A scrape of chairs, no words. The back door closed, a swelling silence. The girls held their breath, looked at Callum, who was jiggling nervously behind them.
“My head’s banging,” they heard their mum say finally.
“Mmn,” grunted Drew, “well, you were three sheets to the wind last night, eh?”
A subtle laugh, a sigh.
“Are we doing the right thing?” they heard their mother ask, in the voice she uses when red reminder bills fall through the post box.
“Don’t wimp out on me now,” Drew said with an edge. “Look at them out there. Those fucking roses.”
This obviously meant something to both of them, as they laughed and then sighed. Now more silence.
“This is boring,” Robin said, an unease in her tummy that she wanted to crush. “I’m going to fix the fort.”
With sighs of relief, the other two followed her and worked quietly and diligently until it was all neat again.
THIRTEEN
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
7. The Blood
I’ve arrived in Manchester, the city my twin heart beats in. I’ve never been here before, never had a reason to, but as soon as I found out Robin lived here, my mental map widened and the pin beckoned me. It’s taken a long time to shake myself onto a train so I can put the bad blood behind me. And it’s taken this horrible separation from Violet to give me a reason, but I’m here. And for a rainy city, it feels like I’m bathed in a pool of light. Hope, I suppose.
But there’s a lot to do now. For a start, I don’t know exactly where my sister lives. Second, she isn’t expecting me and I don’t think she’ll be happy to see me. The last time we spoke was at the funeral. She was hurt and confused and I was hurt and confused and we repelled each other like two positive charges, the way we often did.
It’s been a long journey, and I feel the brain fog that comes from traveling, my mind struggling to cover the distance my body sped through so easily. The first train, from Godalming to London, was half empty. I spent the first ten minutes rocking up and down the aisle, carefully choosing a seat. But the bullet-shaped train from London to Manchester was packed. A queue two people deep shuffled its feet outside the chemical toilet at any one time.
I’ve never been north of London before. As kids, the farthest we’d go was to stay with my dad’s parents—Nanny Mary and Granddad Joe—in Dorset, where they’d retired.
We’d drive in the old Rover, sick as dogs despite the Joy-Rides tablets. Nanny Mary would wrap us up in tight hugs as soon as we arrived, making us sickly drinks with the SodaStream and wiping her eyes about how tall Robin and I had got, even though Robin never got tall in her life.
On those Dorset days, we’d skim stones and eat fries that tasted totally different to Berkshire fries and Dad would say it was because of the ozone. Robin’s hair would go so curly in the sea air that she’d look like a lollipop and she’d always get the hiccups. I loved the seaside. I loved the salt stains on my shins from paddling in the sea, loved collecting pretty little shells and pebbles, arranging them on my bedroom windowsill when we got home or filling little bottles with them. My favorite gems to find were tiny pieces of glass that had been buffed into hearts or diamonds by the waves.
—
My first holiday with Jim and Violet was also to Dorset. To a little village near Charmouth, with a thatched pub and an ice-cream hut on the beach that was open only four afternoons a week. It wasn’t a deliberate nod to my childhood, of course; we’d just found a good deal online for a holiday flat and it was only a few hours’ drive from our house if we left after rush hour. We’d looked forward to it for weeks, imagining ourselves paddling and walking on the sand with a newly toddling Violet. I bought a lemon sundress for me and a matching one for Violet. I wrestled her into hers the weekend before we left to check it fitted. I still have the picture I took of her wearing it. I can’t look at it now.
Throughout the evening before we left, Violet developed a summer cold. By the end of our sticky car journey the next day, she was a pulsating red orb of snot and tears. The holiday was a long week of having to deal with a sick toddler in a flat without our stuff and nowhere near a pharmacy. A week we spent looking forward to being back home, with Tylenol, and nostalgic about the sea.
We only really went out on the last day. Jim insisted on visiting the thatched pub nearby and drinking a pint of ale in the sunny beer garden. I didn’t want to go but couldn’t begin to tell him why. Who doesn’t like beer gardens? Probably only my sister and me. And I couldn’t tell him that either. I sat on the bench seat, nursing my orange juice and distributing drinks to a still-peaky Violet.
—
But anyway, the blood. Like so many stories, this one starts with my mum.
When we were little, she always had music on, pop music or golden oldies. I can’t help but think that helped inspire Robin’s eventual career, but I’d never dare say that.
In summer, Mum would fold open a stripy sun lounger from the shed carefully, like a safecracker, angling it just so. She’d drag the kitchen radio out through the window, lead dangling, and rest it on the white picnic table. She’d turn it up loud and lie with her skirt hitched, oiled legs gleaming. When she’d finished reading her magazine, drinking Typhoo tea or 7UP, she’d spring up and grab whichever one of us was near enough, put us on her hip and dance.
Robin would kick to get down but I would wave my arms, shake my hair, giggle. I loved those moments. She was the best fun in the world then, our blond hair mingling together, our laughter colliding. I’d just wanted Violet to feel like that about me, that was all.
So one day, I found a music channel playing old songs from the eighties, the kind I’d danced to several decades before. I’d got up from the sofa and started dancing, waving at Violet, who was looking at me quizzically. When Kim Wilde came on, “Kids in America,” I sprang over and plucked Violet from her playmat, where she’d been arranging her teddies and dolls. She gave in to it, started to laugh. We jumped sideways and up and down. She copied my exaggerated moves. I copied hers.
Her dimples were so deep and her smile so big that her whole face changed shape as I gazed into it, laughing and kissing her nose. That little nose. We swung each other round and round. As the song changed to Glenn Medeiros’s one-hit wonder “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You,” I put her little feet on my feet and took big sways, which she found hilarious. She’d thrown her head back, laughing, and her shiny hair—getting so long—had swished from side to side.
At the peak of our fun, her face smacked into the door. She didn’t knock into the wood hard, but she’d caught the edge and split her lip. A thin red line of blood pointed from the door to the television like an accusation while the music blared on and surged into adverts.