Robin ignores the door, just like she told the woman on the phone that she would when she arranged the appointment. They’d really seemed to take her seriously, and this betrayal feels more personal than it should.
Irritated and anxious, she looks back at the Magpie flat. The Watkins flat, she corrects herself. Henry has pulled the little chair into the middle of the room and is stepping on it with one foot, like he’s testing it. He stops, puts the chair back where it was and drags the small table to the center of the room instead. He takes the LEGO house from the surface, places it carefully on the floor.
When he takes the cord from his dressing gown, Robin realizes what she’s seeing. Not this. Please, anything but this.
There’s another knock on the door, but it barely registers with Robin. She’s breathing hard, staring as Henry Watkins ties the cord carefully into a loop. His concentration is creating the same frown it used to when he built a new toy for his son or when he took his wife’s mobile from her bag and scrolled through it, stopping every ten seconds to check for her in the hallway.
He’s tugging on the cord now, checking that the knot slides up in the way he wants it to. Testing it over his head, around his neck.
Robin can’t think straight. Can’t move. She’s watching uselessly as he keeps screwing up the knot he’s trying to make. The knocks come again. Kevin the security man, please be Kevin the security man. He can go over and stop Henry Watkins.
Robin runs down the stairs. Her knees shake; she’s Bambi-legged and clumsy. She takes a deep breath and opens the door as far as the safety chain will allow. Pushes her eye to the gap of daylight and jumps in surprise.
It’s not the security man.
THIRTY-FOUR
SARAH|1998
My mother knows, I’m sure of it. Knows what happened and what I did. She avoids me now or watches me carefully when I am in the room with her.
“Are you okay about moving back?” she asks me. “Do you want to stay in Atlanta by yourself? Take up your uni place? I’m sure we could find the money when we’ve sold the house.” She looks away, fiddles with the scatter cushions. I know why she wants rid of me. “Drew would do anything for you, you know.”
I turn to walk out. I don’t know what point she’s trying to make and I don’t know what she wants to say. I don’t want to hear it.
“You two have always been close, haven’t you?” she asks, but it’s not really a question. It’s an implication.
“I want to go back to England,” I say. “And I’m glad we’re leaving, because I want to live with my dad.”
“Are you sure?” she says, eyebrows raised.
“Deadly. And don’t try to talk me out of it.”
I leave her sitting openmouthed on the couch and go up to my room to carry on packing.
When I come back down it’s late afternoon and I can hear my mum on the phone to my dad.
“You don’t have to gloat about it,” she says. A pause. “Yes, you are, Jack.”
I say I’ll make my own dinner, just as I have for the last few weeks. I can’t bring myself to sit at a table with them, not while they prattle on about their great English adventure and Drew rubs my mother’s leg and pinches her bum when she stands up. I’d think that he’s wiped it from his memory, but he’s barely met my eye since that night. I can’t wipe it from my memory. I’ll never forget.
I’ve stayed in my room watching TV endlessly.
The phone trills and I ignore it as I always do.
“It’s for you,” my mum calls up the stairs.
“I’m not here,” I say, as I have since graduation.
“Yes you are. It’s your sister.”
It’s the first time we’ve spoken since we fell out. Neither of us mentions it. My moving back is bigger, so it pushes the argument into the past.
Still, Robin talks guardedly. She says she’s excited about having me back, but then she asks so many questions about my plans and the sleeping arrangements that I can’t help but think she’s the opposite of excited.
Just as, in the background, Dad tells her to wrap it up, she asks me, “Are you okay?”
Am I okay? No, I want to say. I’m pretty much the opposite of okay. My mother has thrown me to the wolves, my sister doesn’t want me home and I don’t know if I should go to university in England, a country I barely remember, stay here on my own or try to get a job, when I haven’t the first clue what I want to do let alone what I’m capable of doing. But none of those things really stand up next to the big one. The one I can’t possibly say right now. Not here. Not on the phone. Not to my sister.
I’m pregnant.
ROBIN|1998
Last week, Callum came to the house for dinner and got drunk with Robin for the first time in a long while. Rez was working, though Robin was skeptical about the kind of work that a welder would need to do at night.
It started with a tense dinner, a shared bottle of red turned into raiding the spirits after Jack and Hilary went upstairs.
They lay on the sofa, heads at each end, jostling to get comfortable as the TV shimmered silently in the background.
“Want to hear a story?” Callum said.
“Sure.”
“Before I got the call-center job, I went for an interview in the sweets factory that Dad used to work for, back when he sold chocolate and stuff.”
“Mmn? Did you get offered it?” Robin had asked, her eyes closed.
“No. But I was a mess. I did a bad interview. I couldn’t even get a job packing sweets. Fuck!” He laughed, a bit—she didn’t.
All Robin’s thoughts were occupied with their other family, soon to return from America. What would it be like to see her mother after all these years? Looking back now, every decision her mother had made revolted her. But at least there was one silver lining. Despite the animosity of recent months, despite his horrible choice of boyfriend and waste of talent, she really loved her brother. Almost more than anything.
THIRTY-FIVE
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
Robin’s front door finally opens. Just a crack. I hear my sister gasp. Her voice, even wordless, is just the same.
Now she’s fumbling with something metal and the door clicks shut again before finally she opens it fully and I see her. God. I see her.
“Sarah!” she says, like she’s seen a ghost.
“Robin, I’m so glad to see you,” I say. But I’m not glad to see the way she looks, and I feel huge next to her. Her smallness frightens me.
She doesn’t seem happy to see me, just shocked and agitated.
“I’m sorry to come here unexpectedly,” I say, and I can feel my eyes filling up, and I’m so embarrassed and hurt by her reaction that I want to shove her hard out of my line of vision and then run away and give this whole idea up.
“No,” she says, looking at me and looking behind her at who knows what. “No, it’s not that.” She’s speaking fast. “I’m shocked,” she pants, shaking her head, “but I’m really happy to see you. It’s just there’s something awful happening behind me and I need to stop it.”
“In your house?” I ask, and try to peer round her.