by Holly Seddon
TWENTY-TWO
SARAH|1994
Everything in Atlanta is huge. The supermarkets with shelves so high I get dizzy looking all the way up, cars that seat seven or eight people, towering offices. And the portions of food, my God. Burgers bigger than your head. Chicken and biscuits with jugloads of gravy. Even alligator steaks.
My favorite place to go is the Varsity, which claims to be the world’s biggest drive-in.
When we go to the Varsity, I always wonder what Robin would have. She’d probably go for the triple-stack bacon cheeseburger, because her eyes are always bigger than her belly. And she’d have Sprite and a fried peach pie.
At first, Robin and I talked on the phone every Sunday, and it would often be about food. Mum would perch awkwardly on the stairs and interject whenever I said anything she thought Dad might seize on as reason to take me back to England.
The calls are more like every other Sunday now. Our days don’t fit together—England is full of lunch before we’ve had breakfast—but it’s easier to find things to talk about when it’s been a bit longer.
“What did you have for lunch?” is how most of our calls start.
“Sandwiches,” Robin generally says. It’s enough for me. From that I can picture the kitchen table, the radio on the side sticky from the cooking oil in the air. I can picture Dad holding his tea with two hands, Robin and Callum doing impressions of whatever thing they’re obsessed with on TV. I can picture Hilary fluttering about, never really eating much.
“What did you have for breakfast?” Robin will ask.
“Pancakes with bacon and syrup, Froot Loops and freshly squeezed orange juice,” I’ll lie. It’s always toast, if it’s anything.
I speak to Dad after Robin. He tells me about the birds he’s seen in the garden or a joke he’d heard on the radio. He’ll ask about school, and I’ll tell him it’s okay. I tell him I have lots of friends, list the names of people who in reality either hate me or ignore me.
After the last call, I said goodbye, handed the phone to Mum and then crept upstairs to the bathroom to listen on the phone by the loo.
“You promised you’d send her over last holiday and I’m still waiting.” Dad’s voice always changes when he’s speaking to Mum.
“We’re not made of money, Jack.”
“He earns plenty and he doesn’t pay shit toward his own son, so the least he can do is buy Sarah a plane ticket home.”
“Oh you want to talk about contributing, do you? Well, how about you put your hand in your pocket, Jack.” Mum says Dad’s name like it’s an insult. “And Sarah’s home is here, by the way. You agreed to that.”
“We’re raising Robin and Callum, and every penny I earn goes toward them and this family. You know I don’t have plane money, Angie; that’s bang out of order, girl.”
I’d heard this argument so many times that they’ll never get past it on their own. A few nights ago when Drew came to tuck me in, I decided to try a new tactic.
“Look how long your hair’s getting,” he said, as he sat on the bed. “Shame your mum cuts hers off. You could be sisters.”
“Drew?” I said, but he’d already launched into his nighttime routine.
“Who’s my girl?” he asked.
“I am.” I smiled, despite myself.
“You’re my guardian angel,” he stressed, as he always does. “Don’t you forget it.”
“I am your girl,” I said carefully. “And I love being here. But I would really like to see my sister soon, just for a bit.” I’m always careful not to say that I miss my dad. It shakes loose ugly adjectives that I don’t like to hear. Drew had looked down, and for a moment I worried that I’d crossed a line. That I’d see his frequent flashes of angry lightning break into a full storm.
“You miss England?” he said.
“I miss my sister,” I reiterated, in case it was a trap.
“I was an only child,” he said, looking into the corner of the room. “I only ever had myself to rely on.” I worried that he’d launch into one of his questionable stories about the school of hard knocks and we wouldn’t talk about me visiting after all, but he sighed. “I’ll get you a plane ticket to see your sister,” he said. Before I could thank him, he added, “But I want one thing in return.”
“Anything,” I said, but I didn’t know what I could possibly have that he’d want.
“Come and sit on my lap and give me a big hug.”
This seemed fair. I threw back the covers and climbed onto his lap and wrapped my arms around him. He smelled the same way he always did. A mixture of sandalwood and whiskey and just a bit like the air freshener in his car. He held on to me, his scratchy face rubbing up against my softer one. I thought he might kiss my cheek, but he pushed my head down a little and kissed the top of my head, then lifted me off him and onto the sheet and left in a hurry.
The next morning, he told Mum he thought it was time I went to England for a visit. As he bustled out the door without looking at me, he handed her his gold card and told her to book me on a flight as soon as possible.
ROBIN|1994
Sarah is due to land at Heathrow tomorrow morning and Robin has been sorting out her bedroom for hours. There needs to be space to pull out the special bed that their dad made, and it’s still pretty hard for Robin to kick a path through the room.
Callum doesn’t need to tidy his room, but he’s done it anyway, “in solidarity.” He finished ages ago and is lying facedown on her bed, possibly asleep. He’s grown in the last few months. Uncurled. His socked toes touch the bed frame, and his head isn’t far off the other end. His height was only part of the reason that he’d been accepted and encouraged into the friendships and in-jokes of older boys at school. He’d almost never seemed young.
Robin is still small. Robin will always be small. She just shouts louder so no one can ignore her. Foghorn, Callum calls her.
“Are you going to help or what?” she shouts at Callum’s back, which rises and falls gently.
“Help with what?” he says with a laugh into her pillow, without looking up. “You’re making a good mess all by yourself.”
“Oh fuck off, Cal,” she huffs, but there’s a teary edge to it. He scrambles to sit, cocks his head to one side and surveys the scene.
“It’s not that bad,” he says. “Look, let’s get all the rubbish in the bin bags and then take them down to the bin, which’ll clear some space. Then we’ll put all your dirty clothes in the laundry bin—hang on, do you have a laundry bin?”
“Somewhere,” Robin says.
“Somewhere?” Callum says, unconvinced. “Okay, well, let’s just put them in a pile outside your door and we’ll deal with that later. All right?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Then we’ll have a bit of space to work with and we can put all these books and tapes away and then you can Hoover the floor.”
“Hoovering’s a bit much.”
“I don’t even know if you’re joking.”
She wasn’t.
They turn the radio up and work diligently. Every time Robin finds some torn-out music from a guitar magazine or some chords she’d jotted down on a scrap of paper, Callum slaps her hand away as she instinctively reaches for the worn neck of her guitar. “Later,” he laughs, and she groans but knows he’s right.
She barely sleeps that night, running through all the things to show her sister when she finally gets here. Robin’s been struggling a lot lately to sleep, thoughts of all the tomorrows and all the yesterdays clumping together and needing to be unpicked and sorted. Robin’s not a planner, she’s a doer, someone who lives in the moment and leaps off in tangents. But at night, her brain is so busy that she has to try to get some order in place. And there are so many questions too. Questions for Sarah, but also questions that maybe Robin should have asked a while ago. Questions for her dad, like, “How could you let Sarah go?” Questions for Callum, like, “Why aren’t you angry that your dad deserted you?” But in the morning, they get stuf
fed back into envelopes for other days.
Robin finally falls asleep in the early hours and wakes up to a cup of tea and an urgent shake of the shoulder from her dad.
“Wake up, sleepyhead, we need to go in a minute.”
She reaches to her floor to grope around for her Metallica T-shirt but comes up with nothing but a few strands of fluff. Ugh, why did she have to tidy her room so perfectly? She doesn’t know where anything is now.
They buckle up in the Rover: Callum and Robin in the back, Jack in the front, Radio 2 on the radio despite the groans from the cheap seats. Hilary stays at home to get the roast dinner cooking. They’d decided that was the most English meal they could make for the prodigal daughter.
When Sarah half-runs into the Arrivals hall, she’s pulling an expensive wheeled suitcase. Her hair is lighter and longer than when she left, her skin tanned. She’s grown taller, and there’s something about the way she moves that reminds Robin of a woman. Of their mother. Robin stays next to her dad until she can stand it no longer and then sprints at her sister, bowling into her and spinning her round.
Eventually embarrassment takes over and they grind to a halt.
“Hey,” Robin says.
“Hi.” Sarah smiles. Robin’s relieved that her sister doesn’t sound American. The girls walk back to Jack and Callum, and Sarah hugs her dad while he strokes her hair and rubs her arms. “Hello, girl,” he says, and his eyes are rimmed red, wet.
Sarah seems surprised to see Callum. This is a surprise in itself to Robin, who is so used to being a twosome with her stepbrother now that it didn’t occur to her not to bring him.
“Good to see you,” Callum says.
“And you,” Sarah says, and the formality suddenly makes them laugh.
“Come on, then,” Jack says quickly, “it costs a bloody packet to park here.”
On the drive home, they all talk over one another. It flows freer than by phone, and despite the tiredness from the flight, Sarah is as excited as Robin.
“How’s your mum?” Jack asks when they pull into Birch End, though both Robin and Sarah guess that he’s wanted to ask all along.
“She’s started referring to herself as a businesswoman,” Sarah mutters. They all pause for a moment and then burst out laughing.
“What?” Robin splutters. “Does she even have a job?”
“She’s selling Mary Kay cosmetics and she’s bought herself a trouser suit.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Robin says, ignoring the tut from her dad.
“Yep.” Sarah laughs. “Jesus Christ indeed.” Sarah never swears.
At least some things haven’t changed, thinks Robin, smiling to herself.
—
The night before Sarah is due to leave, suitcase stuffed with sweets to take to her new school friends (and there are so many, she hasn’t stopped bragging about them), Robin can’t find her sister. She isn’t in the bedroom or the bath. No one is in the kitchen, and only Hilary and Jack are watching TV.
“Where’s Sarah?” Robin asks impatiently.
“Oh”—they look at each other—“she’s gone to the pavilion with Callum. Didn’t they tell you?”
Robin marches out of the house, across the small lawn and out of their cul-de-sac. As she walks, hands in tight fists, she runs through all the reasons that it’s wholly unacceptable for them to do this to her. Sneaking around behind her back, leaving her out. Sarah’s here for only a week and she’s already her old bossy self. Thank goodness she’s leaving, if she’s going to be like this.
Robin turns in to the cricket field, the sound of the sprinkler bringing her out of her thoughts and into the present. As she approaches the white wood of the pavilion building, she squints to see if she can make out the duplicitous pair. Nothing—it’s abandoned. Maybe they lied to Hilary and Jack too and went somewhere else.
As Robin reaches the front of the pavilion, she can hear the sounds of urgent conversation. She rounds the building quietly, nursing her irritation, hoping to catch them talking. Maybe about her. As she pokes her head around the back—the place where she and Callum like to hang out, no less—she sees Sarah leaning against the wall and Callum standing in front of her with his hand on her arm.
“Are you sure?” he says. Sarah looks irritated; she purses her lips and tries to push his hand off her arm.
“Yes. I keep telling you yes. Just leave it, will you?”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay, that’s all.” Callum sounds upset; he keeps his hand where it is.
“Right,” Sarah says. “Well, I’m okay. And if he’s that awful, then you should be glad you don’t have to put up with him anymore and get to spend time with my dad instead.” Callum lets his hand fall from Sarah’s arm and turns around. He spots Robin just as she tries to jump out of view.
“What was that all about?” Robin asks them both as she rolls a cigarette in as nonchalant a way as she can manage. “And why did you go off without me?” Her fire has cooled to mild curiosity.
“Don’t worry about it,” Callum says.
Sarah stands awkwardly and eventually says, “I’m going back to finish packing.”
They let her go.
“What was that really about?” Robin asks, taking a bitter drag and coughing at the sharpness.
Callum sighs, shuffles his feet in the grass and grit.
“I just wanted to check she was okay. Living with my dad, I mean. I know what he’s like.”
“And?”
“And she thinks the sun shines out of him. She thinks he’s a great bloke, great dad, great husband, bloody god among men.”
“Really?” Robin pecks at her wet little roll-up.
“Yep. And you know what? Maybe he is. Maybe he actually is a great dad and a lovely bloke and whatever. And maybe the problem’s with me. Maybe I was so unbearable to live with that—”
“Pack it up, Cal,” Robin chides. “You know what you know. The guy’s a prick.”
“Maybe I just imagined the whole fucking thing,” he snorts, ignoring her. “Maybe everything bad just began and ended with me. Maybe I’m the problem.”
“Ah, enough, Callum,” Robin says, but he doesn’t look back as he starts the walk home.
TWENTY-THREE
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
I’m good at keeping secrets. When April and Evie, who run the B&B, ask me about myself, the cover story I’ve come up with is both banal and intricate. I wear it like a skin.
Yesterday I dressed in the smartest of my Surrey clothes and went into the most upmarket-looking real estate agent and said that my husband and I were considering a relocation. I wondered which roads and areas were the most exclusive. From what Robin said at Dad’s funeral, money isn’t a problem. I was told that the houses around the green and the side of Chorlton closest to Didsbury were my best bets. I spent the day scouring those roads, but unsurprisingly my sister didn’t emerge suddenly from the houses I happened to be walking past.
When I got back to my room, feet and back aching, I lay on the bed and thought about Twitter. About the unused account I found a few days ago that might, at a stretch, be Robin’s. I realize that I’ve been missing something very obvious: her bandmates. I met them once or twice and they should remember me.
I find them easily on Twitter on my phone and hastily set up an account to try to private message them but realize I can’t if they don’t “follow me,” and I can’t be public about who I am and where I am, just in case. So I’m stuck in a loop.
I could send an email to the record company, ask them to forward it to the band. But I’ve asked them to send messages to Robin in the past and it’s not got me anywhere. Besides, they probably get requests like that all the time and just ignore them.
In the end I take a wild stab. I tweet the same thing at both Alistair and Steve. “Please can I message you? It’s about Robin. I’m trying to find her. I’m her sister.” Given Jim doesn’t know about who I really am or who I’m related to, I figure it simply doesn’t mat
ter.
It’s a long shot, but it feels like I’ve done something at least, before dragging myself on another exhausting search around Chorlton tomorrow.
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
It’s the middle of the night and Robin had been asleep when she heard the shout. It came from the back of the house, and as she slid into consciousness, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a shard of a dream. Until it came again.
“Oi, you, get down!” a man was shouting, in a thick and raspy Manchester accent.
Robin sat up automatically and banged her head hard on the underside of her bed. With confusion rattling her sore skull, she scrambled out from under the bed and stood, heart thumping, in the center of her bedroom. Her thin duvet was wrapped around her, but her nakedness felt raw under shorts and a thin tank top.
Whether it was the bump to the head or the fear, Robin struggled to navigate the room in the dark and was too scared to turn on the light. So she stood still, sweat soaking into her duvet, scalp contracting and head throbbing.
“Get down from there!” the man’s reedy voice yelled outside. Robin dropped to her knees and crawled out through the door and into the hallway, sitting on the landing carpet, where the mellow light was always on.
“That’s right, clear off!” she heard the man call, stronger and less shaky than before. She leaned against the landing wall, straining to hear over the sound of her heartbeat.
All was quiet, but after a minute or two she heard a woman exclaim, “Oh Albert!”
Robin crept back into the bedroom and looked carefully through the gap in the curtain. At first, it was just a black soup, but then she heard a gate swing shut and could make out two figures heading slowly toward the apartment building, slipping into the patio doors of an apartment: Mr. and Mrs. Peacock.
Had someone really been scared off by a pair of old people? Or was the old man just losing his marbles? Robin had seen him shuffling around the garden, hunched over like he was looking for something. She’d seen his wife guiding him back inside, sitting him down and carefully taking his dew-wet slippers off.