by S K Sharp
I look at the address he’s given me and it’s not even all that far away. Finsbury Park. Not far from the Emirates stadium. Christ, I could almost walk from here.
I have to tell him what I told Detective Scott. What I didn’t tell Detective Scott.
No! No, I don’t! What I have to do is walk away. I have to get my life back the way it was. I have to call him, or text, or …
I go back inside. Joy catches my eye and gives a little nod and asks if I want to go out for a quick drink after work tonight, and I think Why not? We could go out and eat. Make a night of it. I could do the sensible thing and not go to Declan …
‘I’m going to see my ex-husband,’ I say. ‘His dad died.’ Why am I even talking about this?
Joy winces in sympathy; and I’m thinking how we could still go for a drink, we could talk – maybe that’s what I need; I could ask her what she thinks, if she thinks I should go.
All the way back to my desk.
At half-past five, I pack up and head out, and in my head I’m six years old and lying in the dark, terrified because of something I saw on the telly while Dad was watching Doctor Who; and I’m sixteen and hiding in Declan’s room under his bed; and I’m twenty-three and in love; and I’m twenty-six and he’s out late and he hasn’t called and I don’t know why; and I’m sitting in the kitchen with my head in my hands, remembering what Kat said about mysterious late nights at the office; and all I can think about is how we never seem to talk about us any more, and I can’t remember the last time he said I love you; only of course I can remember and it’s been seven weeks and five days and is that really such a long time, and why am I even counting, and dear God I need a cigarette …
And at the same time, over and over, nagging in the back of my head: if Declan didn’t kill Arty Robbins, who did? Did Dad do it? Why? But if he didn’t, why was there mud on his jacket the next morning? Were those really bruises I saw on Mum’s neck? How did they get there? Why were the police already looking for Arty?
Three stops down the Victoria Line and then a short hop on the bus or a ten-minute walk. My hands are shaking. Declan. It’s been ten years since we exchanged more than a few sentences and I’m nervous as hell, and the butterflies in my stomach are like that evening in 1985 as we walked away from the Shelley back to his house together, with no idea of the drama we’d left to play out without us.
Who could possibly have wanted Arty Robbins dead?
I fumble the packet of cigarettes from my coat pocket. I’m so nervous that I almost drop them. I tap one loose and put it between my lips, light it and draw hard. The hit is immediate, the memory that was about to overwhelm me knocked sideways. I take another drag and then crush what’s left on the pavement. I feel giddy and sick and my mouth tastes horrible. I won’t tell Joy. It wasn’t a whole cigarette. It doesn’t count.
Thirty-four years, seven months and twenty-seven days since Declan’s dad disappeared. I remember every single one. I barely knew him but I was glad he was gone. He had his secrets, Arty Robbins: his affair with Kat’s mum, and that wasn’t the end of it. Some of the truth came out after he left, but was there more? Something that none of us ever knew, even after he was gone?
One glimpse of what he truly was and I hated him.
I’m five minutes from Declan’s flat and an hour early. I look about for something to do. There’s a coffee shop, bland and faceless – lattes and cappuccinos and toasted paninis – the sort of place that could be anywhere in London these days. Its only tie to the past is that Panini used to have something to do with the collectable footballer cards that the boys at school used to trade. I look at the menu and then leave, because what am I going to do? Drink coffee for an hour and think about how stupid I am to be here at all? I left work early because I thought I’d need some time to get myself together, and all I’ve done is left myself with nowhere to go but the past. I should have called Kat, taken her up on her offer or asked her to come with me. Apart from Kat, there’s no one who knows me, not really …
I turn down the path to Declan’s flat. In my head, I’m in the kitchen of the house we used to share, years later, wondering what’s happened to us, how we’ve drifted apart; and I’m sixteen and in the alley behind Byron Road, waiting for him even though I know he’s not coming; and then a week has passed and he’s back, and I don’t care what Mum says, and I’m seeing Dad’s face and the twinkle in his eye that Mum doesn’t notice as he tells me I’d better not catch you with that Robbins boy again.
That was after the party. After Mum did a complete flip and suddenly Declan wasn’t acceptable any more.
Catch you. I knew exactly what he meant.
Was it really Dad that Kat saw that night? Why was he out in the park so late? Why was there mud on his jacket?
And now I’m hunched against the wall of Parklands on my twenty-sixth birthday, and it’s the middle of the night and I’m sobbing beyond hope of comfort because Dad is dying and I saw Declan with that other woman, and I know it’s all going wrong because I’ve seen it all before, at home that summer when Declan’s dad disappeared, and I remember it perfectly and I know what it means … Finally the spiral takes me to where I always end, to the worst memory of them all: to being with Dad and watching him die of the cancer inside him, actually watching him leave, right there in front of me, there and then gone; and how, even in that moment, I wasn’t living in the present, because I’m sitting through my father’s last moments and remembering Declan sitting with that woman, too close, holding hands, kissing; and all I can think of are the thousand and one things that have gone before, the little disappointments, the let-downs, the taking for granted of things that were once a delight. I didn’t know who she was but what difference did that make, for God’s sake? It wasn’t about her, not really. She was just the last of a thousand cuts; and so I buried Dad and took careful aim at the best thing to ever happen in my life and blew it to pieces because I was so scared that whatever happened to Mum and Dad was happening to me and Declan as well.
Oh, Declan. Why didn’t you try harder?
I’m outside his flat and my eyes are full of remembered tears. It’s easier to keep walking, and so I do.
What if I’m the only person who can help him? Does he even deserve my help? But that’s the wrong question. Do I want to help him?
Yes. Even if I don’t know why, I do.
The path is a dead end. I turn back and pass his flat a second time. I’m a mess. I should go home, but then I’ll kick myself because I’ve come this far and I should see him, even knowing how this ends, because the month of misery is coming whether I like it or not; and maybe I can help him, maybe that’s how I finally make my peace over what happened between us and put an end to it for good …
But how? By remembering the clothes that people wore at a party thirty-five years ago? I wasn’t even there when it happened! I don’t have the first idea who killed Arty Robbins.
Oh God, Nicola Walker, why did you say yes to this?
I walk back to the main road. Deep breaths, deep breaths. There’s a fast-food kebab shop across the way and they have a few seats inside. I sit down and nurse a cup of tea and force myself to think about the good times, sipping on it long after it goes cold; even then, I’m still a quarter of an hour early when I’m back outside Declan’s flat and ringing the bell.
The door buzzes at once. I push it open and head up the stairs. I hear footsteps from above. A giddiness hits me and I have to stop and steady myself and …
There he is. Ten years and he’s hardly changed. A little more weight on him, his hairline a little further back so he looks a bit like a budget Tony Soprano. I fish a hanky from my bag, blowing my nose and dabbing at my eyes as he bounds down the last set of stairs and stops right in front of me, awkward like he doesn’t know what to do. He wants to hug me but he doesn’t know whether that’s OK. And it shouldn’t be, it really shouldn’t, but it is. I fall into his arms and it feels so good, because I’m twenty again, and in love, and the w
orld is full of colour and the future is bright …
Was full of colour. Was bright.
I pull away. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Memories.’
He smiles, wary. I see it in his face – the old love we had still there, somehow still alive. It breaks my heart and I have to turn away so as not to burst into tears.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let me put the kettle on.’
He leads me to the third floor, through a solid-looking door into a spacious open-plan lounge-and-dining area separated from a kitchen space by a waist-high partition. The furniture and the size of the apartment tell me he’s done well for himself. He might even be rich, in a London sort of way. I look around at the Simon Marsden prints on the walls, the neatly stacked cabinet beside the television, the big plush moose toy I bought for him thirty years ago. It’s all the Declan I remember, gone upmarket. It feels strange and out of place and puts me almost on edge, until I realise …
It’s all us. Me and him.
Declan follows my gaze. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he says again. He turns away, pointing down a narrow hallway with three doors, two on one side, one on the other. ‘Bathroom’s at the end on the right. Mum’s room is on the left but she’s not here. She’s been staying with Aunt Eileen while I was – you know …’
‘Your mum lives here?’
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Anne Robbins was diagnosed with MS a year before I went to America, and that was two decades ago.
I sit on the smaller of the two sofas, arranged at right angles with a glass-topped coffee table between them. The table is a mess of clutter: half a dozen photography books under a handful of travel magazines and some loose sheets of paper that look like local council forms. I don’t mean to pry but I can’t help myself. They’re about his mum, about putting her into care.
When I look up, I see him watching me from the kitchen.
‘How bad is it?’ I ask.
‘She’s a bit wobbly but she can still look after herself for now. It’s just – I need to make arrangements in case …’ His face twists into a wry smile. ‘At the bail hearing, my solicitor made it sound like she needs constant care, but really … But she does struggle with the stairs. And it’s not fair to leave Aunt Eileen to pick up the pieces if …’ He looks away. ‘You know.’
On the corner of the table is a tourist guide to a place on the west coast of Scotland. I pick it up and look more closely. When I look inside, I realise why it feels familiar. The brochure is new, but I’ve seen this place before. Harris Lodge. Declan picked it out before Dad fell ill. We were going to go on a second honeymoon. One last effort to find our way back to the passion and the romance, and all the things I remembered which it seemed we’d lost.
We never went. Dad’s cancer saw to that.
Declan comes over with our mugs of tea. ‘I was thinking of taking Mum. Before all this. Drive around, take in the scenery. You know, that sort of thing.’ He puts my tea on the table and flops into the other sofa. ‘Mum and Dad went there for their honeymoon. I don’t think I ever told you that.’
He must see the surprise on my face. ‘No. No, you didn’t.’
‘I thought she might …’ He shakes his head, struggling to explain himself. ‘Dad’s family came from that part of the world. She still talks about him. Even after – you know. After everything he did.’
I do know. I remember it.
‘He used to say it was the most beautiful place in the world: standing on top of the cliffs, watching the sun set. He never wanted to live in London, but that was where the money was. They were going to retire there.’ He shrugs. ‘That’s what Mum says anyway. Uncle Dan went back after he … I’ve got a couple of cousins up there somewhere, too. We’re not really in touch.’
‘You never said anything about that before.’
‘I know. I thought it sounded – you know, weird. I just …’ He sighs, and it looks like he’s about to say something more, but it doesn’t come.
‘Declan, I don’t know how much you remember, but … The police didn’t ask about what happened back at the house so I only told them we were together, and what time it was when I left.’
‘Thank you. I suppose that must have been hard for you.’
I want to tell him he has no idea of hard, but maybe that’s unfair. Of everyone I ever knew, now or then, Declan was the one person who seemed to understand what it was like to be me.
‘I don’t get it!’ It bursts out of me. ‘You were with me. I told them! You were with me and then you went back to the Shelley and I saw you go. And there was a policeman in our lounge when I got back, and he was talking to Dad about – about your dad. They were looking for him, so he must already have been missing. Why do they think it was you?’
‘Apparently, someone saw Dad out in the park near midnight.’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t know who. And then, apparently, I went out looking for him after I went back to the Shelley. It’s all stuff they got from the investigation the first time around. The search, you know? When they were looking for him.’
‘You told me you stayed at the Shelley all night!’
He shrugs helplessly. ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’
‘And anyway … That’s all? They can’t—’
‘“Hard forensic evidence linking Mr Robbins to his father’s death.” That’s what the prosecutor said. They cocked something up, so whatever it is, they couldn’t release it. They’ve got something, though, and they won’t tell my solicitor what it is until it’s ready. On the bright side, they can’t keep me locked up while they sort themselves out, so here I am. There’s another hearing a week from now. Then we’ll know.’
‘Oh, Declan.’ I have to resist the urge to reach out and touch him. ‘That must be horrible.’
He shrugs. ‘It’s all bullshit. I didn’t do it. I know I didn’t do it. But it’s the waiting, you know? The uncertainty. The way everything goes on hold.’
We sit in silence, each of us staring at our tea.
‘How … how are you keeping?’ he asks.
‘Still working in the library,’ I say. ‘I have a flat not far from work, now. It’s nothing grand, just a bedsit really. But it’s enough.’
‘Not far from work?’
‘In Farringdon.’
‘Christ, that must cost a bomb!’
No point arguing – prices in central London are insane. ‘I’m only renting,’ I say, which is technically true. ‘It’s tiny.’ I make a show of looking around me. ‘You’re doing all right, by the look of things.’
‘All the money from Dad’s business after he …’ He stops. ‘And the house. Mum should have kept it and rented it out, I reckon. Do you know how much those houses go for in Byron Road these days? It’s daft.’ I hear the note of scorn, the same note I remember hearing whenever he thought someone was putting on airs. ‘You go back there much?’
‘Not really.’
‘Me neither. It’s all changed. Gentrification, the local paper calls it. It’s ridiculous, if you ask me; makes me glad that I don’t have kids. I don’t know how they’d ever afford a place of their own.’
Kids. I look for any trace of bitterness and don’t find it. ‘I saw,’ I say. ‘When I was at the police station, I saw what they’ve done to the park.’
‘And what they’ve done to the High Street.’ He snorts his disdain. The High Street, when Declan and I were teenagers, was a Co-op, a couple of TV repair places, three charity shops, three banks, Omar’s Kebab Palace, the chippy, a drycleaner’s, a fruit-machine arcade, three estate agents – one of them Robbins’ Properties – two hairdressers, some place that sold sofas and stuff like that: all with a constant traffic jam running through the middle. Now it’s a massive John Lewis and the rest is restaurants and coffee shops and mobile-phone outlets, and the whole place has been pedestrianised.
Silence stretches out between us again.
‘I’m sorting things out for Mum,’ he says after a bit. ‘I mean, she can mostly look after herself b
ut it’s only going to get worse.’ He looks away and I see the weight of what’s happening to him, crushing him. ‘To be honest, I was going to do it anyway. I can’t keep looking after her, not forever.’
I got on OK with Declan’s mum until I walked out on him. I suppose she hates me for that. If she does, I can’t blame her. I never told her about seeing Declan with another woman. I never told anyone except Kat.
‘Is there … anything I can do?’ I ask.
‘Not really.’ He looks away. ‘Christ, Nix. I’m past fifty and what have I got to show for it?’ He shifts on the sofa and I glimpse the tracker locked above his ankle. He catches my eye. ‘I didn’t have to wear this. Could simply have walked out, but my solicitor said it would make a good impression. You know, show I’m trying to cooperate.’
I sniff the air. ‘Something smells good.’
‘That’ll be the fennel. Don’t get too excited. It’s nothing special.’
‘You remember when I tried to boil an egg and ruined the pan?’ Declan was always the better cook, much to Mum’s horror.
‘Four minutes.’ He laughs. ‘Not four hours!’
I smile too, because that’s exactly what he said on the day it happened. ‘I just forgot, OK?’ That’s what he thought was so funny. That I forgot.
He brings two bowls of pasta from the kitchen, layered with fennel-spiced sausage, tomato and mascarpone sauce. It smells delicious, and I have to remind myself that this isn’t my life any more. It’s a step back in time for a few hours, that’s all. I close my eyes and slide into memories of Declan in the not-so-Secret Car Park, sitting in his Capri …
Declan nods. ‘Thing is,’ he sighs and looks distant, ‘they’re saying I went back out, after I got to the Shelley, but if I did, I don’t remember it. I remember being in my room, the two of us. I remember you so clearly. But the rest – all the stuff before: going to the Shelley with Mum and Dad, the party, even what happened between me and Dad when he nearly caught us – it’s all just … scraps. Flashes. Impressions. And after … it’s a blur. I don’t remember that night at all, after you left. Nothing.’ He takes a deep ragged breath. ‘I suppose that means I could have done it. I mean, I’m sure I didn’t, because how could I forget something like that? But everything I did and everywhere I went after you left? I honestly don’t know.’ He sighs and shakes his head and gives up. ‘It was almost a relief when Dad disappeared, you know? And now here he is, fucking up my life again. I suppose you remember it all like it was yesterday.’