by S K Sharp
‘I’ll come back with some biscuits,’ he says.
I turn back to Mum once he’s gone. She’s watching me, and I know what she’s thinking because I can see it in her eyes: Dad passed more than twenty years ago, love. The thing she doesn’t understand is that, for me, Dad is still alive. He lives and breathes in every memory I have of him. I want to ask, right now, about her and Dave back in 1985, but the words are stuck, clumped together in the back of my throat.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I say. ‘I just … I can’t – I can’t forget him the way you can.’
‘We were married for almost thirty years, love. No one’s forgotten him.’
My memory flashes to that picture of me and Declan and Kat from the Shelley: not the picture itself but the box where I keep it. I got it when we went to Clacton, a month after the party at the Shelley. The search for Arty Robbins was in full swing and Mum thought a day by the sea with the sun and the sand would help shake away the blues. That’s what she called it. The blues, like it was some passing illness. In the car on the way there, she told us all about her first crush when she’d been fourteen, some boy at her school that had lasted two weeks; how, when he dumped her, she’d thought it was the end of the world. I realised, eventually, that she was telling the story to me, not to Dad. She thought I was upset because I wasn’t allowed to see Declan, but it wasn’t that, because we never stopped. I was upset because home felt like the bloody Cuban Missile Crisis.
All the way there, Dad never said a word. We got to the seaside and Mum bought me that tin full of toffees, like that was supposed to make it all better.
‘I don’t mean … What I mean is …’ Mum never understood what it was like to be me, never even tried; and I should know better but I can’t stop myself, in case maybe today’s the day I finally make her see? ‘Mum, another year and I’ll be the same age Dad was when he … when he passed. I know that. But for me, it’s still as though it was only yesterday.’
‘Oh that’s … But you know that’s not true.’
I want to shout and scream: Obviously I know it’s not true but that doesn’t change how it feels. Dad got it eventually, somehow – what it was like to remember everything as though it only just happened – but Mum and I have had this conversation about a hundred times and it’s like she doesn’t want to understand.
‘You heard about Arty Robbins?’ I ask instead.
‘Oh yes.’ A little gleam lights up in her eye. ‘The whole street’s been talking about it. Well, those of us who remember him. I was talking to Chloe yesterday … You remember Chloe?’
‘Kat’s mum. Of course I remember.’
‘She said they arrested someone.’ Mum shakes her head as though it’s all terrible, but that gleam is still there, that little shard of malicious glee. It did come out eventually, the truth: how the sun didn’t shine from Arty Robbins’ backside like everyone wanted to believe. Mum made sure of that.
‘The someone they arrested was Declan,’ I say. Mum never liked Declan after that night in ’85 and didn’t try to pretend otherwise, but she still managed to act disappointed when I left him.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘Mum! For God’s sake!’
Mum makes an I’m-just-saying sort of shrug. ‘I’m sorry, love, but you know what they say.’
I do, because I’ve heard it all before. Like father, like son. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. That kind of thing. ‘He was eighteen!’
‘Pushed him into the pit where they built Parklands, according to Chloe. Good riddance to bad rubbish is what your dad would have said.’
‘It’s what he did say, Mum. I remember him saying it.’
Mum waves a hand as though trying to waft away a bad smell. ‘I don’t think one single person on this street was sorry when Arthur Robbins took it upon himself to disappear. The way he treated poor Anne …’ Which is such utter rubbish that I literally have to bite my tongue. It was years before people stopped talking about him as though he was the bloody Second Coming.
Except … not Mum and Dad.
‘Declan didn’t do it,’ I say.
She looks away.
‘I know you didn’t like him but he’s not a bloody murderer, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Language!’ snaps Mum.
I just stare.
‘I’m sure the police will sort it out.’
‘Yes.’ I could tell her about talking to the police, about Declan’s alibi, but we’d only get into another fight.
‘Sorry, love,’ she says. ‘I need to make a quick call.’ She gets up and walks out of the lounge; when I hear her talking, I know she’s speaking to Dave. I can’t quite make out the words but it’s in her tone. It’s her private voice – the one she only used for Dad when she thought they were alone.
Two days after the party, Declan went with his mum to Clapham. It crushed me to nothing. At home, the tension was as though a nuclear missile had gone missing. I thought about killing myself in that stupid never-going-to-actually-do-it teenage way. The next weekend, I packed a bag, all ready to follow Declan to Clapham. Dad caught me. I thought he’d yell and tell me I was stupid but instead he took me out to the park. We walked, just the two of us, and he talked and talked about how love wasn’t a flash of lightning – something that came and went – but an ocean, deep and vast and always there; and if what I had with Declan was really love and not some passing crush, then it would survive and last; and yes, he understood how I’d put up with anything, do anything, to keep it, but there would be harder tests than this. It all felt painfully embarrassing at the time, but hindsight long ago showed me the care behind those words. He asked whether I knew where Declan was staying and I told him yes, I had his aunt’s address. Dad took me to the station and bought an A–Z and we looked it up, and then he bought me a Travelcard and made me promise, on pain of death, to be home before dark and not to tell Mum. And then he let me go.
Arty Robbins never did come home. A week later, Declan was back in Byron Road. We saw each other every day. I’m sure Dad knew about it, but he never said a word to Mum. At the end of that summer, Declan went to university and, when he came back, it was like he never left. We held hands and talked about music and television and films and everything. We stopped pretending. I took him home. When I left school, I followed him to Nottingham and the best years of my life. We married a few months after I graduated. Mum never approved, even then, but Dad was always kind. As long as he treats you right, love. We were going to make a life. Together. Forever …
Mum comes back into the lounge now, looking a little flustered. ‘Sorry, love. Just needed to remind Dave of a couple of things I wanted him to get.’
I talked to a therapist once. Anja. I told her about that summer, me and Declan, the mystery of Arty Robbins; about Dad walking out and for three days thinking he’d never come back. She listened politely and then told me how it was normal for couples in long-term relationships to have periods of crisis – a birth, a death, one partner losing a job, moving house; that what defines the strength of a relationship isn’t that these crises never happen, but how they’re addressed. Then she asked whether I resented Mum for moving on, after Dad died. I walked out right then. Years later, I understood why: I don’t resent Mum for moving on. I resent her because she can.
‘What really happened between you and Arty Robbins that night?’
‘Oh, Nicola! It was such a long time ago …’ She bats the question aside but I see the shock in her face, how uncomfortable it makes her. A long time ago, yes, but she remembers …
And I’m in the kitchen again, the morning after the party, about to get my breakfast slapped out of my hands, staring at the bruises on Mum’s neck, and I can’t keep the shock from my face.
‘You were arguing. I thought it was about me and Declan, but …’
‘Yes. Well, teenagers are prone to think that everything’s always about them.’ Mum gives me a dark look.
‘But it
wasn’t.’
She slowly shakes her head. ‘Someone had to say something. It had to stop.’
I see Declan’s mum with her swollen cheek on the day of the party. ‘What—’
‘It really doesn’t matter now, does it? I gave him a piece of my mind, that’s what happened. Everyone thought Arty was such a saint!’
‘I saw the marks,’ I say. ‘On your neck. The morning after. Was that … was that him?’
‘I’d really rather not talk about it, love.’
‘The police asked.’
Mum closes her eyes. She bows her head and doesn’t say anything for so long that I think she’s not going to answer; but when she looks back at me, her face is quite different, old and tired and sad. ‘I told you, love. I gave him a piece of my mind. About all his … goings-on. Then I think I must have gone outside for a cigarette to calm down. I don’t remember how we got there; just being there, out the back of the Shelley, the two of us, Arty shouting and swearing how it was none of my effing-and-blinding business. I remember I told him I’d set the police on him, and he could explain to them how it was none of their business.’
‘Mum?’ Back then, and she already knew about what was happening in Declan’s house?
Mum seems to shrink. She takes a deep breath. ‘I suppose he only had his hands on me for a second or two but I’ll never forget it, and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes, either. I don’t know what would have happened if Dave hadn’t come out. Your dad was right. Good riddance to bad rubbish indeed.’
The tea sits on the table, untouched. I pour a cup for each of us, lukewarm now.
‘What I remember most is his smell. Sweat and stale beer.’ Her voice trails away. ‘Chloe took pictures. Vincent was going to decorate the pub with them … She showed them to me, afterwards. She had this one of Vincent and Arthur, glasses full and roaring with laughter, like Chloe had caught them at the punchline of some joke. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. It was minutes after Dave pulled him off me. Arty didn’t care at all.’
‘Does … Do you know if Kat’s mum still has those pictures?’
Mum shakes her head. ‘The police took them when they came asking questions. Poor woman. She doesn’t remember it, of course.’
‘The argument you had?’
Mum looks away. ‘Nothing that matters now he’s gone, love. Let’s just say I’d seen enough to know he wasn’t the devoted husband he liked us all to think.’
The front door opens: Dave back with a bag from the corner shop across from the Shelley. I hear him rustling in the kitchen and think of the photograph Declan showed me. Arty and Vincent Robbins and Dave, all smiling. Everyone was welcome at the Shelley. That was the kind of place it was – the sort of people we were.
The sort of people we thought we were.
Dave comes back from the kitchen and plops a plate of chocolate digestives on the table. ‘You talking about Arty Robbins? The police were here—’
‘I told her,’ says Mum. ‘You remember how Chloe said the police arrested someone?’ She gives him a look that I can’t decipher. ‘Nicola says it was Declan.’
Dave looks bewildered and then horrified. ‘Oh, Susan! Jesus!’ He turns his attention to me, not that I want it. ‘There must be some mistake. Weren’t you two … weren’t you two already seeing each other back then?’
‘I was with Declan until midnight that night,’ I say. ‘I’ve already given a statement.’
‘Thank God for that! So he’s going to be OK? They’ll let him go?’
I look hard at Dave but his concern seems real enough. ‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s not going to be OK. They charged him. They had to let him go for now, but they took his passport and he’s got to wear one of those trackers and report to his local police station every—’
‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ Dave looks truly shocked. ‘They can’t—’
‘Language!’ snaps Mum.
‘Sorry, but …’ He turns back to me. ‘But why?’
I get up. ‘Look, I should probably go.’ I know I haven’t asked what I came here to ask. I don’t think I can, not while Dave is here. If I’m honest, it’s freaking me out a bit how he’s taking this. It’s like he actually cares.
‘Nicola was asking what Arthur Robbins did that night,’ says Mum. ‘I told her you were my white knight.’
Dave gawps and makes a face. ‘Only because I happened to be by the open kitchen window.’ He looks right at me. ‘If it had been your dad, he would have punched Arty. And Arty would have deserved it, too.’
A glance passes between Dave and Mum, intense – some shared meaning I don’t understand. And it makes me wonder, because I remember that summer after the party so clearly. I remember a tension between Mum and Dad that was more than simply me and Declan; closer to home than Declan’s missing dad. Should I ask straight out if they were having an affair? It’s so easy to picture: Mum terrified, Dave her saviour. Carried away by the moment, Dave takes Mum in his arms to comfort and protect her; Dad hears the commotion and comes out. He sees and he knows … But he can’t do anything because he loves them both, because Dave is his best friend. But it has to go somewhere – that anger, that betrayal, that helplessness … And then he sees Arty Robbins, and it’s his fault, all of it.
‘Mum, what did you and Dad do after …? Before you came home?’ I don’t take my eyes off Dave. I see the corners of his mouth tighten.
‘I honestly don’t remember, love,’ says Mum. ‘I don’t think we did anything. Just … came home.’ She looks around the room as she speaks – anywhere but at me. I feel the lie and the tension between her and Dave; feel the stare he gives while Mum carefully doesn’t look at either of us.
‘So, you and Dad were together for the whole night?’
Mum shakes her head. ‘It’s such a long time ago, Nicola. But yes, I think so.’
Yes, it is, but she remembers. I know she does, and I know she’s lying. ‘So, Dad didn’t go out again that night?’
‘Honestly, Nicola, I don’t remember.’
I feel the walls closing in. I need to get out, but Dave is in my way and I need to know. I meet his eye. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Declan went back to the Shelley after I came home. Did you see him?’
Dave takes a step back, caught by surprise. ‘I … I don’t think so. I think I spent most of the evening with Anne. She was in a bit of a state.’ He shakes his head and glances at Mum. ‘Arty was cheating on her. Your mum called him out, right to his face – right in front of her.’
‘What?’ I don’t understand. ‘The fight you had, I thought you said it was about Anne. About what—’
Mum lays a hand on mine. ‘That’s what you said. No, Arthur Robbins was having an affair, if you must know. That’s what it was about. I didn’t know the rest until later.’
Arty Robbins and Kat’s mum …
Dave makes a sour face. ‘Madge knew about the rest of it, though. Vincent said he’d sort it out, which we all knew meant pretending nothing had happened.’ He moves aside to let me pass.
I get as far as the front door and then turn back. ‘So, you were in the Shelley all night?’
Dave nods, but he can’t look at me as he does so. Lying bastard.
‘But you didn’t see Declan?’
He shakes his head. ‘I really don’t remember. I’m sorry.’
I look to Mum. ‘And you were here with Dad?’
‘Yes, love.’ Her face is full of a where-is-this-coming-from concern, but I know she’s lying, because Dad was wearing his leather jacket that night – the jacket I remember seeing hanging on the coat rack by the front door – which means Dad wasn’t with Mum at all, which means that Mum was with Dave; which means they’re lying, both of them, even now, even after all this time, and I can’t stand it!
‘There was mud on Dad’s jacket the next morning,’ I say.
Mum looks bewildered. Dave looks confused.
‘The next morning. W
hen I came downstairs to go to school. His jacket was hanging from the coat rack we used to keep at the bottom of the stairs. There was mud on it. From the park. If he was with you the whole time, how did it get there?’
‘I …’ Mum shakes her head. ‘No, that can’t be right. You’re confused, Nicola.’
My own mother, gaslighting me. And I’m none the wiser, and I’ve got nothing left to say.
I leave.
‘Wait!’ Dave follows me out. ‘Nicola, wait. Stop!’ My head is full and memories are coming at me from everywhere, all out of sequence: me and Declan, that night in the Shelley; Dad and Uncle Dave and Mum in the park together when I was much younger; Dad when I was in my twenties. Everything …
I round on him. He’s a big man, even if he’s old. I suppose he could be frightening if I wasn’t so furious. ‘What?’
‘Your mother’s probably forgotten all about this, but … she’s wrong. We didn’t go straight back into the Shelley. We went into the park. To get away. Just for five minutes. You have to understand. She was scared. Anyway, someone must have told your dad something about what happened because he came out looking for your mother and saw us and—’ He shakes his head and looks away and shivers. ‘We had a bit of a tussle. The mud could have been from that. I remember we both went over, and it had been raining and the path was muddy.’
‘A tussle?’ I can’t imagine Dad in a tussle with anyone.
‘He … he got the wrong end of the stick. Thought I was the one who’d hurt Susan. We sorted it out quick enough and then they went home, but …’
I look him in the eye. ‘Were you and Mum already having an affair before he died?’
‘Nicola!’ He even has the audacity to look hurt. ‘It was just a misunderstanding.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘He was my friend.’
‘I know.’
Dave bows his head and looks away. ‘No. We weren’t.’ But from the way he says it, I know there’s something there – something so guilty he can’t bring himself to look at me.
I turn away. Do I believe him? I suppose I have to, as far as it goes, but there was something between Mum and Uncle Dave that summer. Dad never talked about it, he was too bloody English for that, but you had to be blind and deaf not to see that something broke in our house that night. It seemed obvious – when Dad left for those three nights – that it was Mum and Dave, and that Dad had found them out. And yes, he came back; and he and Dave somehow stayed friends, and things at home almost went back to the way they were but … Something had changed, something invisible, intangible, impossible to pin down. Dave had been in and out of our lives for as long as I could remember, and he worked at the Shelley, and so did Mum until she and Vincent had their falling out; and it never did make much sense, Mum doing part-time bar work, unless it had been about Dave right from the start – all of it.