Read an extra chapter from The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell

First published in 2022, The Family Remains is the sequel to Lisa Jewell’s gripping bestseller, The Family Upstairs.

To describe it as a “what happened next to Henry and Lucy Lamb”, the key characters in The Family Upstairs, is perhaps an over-simplification. With a wide-ranging narrative that takes us from London to Chicago and back, it begins with the discovery of a bag of bones on the foreshore of the river Thames. The bones turn out to belong to Birdie, one of the characters who’d moved into the upstairs rooms of the now notorious house on Cheyne Walk when Henry and Lucy were children.

This bonus chapter is narrated by Detective Samuel Owusu, who is responsible for establishing Birdie’s identity and also for unlocking the secrets of what happened to the inhabitants of that house just under a quarter of a century earlier. It is one of the finest examples of Jewell’s writing in that it manages to deepen and widen our understanding of all that we have read so far while tempering it (through Owusu) with a wise humanity and acceptance that everyone’s life has a value and a potential for goodness, even in the darkest and most difficult of circumstances.

More than anything it’s a fitting and very moving ending to both The Family Upstairs and The Family Remains.

The Family Remains
by
Lisa Jewell
August 2019
St James and St John Roman Catholic Church, Suffolk

I have left behind a scorching-hot day in London. Here in a tart green nook of the Suffolk countryside it is overcast and a fine mist of summer rain floats lazily onto the bare arms and open shoes of the funeral-goers. I pull a small umbrella from the boot of my car and try to open it, but it does not want to play ball with me, so I throw it back inside the boot and pull up the collar of my jacket, to little effect.
        I see eyes go to me as I walk towards the entrance of the church. I scan the crowd for a familiar face and smile with relief when I see Philip. He smiles too and strides towards me. He is wearing a dark grey suit with a plum tie and is clutching a sheaf of orders of service and a large umbrella. ‘Samuel,’ he says, inviting me to join him underneath it. ‘Thank you so much for coming. It’s hugely appreciated. I know it’s a long way to come.’
        ‘It’s nice to get away from London. I have a hotel booked in Aldeburgh for the night. It’s been a long time since I saw the sea.’
        ‘Aldeburgh is beautiful. A good choice.’ Philip turns and attracts the attention of the priest. ‘Father Tobin. I’d like to introduce you to Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu from Charing Cross Police Station. Samuel was the detective in charge of finding out what happened to Birdie.’
        Father Tobin, with a plume of white hair and an enquiring squint, extends his hand towards mine and squeezes it warmly. ‘I baptised Bridget,’ he says. ‘I blessed her with her first confession and her first holy communion. And now here I am putting her bones into the ground.’ He shakes his head sadly and lets go of my hand. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you for bringing her home.’
        Philip turns again and guides an elderly lady towards him gently by her elbow. She wears a black velvet hat and dark red lipstick that bleeds into the cracks around her mouth. She peers at me and says, ‘You’re very tall.’
        ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘I am.’
        ‘My husband was tall.’ She peers up at Philip and says, ‘Who is this?’
        ‘Mummy, this is Samuel Owusu. The detective from London who found Bridget for us.’
        ‘About time too,’ she says.
‘It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs Dunlop-Evers.’
        She gazes into my eyes for a long moment, and I see tears glaze the rheumy whites. Then she sniffs loudly, looks me up and down and says, ‘You’re very tall. How tall are you exactly?’
        ‘I’m six foot one.’
        ‘Six foot one. My husband was six foot. A very tall man.’
        I catch Philip’s eye and he smiles. Then he looks down at his mother and says, ‘Mummy, I’m going to introduce Samuel
to some more people now. You stay here with Eve, OK?’
        ‘Sorry,’ says Philip, steering me away. ‘She has good days and bad days and believe it or not, today is a good day.’
        Philip leads me to a gaggle of men in their forties and fifties. ‘My brothers,’ he says. ‘Patrick, David, Paul, Jonty and Dicky.’
        ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘My goodness. So many of you.’ And then I feel a stab of sadness when I remember that there should be two sisters here also, but they have both left this world far too early.
        The men introduced as Jonty and Dicky appear to be identical twins, distinguishable only by slightly different haircuts and ­ colours of tie. I look upon them as curiously as they look upon me. ‘I am so sorry for your loss,’ I say. ‘Truly.’
        They bow their heads. The one called Patrick smiles and says, ‘We lost Birdie a long, long time ago.’
        ‘Yes. This is true.’
        ‘I mean,’ he says, quite firmly. ‘Even before she went missing. She always had her feet halfway out of the door. You know?’
        I nod. I do know. Some people come into this world already chasing something or running from something. Some people come into this world broken.
        A restless group of children, teenagers and young adults mill about behind the group of brothers and their wives. I am taken to them. They are the children and grandchildren of the sons, Birdie’s nieces and nephews. They snap to attention when they are told who I am and are excited to meet me. There is a frisson of celebrity. They have binge-watched a dozen box sets about the sorts of people who do my job and I think they think I am Luther come to life.
        Slowly we file into the nave of the tiny church, and there is Birdie on a stand by the altar; she is in a casket of soft golden wood, on top of which are sprays of pink and white flowers. A woman wearing a black trouser suit is playing something turgid on the organ. I take my seat at the back of the church and flick through the order of service.
        I am a Christian with a small c. I used to be one with a big C, but then life got in the way of the church side of things. Now I am a Christian in my own home, not in God’s home. I believe that he is everywhere, not only inside certain buildings. But it is nice to be back inside a church, albeit a very different church to the sort I am used to.
        I follow the congregation and stand during the psalms, sit during the readings, kneel during the prayers. I attempt to sing along to some rather slow-paced hymns and then Philip takes the pulpit and clears his throat and says, ‘I would like to say a few words about Birdie, about Bridget, about my sister.’
        I empty my mind at these words of every image that remains lodged in there after the investigation. I scrub it clean of Birdie grooming a thirteen-year-old girl for sex with her lover, of Birdie stealing children’s shoes, of Birdie stealing people’s wives and money and heirlooms. I stare at the blown-up photograph of Birdie that is perched on an easel by her coffin: a sweet young woman in black and white, head thrown slightly back, caught in a moment of laughter. I look at the photograph of the laughing young woman and I listen to her brother speak.
        ‘Birdie was my big sister. She was ten when I was born, so she always felt slightly out of reach to me. I had a herd of brothers in my immediate field of vision, and I often felt like I didn’t see her at all. And neither did she see me. I was still a child when she left home. When she left she took something with her. I wasn’t quite sure what it was at the time, but it was only when she returned for her first Christmas while at the Royal College of Music that I knew what it was that I’d missed. It was her fierceness. Her unwavering certainty. Her febrile energy. Her furious femininity. It was all the things about her that made her not like the rest of us, because the Dunlop-Everses are a generic bunch on the whole, part of the reason why we’re still so close, why our children and grandchildren have grown up together, why we all still live within fifty miles of our childhood home. But Birdie came from somewhere else, and I think spent her life trying to work out where it was. She travelled all over the world and it is strange, of course, to see where she ended up. I think we always thought she’d disappeared to explore the world. Over the years I pictured her travelling from country to country, playing her violin, as she did so beautifully, for adoring crowds. In my head, I would imagine her picking up her phone occasionally, pressing in my parents’ number, then hanging up at the first ring, scared, suddenly, of the responsibilities that come with being part of a big family and in particular a family such as ours. But . . .’
        I see Philip’s elegant delivery crumble slightly. He smiles a small smile and clears his throat. ‘But it seems that while I was fantasising about my clever, talented, angry, slightly scary big sister seducing the world with her brilliance, she was in fact already gone. Nobody could hear her play her violin down on the silty shores of the river. She and her exquisite talent had been brutally silenced. None of us really knows what happened back in that big dark house by the Thames. We can only guess. And some might say that she played her own part in her downfall. But whatever the truth, I lost my sister. My mother lost her daughter. My children, nieces and nephews lost an aunt who could have inspired them, who might have changed their lives. We will never know what we missed or what the world missed over the past twenty-five years. All we know is that nothing bad can ever happen to her again. So, fly free, beautiful Birdie, and I’ll see you on the other side.’
        The church falls silent. A few people sniff. I make the sign of the cross and quietly leave the church.
        Outside, the fine rain has stopped and a smudge of peachy sunshine leaks through a break in the clouds. I climb into my car and start the engine. I put the address of the beautiful hotel in Aldeburgh into Maps and I pull away from the church, the sound of another lugubrious hymn emanating from the open church doors. Once out on the country lane, I open the window to let in the fragrant, damp summer air.
        I have got what I came for. I have found the humanity. The child. The thing that is not a monster. I am ready now to head back again into the darkness of the world.
        I put on some music and I sing.