“Robin, please, I’ll ask you for the last time. Will you help me get Violet back? I need to come up with a plan. Will you help me?”
I lift the knife in my open palm, show her I mean no harm, but she’s shaking her head.
“No, Sarah. You attacked Mum and you’ve lied about serious fucking stuff. You don’t need a plan to get Violet back—you need help.”
I realize too late that, while she was talking, she was fiddling with the back door, and now she’s opened it and is stumbling out backward. No! I need time to come up with a plan; this has all gone wrong. I rush out after her.
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
Robin plunges out into the cold air and trips over her own trainers. Her sister is bigger, but Robin is stronger, scrappy. Through the tangling limbs, Robin manages to push herself back up onto her feet to scramble away.
Someone is panting hard, and it takes a moment to realize that the sound is coming from both of them.
“Please!” Sarah is saying, but she’s swinging wildly with the knife. Robin ducks and runs down the garden.
When Robin dreams, which is rare, she dreams about running outside. About throwing the door open and flying out, scything through the air, light and fast instead of rooted and heavy. She wakes from those dreams drenched, feeling sick. But Robin finally feels fast now. She can hear her sister’s footsteps behind her, running unsteadily on the cobbles. Sarah is barefoot but almost keeping up. Driven by last chances.
Robin sprints as fast as she can into the black of the alleyway and thuds straight into something. Someone.
“No!” she cries, but they move around her and grab Sarah’s arms. The silhouette moves into the light and Robin sees that it’s Sam from the flats. He pins Sarah to the wall, and Robin knocks the knife from her hand and kicks it somewhere into the shadows.
“Fuck!” Sam says. “What’s going on?”
Robin and Sarah say nothing, and the gate to the back of the flats swings open. Mrs. Peacock pokes her head out, flashlight in her hands.
“Call the police,” Sam says, his voice shaking like he’s trying it out. The old lady disappears into the garden.
Sarah had been limp against the wall but starts thrashing and crying. Robin rushes at her, grabs one of Sarah’s arms. When the moonlight catches her face, Sarah wears a look of desperation and panic.
“Thank you,” Robin says to Sam, who looks even more frightened than he did this morning.
“What the hell’s going on? Isn’t she pregnant?”
“No,” Robin says grimly.
Sarah slumps down to a crouch, sobbing and mumbling sadly about needing a plan, needing help. Robin and Sam hold her tightly. They stay that way, taut and tensed around an exhausted body, until the police finally arrive, three officers running full pelt down the pedestrianized alleyway, illuminated by the squad car parked askance at the end.
“You’ll be okay, Sarah,” Robin says as her sister is handcuffed. “This is for your own good. I promise, you’ll be okay.”
“Since when does our family keep promises?” Sarah says, as she’s pulled barefoot along the cobbles.
FORTY-SEVEN
ROBIN|2017
Robin leads her sister through the double doors, out into the rose garden and onto the car park. Sarah’s nervous, not used to the outside. The wind lashes at them and makes her jump. It’s been months since she arrived and she hadn’t left the grounds until today, but the time has finally arrived. She’s as ready as she can be. The rest is up to the family.
Robin gets into the backseat with her twin. The two women in the front cast nervous glances at each other but don’t say anything.
“Did you tell her where we’re going?” they ask.
“I did,” Robin says. “I told her about the new house, and she’s excited, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Sarah smiles, a little uneasy.
Angela starts the engine and the car rumbles down the drive and out through the gates. Sarah’s thin fingers scratch at her jeans, her tight jaw clenching as the trees and hedges start to whip past faster, blurring into streaks.
Sarah has pills and tools to help with the transition. She has support and a safe place waiting for her. But it’s still new and she’s still raw. The outside is so big for her, just like it was for Robin.
“Did you tell Sarah about the album?” Hilary asks, breaking the silence.
“No,” Robin says, embarrassed. She looks down at her own jeans, picks at a speck of something on them. Paint, probably, from the kitchen. Since getting the keys, everyone’s been pushed to get the place finished in time.
“You should be proud,” their mother says, as she slows to indicate into their new road. There’s a staccato to her voice still; it gives away how nervous she is around her children. How much she wants to get everything right.
“Robin’s releasing an album.” Hilary leans back to try to make eye contact with Sarah.
“Have you got back together with the band?” Sarah asks, taking her eyes off the window for a moment to look at her sister. “That’s good.” She smiles thinly.
“Not with the band,” Robin says. “This is…different. I’ll tell you later.”
They pull up outside the house, a family home in Maplesden, a village a few miles away from Birch End. Sarah stays in the car for a moment while the rest get out. Her chest rises and falls. She looks around as she takes in the newness of everything.
Hilary and Angela talk with their heads close as they walk from the car. Robin hears them admiring the front garden, joking about what Jack would have had to say about “the height of those bushes.” They smile together, bow their heads briefly.
So many mistakes over the years, so many things said. So many losses. If Hilary holds Angela responsible, she hides it well, beneath the layers of gentle words, her creamy coffee-advert voice, her nervous distraction.
When Robin first said she’d come back to Berkshire, finally ready to get the help she needed, they’d rallied together. Angela had driven Robin from Manchester to Berkshire. A long journey for such a nervous driver, but she didn’t complain. Robin was glad to only be traveling fifty miles an hour on the motorway, her head in her hands for most of the five or six hours. Angela had taken her daughter to Hilary’s house, the house Robin had grown up in. Angela visited every day, talked in low voices with her onetime friend, casting glances at Robin and touching Hilary’s arm in quiet agreement.
While Sarah was being cared for, perhaps Angela and Hilary both needed a project. Perhaps that project was Robin. They often drove her to therapy appointments together, Robin with her eyes closed, panting and saying, “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck,” like a mantra.
It had been Angela’s idea to do music therapy.