I’m good at keeping secrets. When April and Evie, who run the B&B, ask me about myself, the cover story I’ve come up with is both banal and intricate. I wear it like a skin.
Yesterday I dressed in the smartest of my Surrey clothes and went into the most upmarket-looking real estate agent and said that my husband and I were considering a relocation. I wondered which roads and areas were the most exclusive. From what Robin said at Dad’s funeral, money isn’t a problem. I was told that the houses around the green and the side of Chorlton closest to Didsbury were my best bets. I spent the day scouring those roads, but unsurprisingly my sister didn’t emerge suddenly from the houses I happened to be walking past.
When I got back to my room, feet and back aching, I lay on the bed and thought about Twitter. About the unused account I found a few days ago that might, at a stretch, be Robin’s. I realize that I’ve been missing something very obvious: her bandmates. I met them once or twice and they should remember me.
I find them easily on Twitter on my phone and hastily set up an account to try to private message them but realize I can’t if they don’t “follow me,” and I can’t be public about who I am and where I am, just in case. So I’m stuck in a loop.
I could send an email to the record company, ask them to forward it to the band. But I’ve asked them to send messages to Robin in the past and it’s not got me anywhere. Besides, they probably get requests like that all the time and just ignore them.
In the end I take a wild stab. I tweet the same thing at both Alistair and Steve. “Please can I message you? It’s about Robin. I’m trying to find her. I’m her sister.” Given Jim doesn’t know about who I really am or who I’m related to, I figure it simply doesn’t matter.
It’s a long shot, but it feels like I’ve done something at least, before dragging myself on another exhausting search around Chorlton tomorrow.
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
It’s the middle of the night and Robin had been asleep when she heard the shout. It came from the back of the house, and as she slid into consciousness, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a shard of a dream. Until it came again.
“Oi, you, get down!” a man was shouting, in a thick and raspy Manchester accent.
Robin sat up automatically and banged her head hard on the underside of her bed. With confusion rattling her sore skull, she scrambled out from under the bed and stood, heart thumping, in the center of her bedroom. Her thin duvet was wrapped around her, but her nakedness felt raw under shorts and a thin tank top.
Whether it was the bump to the head or the fear, Robin struggled to navigate the room in the dark and was too scared to turn on the light. So she stood still, sweat soaking into her duvet, scalp contracting and head throbbing.
“Get down from there!” the man’s reedy voice yelled outside. Robin dropped to her knees and crawled out through the door and into the hallway, sitting on the landing carpet, where the mellow light was always on.
“That’s right, clear off!” she heard the man call, stronger and less shaky than before. She leaned against the landing wall, straining to hear over the sound of her heartbeat.
All was quiet, but after a minute or two she heard a woman exclaim, “Oh Albert!”
Robin crept back into the bedroom and looked carefully through the gap in the curtain. At first, it was just a black soup, but then she heard a gate swing shut and could make out two figures heading slowly toward the apartment building, slipping into the patio doors of an apartment: Mr. and Mrs. Peacock.
Had someone really been scared off by a pair of old people? Or was the old man just losing his marbles? Robin had seen him shuffling around the garden, hunched over like he was looking for something. She’d seen his wife guiding him back inside, sitting him down and carefully taking his dew-wet slippers off.
It’s two in the morning now and the old man has no business being out and about. And yet…just because he’s a bit muddled doesn’t mean the old man hadn’t heard and seen something. Could Robin’s determined visitor have tried a different, more troubling route?
Robin put the light on and slid back under her bed.
—
She woke up later than usual this morning, the top of her head tender from the bang when she sat up in the night.
Robin felt foggy and slow. She shuffled her way to the window, fingered the fabric to one side. There was nothing to suggest there’d been anyone trying to break in—nothing broken, no big incriminating footprints painted in neon on any of the walls. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she didn’t see anything anyway. Maybe Mr. Peacock was just one mad old man, seeing things in the witching hour. She tried to believe that.
Over the way, she can see the young woman raining little kisses on the sleeping lump of baby splayed on her chest. She can see the new tenant standing in his patio doorway, open just wide enough for his body. He’s wearing a hoodie and joggers—it must be Saturday—and thick socks. In one hand, he has a big mug of something steaming; in the other, a cigarette. Robin still misses smoking. Smoking and playing music: they went hand in hand.
She watches for a moment and then, just as the cravings for a cigarette get too deep, she flicks her eyes up to the Magpie flat.
“Good morning, Mr. Magpie.”
The little boy is there. He’s sitting at the table eating a boiled egg and toast. His father sits next to him, no food, just a cup of something. He cradles his drink and watches the little boy as he eats.
Mr. Magpie takes the kid’s plate away when he’s finished, then picks the boy up from his chair and carries him out of the room, even though he’s quite big now. One hand cups the back of his head, and the combined Magpie shape dips out of view and returns in the little bedroom. The boy sits at the table and starts to make something out of LEGOs. Again, his father just watches. After a few minutes, Mr. Magpie sits heavily on the bed, watching still and wiping his eyes on his dressing gown.
They both look up suddenly. Mr. Magpie takes his phone out of his pocket and looks at it, puts it away again. He ruffles the kid’s hair as he leaves the room, and moments later he and Mrs. Magpie are in the kitchen again.
Robin had been about to go and make a cup of tea, check the locks and start the day’s belated steps. Now she goes nowhere, dares not close her eyes.
The Magpies stand at awkward angles, the woman leaning away, the man pointing at her and gesticulating. He steps toward her quickly, looks like he’s shouting. Mrs. Magpie slaps him across the face and runs from the room. He runs after her. Robin strains to see, but they’re not in view; instead, she realizes that the little boy has climbed onto his bed and is curled up with his hands over his ears. What the hell is he hearing?
Enough is enough.
Before she can talk herself out of it, Robin searches online for the local police-station number and dials.
“I hope you can help,” she says as a voice answers. “I’m worried about a woman and child who live near me.”
TWENTY-FOUR
SARAH|1994