Don't Close Your Eyes

by Holly Seddon

  It was an insurmountable, ironclad split.

  Robin had called Alistair the day after Callum and John’s breakup. “I think we’re just friends really, aren’t we?” He’d seen it coming, could have made the call himself. “We’ll keep playing though, yeah? Still do the band we talked about?”

  They’d agreed and met that evening to hand over each other’s stuff in the cricket field, to cement the plan. Made two scruffy little piles of tapes and borrowed hoodies on the stone steps as the daylight faded.

  As they’d talked their goodbyes, their plans for a new chapter as friends, they decided, well, just once more for luck. Behind the pavilion they’d pressed urgently against each other. His totally smooth face smelled of an aftershave he didn’t need, and the effort made Robin feel a tearfulness she’d never expected. They really would keep seeing each other as friends, she told herself; they really could start the band they’d talked about.

  As they put their clothes straight, laughing at the uncharacteristic passion, Robin felt an urge to get back home. To get back to Callum, who finally needed her again.

  She decided that she and Callum would stuff the latest guitar magazines up their sleeves at the petrol station, rip out the tablature and get playing. Just like they had through her upset years earlier, when Sarah didn’t make it to visit.

  And maybe they’d watch Labyrinth ten thousand times in a row, write nonsense poems, talk about writing a film but smoke too much weed to do anything but giggle. Same as they ever did. Sure, he’s upset now, she’d thought, but it will be okay soon. Back to normal.

  —

  It’s been two months since the split and Robin’s patience is running thin. Next to her on the sofa, Callum mashes at the PlayStation controller. He sighs and flings it away so the wire loops over the arm of the sofa like a noose.

  “Do you ever wish you could just press reset?” he says, huffing as he scoops up the tossed controller.

  “What, on this? You can. You’re doing all right though.” Robin’s tired of her stepbrother’s tantrums just because he’s bad at Resident Evil.

  “No, not on this. Like, whichever way you turn you just make it worse. Like maybe you’re just playing a bad go and there’s a better game you could be playing. One where you get all the coins or all the lights are green or you beat every baddie or—”

  “No,” Robin cuts him off.

  “Forget it, then.”

  Callum leaves the controller dangling, slides out of the living room door and into the kitchen. He sits at the new mahogany-look table with his tin of tobacco and fumbles together a very skinny roll-up, a few scratchy odds and sods of weed dotted through it.

  “That’s a bit pitiful,” Robin says as she follows him and starts to make a mug of tea.

  Callum’s hers again, but he’s battered and he’s bruised. And he’s very, very angry.

  TWENTY-NINE

  SARAH|PRESENT DAY

  I woke up to a notification on my phone, a type I’ve never had before. A direct message through Twitter from Alistair, Robin’s bandmate and onetime boyfriend.

  Message one: “Hi, Sarah, I remember you. Sorry to say I’ve not seen Robin in a couple of years. She did a bunk in Manchester.”

  Message two: “Her email address is robinmarshall762@gmail.com. Kick her arse for me, we need to get back to work. Good luck.”

  I try to reply to thank him, but he doesn’t follow me so I can’t. I don’t really care about that though, because I now know that my sister is in Manchester. Hilary was right, even if she was vague on the details. And even better, I have her email address now.

  I spend hours crafting an email on my phone. Stopping, starting, deleting. Going for a shower, starting again. There is so much to say, but that doesn’t mean any of it should be said, not yet.

  In the end, after throwing up and having to sit with my face out of the window, gulping in the syrupy city air, I go to an Internet café nearby and buy myself thirty minutes of computer time and a thin tea.

  I type out a new email:

  Hi, Robin, it’s Sarah. I got your email address from Alistair. I hope you don’t mind, but the number I had for you doesn’t work.

  I’m in Manchester for a bit and I’d love to meet up. It’s been too long.

  I delete the last line; it sounds judgmental. I can’t let her think I’m angry.

  I’m in Manchester for a bit and I’d love to meet up. We must have lots to catch up on. Please call me on 07654 227536 or reply to this and we can arrange something.

  Take care,

  Your sister, Sarah

  I take a deep breath, sip the last gritty glug of tea and press send.

  Seconds later I have a reply.

  “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently,” it begins. Before I can stop myself I pull the keyboard out of its socket and throw it on the ground, chucking the empty teacup after it.

  “Hey!” the bearded guy behind the till shouts, the most engaged he’s been in his surroundings since I’ve been here.

  I feel a cold rage in my chest and snarl at him, “It doesn’t work properly.”

  I troop back to the B&B. It wasn’t a big hope but it’s gone anyway. For one brief moment I’d felt a tiny thread was connecting me to my sister, wriggling its way down the streets and around the parks, tying us together so that I could tug it and find her. But that string’s been cut.

  ROBIN|PRESENT DAY

  Robin has not slept a whole night since the man with heavy boots tried to shove his way into her sanctuary. Instead, she lies sweating, whispering over and over to herself, “Don’t close your eyes.” With every extended blink, she slaps herself awake. Better to stay awake than be that vulnerable again.

  She takes a flask of coffee upstairs each night, but despite her best efforts, she always falls into a restless sleep before morning.

  Tonight, she even chewed some Pro-Plus energy tablets she found in her medicine cabinet, a relic of her late nights with the band. In those days, her form of nightcap was often a frenzied and reckless dawn fuck with one of the hangers-on. The very thought is unimaginable now.

  Despite the extra caffeine, she was still defeated and had started to nod off sitting upright on the bed. But now she’s awake again. She doesn’t know why.

  The clock says it’s just gone three in the morning, and there’s no light outside. And then she hears it.

  Scratch, scratch.

  It’s a minute sound but it carries sharply through the blackness.

  Scratch, scratch.

  Rattle, rattle.

  The sounds intensify and it becomes clear where they’re coming from. Outside her bedroom window. Right outside.

  Robin freezes.

  The noises are so close and sharp that they fill the room like an echo chamber.

  Fight or flight.

  Robin is rooted to the spot, trying to catch hold of the thread of thought that will tell her what to do. She hears the movement of feet on the tiled roof below. The attic bedroom is set farther back than the first two floors, which jut out in a dogleg shape. Although it’s on the top floor, it’s the easiest window to reach. Despite the high roof, several cats have got up there before and yowled unsuccessfully to be let in.

  She’s not imagining this. She’s not been imagining any of it.

  Fight or flight.

  There’s no yowling. The sounds are deeper than a cat’s paws on the tiles, heavier. Robin can make out the sound of distinct footsteps as they angle themselves and maneuver around. She thinks about that heavy thick boot in her doorway, the rage that he threw at her door, the animal force she pushed back with. She was still spent from it, spent from days without proper sleep. But was he back for more already?

  Fight or flight.

  Her phone is charging downstairs, but the thought of turning her back for even a moment, let alone making her way downstairs unprotected, terrifies her. Robin stays deadly still, frozen with the thought of his hands on her throat, her mouth clamped shut.
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  Up here, far from the street below, no one would hear her scream.

  Think, think. She tries to quiet the cold blood rushing through her ears, tries to review her options. She has only two, and neither feels safe: try to slip out of the room and go downstairs to call the police—leaving the window unguarded until they arrive—or try to frighten him off. Threaten a racket.

  She craves flight, but fight is the only real option.

  Before she can talk herself out of it, Robin throws on the light and pulls the curtains back. All she can see is a slab of black night. She yells at the top of her voice, “Get the fuck away from me or I’ll fucking kill you!” She breathes hard, her knees knocking into each other, hands pouring with sweat. One second, two, three.

  Suddenly a shape looms at the window and she leaps back. Dark clothes, pale skin and black holes for eyes. A monstrous snapshot. The footsteps thump away; the old drainpipe groans and clangs as he climbs down it much faster than he’d climbed up.

  She waits a few moments but has to check if he’s really gone. She can make out the flats opposite, a lemony light still coming from the Watkinses’ place but with no sign of Henry. The woman with the baby is shaking a bottle in her kitchen, swaying even without her baby in her arms. She pads away into the shadows. All this normality hangs like stage furniture, unreal to her.

  Her small garden is silent. It’s filled with black shapes that blend into the dark blue of the night. Wheelie bins, walls, the kitchen roof. There’s nothing there. As Robin casts an eye along the alleyway, she sees a blur of movement as someone runs along and back out onto the road at the far right. He’s gone. Thank God he chose flight. This time.

  THIRTY

  ROBIN|1998

  Callum was shy about asking her, scuffing the toe of his trainer along the skirting board and staring at it, avoiding her eye. Robin pretended not to notice but her chest swelled with pride. The thrill of the upper hand.

  “So would you?”

  “Would I what?” she’d said, affecting a distracted tone as she lay ham carefully onto the bed of cheese, ready to layer another sprinkle of sharp cheddar on top.

  “Like to meet him? Rez? My…” He trailed off, did a half smile that made him look like a Levi’s ad.

  “Your booyyy-friennnddd!” Robin teased, dragging the word out like a nursery rhyme and prodding his narrow chest with one finger. He giggled, just a half sound, easy to miss.

  “Yeah,” he said, standing his six-foot frame upright and then booming like a town crier, “my boyfriend!” They laughed; she didn’t say anything for a moment and he understood. It was a delicate stage, applying the top slice of bread that had been buttered on the outside (the trick to perfect crust) and then closing the sandwich-toaster lid.

  “Yes,” she said, as the lid snapped shut and the butter immediately sizzled under the hood. “Of course I want to meet your booyyy-friennnddd!” He didn’t giggle then, just a small smile, dropped quickly.

  “I really like him,” he’d said, his voice soft and low as ever.

  “Good. Then I’m sure I will too. Right?”

  “Right.”

  Callum had been so crushed by the breakup with John, so hollowed out, that to see him even half filled up was a relief. But he wasn’t the same. There were tatters at the edges. A slightly frayed temper. A quickness with his wit that, for the first time in their lives, could turn to cruelty. Which then turned to guilt. And the crushing fear of nature over nurture.

  Callum was her control group. He was true north. Robin had always felt safe pushing her own limits, because she could watch him to see the cutoff.

  They’d smoked their first cigarette together, a dried-up John Player Special from a crunched-up pack that Jack had accidentally sat on and chucked to one side in his garage. They’d winced and coughed, eyes streaming.

  “I don’t like it,” Robin said, turning down the corners of her mouth and then taking another, more tentative drag.

  “Me either.” Callum had grimaced, pecking at the cigarette like a little bird.

  They drank their first drink together. A bottle of Babycham with Christmas dinner, when they were both thirteen. Robin’s cheeks had gone bright red; Callum’s ears, the same. “It’s divine!” they’d joked, “simply spiffing!” There is a photo of that meal somewhere, taken by Hilary. Jack looking at the camera with concern, paper hat on his head. Robin and Callum laughing hysterically, food falling out of their mouths and hot pink faces.

  First cigarette, first drink, first joint, first little pile of dust in a small wrapper.

  Before John, Callum always used to say stop at just the point Robin was secretly hoping he would. Allowing her to sigh and roll her eyes and call him a “big girl” or a “square,” and silently thank him in her head. Then the second phase of the night would kick in. Robin’s paranoid phase.

  “Check my pupils though.”

  “You’re fine, Robin.”

  “My heart’s racing too fast, Cal.”

  A begrudging but gentle finger on the wrist, silent timing, confirmation. “You’re fine, you just need to sleep it off.”

  “I can’t sleep! I shouldn’t have done it! It’s getting worse. Why are your eyes all right? Cal? Why are your eyes all right—did you just pretend to bomb it?”

  “Enough, Rob.”

  The tears. “Why are you snapping at me?”

  She was a nightmare on whatever she took—but the more chemical, the worse it was. Callum seemed to be able to handle it all; his height maybe, or his natural calm, just absorbing and dissolving anything foreign that he put into his body. He’d be giggly to her wasted, chatty to her rushing, irritated to her wildly paranoid.

  But after John, he’d not had the same control. Going over his own line more and more. Noisy and aggressive or weepy and heavy, leaning his body on things and needing to be pulled up the stairs or wrestled into bed. As was her way, Hilary turned a blind eye, and Jack was generally in a deep throaty sleep by this point.

  Robin knew he was seeing someone again. He’d been going out more. He’d come home wasted just as often—maybe even more—but seemed happier despite that. And this someone, she now knew, was a boy called Rez. Rez lived in Reading, he wasn’t at school and Callum was obsessed with him. That’s all she knew.

  Callum invited Rez to the house when Hilary and Jack were out, so Robin could meet him first. That was the plan, and yet at the last moment, Callum had gripped Robin’s arm and whispered, “Pretend we didn’t plan this, okay? You just happen to be here, yeah? I feel a bit childish.”

  “Sure,” she’d said, taken aback.

  The doorbell rang, and she saw a dark shape blurred through the glass.

  “I’ll get it!” Robin sang, ignoring Callum’s “No, wait, I’m coming.”

  She swung the door open with a big, jokey smile on her face.

  “All right?” Rez said.

  “Oh,” Robin said, standing and staring. She hadn’t meant to. She really hadn’t meant to react that way. She’d expected to see someone who looked a lot like Callum, or like John, a smooth-faced, twinkly-eyed, slightly blushing lad. The man before her looked more like a crow than a smooth-skinned teenager.

  “Robin,” Callum said behind her, his voice dipping in the middle.

  “I’m, no, like,” Robin started, and Rez looked over her head to Callum, who beckoned him in.

  “Sorry…I…hi, I’m Robin,” she said, as Rez squeezed past her and nudged up next to Callum.

  “Hi, Robin,” Rez said. He had shoulder-length dark hair and spiky features. His eyes were alert, flickering all around the hallway, taking everything in. There wasn’t much to see: a small table with the phone on it, a shelf above holding the Yellow Pages and the BT Telephone Book. Next to the stairs, a small hallway led to the living room and then the kitchen after that. A coatrack was weighed down with increasingly large coats that billowed out into the hall. Rez fought his way through after Callum. Robin trailed behind, stooping to pick up a denim jacket that h
ad slumped to the floor.

  “Tea?” she asked the room.

  “Rez drinks coffee,” Callum answered, as if she should know that.

  —

  “It didn’t go well,” Robin told Sarah on the phone the next day. Callum used to stick around for the Sunday phone calls, sometimes he’d say hello. Not today. He’d been at Rez’s since the incident yesterday.

  “What did you do?” Sarah asked.

  “Who says I did anything?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Well, it wasn’t…yeah, I did. But honestly, Sarah, you should see him. He looks like he works at the fairground. He’s grim. He’s older than Cal but he’s a total dropout. He smokes way too much puff—he reeks of it. And there’s just nothing to him, y’know? Nothing special. And Cal’s…Cal’s special. He deserves someone special.” Robin was infuriated that she felt so tearful.

  “You sure you’re not just jealous?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh fuck off!” Robin spat back. “Rez is a total piece of shit and I’m looking out for my brother. How fucking dare you?” She slammed the phone down on her sister, even though Sarah called them and had yet to speak to their dad.

  Robin spun around to storm into the kitchen and saw Callum standing in the doorway.

  “I didn’t think you were home,” she said quietly.

  “Clearly.” He pushed past the coats, dropping a few, and then elbowed her out of the way as he ran up the stairs.

  “I didn’t know!” she shouted after him.

  “That’s not the point,” he snapped, slamming his bedroom door and turning music straight on. “From Despair to Where,” by Manic Street Preachers.

  “Bit fucking obvious, Cal!” she shouted before she could stop herself.

  Next to her, the phone rang. It would be her sister again. Robin wasn’t ready to accept she’d overreacted and taken it out on the wrong person. Instead, she picked it up and, before Sarah could say a word, spat, “I’ll get Dad.”