Robin has never left the country. Some of the ritzier kids at school had gone to the Algarve or the Costa del Sol, but Dorset had been the Marshall family’s holiday destination, and anything outside of that was alien.
She’d heard of New York, where the ghosts and the ginormous Stay Puft Marshmallow Man live. She’d heard of Hollywood, where the films get made and all the celebrities live. And she’d heard of Washington, D.C., where President Bush lived, the bloke who liked war. She had not heard of Atlanta. She had not even heard of Georgia.
Robin didn’t want to go live in America, and she certainly didn’t want her sister to go to live in America. As much as she didn’t want to lose her twin to the big gobbling mouth of the States, it also cut her in a way she’d never admit to anyone that her mother hadn’t even asked her. All those years of feeling she wasn’t the favorite and her mum didn’t really like her, she’d actually assumed she was imagining it, because doesn’t everyone’s mum like them? But, no, she was spot-on. And her mother was going all the way to Atlanta, Georgia, to prove it.
“You can come to visit,” her mother had said, but it sounded more like a warning than an offer.
Although Drew had tried to dissuade them—“It will be stressful enough. It’s not a good idea”—they’d all gone to Heathrow to wave them off the following month. “Over my dead body,” Jack had said, glowering, “am I missing out on saying goodbye to my girl.”
When Jack, Hilary, Callum and Robin had arrived at the terminal just after six in the morning, Drew, Angela and Sarah had already checked in to their flight and were waiting to go through to security. Sarah’s face had no color in it. She gripped her new cabin bag—one that matched her mother’s new cabin bag—with white knuckles. A fanny pack on her hips burst with “sucky sweets” for the takeoff and landing.
The company was paying to fly them business class—something that didn’t mean anything to Robin or Sarah, as neither had flown before, but seemed to be more exciting than the move itself to their mum.
Every airport goodbye in films, Robin had thought, involved a last-minute plot twist. A declaration of love or a change of heart. Maybe her mum would change her mind. Maybe she’d move back in with her dad, and Sarah too! But one look at her mum’s face, the Christmas-morning glee, and it was obvious that this would not be like a film.
Her mum tried to hug Robin, while Drew patted Callum on the back and shook his hand, which was the strangest thing Robin had ever seen a dad do. Callum shrank back to his mum’s side afterward and they sat on a luggage trolley and waited while Drew went to buy a coffee and the Marshalls said goodbye. Sarah hugged her dad, and Robin hugged them both. At first, the early-morning strangeness and the adrenaline shot through them and the girls found themselves laughing, but it quickly turned into sobs. Howling sobs. Robin looked up at her mum—standing just to the side—and realized that she was sobbing just as hard, mascara running down her face in streaks and dripping from her jawline onto her new camel-colored mac. When Robin realized her mum didn’t care about the coat, she relented and reached for her. Angela—Angie—pasted herself against their bodies and wrapped her arms around both her daughters. Jack and Angela touched their hands together behind their girls, as they’d done so many times. They broke apart only when Drew came back with two miniature coffees in paper doll’s cups—“expressos,” Angie called them; “espressos,” Drew corrected.
Jack and Robin watched until Angie and Sarah had disappeared up the escalators to have their new cabin bags searched. Afterward, drained, they all got back in the car and went to a Little Chef for breakfast, which no one really ate.
And that was it. Robin’s sister really had gone.
NINETEEN
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
It would be easier if I could just call my sister. It would be a lot easier if I had her address. I know I had her mobile number once, but the last number I have for her doesn’t work and I stopped giving out my number when I moved in with Jim. Sim card removed, the phone from my life with Jim had been switched off and tucked in my bag, kept at all only for the hundreds of photos of Violet. The hundreds of photos I can’t stand to look at.
I got my new phone earlier, and the young man in the shop showed me how to block my number when I made calls, just in case.
Most of the clothes I’ve brought with me aren’t fit for my purpose, so I’ve had to get more. After picking up my new mobile, I visited a charity shop opposite the phone store. I left with two carrier bags full of loose-fitting clothes. I disappear into them. They’re baggy, dark, chosen for their price and ease of cleaning and air drying. They’ll last as long as my plan does.
I have worked out how many more nights I can stay in the B&B before I need to move on to the next stage of the plan. I run the plan over and over in my head, like a mantra, and it calms me as I fall asleep.
I felt better this morning, and I didn’t throw up. I’d slept almost through the night and woke up only to use the loo and check that my envelope of money was still safe.
I nibbled at the cold toast from the rack and asked one of the ladies who runs the place if I could have some scrambled eggs on toast “well cooked.” But then my stomach rumbled, so I caught her arm and she smiled unexpectedly when I said, “Actually, can I have a full English?”
It’s mid-afternoon now. If I were at home, at my old home, I’d just be putting Violet down for a nap, ready to tidy up the lunch things and prepare for dinner. With ingredients chopped and ready, in bowls like on TV cooking shows, I’d have sat at the computer and gone to the Mum Talk online community that I joined when I first found out about Violet. I’d scour the posts. I’d write down improved recipes for homemade Play-Doh or roll my eyes at the complaints about lazy husbands and boyfriends, interfering mothers-in-law, sibling fights. I’d memorize phrases, concerns, pleasantries. I’d say things out loud so they’d sound natural when I used them at the doctor’s surgery or the toddler group.
—
I try not to think about Violet. What she’s eating, what she’s wearing. Whether Jim has gone back to work, what he’s told his colleagues. I wonder if Jim has tried to pry information from Violet. What would she say? The truth, I think. We’ve always told her to tell the truth, even when it’s difficult.
She heard me when I visited, I know she heard my voice. Like me, they too will be quietly planning the next stage. Just like they planned the first. They have already outlined their case against me. Now they’re setting up her new life and routine so that even now, I would be the disruption to her status quo instead of defining her status quo.