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‘How did she—? I mean – what …?’
‘A blow to the head,’ I reply.
He flinches. ‘But you know, I mean, I haven’t seen Birdie for so long. The last time I saw her she was, well …alive. I don’t think I can reallytellyou anything. Or help you. Not really.’
‘I appreciate that, Justin. Of course. But it would be very helpful to talk to you about what you remember from the time you lived together in Chelsea.’
He nods, which confirms that my working theory is correct, that Birdie and Justin did move into the big house in Cheyne Walk back in the late eighties.
‘You want to talk … now?’
‘Yes. Please. If you’re not busy.’
‘I could do with a few minutes. If that’s OK. Just to wash up.’
‘Of course. I can wait here. Take your time.’
He emerges five minutes later in new clothes, a T-shirt and some jeans, and his hair has been brushed and tied back neatly. His face is interesting, with a hooked nose, and his eyes are very bright hazel and the saddest I have ever seen, and I have seen some very sad eyes. The tattoos on his hands run all the way up his arms and into the sleeves of his T-shirt. Many snakes and skulls and crosses.
‘Sorry about that,’ he says. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or something?’
‘I’m fine, thank you. I have my water.’
He gestures towards a folding stool, and I sit on it.
‘I am going to make some notes, I hope that’s OK?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’
‘So, please, tell me in your own words about how you found yourself living in this house on Cheyne Walk and what happened when you lived there. I believe there was a pop video filmed there?’
‘That’s correct. Back in ’88, I think. Bloody Birdie got a bloody cat and we got kicked out of our flat and that woman, Martina, offered us a room and I genuinely thought it was just going to be for a few days. But it ended up being for … God, ages. And it was really fucked up. Really, really fucked up.’
Here, I think, here it is. Here is what I’ve been waiting for.
‘In what way was it … messed up?’ I ask.
‘Oh, Christ. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Well, maybe you could just start at the beginning?’
And then this man with his metal face and scribbled arms and scarred legs and sad, sad eyes tells me about a spoiled family with untold wealth, bored to death inside a pretend castle on the banksof the Thames. And then the father, a lazy, indolent man with no redeeming features, becomes ill. A woman called Birdie who is living inside the pretend castle brings a healing man into the house in order to help the lazy man. And this healing man brings with him a wife and two children, and then there are ten people living in a house where once there had been four and slowly the healing man who had been brought into the house to treat the lazy man had taken everything from him: his wealth, his wife, his freedom, his dignity.
‘I left after two years or so,’ Justin says. I hear pain in his voice as he utters these words. ‘I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed, for the children. But I couldn’t bear it. Not for another moment. It was insane. Birdie turned into a psycho. She got off on all the twisted stuff that was going on.’
‘What sort of twisted things?’
‘Oh, the kids mainly. Keeping them contained in the house. Hours of physical exercise every day. Hours of learning the violin. They weren’t allowed to wear normal clothes or do normal things. No television. No friends. Strange punishments. It was just … everything just felt wrong. And Birdie was clearly obsessed with him.’
‘With who?’
‘David. The healer.’
‘David – what was his surname?’
‘Thomsen. David Thomsen.’
I feel a bloom of sweat break out on my fingertips where they grip the pencil and I wipe them against my trouser leg then return them to my pencil and write the word ‘Thomson’.
