They’d spent that trip around the shopping mall talking themselves into a frenzy, imagining how much bigger the mega malls of America would be. You know, if, if. They nudged each other at every American shop or fast-food place, even though Drew would never have agreed to go into a fast-food place. Instead, wherever we were, we had to seek out the kind of café that’s called “Ferns” and has indoor plants and a large non-smoking area and sells jacket potatoes with fancy fillings like “prawn delight” rather than beans and cheese.
Well, he got the job, as Mum had known he would. He could have been terrible at his job, for all she knew. She’d never even met someone with Drew’s kind of job before, so she saw him as the absolute pinnacle of executives and businessmen. And perhaps her resolute faith and fandom bolstered his confidence so much it became self-fulfilling. Who knows.
ROBIN|1992
She’d been told about the toilet rule. She’d forgotten the toilet rule. At Robin’s home with her dad, if one of them goes for a wee in the night, they don’t flush the chain. It’s a small house and the noise of the old cistern chugs and rattles, waking everybody up. The Granger house is loaded with modern toilets, and the rule is different. If you go to the toilet at any time, you flush the chain. After the first time Robin stayed, Angela had pulled her to one side in the morning, spoke urgently and seriously about something so trivial Robin had actually laughed.
“I’m serious, Robin, if you go for a pee in the night, you need to flush it, okay?”
“All right.”
But she’d forgotten. She’d forgotten a stupid rule about flushing the stupid toilet. She barely remembered dragging herself out of bed in the night, sitting on the loo in her nightie, blinking in the bathroom light, washing her hands and then slipping back under the crackly feather duvet.
The next morning, she was woken to the sound of Drew shouting.
“Fucking animal!”
She didn’t realize that she was the animal.
Her mother had rushed to him. “What’s going on?”
“Look at this,” he was saying. “It’s disgusting!”
“I’m sorry, I was in the en suite—” Angela had started to say, but he cut her off.
“Don’t you take the blame, gorgeous, this isn’t your fault. You told her the rule, right?”
“Yes,” Robin’s mother said emphatically, “you know I did.”
“It’s bloody disrespectful.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you, it’s not you who should be sorry. Robin!”
Robin had walked slowly into the bathroom and was greeted by a scene of such drama and overreaction that she couldn’t help smirking. “Why are you two looking at my wee?”
Drew had looked at her in astonishment, looked back at Angela with the same open mouth. “So you admit it?”
“Admit what?” Robin had asked, the smirk wavering.
“That you urinated all over the place and just left it for us to find?”
“I…no, I went to the loo in the night…I didn’t…” Robin didn’t know how to find the words to explain something so obvious.
“Robin,” her mum said in her parents’ evening voice. “We were very clear about this rule, weren’t we?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“About flushing in the night, remember?”
“Yeah, I mean, I just forgot. It’s not the same as at home.”
“Goddammit!” Drew had shouted, slamming the wall with the heavy side of his closed fist and making Angela and Robin jump. “You’ve not even said you’re fucking sorry!”
“I’m sorry,” Robin spluttered, “I just forgot.”
“Well,” her mother said, more to Drew than her, “just make sure you remember next time, okay? Or we’ll have to start punishing the rule breaking.”
I don’t even want to be here, Robin thought as she walked back to the bedroom to tug her clothes on, ready to go home. Home. As she’d left, she heard Drew call her a “bone idle little shit.” Her mother’s silence upset her more than Drew’s insult.
So when Drew and Robin’s mum had asked to come around a few days later, Robin had thought it was so they could tell her dad that they didn’t want her to come to stay anymore, after she’d got in trouble.
I’ll be glad if they don’t want me over there, Robin thought, though that wasn’t exactly the truth.
But they didn’t want to talk about that. The adults had gone into the living room and perched on the new sofas that Hilary had chosen. The gardening business was doing a little better now that she was helping out, sending out the invoices and talking to “clients.” They’d celebrated with a pair of two-seater sofas from a big store in Reading and a new kettle that lit up when it boiled.
“These are new,” Robin’s mum remarked, rubbing her hands along the sofa cushion briefly. “They’re nice,” she added, smiling quickly and disingenuously at her former friend.
“Thank you,” Hilary said.
Callum and Robin listened at the door as the adults started to talk. Gone were the conversations interspersed with bursts of laughter. Now they all used their polite voices all of the time.
They listened as Drew told Hilary and Robin’s dad about the job he’d been offered.
Robin and Callum looked at each other. Why was he telling them this? Why would they care?
And then it became clear why.
“And they’ve asked us to relocate to Atlanta.” There was a pause.
“Atlanta in America,” Robin’s mum added.
Behind the door, Callum looked at Robin and Robin stared back. What did this mean? Was Sarah going to come home? Where would she sleep? It didn’t matter, Robin decided—they’d make it work.
There was a heavy pause from inside the room.
“And Sarah?” her dad said finally.
“The company will pay for an excellent school for her—” Drew started to say.
“In America?” Jack had interrupted.
“Yes,” Drew and Angie answered in unison.
“But you can’t take—”
“We can, Jack. You know we can.” Drew was speaking louder now. Using his business voice that he used on the phone to “get things done.”
Robin burst into the room.
“You’re not taking my sister to America,” she said, pointing her finger at Drew, her eyes filling with tears. She whirled around. “Dad! You can’t let them. It’s bad enough that you let them take her away in the first place. You can’t let them do this.”
Callum hovered in the doorway but didn’t say anything.
“We’ll talk about this later, squirt,” her dad said quietly. But she didn’t leave. Her dad looked back at Drew and Angie. Angela, as she apparently liked to be called all of a sudden.
“You can’t just take my daughter out of the country,” he said at last, Robin nodding frantically. “And what about Robin? And Callum for that matter. When do they see Sarah? When do you two see them? How can you leave your kids?” As the questions flowed, the conversation got louder and more confusing. Things were being said that the kids had never heard before, accusations and threats. The upshot was this: if Robin’s dad fights to stop Sarah being taken abroad, he risks losing both of them. The mum always keeps the kids; everyone knows that.
“At least this way,” Hilary had said later, when Jack was out, “we can arrange it so Sarah can stay on holidays and you two can go and stay over there sometimes.” She saw the look on Callum’s face. “Maybe,” she added, “if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to,” he said quickly. “But that’s not what I’m worried about. What about Sarah, Mum? No one will be able to check she’s okay.”
“What do you mean?” Robin asked, looking between both their faces, but they ignored her.