by S K Sharp
My two favourite men. I hear the words. I heard them a hundred times when I was young. I can see them, if I want to: Mum, Dad and Uncle Dave, Mum in the middle, an arm around each of them. Thick as thieves, the three of them.
Whatever makes you happy, sweetheart, as long as he treats you right. I feel as though I could turn round and Dad would be standing there behind me, smiling. Is that what he said to Mum, too? Was that how he made peace with whatever he saw that night?
I’d never let anything break up this family.
I miss him so much.
I turn and walk away. I spend the journey home looping through memories of that summer, looking for answers and finding only questions; and it’s only when I’m on my doorstep, thoughts turning back to the present and to Declan, that understanding crashes in.
Either Dave is lying or it couldn’t have been Dad in the park an hour later.
So who was it?
11
Friday 7th February 2020
It’s 4th August 1985. I’m in my room, thinking about my next secret meeting with Declan. It’s almost two months since Arty Robbins vanished. Mum and Dad are in the front garden, weeding the flower beds. My bedroom window is open to the summer breeze and they’re right below me. I can hear every word, even though they’re being quiet.
‘We can’t go on like this, Susan, we really can’t.’
‘I know, love,’ says Mum. ‘But, Craig … it’s not what you think.’
‘Susan, if you think you made the wrong choice—’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Craig! It’s not that! It’s … it’s … Fine! You want me to be honest? You just remember you said that.’
I still feel the sense of utter shock. That word. From Mum! I remember how the rest of that day passed, taut as piano-wire. In the evening, they went out. Dad said they were going to the pictures but Mum came back two hours later on her own and Dad didn’t come home at all. I thought that was that: the end of our family. The next three days were like living with an unexploded bomb. Mum barely said a word; when I found the courage to ask, she told me that Dad had to think about some things, and so did she. Four nights later she went out again, something she almost never did on a weekday. She had Dad with her when she came back. They were both half drunk. They practically fell up the stairs and into bed and had noisy sex – now there’s a memory I wish I could forget – and, after that, everything went back to normal.
Almost to normal.
Do I believe Dave about the fight? Yes, I think I do. About them not having an affair, though … No. There’s something there. There was something in his face, in the way he couldn’t look at me.
‘Nicola. Hey! Wakey, wakey!’
I’m at work, and Ed is standing by my desk, and everyone is looking at me.
‘You saw the email, right? The Orien Trust people are coming in this afternoon. You are ready for them, yes?’
I nod. I’m not sure what time it is. The middle of the morning? I don’t remember what I’ve done since I sat down at nine o’clock. No, that’s wrong, of course. I do remember. I’ve done nothing except stare blankly at my screen as I rake through the past.
‘They were happy enough to reschedule under the circumstances.’ He frowns, looking at my screen and not at me. ‘Actually, can we have a chat in my office?’
‘Yes. If … Why?’
‘I just want you to run through what you’ve got.’
I follow Ed back to his office, which isn’t really an office but a poorly partitioned corner of our tiny open-plan workspace. I remember how it was when I first came to work here and it hasn’t changed at all. The desks, the chairs – none of it. We’ve had our work stations refreshed and a few of the lights have been replaced; other than that, it’s exactly as it was ten years ago. I like the stasis. The timelessness of this place.
‘Sit down.’ Ed points to a chair. I do as I’m told, thinking of the day he first took over. That’s the one thing that has changed. Ed joined us six years ago, taking over from old Trevor Arnold, who must have been nearly seventy and had put off retiring for as long as he possibly could and spent all day, every day, sitting at his desk reading history books. I remember we bought him signed copies of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, which we all thought he’d like but which instead launched him into a thirty-minute diatribe on how the real Thomas Cromwell wasn’t the way Mantel had portrayed him at all and the only decent thing she’d written was The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. He got into a huge argument with Rose Wilkes about it; she told me later that Trevor was bitter because he’d written a historical novel of his own once and no one had bought it—
‘Nicola? Nicola!’
Shit! Ed is talking to me and I’ve got no idea what he just said. ‘Sorry?’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
‘You zoned out. Am I boring you?’
‘I …’ I don’t know. Is he boring me? I don’t know what he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m a bit distracted at the moment.’ I could tell him about Declan’s dad, about Declan being arrested for murder, but if I do that, he’ll tell the others and it’s all I’ll hear for months. It won’t ever go away because it can’t, and this place where I work won’t be safe from the memories. I don’t want that. I force a smile. ‘Still recovering from yesterday, I think.’
Ed gets me to run through the presentation I’m supposed to give this afternoon. I don’t know who the Orien Trust are or what they’re trying to do; all I know is that they want information on the expansion of the London sewer system throughout the twentieth century. I have it all in my head and I can talk until there’s nothing left to say, but apparently that’s not good enough.
‘It’s not exactly a presentation, is it?’ Ed looks baffled. ‘I know you were off sick yesterday, but still …’
Ed’s idea of a presentation is a stack of PowerPoint slides. I’ve known this for exactly five years and eleven months.
‘I’ll get one ready for this afternoon,’ I say.
Back at my desk, I stare at my screen and try to concentrate, but all I can think of is what Dave said, and of Mum, and of the mud on Dad’s jacket, and how they’re lying to me and how I’ll never know the truth.
We can’t go on like this, Susan, we really can’t!
I slide out of that into a different memory: the first time I brought Declan back home, around six weeks before Arty Robbins disappeared. Mum knew him, obviously, because he’d lived across the road for years. I think she knew we were going out from the moment she saw us together, but she didn’t say anything. She let us go up to my room together and left us alone, and then a little later she came knocking on the door, very careful, doing what Dad used to do and not coming in until she was invited, asking if we wanted something to eat or drink. She seemed almost happy about the two of us being together.
I sit at my desk and go through every moment Mum saw us, every conversation we had. She liked Declan right up until that night. And then she hated him, and I never understood why or what he’d done, but what if it wasn’t because of something he did? What if it was because of his dad? What if it was because of what Arty Robbins did to Mum and to his wife, and to everyone around him?
Like father, like son. Was that it? Was that why she hated him?
When Ed comes to see how I’m doing just before lunch, I haven’t made any progress. He sits at my desk for the next hour and I’m like a walking, talking Wikipedia, telling him the information he needs while he’s the one putting together the slides. He wants lots of pictures, because everyone likes to have pictures, which means going through the newspaper microfiche archives that haven’t been made digital yet, which always feels to me like going through the negatives of an old set of photographs. When Zoe, Adam and Kris from the Orien Trust arrive in their expensive suits, we do the presentation together, Ed running through the slides while I stand there, lost in memories of 1985, every now and then jerking back to the present to regurgitate some facts and figures. At the
end, I hand out the information packs I made last week. They seem pleased as they leave.
‘Whatever’s going on with you, you need to sort it out,’ says Ed after they’re gone. ‘You’re no use like this.’
No use like this? Don’t I know it. I’ve been here before. With Declan, towards the end. I was no use to him like that either, as it turned out.
I push a hand into my jacket pocket as I head home, fishing for that ragged half-pack of cigarettes. That’s when I discover I have Declan’s picture of Vincent and Arty Robbins still in my coat pocket, and that’s when I have a bit of a brainwave. In a way, I have Ed to thank.
The police may have Chloe’s photographs but I bet they don’t have the negatives.
12
Saturday 8th February 2020
I feel sort of stupid, heading back to Byron Road. I don’t want Mum to see me heading next door, so I walk up Keats Row instead and come back from the other end of the street, all so I don’t have to pass our front window. I stand on the doorstep of Kat’s mum’s house, hand poised to ring the bell. I don’t know why I’m so nervous, but I am. A part of me is locked in a memory. It’s the summer of 1989. I’m at home on summer break and I’m sitting with Kat in her front room. Kat has a job in London now, working for Private Eye magazine, of all things, which is great because she’s an absolute mine of stories and I love listening to her. She’s telling me how there’s a rumour the magazine might start its own TV show next year – some satirical news programme, which could be really amazing – when the doorbell rings and I see the look in her eye, like she knows what’s coming. She jumps up and runs to open it and there stands Declan, and I can’t make sense of it, because Declan works in Nottingham and told me he couldn’t make it back this weekend because of some work he had to do; and yet here he is, and he’s dressed in a morning suit and carrying a huge bunch of flowers, which he hands to Kat, and right then and there in the hall he gets down on one knee.
‘Nicola Walker, will you marry me?’ he says.
And I remember lying in bed all those months ago, pretending to be asleep. I might just have to ask you to marry me, Nicola Walker.
I almost have to force my way back to the present. I’m standing before Kat’s old front door. I have no idea how long I’ve been here.
I ring the bell and—
SNAP! I’m six years old, sitting at the dinner table, boiled egg with little toast soldiers to dip into the yolk, for tea. The doorbell rings. Uncle Dave has come to visit, and I’m happy because Uncle Dave makes Mum and Dad happy too. He’s funny and we play games while Mum clears up. Later, he sits on the edge of my bed while Mum reads a story. I go to sleep but then I wake up again because I can hear Mum in the kitchen and she’s crying. I get out of bed and pad down the stairs. Mum is in the kitchen and Dave is holding her tight and she’s shivering with tears. When they see me, Mum beckons me to join them and so I do, the three of us all hugging each other.
‘I’m a bit sad, little mouse,’ said Mum. ‘About Grandpa.’
Grandpa was poorly and it seemed right for Mum to be sad about that; and right that Uncle Dave should give her a hug, because hugs help people to feel better. Even with adult eyes looking back at what a six-year-old saw, maybe it didn’t mean much. They weren’t kissing. They didn’t spring apart with guilt or shame. Mum was upset, that was all, and Dave was a friend. But it’s the sum of those small things over years and years that tells me it was more.
If there’s one person who knows the truth about what happened at the Shelley that night in 1985 – one person who isn’t Mum or David – it’s Chloe Clarke.
The door opens. ‘Hello?’ It takes a moment, and then a smile of recognition spreads over Kat’s mum’s face. ‘Nicola Walker!’
That’s the difference between a place like Wordsworth Park and where I live now. When I grew up here, everyone knew their neighbours; and even now, decades later, we greet each other with smiles and cups of tea. I’ve lived in Farringdon for years and I don’t think a single one of my neighbours even knows my name.
‘Hello, Mrs Clarke.’ Thirty years of being an adult and I still call her that, out of habit.
‘Come in.’ She steps back and closes the door behind me. ‘Can I get you something? A cup of tea?’
‘I don’t want to impose,’ I say, knowing it won’t make any difference. ‘I’m on my way to see Mum, so …’ I feel stupid, lying like that. But what else am I supposed to say?
Mrs Clarke ushers me into the lounge, which in this house is the back room, not the front, which means I can see into our back garden and the conservatory that Dave built while I was in America. I can’t help but stare. It seems alien. I have so many memories of looking out from these windows with Kat, years before it was there.
‘Susan said you came up only a couple of days ago,’ calls Mrs Clarke from the kitchen. ‘Asking questions about Arty Robbins. Is that what this is about? She misses you, you know. You really should try and visit her more often. Milk and sugar?’
She comes back with the tea I don’t really want, asks what I’m doing with myself, then asks after Kat and Gary – the same questions she used to ask when Kat and I were in our twenties and she was desperate to know what was going on in her daughter’s life because Kat wouldn’t tell her. It’s a mum-thing, I think. I tell her that Gary might be about to buy a flat in Canary Wharf. Kat’s mum chuckles.
‘Katherine did all right for herself with that one, didn’t she? You wouldn’t have thought it back then, would you?’
I have to smile. ‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t stand him at first.’ She gives me a shrewd look. ‘I wasn’t the only one, either, I think.’
I never understood why, but Kat’s mum actually likes Gary now. Sure, he doesn’t prance around in that stupid coat any more, but he’s still the same Gary underneath.
‘Susan tells me the police arrested Declan,’ she says. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’
‘He didn’t do it,’ I say.
‘I remember you two at the Shelley. I took a picture of you with Kat. And then you all …’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Disappeared.’
I lean forward and rest my hand on hers. ‘He was with me, Mrs Clarke.’
‘And you were both with my Katherine in the park for half the night, if I remember it right, the three of you looking at the stars and talking about the meaning of life,’ she scoffs. ‘I remember that! Like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, you two, and what a right pair of liars you were. Teenagers. You always forget that we were that age once. Kat got the rocket of a lifetime, I can tell you. I imagine you got one from your mother, too.’ She almost laughs; distant memories that seemed so desperate at the time but now so utterly trivial. ‘Still, you both turned out all right, I suppose.’
‘A slap in the cereal bowl actually,’ I say, but Mrs Clarke only looks confused, so I guess Mum never talked about that. ‘You remember that night then?’
Mrs Clarke makes a face. ‘Only bits and pieces, I’m afraid.’
‘I wondered if you could tell me about Arty Robbins and what happened in the Shelley? I left with Declan after the speeches.’
Mrs Clarke shakes her head, and I can’t tell if there’s anything more to the name Arty Robbins than a distant haze of memory. If I’m right, they were having an affair before he disappeared, and maybe that was what Mum threw at Arty at the party that night, although Mrs Clarke never seemed more bothered than anyone else when he vanished. I suppose she didn’t know the real Arty Robbins any more than the rest of us did – not until after he was gone.
‘Mum says Arty attacked her.’
‘Oh yes, well, we all heard about that. Your dad was fuming. David overheard it all through an open window and had to rush outside before—’
‘Before …?’
‘You should ask David, love, not me. He was the one who saw it. He was even more worked up about it than your dad, I think. They were very close back then, all three of them.’
‘Afterwards … did you see Arty?’
She nods. ‘I took a picture of him with Vincent.’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think I saw him again after that. But, Nicky, I’ve already been through it all with the police. I’ve told them everything I remember.’
‘Mrs Clarke, do you know where Mum and Dave went, after it happened?’
‘You know you’re not fourteen any more. You can call me Chloe.’
‘Chloe.’ I force a smile. ‘Sorry. Old habits. So, did you see Mum and Dave?’
Mrs Clarke shifts a little. ‘All I really remember is having to run the place on my own for half the night. It got a bit frantic.’
‘What about Declan? Did you see him after he came back? It would be a little after midnight. Mrs Clarke, it’s really important.’
Her face scrunches up with the effort of trying to remember. ‘No, love. But I’m afraid that doesn’t mean very much. I don’t really remember anyone in particular.’
‘You said you were taking photographs. Official birthday photographer, wasn’t it?’
She smiles and nods.
‘I was wondering, did you have any photos from later? From after midnight? Ones that might show who was still there?’
‘I don’t know. The police took all—’