The woman at the security company had spoken with such patience that Robin had to take a moment to compose herself.
She’d ordered a new alarm system, locks on the windows and bolts for the front door, back door and garden gate. The appointment time would be, she was assured, pinpoint accurate. In five days’ time.
“I know I sound like a nut,” Robin had said, “but it’s really very important that he’s exactly on time.”
“You don’t sound like a nut at all, duck,” the woman had said, her voice giving away a history of receiving such calls.
Robin wished her dad were still alive. That she could just call on him to come and sort everything out. He’d have put new locks on for her, checked the gate was secure. Maybe even taken her home.
With one or two links missing from a family chain, the whole thing can fall to pieces. How long had it been since Robin saw Sarah? Was their father’s funeral really the last time? Robin felt at once guilty for that, and defensive. It took two to stay in touch, right? It wasn’t just her job. But the truth was, she knew she’d pulled away. Let it happen.
The night of the funeral, she’d slept in her old room. Wide awake from jet lag, dried out from tears. She’d given up at five in the morning, gone to walk around the house, trying not to wake anyone. Eventually she decided to take a stroll to the pavilion, Callum’s and her old spot. She pulled her coat on over her pajamas, stuffed her bare feet into her trainers and went to the front door. An envelope was jutting through the letter box, another card from well-wishers, except this one was addressed to her. Hand-delivered, just the name.
She leaned on the old telephone table and opened the card.
A picture of flowers on the front. “In sympathy,” it said. Inside, in carefully inked letters, it said: “Who will you blame this time?”
She’d stared and then read it again as if her imagination had misfired.
She folded it in two and went to throw it in the kitchen bin, shoving it in deep among the cold tea bags. She’d padded upstairs, shoved the rest of her things back into her suitcases and called for a taxi. She left a note of goodbye.
Afterward, Robin used to check in with Hilary. Occasional phone calls and texts, postcards from abroad. The calls grew shorter and further apart. Each one stilted and sad.
One of the last calls with Hilary—what was it, three, four years ago? That’s when Robin learned that Sarah had moved away. Good for you, she’d thought, though it had made her feel more alone.
Now Robin’s phone was unplugged, her number ex-directory. Her new mobile number wasn’t listed anywhere. It dawned on Robin that her stepmother had no real way of getting in touch. For a brief moment, Robin’s finger hovered over the home number on her mobile, unchanged for however many other mobile phones preceded this one.
Her finger stayed aloft. She wanted to reassure Hilary, to be reassured that her stepmother was okay, healthy, living a rich and full life. Wasn’t dead. But the first question Hilary would ask is “How are you?” and the very thought of trying to answer that pushed Robin’s phone straight back in her pocket.
How am I? Fuck no. Robin is riddled with fear, coated in sweat, sleep-deprived and aching. There’s nowhere she can feel safe anymore.
She sits at the top of the stairs, phone in hand, facing the front door. It’s going to come; she knows it’s going to come.
Knock knock. The fist cracks onto the wood with an angry force. If it really was him up there on her roof the other night, he was undeterred by her screaming confrontation. The door heaves and shakes on its hinges.
Another five days before the security people come. Another four nights fighting sleep.
The knocks are faster now. And lower, like some are actually kicks from a heavy boot. A boot imprinted in her memory. The door creaks and groans but stays firm, and eventually the noise ends.
THIRTY-TWO
SARAH|1998
I don’t remember going to bed, but I wake up just in time to stagger into my bathroom to throw up. A rush of sour bile surges from my body, and I buck and buck until it’s all out. A tangy sweetness in the air revolts me.
I splash my face with water and try to brush my teeth, but as soon as the bristles accidentally touch my tongue, I’m sick again.
Eventually, empty and aching, I tread lightly downstairs for a glass of water and some Tylenol. There’s no one in; I see the clock says ten o’clock and I see the blinking light of the answer phone.
Graduation.
The realization of what I’ve missed tumbles away to nothing as the memory of last night looms larger. I pull open the dishwasher to get myself a glass for water. Someone filled it and put it on last night, because the two glasses are side by side on the top rack.
I don’t know what time my mother got home. She spends hours doing classes and then floating in the Jacuzzi. I don’t know who cleared away the drinks—I only hope it was Drew. A memory of his big hands bursts into my head and I throw up in the sink and blast it away as fast as I can.
I stand by the phone for a long while, my eyes staring at the blinking light.
It’s just gone three in the afternoon in Birch End. The time difference no longer a calculation, just absorbed knowledge after years. I imagine picking up the handset and dialing. Dad would be at work, oblivious and whistling. Hilary would probably answer. Would she know from my voice?
I imagine telling Robin, trying to find the words. I imagine Robin’s disgust and rage traveling up the phone cable. I imagine her telling me to leave, to come home, to kick him in the nuts. I imagine her defensive of me, telling me without words that she loves me, that there’s somewhere else I can go.
But then…it might not work that way. How easily she can cut the strings between us, her defensiveness over Callum more vital to her than our twin hearts beating together. It’s been weeks since we spoke, and she’s made no effort to apologize for the way she acted when I asked a genuine, caring question.
I feel my stomach lurch again, imagine her telling me, “Maybe this is what you wanted,” like she says about America when she’s angry. “You love America. You think you’re too good for England.”
I don’t play the answering-machine message or make the call. I go up and lie on my bed, sipping water and prodding the memories from every angle to try to make them right, make them smaller and fold them away.
By the afternoon, my sickness has dulled to a delicate stomach, and my headache is a constant fuzz. I make my slow way downstairs, ready to attempt to eat something. Drew and Mum are at the kitchen table. Neither one of them mentions my missed graduation ceremony. They seem to have made up. My mother has turned her disapproval to the manner of the sacking and has joined in the positive spin that Drew has given it.
“You look peaky,” she says to me as I lean on the kitchen wall and avoid looking at Drew.
“You should go to bed,” Drew says sternly.