—
I’m home now. My bruises and cuts have faded a little and my belly gives nothing away. Everybody except Robin seems either relieved or oblivious. Dad can now forget his daughter had ever shamed herself like that, with a fictional boy at an unlikely party. Hilary can get back to saying nothing and doing nothing about her son and the path he’s taken. And Mum and Drew could stay insulated in ignorance.
But me? I’ll never forget, and Robin will never forgive.
A baby girl. My baby girl. Robbed from me.
ROBIN|1998
Robin paws at her anger in private. Where once she’d been the only one to take a positive interest—touch Sarah’s belly, laugh about the size of her swelling bust, make up nicknames for her niece or nephew, like “little bean”—now she avoids her twin sister. In their brief conversations, Robin looks down at her shoes. When she’s home, Robin locks her bedroom door, creates a wall of sound to keep everyone out.
Despite promising Hilary she wouldn’t, after three sleepless nights in a row made her feel crazy with indecision, Robin called the police.
She gave them Rez and Callum’s names. Told the police that they were selling dope, that at least Rez if not both of them were shoplifters, told them that they’d tried to burgle the family home. Told the police that they’d pushed her sister down the stairs. Told them to check with the hospital, see the records for themselves.
Nobody else had wanted to involve the police. Not even Sarah, who just wanted to forget and to channel her anger and grief in her own way.
Instead, Sarah had to give a stilted statement to two uniformed officers, who came and perched on the sofa and drank tea politely. While Robin sat next to her, closer than they’d been in weeks, Sarah could hardly get the words out.
The policeman jotted down Sarah’s patchy statement and the policewoman looked at the sisters with concern, as Robin hugged her stomach like it was her body that had been hollowed out. Like they’d done it to her.
The police went to call at the flat while Rez and Callum were out. Their flat, which they shared with odds and sods of Rez’s extended family and network of shoplifters and rat-eyed drug dealers, was an Aladdin’s cave of minor crime. But, honor among thieves, no one told the police where to find Rez or Callum.
The police can’t have tracked them down yet, because Callum and Rez have just arrived at the Marshall house, their car exhaust banging an announcement as they pull up and crush the edge of the lawn.
Robin thunders down the stairs and flings open the front door, her dad shouting after her to wait.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she rages, marching up to Callum and Rez so they both take a step back on the small lawn. Jack and Hilary have followed her out, Hilary small and exhausted, her cardigan wrapped around her like a swaddling blanket.
“You called the police, Robin,” Callum says quietly, and looks at Rez. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Callum, please, you need to go,” Hilary is saying, and she’s put her arm around his waist to try to nudge him back to the car, but he’s just twirling away from her and refusing to leave.
“The damage you’ve caused, Callum, you need to get the fuck away from here,” Jack is saying. The loudest voice Robin has heard from him in years. You should have acted this bravely years ago, she thinks through the red fog in her head.
“Please, Jack, don’t do this here—” Hilary tries.
“Enough, Hilary! Don’t you defend him,” Jack snaps, and Hilary sags even more.
Robin stands there on the lawn, barefoot in her shorts and T-shirt. She cannot say anything. She can’t catch a clear thought; they jumble in a ball and hurtle around her brain. She’s so angry, so upset, that she feels like her whole body is on fire and she’s just burning there on the grass, chest heaving.
Rez is trying to tug Callum away, but Callum is shaking him off too. “Robin,” Callum says, with no fight in him. He’s shrinking under the glare of Jack and Robin’s anger, Hilary’s shame. Robin looks away from him and up at Sarah’s window, where she sees the outline of her twin. The flames pick up even more and she stares at her beloved brother through them, still mute.
“I’m so sorry about that night.” Callum’s pleading now, new tears catching in his throat as Rez puts a hand on his shoulder. “I said I was fucking sorry, but you didn’t have to go to the police. Robin, you’ll ruin our lives!”
“Ruin your life, Callum? Your life?” Robin shouts. “You pushed my sister down the fucking stairs!”
Rez is shaking his head, opening his mouth to argue, but Callum says, “I’ve said I’m sorry. She’s all right, isn’t she? She’s all right, she’ll live. We didn’t even take anything in the end.”
“That’s enough!” Jack yells again. “You’ve got a bloody nerve coming round here after what you’ve done. The pain you’ve caused my daughter.” He tries to move his stepson off the grass by force, pushing his back and pulling both his arms in turn. Tries to get him and Rez into the rusty old car they’d arrived in.
“You took everything!” Robin screams, and she starts to thump Callum’s chest. “She was pregnant. And you two killed her baby!”
Callum sucks in the late-summer air and wobbles on his feet. He stares down at Robin, his chest still absorbing her thumps.
“She’s pregnant?”
“Was!” Robin says, stepping away from him and leaning over, panting. “Was,” she says again.
“I’m…” He stops and looks at Rez, whose own face has also just drained of all color.
“Shit,” Rez says. “Look, I’m sorry too—”
“Both of you need to get the fuck off this lawn now,” Robin says. “Your sorrys are worth shit to us. Your sorrys won’t bring that little baby back, they won’t piece Sarah back together and they won’t make me love you again, Callum. I hate you. I hate you from the top of my head to the soles of my fucking feet. Now get away from this house!” Her voice is broken, feral, louder than bombs. Callum stares at his mum, who nods, stony-faced. Rez backs away, pulls Callum’s sleeve, so he follows dumbly. They get into their car, sit for just a moment staring at each other and then roll slowly down the road.
—
Just hours earlier Robin had stood on their postage-stamp lawn, in her shorts, and shouted things into her brother’s face that she hoped would destroy him. She’d wanted to destroy him. To annihilate what he’d become. To crush the love she’d had for him, grind it to dust and blow it into the wind.