the estimate that the solicitor had given her yesterday when she’d finally got up the nerve to ask. Minus, he’d said, expenses and fees owed to the firm. And then there would be inheritance taxes to pay. You’ll end up with about three and half million, he’d said. Or thereabouts.
He’d given her a high five. Confused her with a young person like the ones he read about in the newspapers. It had been quite disconcerting.
‘It’s in a bad state,’ Libby says, now. ‘And it has a history.’
‘History?’
‘Yes. Some people died there. A bit shady. Distant relatives.’ She was about to mention the baby left behind in the cot but stopped.
‘No way!’
‘Yeah. All a bit shocking. So for now I’m just going to act like everything’s normal.’
‘You’re going to keep on selling kitchens? In St Albans?’
‘Yes,’ says Libby, feeling her equilibrium start to rebalance itself at the thought of nothing changing. ‘I’m going to keep on selling kitchens in St Albans.’
8
Marco and Lucy spent the night on the beach in the end. The rain had stopped at about 2 a.m. and they’d gathered their things and walked the twenty minutes across town to the Promenade des Anglais where they’d unrolled their yoga mats on the wet pebbles, tucked themselves under sarongs and watched shreds of spent grey rain clouds chase each other across a big pink moon until the sun started to leak through the line between the sea and the sky.
At eight o’clock Lucy collected together all the cents from the bottom of her rucksack and the bottom of her purse and found she had enough to buy croissants and a coffee. They ate them on a bench, both stultified by lack of sleep and the awfulness of the night before. Then they’d walked back across town to Samia’s flat to collect Stella, and Samia had not invited them in for lunch despite the fact that it was midday and they had clearly not slept in beds. Stella had been bathed and redressed in clean clothes, her soft curls brushed out and pinned back with pink fluffy clips and, as they walked back across town yet again, Lucy pondered that it probably looked like she and Marco had kidnapped her.
‘I can keep her for another night,’ Samia had said, her hand on Stella’s shoulder. Lucy had seen Stella shrug against Samia’s hand, almost imperceptibly, a tiny shake of her head.
‘That’s kind of you, but I’ve found us somewhere to sleep tonight.’ She’d felt Marco’s eyes burning into her shoulder at her lie. ‘But I am so, so grateful to you. Really.’
Samia had tilted her head slightly and narrowed her eyes, processing some silent account of Lucy’s situation. Lucy had held her breath, awaiting some damning pronouncement on her appearance, her parenting, the part she’d played in Samia’s precious son’s moonlight flit. Instead Samia had moved slowly towards the table halfway up the hallway and pulled a small purse from her shoulder bag. She’d peered into the purse and pulled out a twenty-euro note which she passed to Lucy.
‘It’s all I have,’ she’d said. ‘There is no more.’
Lucy had taken it and then leaned into Samia and hugged her. ‘Thank you,’ she’d said. ‘God bless you.’
Now she and the children and the dog are walking along the Promenade des Anglais in the burning afternoon sun with a bag full of clean clothes from the laundromat and bellies full of bread and cheese and Coca-Cola. They head towards one of the many beach clubs that line the beaches here in Nice: le Beach Club Bleu et Blanc.
Lucy has eaten here, in the past. She has sat at these tables with Marco’s dad, worked her way through piles of fruits de mer, a glass of champagne at her elbow or a white wine spritzer, whilst being cooled by intermittent puffs of chilled water squirted from tiny nozzles. They wouldn’t recognise her now, those jaded old waiters in their incongruously trendy blue and white polo shirts. She’d been a sight for sore eyes twelve years ago.