They drank their first drink together. A bottle of Babycham with Christmas dinner, when they were both thirteen. Robin’s cheeks had gone bright red; Callum’s ears, the same. “It’s divine!” they’d joked, “simply spiffing!” There is a photo of that meal somewhere, taken by Hilary. Jack looking at the camera with concern, paper hat on his head. Robin and Callum laughing hysterically, food falling out of their mouths and hot pink faces.
First cigarette, first drink, first joint, first little pile of dust in a small wrapper.
Before John, Callum always used to say stop at just the point Robin was secretly hoping he would. Allowing her to sigh and roll her eyes and call him a “big girl” or a “square,” and silently thank him in her head. Then the second phase of the night would kick in. Robin’s paranoid phase.
“Check my pupils though.”
“You’re fine, Robin.”
“My heart’s racing too fast, Cal.”
A begrudging but gentle finger on the wrist, silent timing, confirmation. “You’re fine, you just need to sleep it off.”
“I can’t sleep! I shouldn’t have done it! It’s getting worse. Why are your eyes all right? Cal? Why are your eyes all right—did you just pretend to bomb it?”
“Enough, Rob.”
The tears. “Why are you snapping at me?”
She was a nightmare on whatever she took—but the more chemical, the worse it was. Callum seemed to be able to handle it all; his height maybe, or his natural calm, just absorbing and dissolving anything foreign that he put into his body. He’d be giggly to her wasted, chatty to her rushing, irritated to her wildly paranoid.
But after John, he’d not had the same control. Going over his own line more and more. Noisy and aggressive or weepy and heavy, leaning his body on things and needing to be pulled up the stairs or wrestled into bed. As was her way, Hilary turned a blind eye, and Jack was generally in a deep throaty sleep by this point.
Robin knew he was seeing someone again. He’d been going out more. He’d come home wasted just as often—maybe even more—but seemed happier despite that. And this someone, she now knew, was a boy called Rez. Rez lived in Reading, he wasn’t at school and Callum was obsessed with him. That’s all she knew.
Callum invited Rez to the house when Hilary and Jack were out, so Robin could meet him first. That was the plan, and yet at the last moment, Callum had gripped Robin’s arm and whispered, “Pretend we didn’t plan this, okay? You just happen to be here, yeah? I feel a bit childish.”
“Sure,” she’d said, taken aback.
The doorbell rang, and she saw a dark shape blurred through the glass.
“I’ll get it!” Robin sang, ignoring Callum’s “No, wait, I’m coming.”
She swung the door open with a big, jokey smile on her face.
“All right?” Rez said.
“Oh,” Robin said, standing and staring. She hadn’t meant to. She really hadn’t meant to react that way. She’d expected to see someone who looked a lot like Callum, or like John, a smooth-faced, twinkly-eyed, slightly blushing lad. The man before her looked more like a crow than a smooth-skinned teenager.
“Robin,” Callum said behind her, his voice dipping in the middle.
“I’m, no, like,” Robin started, and Rez looked over her head to Callum, who beckoned him in.
“Sorry…I…hi, I’m Robin,” she said, as Rez squeezed past her and nudged up next to Callum.
“Hi, Robin,” Rez said. He had shoulder-length dark hair and spiky features. His eyes were alert, flickering all around the hallway, taking everything in. There wasn’t much to see: a small table with the phone on it, a shelf above holding the Yellow Pages and the BT Telephone Book. Next to the stairs, a small hallway led to the living room and then the kitchen after that. A coatrack was weighed down with increasingly large coats that billowed out into the hall. Rez fought his way through after Callum. Robin trailed behind, stooping to pick up a denim jacket that had slumped to the floor.
“Tea?” she asked the room.
“Rez drinks coffee,” Callum answered, as if she should know that.
—
“It didn’t go well,” Robin told Sarah on the phone the next day. Callum used to stick around for the Sunday phone calls, sometimes he’d say hello. Not today. He’d been at Rez’s since the incident yesterday.
“What did you do?” Sarah asked.
“Who says I did anything?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Well, it wasn’t…yeah, I did. But honestly, Sarah, you should see him. He looks like he works at the fairground. He’s grim. He’s older than Cal but he’s a total dropout. He smokes way too much puff—he reeks of it. And there’s just nothing to him, y’know? Nothing special. And Cal’s…Cal’s special. He deserves someone special.” Robin was infuriated that she felt so tearful.
“You sure you’re not just jealous?” Sarah asked.
“Oh fuck off!” Robin spat back. “Rez is a total piece of shit and I’m looking out for my brother. How fucking dare you?” She slammed the phone down on her sister, even though Sarah called them and had yet to speak to their dad.
Robin spun around to storm into the kitchen and saw Callum standing in the doorway.
“I didn’t think you were home,” she said quietly.
“Clearly.” He pushed past the coats, dropping a few, and then elbowed her out of the way as he ran up the stairs.
“I didn’t know!” she shouted after him.
“That’s not the point,” he snapped, slamming his bedroom door and turning music straight on. “From Despair to Where,” by Manic Street Preachers.
“Bit fucking obvious, Cal!” she shouted before she could stop herself.
Next to her, the phone rang. It would be her sister again. Robin wasn’t ready to accept she’d overreacted and taken it out on the wrong person. Instead, she picked it up and, before Sarah could say a word, spat, “I’ll get Dad.”
SARAH|1998
Robin finished her exams last week. I didn’t call to ask how they went—why should I?—but I know because Dad told me. He called on Sunday. Mum lifted the handset and passed it quickly to me, then walked off into the kitchen like someone had done wrong by her.
“So,” Dad had said after the initial routine of how-are-yous, “graduation next week.”
Words like “graduation” or “subway” or “soda” sound wrong in Dad’s mouth. He uses them only to mirror me, and the effort irritates me unfairly.
“Yeah,” I said, like it was nothing. “The gown’s upstairs.”
It’s navy crushed velvet with a dark blue cap and a mortar with gold tassels. It’s hanging in my wardrobe in its dust sheet. I don’t like seeing it there, its big heavy shape looming like a monster every time I open the door. But knowing it’s there, knowing I actually made it and I’m nearly on to my next chapter, that feels good. That’s worth opening the door. I don’t want to stand there on a stage surrounded by a sea of faces who never really liked me and will barely remember me. But I’ll do it for Drew, who paid for it. Who likes to see me dressed up, likes to take pictures for his desk.
“And what’s the name of the university you’re going to?” Dad had asked. I groaned a bit, because I bet he wouldn’t forget which uni Robin was going to if she’d been going. “Georgia State. It’s only half an hour on the train, so I can stay living at home.”
Home. I know that still hurts him.
“Robin and Callum finished their exams last week,” Dad said after a pause.