Jack shuffles closer to Hilary. Now that he has relinquished Callum, he notices his next task. Snaps to and wraps himself around his partner until she disappears into him, their bodies shaking together.
Robin is silent. Her knees are shaking, her hands feel icy, but she doesn’t move. Can’t move. She didn’t even move as the paramedics pushed past her, carving a small curled path in the fabric on the floor.
The light is dim, but as the paramedics unwind the rope and attend to Callum—another fruitless gentle dance—what little light there is outside shakes free through the wonky blind and rushes to outline him.
Still Robin stares at his neat, slim body in disbelief. He’s wearing only boxer shorts. His long limbs with their dusting of golden hair taut and surprisingly muscular. An almost-man.
The matching tattoo they both have is just visible from her angle. The quote from Labyrinth, mirrored on her own arm: “It’s only forever, not long at all.”
This is the last time I’ll see his skin, she thought, clapping her hand over her mouth in case her thoughts broke free. Even through his size and his emerging man’s shape, you could still see how he’d looked as a kid, could follow that line all the way to imagine how he looked as a baby. When all of this was still to come.
And a baby must have been what Hilary had seen when she burst through the door and knew that it was already too late. That her life and everything she had done with it was gone forever. Her boy was gone forever.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Marshall,” the female paramedic said after laying a stained duvet cover over Callum, from his face down. “There really was nothing anyone could have done.”
Ashtrays overflowed and abandoned pints of Coke were stacked up on old bits of furniture. There were books everywhere, the most Callum thing about that room. He died surrounded by books, so,…well, it didn’t mean anything, because he was still dead. None of it had meant enough, and nothing that could be said or done would change that.
Everything is cold and slow now. Hilary shakes herself free from Jack, wipes her eyes and nose on her jacket and walks gingerly to where her son is lying. She kneels down next to him, pulls the duvet cover back down so his face is no longer hidden. She strokes his cheek, brushes his hair away from his eyelids. Her shoulders shake and she wipes her eyes again, the tears pouring faster than she has any hope of catching.
Hilary lies down next to her son, on the uneven fabric-coated floor. He’s so much taller than her, somehow elongated in death.
The spell on Jack breaks and he realizes Robin has been there the whole time.
“Oh love,” he says, and she stumbles and falls to him, her eyes springing with tears that seem too small, so pathetic that she starts to beat her own head with her fists, but that’s still not enough.
“He’s gone?” she asks no one. She knows. They all know. Rez knew, when he fled, the others too no doubt.
“I’m so sorry,” Jack says, the words catching. “You shouldn’t have been here tonight.”
“He shouldn’t have been here tonight. I should have been here for him, Dad. A long time ago. Fuck.” He doesn’t argue, doesn’t console. Just holds her until she can stand by herself again.
There are formalities, papers, calls to make…Robin isn’t really listening to the calm words from bright uniforms. As one paramedic leads Jack out and into the living room, Robin goes into the kitchen to get a drink of water, splash her face, paw at her new emptiness in solitude.
That’s where she sees it. The note.
It is the only clean thing in the room. Dirty plates, bowls and takeaway trays teeter on every surface, while ash piles sit next to overflowing ashtrays. The note is written on lined notepad paper, the kind they once wrote their songs on together. It’s held in place by a half-empty cup of black coffee that isn’t completely cold. His cup. The last thing his mouth touched. Robin traces her finger along the edge, collecting his dust.
She reads the words quickly without touching the paper.
She reads it again. And again. Again. Eyes spiraling helter-skelter from top to bottom, lurching back up.
Now it’s inescapably committed to memory. Stamped into her like animal flesh under a branding iron.
As the words tick over, she claws at them. To their soundtrack, she thinks about who he’d become and whose fault that was. She thinks about Hilary lying on stinking clothes next to her only child, touching his skin for the last time. She thinks about how much worse this note could make everything.
Robin picks it up like it’s poisonous, folds it carefully and slips it into her pocket. She takes it into the bathroom, sits on the watermarked toilet with the door locked. And the words still tick through her.
“I’m so sorry,” he wrote, in his beautiful neat writing, just curly enough.
“I didn’t know that Sarah was pregnant and I can never forgive myself for what I’ve done. I’ve made so many mistakes over these last years, but I can’t come back from this one. My greatest fear was turning out like my dad, and what I did to Sarah is far worse than anything he ever did.
“I love you all but I don’t deserve you. It wasn’t Rez’s fault. It was my idea to steal that stuff, and it must have been me who pushed Sarah. So it was all me, all of it. I’m sorry.
“Forever is too long after all. I love you always.”
It’s three in the morning. Back at home now, Robin spreads it on the bed in front of her as Hilary frantically vacuums every inch of the house, howling, and Robin’s dad paces the living room, hiding from all the women he doesn’t know how to help.
THIRTY-NINE
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
So here we are, back at Robin’s front door. A couple of hours after we were last here.
My twin is spent. Utterly wrecked by bashing doors and standing up to a suicidal man who she’d thought was a wife beater. It’s just so Robin.
Once inside her hall, my sister bends down to pick up a card from the hall carpet. While she reads it, she leans on the wall, exhausted, and I click the door closed behind us.
It’s just a normal family house. Nothing special, nothing fancy. It’s solid, neutral, a bit old-fashioned. There’s not a trace of personality.
“Damn it. I just missed them,” Robin says, finally moving down the hall. “Sorry,” she adds, “come in. Let’s get a cup of tea or something.”
We walk into the kitchen and she puts the kettle on. She pulls down two chunky pastel-colored mugs. The kitchen is a basic wooden affair—it’s so normal it makes me feel sad.
She slides the card toward me along the counter.
“It’s from a security company I called. When you were knocking, I thought it was them. I—” She stops. “I missed them.”
“Oh,” I say. And automatically open the fridge to get out some milk. It takes my breath away. Everything in there is organized into colored sections, in Tupperware boxes. Robin’s certainly changed. In fact, unlike the grime of the outside, the whole house is spotless.
“Why did you need security?” I ask quietly. I wonder if she’s having trouble with fans, maybe a stalker. It seems a bit much.