by Holly Seddon
Now Robin’s phone was unplugged, her number ex-directory. Her new mobile number wasn’t listed anywhere. It dawned on Robin that her stepmother had no real way of getting in touch. For a brief moment, Robin’s finger hovered over the home number on her mobile, unchanged for however many other mobile phones preceded this one.
Her finger stayed aloft. She wanted to reassure Hilary, to be reassured that her stepmother was okay, healthy, living a rich and full life. Wasn’t dead. But the first question Hilary would ask is “How are you?” and the very thought of trying to answer that pushed Robin’s phone straight back in her pocket.
How am I? Fuck no. Robin is riddled with fear, coated in sweat, sleep-deprived and aching. There’s nowhere she can feel safe anymore.
She sits at the top of the stairs, phone in hand, facing the front door. It’s going to come; she knows it’s going to come.
Knock knock. The fist cracks onto the wood with an angry force. If it really was him up there on her roof the other night, he was undeterred by her screaming confrontation. The door heaves and shakes on its hinges.
Another five days before the security people come. Another four nights fighting sleep.
The knocks are faster now. And lower, like some are actually kicks from a heavy boot. A boot imprinted in her memory. The door creaks and groans but stays firm, and eventually the noise ends.
THIRTY-TWO
SARAH|1998
I don’t remember going to bed, but I wake up just in time to stagger into my bathroom to throw up. A rush of sour bile surges from my body, and I buck and buck until it’s all out. A tangy sweetness in the air revolts me.
I splash my face with water and try to brush my teeth, but as soon as the bristles accidentally touch my tongue, I’m sick again.
Eventually, empty and aching, I tread lightly downstairs for a glass of water and some Tylenol. There’s no one in; I see the clock says ten o’clock and I see the blinking light of the answer phone.
Graduation.
The realization of what I’ve missed tumbles away to nothing as the memory of last night looms larger. I pull open the dishwasher to get myself a glass for water. Someone filled it and put it on last night, because the two glasses are side by side on the top rack.
I don’t know what time my mother got home. She spends hours doing classes and then floating in the Jacuzzi. I don’t know who cleared away the drinks—I only hope it was Drew. A memory of his big hands bursts into my head and I throw up in the sink and blast it away as fast as I can.
I stand by the phone for a long while, my eyes staring at the blinking light.
It’s just gone three in the afternoon in Birch End. The time difference no longer a calculation, just absorbed knowledge after years. I imagine picking up the handset and dialing. Dad would be at work, oblivious and whistling. Hilary would probably answer. Would she know from my voice?
I imagine telling Robin, trying to find the words. I imagine Robin’s disgust and rage traveling up the phone cable. I imagine her telling me to leave, to come home, to kick him in the nuts. I imagine her defensive of me, telling me without words that she loves me, that there’s somewhere else I can go.
But then…it might not work that way. How easily she can cut the strings between us, her defensiveness over Callum more vital to her than our twin hearts beating together. It’s been weeks since we spoke, and she’s made no effort to apologize for the way she acted when I asked a genuine, caring question.
I feel my stomach lurch again, imagine her telling me, “Maybe this is what you wanted,” like she says about America when she’s angry. “You love America. You think you’re too good for England.”
I don’t play the answering-machine message or make the call. I go up and lie on my bed, sipping water and prodding the memories from every angle to try to make them right, make them smaller and fold them away.
By the afternoon, my sickness has dulled to a delicate stomach, and my headache is a constant fuzz. I make my slow way downstairs, ready to attempt to eat something. Drew and Mum are at the kitchen table. Neither one of them mentions my missed graduation ceremony. They seem to have made up. My mother has turned her disapproval to the manner of the sacking and has joined in the positive spin that Drew has given it.
“You look peaky,” she says to me as I lean on the kitchen wall and avoid looking at Drew.
“You should go to bed,” Drew says sternly.
“Hang on though,” Mum says. “We should tell her what’s happening first.”
I don’t care, I don’t care, I just want to shove my head under the pillow and crunch my eyes shut and hope I see something different when I do. I don’t want to be in the room with him, his body, his hands, his face, his smell, his nonchalance.
She tells me they’ve seen a realtor, that they can make a profit on this house and “flip it” pretty quickly. We’re going to move back to the UK, live somewhere “nice and bijou” while waiting for this house to sell and for the tenants in Birch End to find somewhere.
“And you can go to uni there, and we’ll be near Robin again.”
“Great.” I manage a small smile, still avoiding eye contact. My belly is emptier than it’s ever been and it gurgles loudly. I can’t face food after all. “I need to lie down.”
As I walk upstairs, I hear my mum ask Drew what happened last night. I hear her mention the whiskey, the glasses. She must know. She must know and has folded it down like origami and slotted it away. Choosing a new “bijou” house in England instead. Or maybe she just thinks that what happened is okay. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to think too. Who the hell is left for me to ask what I should think now?
ROBIN|1998
It’s after ten, but Robin can hear the raised voices as she approaches the house. Her exhilaration from hours of frenzied band practice gives way to dread as she turns her key.
“You can’t just do nothing, Callum, that’s not the way the world works,” her dad’s saying.
“I’ve got ambitions,” Callum’s saying, in his soft voice. “You’re talking like I want to go on the dole for the rest of my life. I just don’t see the point in going to university.”
“Fine,” Hilary says, “we don’t mind that. But you need to do something.”
“What’s Robin doing?” Callum huffs.
“She’s got the band—” Jack says, and Callum hoots with sarcastic laughter.
“That’s not a job! That’s a hobby. I play guitar too. Why doesn’t that count?”
“It’s kind of a job,” Hilary says. “The band have earned a bit of money. They’ve played a couple of concerts.”
“Weddings,” Callum says defiantly. “And pubs.”
“Where have you played?” Jack asks, as Hilary tries to stop him.
“Well, nowhere, obviously, because I’m just a gigantic disappointment.” A chair scrapes and Callum appears in the hall, goes to push past Robin but stops. They’re toe-to-toe. She reaches up and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Y’all right?”
They’ve danced around each other ever since the fallout over Rez. Sliding in and out of rooms without eye contact, polite nods at dinner, bolting meals fast and without fuss. More often than not, Callum leaves soon after, a car waiting for him outside, driven by Rez or one of his scabby entourage. “He can’t exactly come in, can he?” Callum snapped at Hilary a few days ago. “Robin made it very clear he wasn’t welcome.”
Callum breathes in hard but lets it go again. “Yeah,” he says, chewing the inside of his mouth and dropping his head onto her shoulder. “Just a bit fucked off.”
It’s the longest they’ve spoken in weeks.
“Want to play guitar?” Robin says, her face serious and hopeful. “I can show you what I’ve been working on.”
He pauses. “Okay, go on, then.”
They troop upstairs. Robin heaves her Epiphone SG off her shoulder and props it in the corner, picks up her old acoustic and sits down. Its belly is covered in stickers, whited-out band names and symbols
scratched and flaking. She runs her fingers over them, blurred memories of summer days spent carefully painting them on together.
“So,” she says, putting her callused fingers on the strings and looking at Callum. “This is something I’ve been working on, but the bridge isn’t right. You wanna help?”
“Sure,” he says, lays himself down on his belly to listen. Within a few chords, he’s asleep.
Robin wakes up first the next morning, still wearing her clothes and arm sore from being cricked around a guitar neck all night. She goes downstairs to find Hilary at the kitchen table, neat stacks of invoices and receipts, a crunchy thick calculator and a pot of tea in front of her.
“Hey,” Robin says.
“Hi.” Hilary slides her thick bookkeeping glasses from her nose and shakes her hair a little behind her. “Want some tea?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She waits a beat but can’t help but interfere. “Hilary, I’m really worried about Cal,” Robin says. “And I don’t want to be a grass, but if I don’t say something, I’ll regret it.”
“What’s going on?” Hilary frowns.
“He’s just not himself, you know? All he does is hang out with Rez and smoke weed and drink. He’s got this amazing brain and he’s doing nothing with it.”
“You’re both eighteen, Robin. Even I’d had the odd joint at your age, and I don’t want to clip his wings and control him like his father did.”
“But he’s not just experimenting, he’s drifting miserably along. And he’s choosing to spend time with Rez over any of us. He’s drifting away from us.”
Hilary takes a deep breath and pours them both another cup of tea.
“Maybe you’re right, and I don’t like it either. But if I start putting my foot down, he’s going to bolt.” She thought for a moment. “Here’s what I think we should do….”
Robin hadn’t liked the idea, but Hilary had invited Rez over for Sunday lunch anyway. Callum had agreed but wanted assurances that no one would “grill him.”
“I just want to meet the person you’re spending so much time with, love,” Hilary had said. “If he’s special to you?”
Callum had looked down at his feet, shuffled about. “Yeah, he is.”
“Well then,” she’d said.
“Well then,” he’d answered.
Rez had arrived dead on time at 1:00 P.M. that Sunday. He had some garage flowers for Hilary and a bottle of Bell’s whiskey for Jack. “Where d’ya steal that from?” Robin asked, and Rez had frowned. “Robin!” Callum snapped. “I was only joking,” she’d sighed, blushing and angry about it.
Rez had looked so strange there, sitting at the table in a shirt and trousers that must have been borrowed from someone bigger.
Callum had given him encouraging smiles when he thought no one was looking.
Rez had his greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail and smelled like he might have got aftershave on. Bad aftershave, Robin had thought, probably bought from some dodgy guy in the pub. Or stolen.
“So,” Hilary had said as she loaded the plates with peas, “are you at university, Rez?”
Callum had coughed.
“I’m working, actually, Mrs. Marshall.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack had asked. “What do you do, Rex?”
“It’s Rez, Dad,” Robin had prompted, trying to show Callum she was on his side, but he glowered at her.
“What do you do, son?” Jack asked.
“I’m a welder.”
“Ah.” Jack looked pleased. “It’s a good line of work, that,” Jack said. “I used to know a guy who made a killing welding, did it industrially. George whassisname. Wato was it, Hilary?”
“No idea, Jack.”
“George…George something. Greek guy. Do you know him?”
“No.” Rez had shrugged and smiled a bit. His sharp little teeth flashing.
“Good bloke, he is. You ever meet a Greek George on a job, tell him Jack the gardener says hi.”
“I’ll do that,” Rez said, swallowing a big forkful of meat and veg. The gravy dripped a little down his big shirt and Callum dabbed it off with a napkin, while Robin smirked before she could stop herself. She saw Callum’s eyes narrow.
“You got something to say?” he asked.
“Me?” Robin said, opening her eyes wide.
“Yes, Robin, you,” he said flatly.
“No, Callum, there’s really nothing for me to say. Is there.”
“Well, I have something to say,” he said, more softly, turning away from Robin and looking to his mum. “Well, we both do.”
Rez had carried on chewing, looking at his plate as Callum said, “I got a job.”
“Oh that’s great news,” Hilary said, smiling and nudging Jack.
“Great news,” Jack repeated.
“Shifts in a call center in Reading. Four days on, four days off. Taking calls from the shopping channel.”
“Telesales?” Hilary had said, trying to disguise her disappointment.
“It’s just a start, Mum. It’s something to pay the rent while I work out what I really want to do.”
“Rent?” Jack had snorted a little. “When have you ever paid rent, son?”
“We don’t want your money, Cal,” Hilary added.
“Well, here’s the thing.” He spread his long fingers on the table, next to his abandoned cutlery. “The job’s in Reading. And Rez is in Reading. So we thought…Well, it makes sense really, since Rez has the space—”
“Oh no,” Hilary said. Callum flashed a look at Rez, then back at his mum, who had stood up to hug him from behind. He stood up and hugged her back, wrapping his long arms around her narrow shoulders.
“It’s just down the road, Mum. I spend most of my time there anyway.”
Robin felt sick. “How are you going to afford rent and all that shit you smoke and shove down your throat.”
“I’ll miss you too, Robin,” he said, and his voice broke and took the wind out of her.
“Are you really going?” she gasped, trying to keep her eyes dry.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I don’t want you to,” she croaked.
“I know.”
When the meal was over, Rez shook Jack’s hand and kissed Hilary’s cheek. He pushed past Robin without saying a word and went to wait in the car.
Robin and Callum had hugged properly then. No sniping, no words, locked tightly together for the first time.
He came back for his stuff the next day.
As Rez’s car bumped and banged down the road, loaded with Callum and his clothes, books and music, Jack held a sobbing Hilary. Robin climbed back up the stairs, angry at her own tears, and kicked her way into her bedroom. There she found a shoe box of demo tapes and half-finished lyrics on her bed, and his acoustic guitar.
THIRTY-THREE
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
Number 68 George Mews isn’t a very impressive house for a rock star.
The windows are grimy and all the curtains are closed. It dawns on me that Robin may have lived here only for a short time before moving on, not bothering to tell Hilary that she’d left the city. I knock but there’s no reply. I listen at the door but can’t hear anything. Even if I did hear movement, it might not be Robin. Maybe she was never even here.
I feel like I’m being watched. Probably because I’m behaving strangely and so I expect everyone around to notice that, but when I look, I can’t see anyone paying me the slightest attention. I hover on the step and look across the green. A few dog walkers, some teenagers sitting on the grass drinking Coke. I think I see a tall figure farther away in the shade of the trees, but the shadows make it hard to see clearly. A figure that makes me shiver. The shape of a long-lost ghost.
It’s far more likely to be a drug dealer or someone waiting for a secret assignation with a forbidden love. For all I know, it’s one of the guys from the Spice Lounge, laughing at me.
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
Today is a day like yesterday and the day before. Like last week
too. But it feels different. It is different. At eight-thirty on the dot, a man called Kevin from the security company is going to knock on her door, be invited inside, and lock her house up like Fort Knox.
She’d still be living in a box, but it would be a safer box. A small, invisible thread would link her to people whose sole job it was to keep her safe. Alarms with automatic connections to security guards, panic buttons, military-grade locks and chains. Finally, she wouldn’t be alone and vulnerable to whoever was targeting her.
She’d woken up about seven and scrambled out from under her bed, where she’d hopefully slept for the last time. She’d had a cup of tea while leaning against the kitchen wall and then made another, followed by a protein smoothie that made her gag.
She hovered in the kitchen for a while, scrolling through the workout apps on her phone. When her smoothie had gone down enough, she went up to the bathroom to brush her teeth and started taking her daily steps from there.
She’d done only three laps of the house when she paused in the gym room, glancing across at the backs of the flats. The old lady was washing up but she wasn’t looking in Robin’s direction. The new guy was standing in his patio door with a mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He was rocking slightly on his heels and misjudged it, needing to correct himself or he would have fallen on his arse.
Robin moved to Henry Watkins. He’d been up late. She’d seen a light on in his son’s room when she’d gone to the loo in the night, had seen the shape of him in there, as he often was. Had shaken her head and looked away.
Now he’s in his son’s window. He’s not looking her way and appears to be sitting down. Perching, Robin thinks, on the small chair with its miniature table. The one they’d bought for the boy not so long ago and where Robin had seen him doing drawings and making LEGO buildings.
Henry’s profile faces the window, his gray streak more prominent than ever now that his hair is longer. He looks at once wild and caged.