“I just buzzed you in,” he says. “Can I help?”
We’re already thundering up the stairs, but Robin beckons for him to join us. He’s out of shape, puffing with every step, but he catches up with us.
Robin stops outside a door that has a big bristly welcome mat and two potted plants on either side. It looks too cheerful to contain someone with a cord around his neck, but Robin drops my hand and starts hammering on the door anyway.
“Henry!” she’s shouting. “Henry, I’m sorry! Please don’t do this!”
My sister said she didn’t know him, but I don’t believe her. She seems to be taking an awful lot of responsibility for a stranger. I think he’s probably someone she’s fallen out with or maybe a jilted boyfriend, but I stay quiet and put my hand to my belly while I think what to do next.
Something occurs to me at the same time it occurs to the neighbor, and we both reach for the handle. I pull my hand away again, to let him do it. He turns it to the right, nothing. Turns it to the left, the door opens. In any other situation, our stupidity not to try that first would have been funny. Not today. We pile in.
Robin seems to know the way, which confirms my suspicions that she’s been here before. She winds down the hall. To the right is an open floor plan that seems to be the living room, dining room and kitchen. I step into it briefly to get out of the way of the downstairs guy. It’s sparkling clean. Even the stovetop, no marks of grease, no tiny little specks that normally don’t come off. The floor is immaculate, right up to the kick board. The sterile perfection makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Signs of a child drip from every surface. Arthur: his name peppered around the room, spelled out in magnetic letters on the fridge. I step back into the hall and see little shoes taking pride of place on the shoe rack. By the size of them, I see he’s probably the same age as Violet. I suck in air and look away.
How could this man, with a loved child the same age as Violet, want to kill himself? Unless the child is gone? Some terrible accident that I can’t let myself think about because it’ll start me imagining terrible things happening to Violet. No. Stop. I have to shake myself out of this spiral.
We pass two doors on the left that we don’t open and then head for the last one. Robin takes a deep breath and reaches for the door. Just then, we hear the scream of an ambulance outside. “I’ll go,” I say, before they can stop me. I’d rather never see behind that door.
I rush back out of the flat and down the stairs. As I make my way to the front door to let the paramedics inside, I realize an old lady is standing in the doorway to one of the flats. She’s wearing a tabard and twirling a duster in her hands. “Is everything okay?” she calls, in a thick Manchester accent.
“Yes,” I call back as I run, even though it’s not.
As I open the door to the uniformed medics and point up the stairs, the old lady comes right up to me and touches my arm.
“Careful, love,” she says, “you shouldn’t be running around like that in your condition.”
I put my hand on my belly. An instinct to touch, to protect, to check it’s still there.
“Oh.” I smile at her. “It’s okay, I’m being careful.”
“How far along are you?” she asks, running the duster along the banister as she steps up after me.
“It’s early days.” I smile. “About fifteen weeks.”
“Well,” she says, “good luck to you. Mine are all grown up now. I miss them being little but I don’t miss carrying them. I was sick as a dog.”
“I’ve been quite lucky,” I say.
“You look it. You’re blooming,” she says, and smiles for the first time.
“Thank you.” I smile back, but then I remember the darkness upstairs and bid her good day.
On the way up the stairs after the uniforms, I take it slower. I feel the old lady’s concerned eyes on the small of my back, and I put one hand there and rest the other on my bump. The adrenaline of the morning has washed away, leaving gritty sediment in its place. It slows me down, and by the time I get into the flat, I can hear Robin yelling.
“What the fuck?” she shouts. “How could you even think about doing that to your kid?”
He’s alive, then.
I hear the male paramedic telling her to go and cool off. Robin arguing. I stand awkwardly in the hallway of a flat in which I don’t belong. The guy from the downstairs flat comes out from the back bedroom, his skin white and clammy. His neck is just a bit too fat for his collar, so it looks like a plinth for his head.
“I think a cup of tea is a good idea,” he says. I follow him into the kitchen. Neither of us knows where anything is and we destroy its perfect condition as we shamble around, opening cupboards, shaking loose dust off the tea bags, spilling slops of milk.
“Stick some sugar in his,” I say. “It’s good for the shock.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I think I’ll have some too.”
His hands are shaking and he scatters sugar everywhere. I take over.
“Thanks,” he says. And then he holds out his hand. “We’ve not properly met. I’m Sam. I live downstairs.”
“I’m Sarah,” I say, shaking his clammy hand. “I’m Robin’s sister.”
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
Robin looks at Henry Watkins slumped on the small bed. He’s still in his dressing gown, which flaps open without its cord. Underneath, he wears flannel pajama bottoms and an old tank top she knows well. His hair is longer than it’s been before, the Magpie stripe as wide as a fist. He looks wrung out. His eyes are hidden among a scribble of wrinkles, his skin is pale—but not, she knows, as pale as hers.
He is sitting in his son’s room, surrounded by strangers, and he doesn’t seem to care. Just stares at nothing.
The paramedics have checked him over. He hadn’t taken that final step. Only stood there, on the table, with the cord around his neck. Whatever he was waiting for, it didn’t come. But they did: Robin and the guy from downstairs.
She’d rushed in first, locked eyes on his. His neck wore the cord loosely. He’d inched his bare toes over the edge of the table, which wobbled slightly when the door burst open and Robin arrived.
“Fuck,” the downstairs guy had said.
Robin had slowed to a stop, pulled him behind her and held her hands out to Henry, showing him her palms. “I’m not going to do anything,” she said, “but you know this isn’t the answer, so we’ve come to help you down.”
He’d bowed his head, pulled the small stuffed mouse from his pocket and held it to his face. “I just want my boy,” he said. “I can’t live without him.”
“I know,” Robin said. “But he can’t live without you either, not properly.”
She’d offered her hands and he’d taken them, but at first he didn’t move. Stood holding them, noose in place, like an exhibit. Behind him, through the window, Robin’s own house stared back at her.