“Why did you lie, Sarah?” Robin asks.
“We all lie, Robin. Everyone lies. I wanted to get what I deserved, what I’d had stolen from me. I wanted the chance to be a mum. I don’t apologize for that.”
“But did you hurt that little girl?”
The rage shoots through me. How could she even ask that? I loved Violet. I loved her from the moment I held her, when she was just a few weeks old. I loved her and I looked after her day and night while that woman lay around and talked about how tired and miserable she was. I fed Violet in the night and the day; I gave her everything she needed. And the one night I was supposed to go out on some online date I was dreading, Elaine had begged me not to go. Jim was at a work thing and the woman had clung to me, pleading. Violet was asleep in her Moses basket, softly snuffling after I’d rocked her to sleep. Elaine had grabbed both my shoulders and looked into my eyes and said, “I can’t do this. It was a mistake. I’m not cut out for this. Please.” It wasn’t my fault, I didn’t mean for it to happen, but when it did, when she lost her footing, a calmness came over me. An opportunity presented itself, a chance to be there for my new family in the way I’d always wanted.
“I would never hurt Violet,” I say to Robin. “I love her. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to love someone like that.”
“But her father thinks you hurt her.”
“Jim doesn’t know anything. He’s a weak little man who doesn’t know anything.”
“He knows he doesn’t want you near Violet.”
“He can’t keep her from me!” I shout. It’s the first time I’ve shouted in so very long, and my throat stretches around the words. I grow with them. A new anger makes me sway.
“Come downstairs,” Robin says. She’s using the kind of voice you’d use to coax a nervous animal. “Let’s talk about this downstairs. I just want you and the baby to be safe.”
“No,” I say. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to open this up. I want Violet and I want a boy baby and I want what I should have had all along, what everyone else has taken from me.
“No!” I say again, and I reach out to push at Robin, but she’s already making her way down to the hall.
She turns the light on at the bottom of the steps, and I see her looking up at me and looking nervously behind her at the front door. She’s trapped, and she knows it. She’s not going out the front unless it’s life and death; she’s told me that before. I don’t want it to be life and death for her. But what life is this? She’s a hermit, a recluse. Living here in a home built for a family. Who would know if she wasn’t here? Who would know if someone with a family moved in? Violet and me. We could be happy here. I thought we could be happy with Robin, thought she could help me get my girl, rebuild my family. But I was wrong. For all her rebel talk, Robin is the biggest snitch of all.
“Why did you attack Mum?” Robin asks, looking up at me. She thinks I don’t notice that she’s stepping into her trainers in the dark of the corner. I see everything. Just like Mum did.
“Why do you think?” I say. Really? I really have to explain this?
“Because you thought she let everything happen to you?”
“She saw it all. She’d watched the way he looked at me, the way he planned it all. She says she didn’t, but she did. The same thing he’d done to her, he did to me—how could she miss that? Only Hilary was truly there to help me afterward. She got me some help, came to visit me. Picked me up when I got out, helped me start a new life in Surrey. Helped me find a job.”
“You tried to claw Mum’s eyes out?” Robin says. That’s a huge exaggeration, but I see from the way she’s screwed up her face that she will never understand how I felt that night and for all the years that ran up to it.
“I’m not here to talk about that—it’s history. I came here to ask your help to get Violet back.”
“You need to forget Violet,” Robin says softly, “and focus on the baby that’s yours. I understand why you lied about Violet, I get it. You were still upset about the baby you lost and I understand why you got attached to her, but you have your own baby on the way. I can help you with this baby. I can still help you.” There’s a pleading whine to her voice. I’ve never heard Robin on the back foot before. But she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get any of it. That the baby idea was there only to get Jim to take me back, to seal the deal. To let me in and accept that what’s best for Violet, what’s best for all of us, is for me to be Violet’s mother. Just like I’ve been for nearly four years. That it didn’t matter what it took to get back to that: any lie, any deception, anything was worth it.
I start to tread down the stairs, carefully, but the baby thing is history now. I lift up the pajama top and tank top, pull at the tape and throw the bump on the floor. That plan is ruined now. I need a new plan.
“You’re not even pregnant?” Robin asks, but I ignore her. “What the fuck is going on, Sarah?”
I don’t answer.
FORTY-SIX
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
Robin is too hung up on this fake-baby thing. She’s seeing everything in separate pieces, not the whole picture. I ball up my fists; there’s no getting through to her and I can’t let my frustration cloud my thinking. I need a new plan. I have to get things ready for Violet. I have to get her back, find somewhere for us to live. It was going to be here, but Robin isn’t going to help me, that much is clear.
I need to think fast, come up with a new plan, but Robin won’t shut up and it’s hard to think.
“What the hell, Sarah? You’ve lied to me constantly since you got here. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Robin asks. “I could have helped. And now I’m wondering what else you’re keeping from me. What do you want from me?”
She’s backing away down the hall, into the kitchen.
“You? You only wanted to help me when Callum had left you and you needed a project. You never wanted me, you never wanted your sister back. I’d missed you for so long, but you just moved on to a replacement.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “But that’s just not true.”
“Now you’ve gone behind my back again,” I say. “But it’s not too late. You can still help me.”
“How?” she asks, that new nervousness still creeping into her words.
We’re in the kitchen now. She’s reaching for the key in the back door, and I reach for the knife on the side. I don’t want to hurt her, but I just need to make sure she stays here while I think up a new plan, get it straight. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone, but I have nothing left. I thought I had a sister, but she’s just going to stand in my way. I chant it quietly: “I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt you.”
She looks at the knife, looks at me. She doesn’t understand that I just need time to think.