“Yeah” was all Sarah said. Robin stood up again, kicked the dirt with her boot and squinted at the sky, realized people were watching her. “I have to go.”
The adrenaline had fully seeped away, leaving Robin standing in waves of heat, walking on the cracked pinky-red soil of the VIP area, hot phone in her hand. Her dad was dead. She behaved badly. She didn’t cry right away but had sat on the earth for a moment, before leaping up because it was too hot. She had found her way to the VIP beer tent and asked for a bottle of water, drained it, asked for a beer, drained it, then threw up. She didn’t tell the rest of the band until that night, when they gave her awkward hugs and bought her more drinks. Alistair, who’d known her dad the longest, stayed up drinking and smoking with her. Cried a few tears too.
Over the next few days, as Robin trudged silently through pre-planned photo ops and interviews, there had been text messages with times and arrangements.
The funeral. A week away. Which had seemed like ages, until you factored in a twenty-four-hour flight time, with stops.
Robin still did the press stuff, since no one said she could miss it and she was too numb to ask. She’d sat next to the others, staring blankly, laughing robotically, giving slow and stop-start answers. In the middle of a radio show, she was asked how much she’d enjoyed the Melbourne music festival, and when she started to cry, Alistair wrapped an arm around her to muffle the sound.
The flight from Melbourne to Sydney was fine. The flight from Sydney to Hong Kong was fine. Then there were a few hours to kill, time for Robin to buy a black outfit for the funeral. She’d never picked something like that for herself before. She walked into the main shopping bit of Terminal One and panicked. It was almost all designer clothes, beautiful handbags on pedestals in the middle of shops and delicately lit mini-boutiques where no other customers were wearing jeans. She went into Gucci because she vaguely knew that they did clothes in black.
She found a black dress and jacket, bought them without trying them on and forgot she needed shoes. As she walked to find coffee and lunch or breakfast or whatever-time meal it was, the only shoe shop she could see was Jimmy Choo. At least she’d have a proper neat outfit, she’d thought, even though it was extravagant and uncomfortable.
The flight from Hong Kong to Heathrow was delayed. As the gate opening time slid further away, Robin and others waiting had been put up in hotel rooms near the terminal. Some people’s giddiness at the bonus stay was palpable. Others, like Robin, who were bored skinless of traveling, trudged onto the airport mini-bus like they were headed to the executioner’s block.
For the next twelve hours Robin lay in bed wearing an old T-shirt and knickers, eating room service, drinking beer from the mini-fridge, watching weird TV and just weeping.
She’d thought of her dad up a tree, where he’d spent most of his waking adult life. She thought of his concentrating face as he worked, of the green patches he always had on his work trousers, of his hair, which was gray and curly but plentiful. She thought of his giddiness when he spotted a rare bird, dragging them out to see even though no one shared his interest. How they’d laugh when he pointed to a blue tit or great tit, and he’d pretend not to notice.
Robin had tried to count how long it had been since she’d seen him in weeks and months. The months ran to years. She wept so hard that she got a migraine and nearly missed the rescheduled flight.
When she finally touched down in England, there was an hour and a half to go before the funeral started. She’d joined the long shuffle to get through security and tried to call a cab before realizing that she didn’t know any local numbers. In desperation and post-migraine exhaustion, she’d called and asked a PA from the record company to arrange for a car. She’d explained it was for her dad’s funeral, that she was running late and needed to get there fast. With forty-five minutes left to get to Birch End, Robin stepped into the Arrivals lounge to find a chauffeur holding her name on a thick pink card.
He’d taken the trolley loaded with suitcases, wordlessly pushing it through the sliding doors toward the car park. The freezing cold slapped her cheeks.
They’d sent a fucking limousine.
The thing Robin knew about limousines, besides being ostentatious and broadly less safe than any other cars, was that they’re slow.
With no other options, Robin had struggled into her dress and new shoes in the back of the limo, in the slow lane of the M4. She’d texted everyone whose number she had to try to explain, to plead with them to wait. She eventually rolled up, taken almost to the church door—past the hearse—just as Sarah and Hilary were giving up and going inside. Robin had stepped out carefully onto pinprick shoes and tottered slowly up the last of the cobbled path.
“I’m so sorry,” she’d said, reaching for Hilary awkwardly to try to hug her. She ended up pulling her black handbag from her shoulder.
“Are you drunk?” Sarah’s eyes had widened.
“No, new shoes,” Robin said. “I didn’t have much notice,” she’d added to Hilary, still cross that she’d been kept in the dark for weeks. Cross that Sarah was living so comfortably in a shared past that Robin had been excluded from, had no place in. Furious that Sarah had not once asked if Robin was okay, considering her only chance to say goodbye to their dad had been dashed away.
“You’re here now,” Hilary said. She had blusher on the sharp ridges of her cheeks, pale lipstick and no eye makeup. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Robin thought about the way Hilary had looked when they first met and wondered why she hadn’t noticed the changes over the years.
—
Robin pays close attention to everything she can see now. She can’t see much, but she studies it like it’s her job. She’s learned just how much can fall away and fall to pieces when she closes her eyes. Over the last few days Robin had continued to watch Mr. Magpie roaming his empty flat, refusing to close her eyes and look away.
Watching in mute, Robin imagined the awkward exchanges when Mrs. Magpie dropped off the little boy, saw the change in the man when his son was there.
Mr. Magpie was getting thinner, and slower. There seemed to be a light on all day and night. Sometimes she’d see a man’s shape in the little boy’s bedroom, when the little boy wasn’t there.
TWENTY-TWO
SARAH|1994
Everything in Atlanta is huge. The supermarkets with shelves so high I get dizzy looking all the way up, cars that seat seven or eight people, towering offices. And the portions of food, my God. Burgers bigger than your head. Chicken and biscuits with jugloads of gravy. Even alligator steaks.
My favorite place to go is the Varsity, which claims to be the world’s biggest drive-in.