The Family Upstairs

Lucy wakes up early the next morning in the Blue House. She pulls her expired passport out of her bag and thinks about returning to England. She remembers how she arrived in France and got her first passport. Lucy was born in England but arrived in France as a child. When she arrived in France, the people who brought her drove illegally across the border; no one ever asked for their passports.

Since she was a child, Lucy played the fiddle to make money, paying for places to stay by the night. Michael discovered her playing her fiddle one night. Lucy remembers how “[b]ack then he was her hero, the man who’d come to watch her play every single night for almost a month, who’d told her she was the most beautiful fiddler he’d ever seen” (86-87). Michael brought Lucy home to his house and they eventually married. Later, Michael insisted Lucy get a passport so they could go on a honeymoon and travel.

Now, as Lucy looks over her expired passport, she thinks about how none of the information on it is true. The passport had worked well prior to expiring, but she doesn’t know how Michael got it, and she doesn’t have passports for the children or the dog.