Robin decides she’s onto a losing thing and apologizes, wiping the food away with her sweater sleeve as the corners of Drew Granger’s mouth tip downward and Callum goes red.
“I was just working out that you and Dad have been together for twelve years,” she adds, looking at her parents and expecting some kind of ripple of warmth. Parents normally love being told that something they’ve done is extraordinary. Twelve years of going to sleep with the same person in your room, spending every night and every weekend with someone and staying friends, that is extraordinary. Sarah and Robin fall out after one night in the same bed, and even Callum has snapped at them both in close quarters before. But none of the adults seem to like what she’s said, so she tries something different, because nobody is talking anymore and it makes her feel weird.
“How long have you two been together?” she asks Hilary, but it’s Drew who answers with a joke. “Too bloody long!” Hilary and Jack make a couple of polite “hmph hmph” noises, but Angie throws her head back and laughs. She laughs so loudly it’s more like she’s shouting “ha-ha” in a speech bubble, like a character in a book. The kids wolf their food down after this and, once Callum asks for permission from his dad, they slide off their chairs and bound upstairs.
After Callum is shouted down and the Grangers leave, Jack asks Robin if she wants to come into the garage to help him with something. She runs down and out of the back door so fast she skids a bit and grazes her knee on a bit of gravel. She doesn’t even slightly cry and hopes her dad notices how brave and hardy she is, but he’s doing that faraway look again. Just as they’re about to go into the garage, he grabs her hand and says, “Be quiet, squirt. Look over there, there’s a couple of fledglings.” Robin squints to see two brown shapes bobbing about on the lawn and a larger bird watching them nervously from a tall branch. “Starlings,” her dad says, but she knew that anyway. “Poor old mum,” he adds.
Inside the garage, he starts to take off the legs of a chair that used to sit with the others in the kitchen. It got scuffed over the years—they all did, so one by one he’s sanding all the bits of each chair and polishing them again. The dust smells like Christmas, all woody and sweet, and Robin can’t help but feel calmer in the semi-dark dusty room with her favorite parent. They work silently, Robin rubbing her chair parts diligently with sandpaper wrapped around a block of wood. She hears her dad open his mouth a few times, his dry lips audibly parting, but every time she looks up expectantly, he closes them.
Eventually they’re called in for sandwiches. While her dad packs away the tools in their special cases and canvas pouches, he says without looking up: “I know you think Mum’s on your case a lot, but it’s just because she loves you and wants you to be the best that you can be.”
“She’s never on Sarah’s case,” Robin is surprised to hear herself say in a choked voice.
“Yeah, but your mum and Sarah are peas in a pod, aren’t they, girl? And you and me are alike. So you’re always going to butt heads with Mum. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, it just means that, y’know, it’s a bit easier for her with Sarah and it’s easier for me with you. But you’re a good girl in your own way, Robin,” he says, looking at a deep cut on his hand, “so remember that.”
—
It’s nearly the end of term and school rules have gone out the window. The whole school piled into the school hall on Friday afternoon, filing into neat lines and sitting cross-legged like matches in a box. The head teacher played them an old Disney film through a projector, and even though they could barely hear anything, the excitement crackled over the hall like electricity running through wires.
That night the girls slept over at Callum’s again, and the adults plain forgot about the rules there too. The three of them ate pizza out of the box, collected from the Italian by one of the dads. They watched films in Callum’s room until they fell asleep, no one knocking on the door with a five-minute warning, no kisses good night from the mums.
The next day, the adults huddled around a special filter coffee machine in the kitchen, where they talked in low, hungover voices. The unattended kids were allowed to drag all the spare bedding onto the lounge floor and hide in the blanket fort they made, eyeholes focused on the TV. Callum let Sarah choose the film, much to Robin’s disgust. Thankfully she chose The NeverEnding Story and not something lovey-dovey. Robin had never thought about it before but Callum seemed to take a lot of pleasure in making sure everyone was okay, in offering to give other people their way. He let the girls slide backward into the fort first, waited as they settled into their chosen spaces before straightening the blanket carefully and wedging himself in however he could.
He always offered to fetch them drinks. He listened patiently to their fights and, without taking sides, offered a suggestion that always seemed to flatter both their interests. Often not his own though. At first, Robin thought he was a kiss ass, sucking up to Sarah and showing off to the adults, but she noticed he was like this more when it was just the three of them, and if he was ever thanked for anything—like just now—he’d glow pink and change the subject.
“There’s something going on in there,” he said, gesturing to the kitchen and lowering his voice. “My dad was yelling at my mum the other day and my mum was crying and saying Dad had done something wrong and she never says that, even when he…Well, anyway, I heard your mum and dad’s names too and—”
“What?” the girls both asked, a shot of excitement and fear sparking between them. Adults falling out with each other was a riskier, more raw thing than when kids feuded. Both girls were moths to the flame whenever it happened. They had to be dragged away from gawping at drunks scrapping outside pubs, they automatically walked toward teenage lovers in the midst of world’s-end showdowns, they rubbernecked car crashes on the motorway, hands pressed to the window and sliding to whichever side was nearest.
Before Callum could stop them, they’d scrambled free from the bedding and headed to listen at the kitchen door. If Callum had brought this up only to stop them from thanking him for his kindness, it had backfired.
“You two are fucking mad,” Jack was saying, his voice that weird whispered shout that only parents can do.
“Jack,” Angie said, “keep your voice down, you’re shouting.”
“I’m not fucking shouting. You don’t know what shouting is. And what the fuck has that got to do with anything? After what you’ve just said, you’ve got a nerve telling me how to bloody react.”
“Now, Jack…” Drew started.
“Don’t.” Jack’s response was swift and sharp as a thrown knife.
“Jack”—the girls could barely make out Hilary’s voice—“I need some air. Do you want to come into the garden with me?”