We left Paris four days later. I had a temporary passport, and the police had all Natasha’s details, as well as Peggy’s (she had, of course, left the hotel straight after our visit, and the hotel was closed and its records unavailable). Neither Dad nor I thought they had the slightest chance of catching either of them, but they said they would try.
My savings account was empty. All my money had vanished and, even though the police and bank were apparently trying to get it back, the fact that she’d seen me putting in my PIN was probably going to mean that I was technically liable. We had tracked down the lovely woman at the clothes shop, who backed me up, but apparently that didn’t count for much.
Natasha had caught my train to London and then taken all my money, in cash, from various banks. With my bank card and photo ID, she had trawled around different branches and taken the maximum amount allowed from each, then transferred what was left into a different account and withdrawn that. It had disappeared, like Natasha herself.
I wished she had actually been Deanna. I didn’t want my cousin, someone from my own family, to have done this to me. I wanted it to have been a mad stranger.
Her plan had worked, and now she had the money. I couldn’t put into words how that made me feel. It wasn’t the money (although it was a little bit the money). It was the fact that I’d been entirely and completely taken in by her. I felt dirty and used. I hated her, and I would find some way of getting revenge.
However, Dad was taking the unrelenting view that it was only money and didn’t matter, and I had learned to enjoy his company. I was wearing new clothes, and I felt like myself again. Although Dad had grandly said I could buy whatever I wanted, I was too aware of the fact that I had lost my entire inheritance to be able to enjoy shopping in Paris. I was wearing the basic clothes I’d got on that evening when he’d rescued me. My hair was growing, and I thought I might try to change its colour because I didn’t want to look like that woman any more.
It took me ages to get through security at the Eurostar terminal. My passport wasn’t a normal one, and both sets of border people spent ages looking at it and asking me about it. By the time I was through, Dad was sitting on a wide windowsill by the cafe with two coffees and two croissants next to him.
I sat beside him.
‘I’ve done it,’ I said. ‘Crossed the border.’
‘Cheers,’ he said.
I picked up the other cardboard coffee cup and we pushed them together. ‘Thanks for the rescue.’
‘It’s been a pleasure,’ said Dad. ‘I mean, it really has. It was about time we did something together.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’
The Creep was less than three weeks away. I didn’t want to think about it, but it was lurking all the time. Things were dying. I was staying away from the news, but there were no birds left, as far as I could see, and Peggy had been right about the small animals.
Those creatures had died, and people swept up the birds and buried their pets (or carried them in handbags). One day soon there would be human corpses lying everywhere, and no one would be left to clear them away.
However you chose to look at it, the process was underway. It made me feel sick to think about it and I knew that I could be friends with Dad now, and write off the money, and go home to find Zoe, and do all the things I had to do, and I had to do it fast because the days were numbered. We were the dinosaurs in the days before the comet.
The odd thing was that I thought Natasha had been right in one of her early messages: I still couldn’t focus on what was going to happen. I couldn’t think about it. My mind protected itself by swerving away every time I tried, and I thought it was the same for most people, and I was glad. I was always a bit surprised at how polite most people were. The train was busy, and if we’d wanted to, we, the passengers, could have stormed the driver’s compartment and seized control of it, but no one did. Everyone carried on following the rules. Though perhaps there’s no point in seizing control of a train, because it can only go where the rails will take it.
I knew that after a mad hot summer of adventures and tricks and lies I was going home. I stopped thinking about the things I should do before the end of the world and started to think beyond it.
My imaginary list of Things to do After the End of the World went like this:
If things are somehow the same, on September the eighteenth –
Do not waste a moment.
Go on mad, wonderful dates with Zoe.
Apply to drama school.
Audition for plays.
Be confident when you need to be, but also own the fact that you’re quiet and that’s all right.
Work hard.
Have fun.
Be the best person you can be; help people who need help.
Go back to Madrid one day.
Go back to Paris one day.
Learn more languages.
Go to galleries.
Listen to music.
Read books and books and books and books.
Be happy.
No need to hide.
And if you wake up on September the eighteenth, you will go after Natasha and you will find her, and she will be very, very, VERY sorry that she messed with you.
I was trying to hold on to it. It might be all right. I was trying to believe that it would be, because I could not believe otherwise. I didn’t want to know the statistics. I most certainly didn’t want to think about breathing apparatus and bunkers and things.
Dad and I sat together on the train and I stared out of the window. There were fires in Paris, and demonstrations and groups of people, and then the train went faster and faster and faster and we were passing through the countryside.
I knew that people all over the world were doing their best to prepare. It was a leveller: I had always felt like a child, but now I knew that all the adults were no more prepared, no more sensible, than we were. My own father, previously the most impermeable person, had said that he’d never stopped feeling like a teenager and he didn’t think anyone else really did either. Everyone was in this together.
They weren’t really, of course. There was aggression, and murder, and war, but there was also peace and love, because humans are complicated. People were preparing bunkers, but the bunkers weren’t going to work for long and, even if they did, what kind of a life was that? Was it just that people were so programmed to find a way to carry on living that they would do anything?
I knew that some people were making their own missiles filled with oxygen, to try to kill the pollution. People in countries with big gun cultures were planning to shoot it out of the sky. That was beyond unhinged. There was nothing any of us could really do but wait.
‘Strange times, hey?’ said Dad.
‘Yes.’
‘It’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘We have to believe it, no matter what. We have two tiny children in the family, don’t we? They have no idea. Sofie heard about it but thought it was something that went creak. It took us ages to work out what she meant.’
‘Cute.’ He was right: thinking about Sofie and Hans-Erik somehow made the bad things fade a bit. ‘Yes. I think it’ll be OK.’
‘They say you should live every day as if it were your last,’ he said, ‘but when it comes down to it that’s not really it, is it? Live every day as if it might not be your last. That kind of works better.’
‘Live every day as if you had a future.’
‘I’m going to the bar,’ he said. ‘Want anything?’
‘Chocolate, please,’ I said.
I stared out of the window at the dark of the Channel Tunnel, and then it went light and I was back in Britain. I’d been away for over two months and it was strange to be here again. I had expected the countryside of Kent to be staid next to Paris, but there were tents and festivals and banners and fires just as there had been in France and Spain. As we came into London the train slowed enough for me to look in through people’s windows, to see that, in spite of everything, they were mainly just living their lives and hoping for the best, and quite a lot of them were watching EastEnders.
We got off at St Pancras, walked down a ramp and came out through some sliding doors into the station concourse.
‘Libby!’ I had known Mum would be there, but I hadn’t expected her to yell like that. She had not previously been the sort of person who would shout at the top of her voice across a crowded station. But now she bellowed. I dropped my bag and ran to her, and we smashed into each other like bulls.
Then she hugged me, and I hugged her, and I knew that, whatever was going to happen, we would face it together.
She felt more substantial now. She felt dependable.
We caught the train back to Winchester, me and my two parents, and that was, of course, mortifying, and, in spite of the bond Dad and I had forged since he came and found me in the Louvre, I sat there between the two of them with nothing at all to say. I kind of flipped back into being my old self, and I didn’t want that, but I even more didn’t want to relax into this particular situation. I didn’t want to have to start plotting to get my parents back together.
But they spoke to each other, filling each other in on things, and I was glad they were there.
‘Can I use your phone?’ I said to Mum, and she handed it over. I started a text to Zoe.
Hi Zoe. It’s Libby, on Mum’s phone this time. I’m nearly home. Can I see you soon? Thank you again SO, SO MUCH for saving me. I need to say thanks in person and I also need to give you the money for that reverse charge call. Thank you, thank you, thank you – you are amazing, my Romeo xxxx
I sent it even though I knew it sounded mad. We’d been texting every day, though I had always deleted the messages straight away from Dad’s phone. Oddly, Natasha sending all my old emails to her had fast-forwarded our relationship to a new place that felt full of possibility. I had no need to pretend any more. She replied at once.
Don’t be silly about the money. My parents pay the bill and they say don’t you dare attempt to pay them for it. Get your dad to give them some wine if you want! Yes, we have to meet up. Later today? xxx
I leaned back and smiled.
Perfect.
At Winchester station I said goodbye to my dad. It was the very first time I could remember being sorry to leave him. He gave me a hug and kissed the top of my head.
‘Come over and see us all,’ he said. ‘As soon as you can. Please. Anneka and the kids can’t wait to see you.’
‘I will,’ I said, and Mum and I walked home to Sean.
It turned out, though, that we weren’t just walking home to him.
‘If you’re ready for it,’ said Mum, taking my arm and steering me into the park, ‘I need to tell you something before we get home.’
‘Can’t you tell me when we get home?’ I was desperate for the comforts of my own bedroom. In fact, I was longing for them with all my being.
‘It’s about Violet,’ she said. ‘And, no, I have to tell you now. I’ve spent your whole life not telling you about her when you should have known.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Finally! I thought no one was ever going to tell me about Violet. I thought there was some rule that said I was never, ever allowed to know.’
‘Sorry,’ said Mum, and she took me into the same park where I’d been walking back in December when I’d heard the news. ‘Let’s walk and talk. I think it’ll be easier this way.’
I had no idea what to expect, except that I knew Violet was dead. I knew that, not because Natasha had told me, but because of Mum’s reaction when Natasha had said her name.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Who was she?’
‘OK,’ said Mum. ‘Right. This hasn’t been easy for me, but it’s different now. As you know, I cracked up over the summer, and that’s all connected with Vi. It’s OK now. And I know it’s weird to think of your parents in these terms, but here goes. When I was fourteen I had a boyfriend. He was seventeen. My parents hated him, as you can imagine, but I didn’t. To cut a long story short, just after my fifteenth birthday I discovered I was pregnant. Not only that, but I was thirty weeks pregnant. I know. Don’t look at me like that.’
‘I’m not looking at you like anything! That must have been awful.’
‘Horrific. Too late to do anything but have the baby. She was a little girl.’
‘Violet.’
I waited. The next bit was going to be horrible.
‘Violet,’ said Mum. ‘My parents took charge and she was whisked away. I never saw her again.’
She stopped talking.
‘She died,’ I said.
‘No. No, that’s the thing. She didn’t die, Libby. She was adopted. It was all right, mainly. I had to get on with life. I messed up my exams and caught up with my education later, in my early twenties, but I just had to hope she was being looked after better than I would have been able to look after her. I thought about her every day, forever.’
‘What happened?’ I managed to say. I was dreading the answer. Here was another family member – a half-sister – and she was lost too.
‘She was fine.’ Mum turned a huge smile on me. ‘I always thought of her out there, and I always wanted her to come and find me. I left my details on the register for her, but she didn’t contact me. After twelve-twelve I knew I had to try harder. The only thing I wanted to do before the end of the world was to find my other baby. I tried to track her down, but without much luck. I wrote messages to her and sent them off to the adoption people, so she might be able to get them if she looked for me. Then, this summer, she did. She decided to look for her birth mother, and she found me.’ She took my hand and we started walking towards the house. ‘It was difficult. I was very up and down, because when she found out that I had another daughter and that you’d always lived with me, she found it difficult to process. She was very angry and said she didn’t want anything to do with me. Honestly, darling, when you went off with Natasha I really wasn’t myself. I thought you needed some time away from me to grow, and I’d told you to travel so I could hardly turn round and forbid it. I loathed Natasha but I could see how she was helping you come out of yourself. I don’t know what I was thinking when I let you go off with her. I stupidly thought I could use the time to build something with Violet, but then she told me she didn’t want to meet me after all. Suddenly I had neither of you. I felt I’d pushed you away to make space to get to know her, and then she didn’t want to know me. I wanted you to come back, but I felt so shabby. I suppose it wasn’t Peggy who had the massive breakdown. It was me.’
‘What?’ I couldn’t keep up with all this. ‘So she’s alive? Why did Natasha say she was dead? Natasha said she was a little child talking from beyond the grave!’
‘I have never been so angry in my life as I was then,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize it until later, but she had been through my laptop. I only discovered that last week, when I saw that some documents had been opened more recently than they should have been. She’d found the very private letters I’d written to Violet and misinterpreted them. She thought I was writing to a dead baby, rather than a lost one. Oh my God, that girl. At the time I just thought she’d eavesdropped on Sean and me talking, and picked up the name. I thought it was a shot in the dark. Anyway, I kept on bombarding Vi with messages, and she came round. She understood that I’d had her at fifteen and hadn’t been allowed to keep her, whereas when I’d had you I’d been a married twenty-eight-year-old and it was entirely different. I told her all about you and she started to accept that she had a little sister. To be honest, she only felt able to come to Moralzarzal because you weren’t there – one thing at a time. But we got to know her and it was …’ She grinned. ‘It was incredible actually. I know I was in a bad way, and I didn’t just pull myself back by magic. I went to a doctor, in Spain. He gave me antidepressants, and they took a couple of weeks to work. But they do work. A combination of medication and having both my girls back. It’s got me back on an even keel.’
‘She slept in my bedroom,’ I said. I imagined her, this unknown older sister, sleeping in the room I’d shared with Natasha. I wondered whether she slept with my flamingo lights on.
‘She did, darling,’ said Mum. ‘Yes. Is that OK? Would you like to meet her?’
As we turned the corner I saw there was a cluster of people near our house, and when I got closer I began to see who they were. There was Zoe and her family. There was Max, who I’d thought was in Singapore, who I’d dumped because he’d told me Natasha was talking shite. Max turned towards me and galloped down the street, and I gave him a little hug, which was the most physical contact we had ever had.
‘I thought you’d uploaded yourself to the … mainframe?’ I said.
‘Didn’t work. Came back. I thought you weren’t talking to me any more.’
‘Sorry. I do want to talk to you.’
‘Then we’re cool. Sorry about what happened. I would have sorted her out for you!’ He made fists like a boxer.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘If only I’d thought of that.’
Then there was Zoe. She hugged me very tight, and I hugged her back, and nuzzled her hair a bit. I pulled far enough out to look into her eyes. She was looking right back, and her gaze was full of everything.
‘Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘You saved me.’
‘You saved yourself. We’ve brought you a cake.’
‘I don’t want any fuss.’
She laughed. ‘That’s why you’re so brilliant.’
‘But I could eat some cake.’
She put her arm through mine, and we walked up the road to have a little party.
‘Did you say,’ I said, knowing that I had to tackle this first, ‘that you were OK with my emails? I mean, I know you said that, but did you just say it because I was in a state? Or did you mean it?’
‘I did mean it,’ she said, and she smiled. ‘In a strange way it was amazing to get to know you.’
I imagined Natasha going through my phone, reading all those drafts, and sending every one of them just out of spite. I had the strangest feeling that, in that respect, she had done me a favour.
Then there was a woman who looked about thirty, hanging back and smiling shyly. She had thick black hair, and brown eyes, and I knew she was my big sister.
‘Hello, Libby,’ she said.
I grinned at her. ‘Hello, Violet.’
We looked at each other, and then I took two steps towards her and hugged her as tightly as I could.