She’d wanted to. But she’d calmed down a little as the evening plowed on. Had even managed to slip into a thin watery sleep, until the sharp ring of the home phone slashed through the stillness.
Hilary is up, phone in hand, by the third or fourth ring. Robin turns her pillow over to the cold side, burrows her face into it. Waits. It’ll be about Callum: he’ll be drunk, high, in some kind of dramatic state. Rez will have had enough of him, will have given up trying to pry his deadweight spaghetti limbs off the pavement and out of harm’s way. Let him stay there. Let him suffer.
Robin sighs, heaves herself up and shuffles to the bathroom. Sits down harder than she should on a toilet seat that constantly breaks, pees while she tries to listen. Hears the word “ambulance.” Stomach pump? Even though Callum’s been in big messes before, perhaps after the last few weeks and the argument he’d pushed himself too far. Taken too much, washed it down with the wrong thing. She wants to say “good,” like she would have a few hours ago, but she can’t. There have been too many ambulances recently.
In the room next to the bathroom, Sarah is stirring. Her mattress creaks as she rolls to the edge. Two dull thuds follow as she steps out of bed.
Robin wipes, flushes. She wouldn’t normally at night but everyone is up. She can hear her dad and Hilary downstairs, talking over each other. Robin splashes herself with the tap by accident as she reaches for the soap. Curses as she dries her hands, T-shirt dripping.
Sarah is already on the landing when Robin leaves the bathroom.
“What’s going on?” Robin asks. Sarah is leaning over the top of the staircase, listening. She spins round, grabs Robin by the shoulders.
“I think we should go into your room. It’s Rez on the phone,” she says.
“Rez?” Robin spits his name. “Why? What’s Callum done now? What’s he taken?”
Robin doesn’t want to push past her sister, especially at the top of these stairs, but the front door is open and her dad and Hilary are leaving. It’s been only a minute or two since the call came, and they’re already wearing coats over night things.
“Dad!” Robin calls, but he ignores her, the door closing.
“Sarah, let me past.”
“You shouldn’t go, don’t—”
“Let me the fuck past.” It’s a growl.
Sarah steps aside, head bowed, hand on her stomach.
Robin thunders down the stairs, grabs her coat on the way out of the door and runs barefoot after the car’s rear lights.
They had to stop and let her in, of course, as soon as they saw she was there. No time to stop and argue. The cold quiet of the car rushes at her while she buckles up. An embarrassed held breath that means nothing when Robin realizes Hilary has her head in her hands, is breathing hard and crying.
“Faster, Jack,” she pleads. The car lurches forward, swings out from the cluster of houses and flies up the high street toward the road to Reading.
“What’s happening?” Robin asks quietly.
“You shouldn’t be here, Robin,” Hilary shouts. “You slowed us down.”
Robin can’t remember the last time Hilary shouted. Her dad ignores her, concentrates on the car, which is shaking along the outside lane of the A33, topping a hundred miles an hour. The mess of traffic lights by the soccer stadium start to flip yellow then red, but apart from a quick look to the left, Jack doesn’t slow down.
The car pulls up outside the small block of flats and stops across two spaces. Hilary and Jack unbuckle, shove their doors open and run to the front door. As they press the buzzer repeatedly, Jack grabs Hilary’s hand, holds it to his chest. Robin is out of the car and following behind, her feet sore from running along the road minutes earlier. Her chest burns with a nameless feeling. Her parents are inside already.
She can hear shouting, crying. Rez comes running out of the front door, and he shoves past her as he heads to the car park. He gets into his banged-up car, starts the engine and then covers both his eyes with his hands. As Robin goes into the block and starts up the communal stairs, she hears the telltale cough of Rez’s old engine as he drives away.
But mostly she can hear Hilary. Hilary isn’t crying, she isn’t shouting. She’s screaming. A sound Robin hasn’t heard before or since. Neighbors are rattling their doors open, poking their heads out. Robin takes a deep breath, walks up the last set of stairs to the top floor.
The door to the flat is open. She’s been here only a handful of times, and each time the place has been filled with people, laughter, smoke. Tonight the place is still and black.
Robin steps inside, follows the noise that Hilary is making. As she walks into the living room, Robin hears the ambulance pull up outside. The air in here smells male. Sweat and old clothes, beer and bad food. And even though he hadn’t been his groomed and particular self in a while, there’s still a top note over it all. A tang of shower gel and the aftershave that baby-faced Callum didn’t really need.
As the paramedics’ boots rush up the stairs toward the flat, past the dull hum of neighbors talking to one another, Robin steps into the bedroom. At first, she doesn’t see the real focal point.
Instead, she sees clothes scattered across the floor. A guitar with only three strings propped against the chipped window frame. And Hilary siting on the unmade bed. She’s motionless, the sheets bunched into balls under her rigid hands. Suddenly her thin shoulders start to pulse up and down under her jacket and nightie. She pulls the wrinkled sheets up to her face and screams into them again.
Robin stays rooted to the spot, squinting through the dim light of a swinging bulb, scanning for her dad. She realizes that he is merged with the wave of clothes spraying from the wardrobe. He looks at first like he is holding back another wave, but no.
“Oh God, no.” Robin scrambles over, bare feet skidding among crunchy socks and sweaty T-shirts. It’s all too late.
Her father is half in the wardrobe. He’s swaying slightly and panting with exertion. His arms shake as he holds up Callum’s body. Holds his head up closer to the high wardrobe rail.
Callum’s long arms and legs are dangling, and his eyes are closed. His toes twist and point among the clothes, just skimming their surface. As his weight slips from Jack’s grasp, his desperate stepfather heaves him up again. And again and again, with shaking arms. All for nothing.
The paramedics rush in and take over. Jack protests, quietly, almost silently. “I need to hold him up,” he croaks, stuck in a look of perfunctory punishment, grinding himself into the floor. They pry the deadweight from Jack’s hands gently and firmly, guide Jack to the bed as they lay Callum down among the discarded sweaters and blim-burned jeans. It’s a practiced move, all in one, wordless and graceful somehow. Like a ballet.