CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
ALEXANDER
It takes Lily seven minutes to realize we are going the wrong way.
She is in the back seat, explaining in great detail that one of her classmates insists whales are fish, when she suddenly stops mid-sentence and looks out of the window.
“This isn’t Mum’s street.”
“No.”
“It isn’t the school either.”
“No.”
She leans forward until the seat belt stops her.
“Where are we going?”
I glance at Isabella. She is sitting beside me, watching the passing streets with an expression that gives me no indication whether she regrets accepting the invitation.
“Your dad wants to show you something,” she says.
Dad.
There are still moments when the word produces a physical reaction, although I am learning not to show it every time Lily uses it. She should not have to manage my emotions simply because she gave me a place in her life.
“Is it a surprise?” she asks.
“Technically,” I say, “it’s a house.”
Lily wrinkles her nose.
“Houses aren’t surprises. They don’t fit in boxes.”
“That is a very reasonable limitation.”
“Is it the house with three staircases?”
I look at her through the rear-view mirror.
“You remember that?”
“You said it had three staircases, but you didn’t know how many steps there were. I said I could count them.”
I remember every word of that conversation. It happened the first day Lily came into my flat, wore a plastic tiara while serving imaginary tea, and called me Dad as though she had no idea she had just altered the entire structure of my life.
“I’ve come prepared for a rigorous audit.”
“What’s an audit?”
“It’s when someone checks whether another person counted everything properly.”
“So did you count them?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that was your job.”
Lily appears satisfied with the answer. Beside me, Isabella turns back toward the window, but I catch the beginning of a smile.
The house appears a few minutes later beyond the iron gates and the line of trees that conceals part of the fa?ade.
I have not spent much time here since stepping away from the company.
Margaret keeps the office functioning, the staff maintain the property, and a security team occupies the smaller building on the grounds, but the main rooms remain quiet.
This is the house where Isabella and I lived before everything fell apart.
She goes still when the gates open.
“If you’ve changed your mind, we can turn around.”
Isabella does not look at me.
“Lily wants to see it.”
“I was asking about you.”
Only then does she turn toward me.
“I know. I haven’t changed my mind.”
I park in front of the main entrance. Lily releases her seat belt the moment the car stops but waits for me to open the door, a rule Isabella taught her that not even curiosity is enough to make her ignore.
Once outside, she tips her head back to inspect the fa?ade.
“It’s very big.”
“Yes.”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Fifteen.”
She stares at me as though I have confessed to a crime.
“Why?”
“That is an excellent question.”
“Do you sleep in all of them?”
“Not at the same time.”
“I know,” she says impatiently. “Do you choose a different one every day?”
“I use one.”
Lily looks at the windows again.
“Then the others must be sad.”
Isabella closes the car door and adjusts her bag on her shoulder.
“Perhaps your father should apologize to them.”
“I can arrange a meeting.”
According to Lily, the steps outside do not count because “real staircases have to be inside the house.” She announces this rule before we even cross the threshold and immediately asks for my phone so she can record the results.
I hand it over.
“Do you know how to open Notes?”
“Yes. Grandpa taught me.”
She types with both thumbs, very slowly, and creates a document titled DAD’S STAIRCASES. Then she adds the number one and surveys the entrance hall.
The main staircase divides into two at the first landing, with dark wooden banisters and a chandelier Edmund always considered excessive despite refusing every suggestion to replace it.
Lily places one foot on the first step.
“We have to count going up and coming down so we can check.”
“Of course.”
“And you can’t talk because you’ll confuse me.”
We spend the next several minutes in silence while she climbs. Lily counts aloud, gets to thirteen and decides she needs to start again, then accuses one of the landings of trying to trick her. Isabella follows a few steps behind us, her fingertips moving lightly along the banister.
She knows this staircase.
She walked down it on the morning she was supposed to choose flowers for our wedding and left this house carrying only a suitcase.
The memory comes without warning, but I do not allow it to take over the moment. Today, Isabella walked through the front door because she chose to, and Lily is currently standing on the twenty-first step arguing with the architecture.
“Twenty-four,” she announces when we reach the upper floor. “Does the landing count as one?”
“You’re in charge of the audit.”
“Then no, because it’s floor.”
She records the number on my phone and sets off in search of the second staircase. Instead, she finds the bedroom corridor and then a gallery of portraits that immediately captures her attention.
“Who are they?”
“People from the Thorne family.”
“All of them?”
“Most of them.”
Lily studies men in dark suits and women in dresses from another century.
“They look angry.”
“Old portraits required people to appear solemn.”
“What does solemn mean?”
“Pretending you didn’t want to smile.”
Isabella gives a soft laugh.
“That explanation is heavily influenced by personal experience.”
At the far end of the wall hangs Edmund’s portrait, painted nearly twenty years ago. Lily approaches it and recognizes him from photographs.
“That’s your grandfather.”
“Yes.”
“Did he live here?”
“Part of the year. When I was little, he spent more time here because he was looking after me.”
“Because your dad died.”
“Yes.”
“Were you sad?”
The question is direct, as almost all Lily’s questions are. Children do not pretend death becomes less real simply because adults avoid naming it.
“Very sad. I was angry for a long time too, although I didn’t always know who I was angry with.”
“With him?”
“Sometimes. Then I felt guilty because I knew he hadn’t chosen to die.”
Lily considers that seriously.
“When Grandpa Edmund died, were you angry too?”
“A little. But by then, I already knew sadness and anger can exist at the same time.”
She looks back at the portrait.
“Mum said he was kind to her.”
My attention shifts to Isabella. She keeps her eyes on the painting.
“He was,” I say. “My grandfather cared about your mum very much.”
“Even when you had the big fight?”
There are some questions no amount of preparation makes easy.
“Even then. He believed I was wrong before I was able to admit it.”
Lily nods slightly, as though the information fits the man in the portrait.
“I think I would have liked him.”
“He would have loved meeting you.”
I do not add anything about the years that were lost. I do not want Lily to turn grief for a man she never met into another responsibility she has to carry for me.
She hands my phone to Isabella and continues toward the end of the corridor, where she finally discovers the second staircase.
It is narrower, built to connect the bedrooms to the old library, and has nineteen steps.
The third, originally used by the staff, creates an argument because it runs all the way down to the kitchen and turns twice.
Lily counts thirty-one, then thirty, and demands a second inspection.
On the way down again, we find Margaret at the lower landing.
She is carrying two folders and shows no surprise at discovering us counting stairs.
“Mr Thorne.”
“Margaret.”
She looks at Lily.
“Miss Costa.”
Lily narrows her eyes.
“Do you know how many steps this staircase has?”
“Thirty-one.”
“I told you!” Lily exclaims, turning toward me. “Alexander counted wrong.”
Margaret raises an eyebrow at my first name but possesses enough survival instinct not to comment.
“Mr Thorne is usually more competent with numbers.”
“That step is smaller,” I explain. “It is a design flaw.”
“It is still a step,” Isabella says. “Accept defeat with dignity.”
Margaret hands me the folders, then asks Isabella about the meeting she had that morning, remembering the client and the project rather than treating her merely as an extension of me. While they speak, Lily notices a half-open door and wanders into Edmund’s old study.
Several boxes remain on a side table. I asked for his personal belongings to be catalogued after his death but never managed to decide what should happen to all of them. Part of the room remains exactly as Edmund left it.
Lily finds a photograph album before I can distract her.
“Can I look?”
“You can.”
She places it on the rug and sits cross-legged. Isabella says goodbye to Margaret and joins us as Lily turns the pages. There are photographs of Edmund at university, my parents’ wedding, and Christmases from a time when I still appeared willing to smile for a camera.
Then we reach the fountain.
Lily is silent for two seconds before dissolving into laughter.
I am approximately three years old in the photograph, completely naked in the garden fountain and holding a stone fish as though I have just conquered it.
“Is that you?”
“No.”
Isabella leans over the album.
“That is definitely you.”
“The image quality does not allow for reliable identification.”
“Your name is written underneath,” Lily informs me. “‘Alexander, summer 1992.’”
“Circumstantial evidence.”
Isabella’s laughter mixes with our daughter’s, and for a few seconds Edmund’s old study stops feeling like a mausoleum.
Lily demands to know why I was naked, who took the photograph, and whether all billionaires swim in fountains.
I answer the first two questions with perhaps excessive discretion and refuse to provide statistical data on the third.
She immediately wants to see the garden.
Before we reach the door, however, Lily notices another corridor and asks what is there. Five bedrooms remain closed, including the one Isabella once shared with me.