Robin has not slept a whole night since the man with heavy boots tried to shove his way into her sanctuary. Instead, she lies sweating, whispering over and over to herself, “Don’t close your eyes.” With every extended blink, she slaps herself awake. Better to stay awake than be that vulnerable again.
She takes a flask of coffee upstairs each night, but despite her best efforts, she always falls into a restless sleep before morning.
Tonight, she even chewed some Pro-Plus energy tablets she found in her medicine cabinet, a relic of her late nights with the band. In those days, her form of nightcap was often a frenzied and reckless dawn fuck with one of the hangers-on. The very thought is unimaginable now.
Despite the extra caffeine, she was still defeated and had started to nod off sitting upright on the bed. But now she’s awake again. She doesn’t know why.
The clock says it’s just gone three in the morning, and there’s no light outside. And then she hears it.
Scratch, scratch.
It’s a minute sound but it carries sharply through the blackness.
Scratch, scratch.
Rattle, rattle.
The sounds intensify and it becomes clear where they’re coming from. Outside her bedroom window. Right outside.
Robin freezes.
The noises are so close and sharp that they fill the room like an echo chamber.
Fight or flight.
Robin is rooted to the spot, trying to catch hold of the thread of thought that will tell her what to do. She hears the movement of feet on the tiled roof below. The attic bedroom is set farther back than the first two floors, which jut out in a dogleg shape. Although it’s on the top floor, it’s the easiest window to reach. Despite the high roof, several cats have got up there before and yowled unsuccessfully to be let in.
She’s not imagining this. She’s not been imagining any of it.
Fight or flight.
There’s no yowling. The sounds are deeper than a cat’s paws on the tiles, heavier. Robin can make out the sound of distinct footsteps as they angle themselves and maneuver around. She thinks about that heavy thick boot in her doorway, the rage that he threw at her door, the animal force she pushed back with. She was still spent from it, spent from days without proper sleep. But was he back for more already?
Fight or flight.
Her phone is charging downstairs, but the thought of turning her back for even a moment, let alone making her way downstairs unprotected, terrifies her. Robin stays deadly still, frozen with the thought of his hands on her throat, her mouth clamped shut.
Up here, far from the street below, no one would hear her scream.
Think, think. She tries to quiet the cold blood rushing through her ears, tries to review her options. She has only two, and neither feels safe: try to slip out of the room and go downstairs to call the police—leaving the window unguarded until they arrive—or try to frighten him off. Threaten a racket.
She craves flight, but fight is the only real option.
Before she can talk herself out of it, Robin throws on the light and pulls the curtains back. All she can see is a slab of black night. She yells at the top of her voice, “Get the fuck away from me or I’ll fucking kill you!” She breathes hard, her knees knocking into each other, hands pouring with sweat. One second, two, three.
Suddenly a shape looms at the window and she leaps back. Dark clothes, pale skin and black holes for eyes. A monstrous snapshot. The footsteps thump away; the old drainpipe groans and clangs as he climbs down it much faster than he’d climbed up.
She waits a few moments but has to check if he’s really gone. She can make out the flats opposite, a lemony light still coming from the Watkinses’ place but with no sign of Henry. The woman with the baby is shaking a bottle in her kitchen, swaying even without her baby in her arms. She pads away into the shadows. All this normality hangs like stage furniture, unreal to her.
Her small garden is silent. It’s filled with black shapes that blend into the dark blue of the night. Wheelie bins, walls, the kitchen roof. There’s nothing there. As Robin casts an eye along the alleyway, she sees a blur of movement as someone runs along and back out onto the road at the far right. He’s gone. Thank God he chose flight. This time.
THIRTY
ROBIN|1998
Callum was shy about asking her, scuffing the toe of his trainer along the skirting board and staring at it, avoiding her eye. Robin pretended not to notice but her chest swelled with pride. The thrill of the upper hand.
“So would you?”
“Would I what?” she’d said, affecting a distracted tone as she lay ham carefully onto the bed of cheese, ready to layer another sprinkle of sharp cheddar on top.
“Like to meet him? Rez? My…” He trailed off, did a half smile that made him look like a Levi’s ad.
“Your booyyy-friennnddd!” Robin teased, dragging the word out like a nursery rhyme and prodding his narrow chest with one finger. He giggled, just a half sound, easy to miss.
“Yeah,” he said, standing his six-foot frame upright and then booming like a town crier, “my boyfriend!” They laughed; she didn’t say anything for a moment and he understood. It was a delicate stage, applying the top slice of bread that had been buttered on the outside (the trick to perfect crust) and then closing the sandwich-toaster lid.
“Yes,” she said, as the lid snapped shut and the butter immediately sizzled under the hood. “Of course I want to meet your booyyy-friennnddd!” He didn’t giggle then, just a small smile, dropped quickly.
“I really like him,” he’d said, his voice soft and low as ever.
“Good. Then I’m sure I will too. Right?”
“Right.”
Callum had been so crushed by the breakup with John, so hollowed out, that to see him even half filled up was a relief. But he wasn’t the same. There were tatters at the edges. A slightly frayed temper. A quickness with his wit that, for the first time in their lives, could turn to cruelty. Which then turned to guilt. And the crushing fear of nature over nurture.
Callum was her control group. He was true north. Robin had always felt safe pushing her own limits, because she could watch him to see the cutoff.
They’d smoked their first cigarette together, a dried-up John Player Special from a crunched-up pack that Jack had accidentally sat on and chucked to one side in his garage. They’d winced and coughed, eyes streaming.
“I don’t like it,” Robin said, turning down the corners of her mouth and then taking another, more tentative drag.
“Me either.” Callum had grimaced, pecking at the cigarette like a little bird.