The Family Upstairs

“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 onto for dear life has just dissolved into a heap of gold coins, that everything has changed.” 

Libby is someone who likes to have her life planned out and who has been working hard to move forward in her career. However, after inheriting the mansion in Chelsea worth millions of pounds, Libby feels her life upended by the news. Libby is still unsure what to do with the house, but this news sets her on a path that will change her life plan.

“‘Yes,’ my sister replied brightly, because although she was only a year and a half younger than me she was too young to understand that not everyone thought sleeping in secret rooms at the top of secret staircases was an adventure, that some people might think they deserved proper big bedrooms and would be offended.” 

When Birdie and Justin first move into the Chelsea mansion, the Lamb family puts them in the smaller bedrooms upstairs. Henry notes Birdie and Justin’s negative reactions, and suspects that they are offended at being put in the upstairs bedrooms. This is a moment of foreshadowing, since Birdie, along with David, feel entitled to the Lamb family’s belongings and will end up taking over the entire house.

“She finds it hard to locate the overlap, the point at which one becomes the other. When her adoptive mother first held her in her arms, she imagines. But she wasn’t sentient then. She wasn’t aware of the transition from Serenity to Libby, the silent twisting and untwisting of the filament of her identity.” 

After discovering that her birth name is Serenity Lamb, Libby tries to make sense of the two parts of her identity: her adoptive name, and the biological family into which she was born. Libby will continue to unravel the story behind her biological family and will learn new things about herself along the way.