by Holly Seddon
I stand there, staring up at the house. “Or you could come in?” she says cautiously. We don’t speak for a moment, but there’s no option really besides walking in.
Hilary doesn’t use as many words as Mum. Mum repeats herself, embellishes her own omnibus retelling, talks over people and uses three adjectives when one would do. Hilary sits, listens, leaves such a gap that you almost fill it with embarrassed supplementary small talk and eventually asks a small, precise question or makes a small, precise observation.
We sit in silence for several breaths until she says: “How do you really feel about going to America?”
It’s the “really” that does it and I start to cry.
“I know I have to go,” I eventually say, and she doesn’t correct me. “I just wish everything was simpler.”
She purses her lips like she’s chewing the remark I’ve just made, tasting it, and then nods. “Yes,” she says, “me too.”
We sit while I cry myself out. As I dry my eyes, almost sad that the tears have stopped, because the relief was so sweet, she says to me, “It’s important that you know how much your dad wanted you to stay here too.”
“Did he?” I blurt out angrily. “Because he didn’t even ask me if I’d like to.”
The pause grows, two breaths, three. “No, he didn’t. He didn’t ask you because the possible answers were too painful. If you said you didn’t want to stay with him, his heart would have broken. If you said you wanted to stay, and he knew your mother would fight for you and win, his heart would have broken.”
I open my mouth to speak, to protest, but there’s nothing to say, so I just let myself cry again. But it doesn’t offer the same relief as before.
Hilary insists on driving me home. She doesn’t question my stuffed rucksack but tells me I can come back anytime. It’s still my home. But it’s not. I let myself in around the back of the house I now live in. Mum and Drew are still in the kitchen looking at brochures for new homes in Atlanta.
“Have you been playing in the garden?” Mum asks, without looking up. I leave a Hilary-length pause but it’s wasted on them. “Yeah,” I say eventually. “I’ve been playing in the garden.”
“I love this breakfast island,” Mum says, pointing Drew’s attention to the shiny paper in her hand. I head to my room.
ROBIN|1992
The thought of Sarah leaving the country seemed too unreal. Robin just couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t picture Sarah on a plane, or using dollars or eating American food for tea while Robin would already be in bed.
Robin has never left the country. Some of the ritzier kids at school had gone to the Algarve or the Costa del Sol, but Dorset had been the Marshall family’s holiday destination, and anything outside of that was alien.
She’d heard of New York, where the ghosts and the ginormous Stay Puft Marshmallow Man live. She’d heard of Hollywood, where the films get made and all the celebrities live. And she’d heard of Washington, D.C., where President Bush lived, the bloke who liked war. She had not heard of Atlanta. She had not even heard of Georgia.
Robin didn’t want to go live in America, and she certainly didn’t want her sister to go to live in America. As much as she didn’t want to lose her twin to the big gobbling mouth of the States, it also cut her in a way she’d never admit to anyone that her mother hadn’t even asked her. All those years of feeling she wasn’t the favorite and her mum didn’t really like her, she’d actually assumed she was imagining it, because doesn’t everyone’s mum like them? But, no, she was spot-on. And her mother was going all the way to Atlanta, Georgia, to prove it.
“You can come to visit,” her mother had said, but it sounded more like a warning than an offer.
Although Drew had tried to dissuade them—“It will be stressful enough. It’s not a good idea”—they’d all gone to Heathrow to wave them off the following month. “Over my dead body,” Jack had said, glowering, “am I missing out on saying goodbye to my girl.”
When Jack, Hilary, Callum and Robin had arrived at the terminal just after six in the morning, Drew, Angela and Sarah had already checked in to their flight and were waiting to go through to security. Sarah’s face had no color in it. She gripped her new cabin bag—one that matched her mother’s new cabin bag—with white knuckles. A fanny pack on her hips burst with “sucky sweets” for the takeoff and landing.
The company was paying to fly them business class—something that didn’t mean anything to Robin or Sarah, as neither had flown before, but seemed to be more exciting than the move itself to their mum.
Every airport goodbye in films, Robin had thought, involved a last-minute plot twist. A declaration of love or a change of heart. Maybe her mum would change her mind. Maybe she’d move back in with her dad, and Sarah too! But one look at her mum’s face, the Christmas-morning glee, and it was obvious that this would not be like a film.
Her mum tried to hug Robin, while Drew patted Callum on the back and shook his hand, which was the strangest thing Robin had ever seen a dad do. Callum shrank back to his mum’s side afterward and they sat on a luggage trolley and waited while Drew went to buy a coffee and the Marshalls said goodbye. Sarah hugged her dad, and Robin hugged them both. At first, the early-morning strangeness and the adrenaline shot through them and the girls found themselves laughing, but it quickly turned into sobs. Howling sobs. Robin looked up at her mum—standing just to the side—and realized that she was sobbing just as hard, mascara running down her face in streaks and dripping from her jawline onto her new camel-colored mac. When Robin realized her mum didn’t care about the coat, she relented and reached for her. Angela—Angie—pasted herself against their bodies and wrapped her arms around both her daughters. Jack and Angela touched their hands together behind their girls, as they’d done so many times. They broke apart only when Drew came back with two miniature coffees in paper doll’s cups—“expressos,” Angie called them; “espressos,” Drew corrected.
Jack and Robin watched until Angie and Sarah had disappeared up the escalators to have their new cabin bags searched. Afterward, drained, they all got back in the car and went to a Little Chef for breakfast, which no one really ate.
And that was it. Robin’s sister really had gone.
NINETEEN
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
It would be easier if I could just call my sister. It would be a lot easier if I had her address. I know I had her mobile number once, but the last number I have for her doesn’t work and I stopped giving out my number when I moved in with Jim. Sim card removed, the phone from my life with Jim had been switched off and tucked in my bag, kept at all only for the hundreds of photos of Violet. The hundreds of photos I can’t stand to look at.
I got my new phone earlier, and the young man in the shop showed me how to block my number when I made calls, just in case.
Most of the clothes I’ve brought with me aren’t fit for my purpose, so I’ve had to get more. After picking up my new mobile, I visited a charity shop opposite the phone store. I left with two carrier bags full of loose-fitting clothes. I disappear into them. They’re baggy, dark, chosen for their price and ease of cleaning and air drying. They’ll last as long as my plan does.
I have worked out how many more nights I can stay in the B&B before I need to move on to the next stage of the plan. I run the plan over and over in my head, like a mantra, and it calms me as I fall asleep.
I felt better this morning, and I didn’t throw up. I’d slept almost through the night and woke up only to use the loo and check that my envelope of money was still safe.
I nibbled at the cold toast from the rack and asked one of the ladies who runs the place if I could have some scrambled eggs on toast “well cooked.” But then my stomach rumbled, so I caught her arm and she smiled unexpectedly when I said, “Actually, can I have a full English?”
It’s mid-afternoon now. If I were at home, at my old home, I’d just be putting Violet down for a nap, ready to tidy up the lunch things and prepare for dinner. With i
ngredients chopped and ready, in bowls like on TV cooking shows, I’d have sat at the computer and gone to the Mum Talk online community that I joined when I first found out about Violet. I’d scour the posts. I’d write down improved recipes for homemade Play-Doh or roll my eyes at the complaints about lazy husbands and boyfriends, interfering mothers-in-law, sibling fights. I’d memorize phrases, concerns, pleasantries. I’d say things out loud so they’d sound natural when I used them at the doctor’s surgery or the toddler group.
—
I try not to think about Violet. What she’s eating, what she’s wearing. Whether Jim has gone back to work, what he’s told his colleagues. I wonder if Jim has tried to pry information from Violet. What would she say? The truth, I think. We’ve always told her to tell the truth, even when it’s difficult.
She heard me when I visited, I know she heard my voice. Like me, they too will be quietly planning the next stage. Just like they planned the first. They have already outlined their case against me. Now they’re setting up her new life and routine so that even now, I would be the disruption to her status quo instead of defining her status quo.
Jim’s mother will be her new stay-at-home caregiver, no need for safe and sensible Jim to pause his safe and sensible job. They have money. The house is in Jim’s name.
I have no claim to any of it. The only piece of paper worth anything is Violet’s birth certificate, and that is in my old home, behind changed locks. As if that’s enough to keep me out. Not once I have backup. Not once I have my twin on my side again.
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
While Robin watched from the various windows, there were flurries of change in the Magpie apartment. After the boiling rows, it looked like Mrs. Magpie had finally left her husband and taken the little boy with her. She’d been back a few times briefly but never for long. Cautious visits after a life together. After they leave each time, Mr. Magpie remains. He’s stopped going to work as far as Robin can tell.
Robin battles not to feel sorry for this man, a man who beats women. She watches his husk in a dressing gown, sees him sitting on his son’s bed. Robin reminds herself that what she saw may have been the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. That it’s a good thing the family are apart. But the way his lights go out every time his son leaves is hard to ignore. Especially as Robin’s gift may well have played a part, and not in the way she’d intended. Robin hates infidelity, hates blurred lines, but violence trumps it all.
He didn’t ask to be her symbol of normality and goodness. But watching him clatter around his empty apartment, troubling each room in turn, never seeming to sleep, not dressing until late—if at all—also feels like an injury to her. Feels like he’s pulling her down even further with him.
Mr. Magpie, possible wife beater and God knows what else. And yet every day, still, “Good morning, Mr. Magpie.”
After the arguments in the kitchen, a heavy question mark sat over the Magpie family. While tuning out her own pressing concerns, quite literally in the case of the drumming on her door, Robin has found herself running over spools of old film in her head. Scenes witnessed in the Magpie house, newly soured from the recent activity. Robin has watched this family for over two years. Watched their son turn from a bundle in their arms to a scooting, laughing zip of color through the alleyway. Watched their special days, their milestones.
Robin has never shared any milestones as an adult, unless you include getting drunk with the band. Last Christmas, she’d surprised herself with a yearning for someone’s hand in hers, waking up smelling the sleepy scent of someone else’s skin. She’d watched the Magpies with a sharp and jealous edge.
Robin couldn’t risk it, of course. The closeness, becoming two-halves-of-one-whole, it was dangerous. Boyfriends required trust and leaps of faith. They could then take those trusting hearts and twist them into something new, something impossible to unpick.
Robin had decided many years ago never to take that risk. She’d rather rely on her own wits, sit in her own mess, than be dragged and coerced into someone else’s. She’d seen the damage that a boy—a man—could do.
But so many times she’d watched and thought what an attentive man Mr. Magpie was, what a good father. She’d marveled at how lucky Mrs. Magpie was and then at how vile she’d become. For months, Robin had seethed, wondering how Mrs. Magpie could cheat on a man like that. A man Robin doesn’t really know. A man who is standing in his kitchen right now with a large kitchen knife in his hand, testing the weight. He’s dropping it into his flat palm, holding it up to the light, staring at it like it offers some kind of solution.
TWENTY
SARAH|1993
We’ve been in Atlanta now for six months. The first three we lived in an “executive serviced apartment” paid for by the company, which meant that someone came in every day to empty the bins and there was a gym in the basement, where Mum spent a lot of time while Drew was at work. She’d met some of the other executives’ wives and was surprised to see that Americans weren’t all overweight, like we’d been raised to believe.
The whole of Atlanta feels like a building site. They’re preparing for the Olympics even though it’s still years away. And they’re building even bigger houses and even taller towers. Drew says it’s a “boom city,” which sounds dangerous. All in all, it feels a very long way from Birch End.
I liked the apartment we stayed in. I liked the huge fridge that had a special chute just for ice. I liked that we were on the sixteenth floor of the building—the highest I’d ever been—and when I opened the electric curtains with a special button, I could see out across a city that was glittering with glass, the cement mixers and diggers out of sight on the ground.
I was sad when we moved out but I was awestruck by our new house in Sandy Springs. It could have gobbled both my old houses and still had space. Three of the five bedrooms have their own bathroom. I have a wardrobe that you can walk into, and even after I’d hung all my clothes up, there were about eight feet of railing left empty.
The school that the cola company found for me is very small. It’s for students from around the world, and there are three other cola kids in my class of twelve.
I notice the other cola kids smirking at me when I get told off for misunderstanding things. At my old school, I’d known all the rules. I was like an encyclopedia. I showed prospective pupils around.
But here, here I get everything wrong.
I was due to fly to England two weeks ago. Apparently, March in Atlanta is usually chilly and very rainy. But the morning before I was due to leave—my second-ever flight and the first on my own—snow started to fall. It fell and fell and fell. We tried to set off for the airport early, Drew begrudgingly lined up to drive me, as Mum doesn’t like driving on the right. There were at least two feet of snow on our front garden—“yard,” as our neighbors call it. We tried to get to Drew’s car. I couldn’t drag my suitcase through the heaving drift of white.
We went back inside to watch the news and work out what to do. The newsman said that the airport had only four inches of snow on it but that the roads were “treacherous.” My flight was canceled. The power went out. When the electric came back on, we watched the National Guard on TV as they handed out bags of fruit to stranded motorists. By the end of the day, fifteen people had died in the snowstorm.
Mum said she’d rebook the flights for the next school holiday, which seems like a year away. I wanted to call my dad and let him know about the blizzard and that my flight was canceled, but the phone lines were down.
Robin answered when I finally got through.
“What the fuck happened?” she said. “Were you trapped in the snow?”
“Not exactly,” I said, too sad to match her agitation. “But it snowed really badly and the planes couldn’t take off.”
“I’m gutted,” she said.
“Me too,” I’d whispered. A sob lodged itself in my throat, which I tried to swallow back down as my mum came near the phone.
“Is that Englan
d?” she said. “Let me talk to them.” But I wrapped myself in the phone cord as I turned away, and she stepped back.
“I’d never seen Dad so excited,” Robin said, her voice calmer then. “We got to the airport early.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. For the weather, for the electricity, for Dad, for Robin, for me.
—
The day after the snowstorm, when Drew and Mum had to cancel their child-free plans, I expected to be in trouble. When Drew knocked on my bedroom door, I inched a little farther away from where I was sitting on my bed working on my algebra.
“If I hadn’t been here to take you to the airport,” he said, really seriously, “I’d have driven to work and got stuck. Maybe even killed.” I didn’t know what to say, but he warmed to the idea and grabbed my hands in his. “You’re my guardian angel, Sarah. My good-luck charm.”
He’s said it since, and I’ve started to like it. He’s finally noticed that I’m a good girl.
“I booked that flight,” Mum had huffed after one of his bouts of praise, but he’d ignored her.
Drew is tall, like Callum. Like me too. He’s broad and strong. He plays golf but no other sports, so I guess it’s just luck. Mum has to work at it. Drew has sandy hair and dark eyes. I guess he could have been my dad. Maybe if I let that happen, I’d be happier. Maybe he is my dad now.
At school, I’m Sarah Granger, but I’m not allowed to tell Robin or Dad, as “Jack’d blow his stack.” Americans are more traditional, Mum says, and everyone at Drew’s work thinks they’re already married. “We’re as good as,” she says, fixing Drew with a look I never saw her give Dad. More like the looks Dad used to give her. Longing.
Sarah Granger. A new name. A new dad. A new life.
ROBIN|1993
“Happy Sarah and Robin Day!”