“Cal…” Hilary started, but he shook his head.
“Can’t she come and live here?” he said, his eyes wide and desperate. “This is her home too, isn’t it? I can sleep on the sofa or…or she can share my room! Why are you and Jack letting her go?”
“You know it’s not that simple, darling. Jack doesn’t want her to go at all, but Angela is Sarah’s mum and—”
“So she’s going to keep her safe, is she?”
Robin had never seen Callum so openly upset, had certainly never heard him questioning his parents or arguing. For once, she didn’t wade in. She just watched.
“You know what your father’s like, Callum,” Hilary said, growing pink, her words hurried. “He will fight tooth and nail—”
“Then Jack should be fighting harder!”
“It doesn’t work like that, Cal!” Hilary’s eyes were filling with tears, and as soon as one broke free, Callum stopped arguing and apologized, turned and walked rigidly from the room and up the stairs.
Robin followed him to his room and knocked on the door. He was sitting on the bed, arms around his knees in a spiky triangle.
“What was that all about, Cal?” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t look up.
“It does matter, actually. Sarah’s my fucking sister!”
“This isn’t about you, Robin.” Callum looked up slowly, held her gaze. Robin said nothing but stepped back.
“I know you might find it hard to believe, but the whole world doesn’t revolve around you.” He looked back down, hugged his knees tighter.
SARAH|1992
Drew’s on “gardening leave” now. A full two months off before he can start working for the competitor that he’s moving us to America for. I thought that meant we had two months before we left, but I was wrong. A real estate agent and an interested family walked into my room this evening. Mum hadn’t mentioned they’d be coming. The real estate agent apologized to the family when she found me in there. I’ve only just got used to this new house, this new life, and now it’s all going to change again. And no one has asked me what I think about that. Not even Dad. He’s just going along with it. I notice that not once has anyone asked if he would want to take Callum. Drew’s not even mentioned that he’ll miss him. “I have you now,” he says.
Mum is spending a lot of time in the evenings calling “real estate people” in Atlanta but not—as I’ve asked several times—any schools yet. “Drew’s company will take care of that,” she says. “They’ll pay your fees for somewhere really good. Not like that falling-down shithole you’re in at the moment.” I don’t remind her that her other daughter goes to that school too and no one’s offering to pay her school fees.
I don’t want a cola company to decide where I go to school. I don’t want any of these “golden opportunities” at all. I just want to go back to my old house and for everything to be the way it used to be.
One evening, sick of the giddy excitement at home, I stuff some clothes into my bag and tiptoe down the stairs and out of the house. I don’t leave a note. I don’t need to—any fool could work out where I’m going.
I walk the path to my old house with new eyes. Knowing all of this will be a memory soon makes it fresh and vital. Past the sweet shop, past our old primary school, the cricket field with the nearly finished pavilion being painted white.
I turn onto my old road, see the house looking smaller than it used to. Hilary is on the front lawn, knees on a pad and rose secateurs in her hand. She has her hair swept up behind a silk scarf and looks straight out of another time. A more glamorous time, even wearing gardening gloves.
“Hello, Sarah,” she says, jumping a little as she notices me. “What are you doing here? Not that it’s not lovely to see you,” she adds in a hurry.
“I just…” I trail off, feel my throat tighten and my eyes fill. “Is Dad here?” She shakes her head ever so slightly. “Or Robin?” Her head shakes again, the perfect scarf slipping just a fraction. “I’m sorry, darling, Callum and Robin are out somewhere. Maybe they’re at the cricket field? Did you want me to come and look with you?”
I stand there, staring up at the house. “Or you could come in?” she says cautiously. We don’t speak for a moment, but there’s no option really besides walking in.
Hilary doesn’t use as many words as Mum. Mum repeats herself, embellishes her own omnibus retelling, talks over people and uses three adjectives when one would do. Hilary sits, listens, leaves such a gap that you almost fill it with embarrassed supplementary small talk and eventually asks a small, precise question or makes a small, precise observation.
We sit in silence for several breaths until she says: “How do you really feel about going to America?”
It’s the “really” that does it and I start to cry.
“I know I have to go,” I eventually say, and she doesn’t correct me. “I just wish everything was simpler.”
She purses her lips like she’s chewing the remark I’ve just made, tasting it, and then nods. “Yes,” she says, “me too.”
We sit while I cry myself out. As I dry my eyes, almost sad that the tears have stopped, because the relief was so sweet, she says to me, “It’s important that you know how much your dad wanted you to stay here too.”
“Did he?” I blurt out angrily. “Because he didn’t even ask me if I’d like to.”
The pause grows, two breaths, three. “No, he didn’t. He didn’t ask you because the possible answers were too painful. If you said you didn’t want to stay with him, his heart would have broken. If you said you wanted to stay, and he knew your mother would fight for you and win, his heart would have broken.”
I open my mouth to speak, to protest, but there’s nothing to say, so I just let myself cry again. But it doesn’t offer the same relief as before.
Hilary insists on driving me home. She doesn’t question my stuffed rucksack but tells me I can come back anytime. It’s still my home. But it’s not. I let myself in around the back of the house I now live in. Mum and Drew are still in the kitchen looking at brochures for new homes in Atlanta.
“Have you been playing in the garden?” Mum asks, without looking up. I leave a Hilary-length pause but it’s wasted on them. “Yeah,” I say eventually. “I’ve been playing in the garden.”
“I love this breakfast island,” Mum says, pointing Drew’s attention to the shiny paper in her hand. I head to my room.
ROBIN|1992
The thought of Sarah leaving the country seemed too unreal. Robin just couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t picture Sarah on a plane, or using dollars or eating American food for tea while Robin would already be in bed.