“Look, love, it’s the first show, you’re bound to feel a bit funny, but it’s only the small room and it’ll be a friendly crowd. Relax, yeah? You just have to try out some of the new stuff and play the faves. It’s nothing to worry about, Robs.”
Robin hadn’t replied. After decreasingly patient “interventions” from pretty much everyone in the band and staff, a brief chorus of “fuck you, then,” “bollocks to you, Robin,” bubbled up, and then finally the footsteps stomped away. Robin stood again, still wearing an extremely thick hotel dressing gown and single-serving slippers with the hotel crest on them. A note written on hotel paper lay on the carpet in Alistair’s handwriting: “When will you grow the fuck up, Robin?”
She breathed in and out hard, that creeping gruesome feeling that she could never quite fill her lungs enough, and then lay carefully on the floor again, eyes wet and hot, and counted every bead on the cornice until she fell asleep.
—
It wasn’t the first time everyone had been angry with her. But whereas she’d thrived on it, courted it and rolled it up into a big boulder as a kid, this anger crushed her. Sat on her chest, stole her voice. And now, nearly three years later, she sometimes had to say things out loud to herself just to check she still had a voice.
“Good morning, Mr. Magpie.”
TEN
SARAH|1991
Dad’s working on an old oak at a big house about an hour’s drive away. It’s a specialist job that keeps him out of the house more than I’d like. There’s something unbalanced about our place when he’s gone until late. Like there’s a missing tent peg so the fabric flaps a bit and lets the wind and rain in. Mum’s not the most patient person at the best of times—she always seems to be irritated by something. I find myself tiptoeing around even more so I don’t get caught in the crossfire between her and Robin sniping at each other. But this time, she’s quiet. She doesn’t sigh dramatically and talk about all the things she could be doing with her life instead of standing there in front of us refereeing our squabbles. She doesn’t chase Robin up the stairs, threatening to smack her legs for being cheeky. She doesn’t complain when we ask what’s for tea, every half an hour until teatime. She just says, “Oh um, not sure,” and things like that.
It’s warm for spring. The heavy orange skies stretch out overhead, filled with the perfume of new grass. It’s nosebleed weather and I’ve had three today already. There are bright splatters all over my gingham dress. I’m standing in the school office holding a soaked tissue under my nostrils and the school secretary is telling me to lift my head back.
“No.” The teacher with the first-aid certificate rushes over. “Don’t hold your head back like that, just keep it still like this. Here’s a fresh tissue.”
“I was thinking of the carpet,” I hear Mrs. Woolacombe—the secretary—grumble as she sits back down by her desk and takes a bite of her sandwich.
They’ve been trying to call Mum but there’s no answer. I convince them that she’ll be in the garden and just won’t have heard the phone. The secretary looks at me, my dress and the carpet. “If your mum’s not there,” she says, “you need to come straight back.”
I’m giddy from being out of school, the lunchtime sun on my arms. I feel alive with the rushing sounds of the adult world all around me as I run home, nose throbbing.
I get to our front door, freshly painted green by Dad, something Mum’s been asking him to do for years. It’s not locked, and I guess Mum’s probably in the garden lying on a sun lounger with oiled legs and a Twix.
I close the door quietly, hoping to get to my room to change clothes before telling her about the blood on my dress. As I step toward the stairs, I hear a noise in the living room. It sounds like Mum’s laughing, or maybe singing, but sort of faster than usual and not in tune. And then I hear another noise. It’s like a grunting sound, like a dog might make while it snuffles around, smelling things in thick grass. I stand still and catch a tiny drop of blood working itself loose from my nostril.
I touch the banister, thinking about making my way up, but I can’t help myself and I have to look. I tell myself that I’m checking everything is okay, but I’m not. I’m curious and a bit frightened and I just can’t stop myself from pushing my eye up to the gap between the open door and the frame and looking in. It’s dark, and I hadn’t noticed the curtains had been tugged shut when I walked past the front of the house. There’s no light on, just the orange glow of the outside framing the curtains.
Drew Granger is lying on the sofa and there is a fan of blond hair spreading out under him. He’s topless, pink-skinned, and his trousers are loose around his middle. I can’t see most of my mum, just her hands and arms clasped tight around his back, and her new summer dress in a pile on the floor.
He’s tall and broad, kind of barrel-shaped, but not fat. Just big. My dad is narrow, wiry. He says he’s built like a monkey, which is good for climbing trees. Drew Granger is more like a gorilla: hairier, bigger, louder. Powerful.
I’ve never seen anything like this before. The only man I’d ever seen naked was my dad, and only occasionally. When I needed a wee and he was in the bath, or the time the washing machine flooded the kitchen first thing one Saturday. Robin and I had started screaming and yelling and Dad had appeared out of nowhere, stark naked, to turn off the water. I don’t like the size of Drew Granger. I don’t like how he swamps my mum, and I really don’t like the fact that she seems to like it so very much. My poor narrow monkey dad. I think of him shinning up the old oak, working so hard for us, and I feel tears welling.
I hurry back to the front door and out onto the little front garden. I rush down the road, past the Grangers’ BMW, which I hadn’t noticed on the way in, and walk back into school, still holding to my nose the wrinkled red tissue that I’d left with.
“No one was in,” I say to Mrs. Woolacombe without meeting her eye.
ROBIN|1991
Something’s up with Sarah but Robin doesn’t know what. Seeing her sister distracted by something secret is disconcerting, and it chews at her thoughts more than Robin would have expected. Normally Sarah is a fountain of criticism and do-goodery, but she’s barely sniped at her twin for days and hasn’t told on her all week. Instead, Robin notices that Sarah is spending more time in her room than usual and is obviously avoiding their mother. One curious effect of this, which Robin’s not sure yet if she likes or not, is that Angie is spending more time with Robin.
So far this week, Robin has had a haircut—her mother agreeing for once that she could have it shorter than her shoulders—and though there were some cross words in both directions, Robin was even invited to go to Safeway to do the weekly shopping. A treat disguised as a chore on account of being able to choose a comic and some sweets at the till and having the illusion of a say over dinners for the week ahead:
“Hot dogs, Mum?”