by Holly Seddon
The letter is two-thirds down, amongst the other paperwork, old rental agreements, guarantees. She touches it, the lined paper worn and soft like old cotton. The folds are still in place from the night she found it and took it home. She doesn’t need to read it; it’s scorched through her.
“Here,” she says to Rez as she walks slowly back into the living room.
“Is this…?” he asks, breathing hard again.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay?”
He opens it carefully using the tips of his fingers and sits back in shock. “It’s been so long since I saw his handwriting,” he says, to no one in particular.
Robin takes a deep breath and looks at Sarah, while Rez stares at the paper in his hands.
“He says it wasn’t my fault,” Rez says, “but you…He says it was his idea to steal the stuff, but that’s not true. The minute he mentioned his mum’s jewelry I started to think a certain way. We were always broke and it was just sitting there. I dunno who finally said it but it was not solely his idea.”
Rez is wiping his eyes with his right hand, holding the note away with his left.
“He says he pushed Sarah,” Rez reads, looking up in confusion. “But he didn’t. No one did. She fell. You fell, didn’t you?” he says to Sarah.
“I still don’t know,” Sarah says, quietly and emphatically.
“Poor Cal,” Rez says. “And you’ve had this the whole time?”
Robin hangs her head. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe you should have it now. I’m sorry, for that part at least. I only wanted to do right by him.”
“You might not believe this, Robin, but that’s all I wanted to do too.”
—
He left, cradling the note like a newborn. It was a strangely flat feeling after weeks of anticipation and fear, years of mutual loathing.
Robin knew she’d been blinkered, knew she’d laid everything at Rez’s feet. Knew it wasn’t fair, but it had felt fair. She hadn’t known her dad did the same.
And she believed Rez. Believed he wouldn’t come back. Believed the anger and grief he’d carried around had boiled over in his frenzies at the door, even to scaling her roof to peer at her world. It wasn’t okay, it wasn’t normal, but who was she to judge normal reactions?
As the front door clicked back into its frame, the two sisters hugged wordlessly. Too many words had come out already that they didn’t have the energy to pick up and tidy away. So they didn’t.
FORTY
SARAH|1998
Nobody else has ever seen that letter. Just Robin. She won’t let me read it, has just given me a patchy summary that I don’t believe. And no one else knows it exists. Not Hilary, not Dad and not the police. Robin carries it with her, clutching it to her in bed as she cries silently every night. I watch her through a crack in the door and creep away, my own grief stealing my tongue.
Robin plans to speak at the inquest, whenever it is arranged. She plans to tell the panel of strangers that her stepbrother had been led astray by Rez, his resistance low because of the brutality and rejection from his father, Drew Granger.
Drew and Mum came around the day after Callum ended his life. They sat on the edge of the sofa in silence, across from a half-conscious Hilary, who had been given something, and Dad, who was silent, still shivering in shock.
Nobody knew what to say and everyone felt responsible. Only some of them should have, but that’s not the way it works.
Robin had refused to come out of her room to see them, and Mum sent Drew to the car while she went up to speak to my sister. I expected her to reappear seconds later, but Mum was gone a little while. Perhaps Robin was desperate for comfort, while Mum still didn’t know that I’d loved and lost, that I needed comfort and couldn’t possibly seek it from her. She must have known what happened that night in Atlanta, and she just left me to hide it and deal with it all by myself. If she’d known the outcome, the loss, she’d probably just be relieved. The surface would still look the same. And isn’t that what matters?
ROBIN|1998
They all nursed their grief in different ways. Hilary had emerged from the sedation she’d been given and trailed like a ghost around the house. She would go into the garage and sit amongst the spiders and the dust, leaning against the bin bags full of stuff Callum had left behind. Unable to open or touch inside the sacks.
She spent hours in the garden. Dug holes in it for no reason, filled them up again. Jack just watched from the window, made her cups of tea that went cold as she drove her shovel deeper into the lawn, scarf slipping from her hair.
Everything Callum had ever touched became an artifact. A crisp old toothbrush was wrapped in tissue paper to preserve it. There was a bag of laundry he’d never picked up, cleaned of his scent by the machine. Hilary would hug the clothes and take deep sniffs, throwing them across the room because they smelled of detergent and nothing more, then gather them all up, mumbling apologies into them.
Robin hid. She hid in silence, because there was so much music that was out of bounds now and she hadn’t yet found anything untainted. Callum oozed out of her record collection whichever way she thought about it. Bands he’d got her into, music they’d loved together, albums they’d quarreled about, those early chords they’d learned. It was too knotty to try to unpick, and every note would strike her heart, so she didn’t risk it. She lay on her bed, staring out of the window and watching the clouds tumble slowly like playful animals. Watching the scratches left in the blue by planes heading to and from Heathrow.
When Robin slept, she dreamed of Callum. Dreams in hyper-real colors, rich textures, smells. Dreams so real they taunted her into trying to stay awake. She lay at night with her arm slung over the acoustic Eastman guitar he’d left. The only physical reminder she could bear to see.
She knew her mother and Drew would come over. That in grief, Drew would claim an ownership of Callum that he’d surrendered in real life. She wanted to lock the house down to keep him out. Instead, she just continued to hide.
When her mother knocked lightly on her door—“Robin, it’s Mum”—Robin fully expected to tell her to go away. “Can I come in?”
“Okay,” Robin said, choking on the word in surprise.
Angela had come in and sat lightly on the bed. Robin didn’t look at her. She stayed where she sat, leaning against the wall with her fingertips just reaching to brush the strings of the guitar.
“I’m so sorry, love,” her mother said, and Robin’s face creased in on itself and the tears came so suddenly that her face and hands and arms were soaked with the wet heat of them.
The eruption passed quickly. Robin wiped her nose and eyes on her sleeve and looked up. Her eyes burned and felt swollen.
“I don’t know what to do, Mum,” she said. And then the hot tears came in waves again, her small chest lurching with the force of them. When she looked up, she saw the tears coursing down her mother’s face, and her own tears turned to anger.
“It’s his fault, you know. All of it.”
“Whose fault?” her mother asked.
“You know who. Your husband. I heard him downstairs just now, heard his empty words in the hall. How dare he come here and act like he’s upset.”
“Of course he’s upset! We both are, we all are. God, Robin, how could you say that?”
“He hated Callum.”
“He did n—”
“He hated him. He hated that he was soft and gentle and kind. Hated that he was like Hilary, that Ca—that he—wasn’t some red-blooded macho philanderer like he is. And my brother knew it. He knew his dad felt like that, and it messed him up since he was a little boy. Even when he was happy here and accepted and loved, he still dragged that around with him.”
“He may not have been the best father—” Angela started.
“He was a terrible father!”
“He was traditional and he was impatient—yes, he was a shitty dad, but he was still Callum’s father, and he’s lost him just as much as an
y of you. More, maybe, because he never got the chance to put it right.”
“Neither did I,” Robin whispered.
“What do you mean?” Angela lowered her voice, tried to reach across to stroke Robin’s hair, but she inched away. “He knew how much you loved him. You two were always thick as thieves.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Robin said. She said it to her knees, without looking up.
“Robin, please.”
“It doesn’t matter, just get out.”
“Please don’t do anything rash,” her mother said softly.
“Just get the fuck out of my room.”
—
It was only after he was arrested that the family found out how old Rez was. Twenty-three. It had been bad enough when everyone thought he and Callum were both a pair of kids, but they’d got together when Callum was seventeen and Rez would have been twenty-two. A man. A skinny, immature, rat-faced man, but still a man. And dominant, they believed, despite the pathetic figure he cut.
Robin faced down that man. Stared into his rat face as she gave evidence at Rez’s court case for theft, possession and actual bodily harm—outraged that he wasn’t charged with grevious bodily harm and refusing to hide while she said it all. “He pushed my sister and he said, ‘I hope you die.’ He definitely meant to hurt her.”
What she said changed from the original statement she’d given before Callum’s death. She blamed anger for clouding her memory. Claimed she’d heard Callum trying to stop Rez, claimed it was Rez grabbing the jewelry, Rez leading everything. Gentle Callum being swept along. It was deeply and deliberately untrue.
FORTY-ONE
ROBIN|PRESENT DAY
“What else do you have in there?” Sarah asked, peeking curiously around the dining room door.
Robin took a deep breath, sighed and shook her head. “I don’t even know. Not all of it. I’ve lugged it around from flat to flat. Demos, old notebooks, guitars, my first amp. The little Park amp, do you remember?”
Sarah shook her head. “You must have got that when I was in Atlanta,” she said, and Robin tried to ignore the bitter note.
Sarah opened the door wider, put her hand on the small of her back and stretched into it.
“You okay?” Robin asked. “Is it the baby?”
Sarah smiled. “I can’t feel it yet,” she said. “I’m just sore. A bit tired.” She stepped in farther, tentatively, and beckoned for Robin to join her.
“I don’t know,” Robin said. “It’s been a fucked-up day as it is. I don’t think I can handle this too. I’m sorry.”
“Well, how about we look at it tomorrow? Together?”
“Maybe,” Robin said. “But what are your plans tomorrow and, y’know, after?”
“That’s not an easy question to answer,” Sarah said, moving her hand self-consciously to the small bump under her baggy top.
Robin waited for more of an explanation but it didn’t come.
“Would you mind if I went to bed?” Sarah finally said, bustling back out of the room and leaving Robin to hurriedly shut the door firmly again, lest some stray memories burst out after them.
FORTY-TWO
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
We’re sleeping in the same room for the first time in years. Top and tail. Twenty years have dissolved and we’re jammed together in a sleepover. All that’s missing is Callum.
Robin’s smelly little feet are in my face, and both our heads are filled with ten thousand crazy stories. I need to add one more. She asked earlier what my plans are, and I know my sister—she’ll be filling in the gaps herself.
So I take a deep breath and tell her what happened with Jim, about the list. I tell her wide eyes again and again that I’d never hurt a child. That he’d misunderstood and misread everything and that I’d not helped myself. That it was the perfect storm. I tell her I need somewhere to stay.
“If Jim finds out too soon about the baby, I’ll have no hope. But if Jim knows at the right time, he’ll feel differently. He’ll listen to my side because he’ll have to. But he can only know when it’s too late, you know? When I’m too far gone and there’s no going back. And then he’ll have to let me see Violet too. He can’t keep siblings apart. God knows we can’t let that happen again. Maybe he’d even let me bring her up here to stay. And then—”
I slow down, not wanting to get ahead of myself. Robin says nothing.
“I just need to get myself straight before I try to get Violet. You have money. I know, I know, that’s gross of me, but I’d rather be honest and ask outright—”
Robin, propped up on a pillow, holds up her hand to stop me. Pulls at her dark curls.
“You can have any money you need,” she says. “But, Sarah, this is so fucked up.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I just don’t understand what you’re asking from me. We’ve not spoken in years and we have no idea what’s happening in each other’s lives. How do you see this working? What are you actually saying? Do you want to live here? Do you want me to write you a check? Do you want me to talk you out of this?”
If she doesn’t understand this, how can she understand the next part of the plan?
“I just need help to make a life for Violet to come back into. And I need some support, from the only person I’ve ever really had support from.” My voice cracks. “You’re stronger and tougher than me and always have been. You know why I am the way I am. You know I’d never hurt a child, never hurt anyone. I don’t expect Jim to believe me just like that, but there’s no way he’ll even hear me out on my own.”
“So you want to stay with me while you get straight?”
“Yes. I mean, I’d love to.” My heart soars. My sister. I knew she’d help.
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Robin starts, and the caution in her voice chills me. “I mean, you think it’s best if you hide up here while you’re pregnant, but then you’ll spring it on Jim that you’re having his baby and want to try to get custody of the daughter he thinks you hurt?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds crazy, but…” My smile fades.
“It is fucking crazy, Sarah. It’s the kind of crazy that would get anyone’s kid taken away. You won’t get custody like that, but I don’t think you’re talking about formal routes. You must realize I won’t help you snatch your daughter.”
“Well, what would you do, then, Robin? What would you do in my situation?”
Robin swings out of the bed, comes and sits at my end. She lifts a wiry arm and drapes it on my shoulders. It feels good. My sister. My twin.
“What I’d do is probably far crazier,” she says. “That’s why I’m not thinking about what I’d do, I’m thinking about what you should do. You haven’t hurt your daughter, but you’ve told Jim enough bullshit that he thinks you’re mental. And you’re pregnant with a baby he doesn’t even know about, and you’ve run off to Manchester to see your equally mental sister. Like, Sarah, this shit is not going to work. You need to stop. You need to just stop and tell the truth. We need to tell the truth about everything.”
Robin leans against the wall and crosses her legs. We could be six years old again. “Okay, then, let’s do this,” she says. “It’s my turn to tell you the truth.”
Robin tells me that she hasn’t left the house in years. Not months, years. Tells me how she spends her days. Tells me she’s weak now, doesn’t know how to get strong again.
“But you are strong, Robin. You faced Rez. You faced him today and you made things better.”
“Only because you were here. I’d have fallen apart by myself.”
“That’s not true. I just clung on to the wall and tried not to faint. You handled it, just like you always did.”
She’d stepped up to him because she’s strong and tough and slightly nuts, the Robin I’ve always known. But she seems to have forgotten that. I ask her what she wants now.
“Well, I’d like to meet Violet. And I do want to help you with all of that, but I can’t get out of my f
ront door unless it’s literally life or death. Hell, I can’t even sleep in a bed most nights. Usually I’d be lying under it. So I need help too. And I’m so fucking embarrassed, Sarah.”
I ask her why this has happened, why she’s receded into this tiny shell, miles from home. She says she doesn’t know. But without needing to highlight the segue, she says, “I loved him, Sarah. But I hated him for what happened to you, and then before we all had a chance to start again or try to find a way forward together, we lost him.”
She’s still self-censoring the name. Callum. Just like she did after he died.
“I blamed him for what happened to you, and for what happened to him, to be honest. Then I blamed Rez for corrupting him, I blamed Hilary for not kicking his arse, and I even blamed you for distracting me from him.”
I look down at the small bump under my borrowed pajamas.
Robin squeezes my hand lightly without making eye contact in the dim light. “I just want to be honest. But most of all, Sarah, I blamed myself. I all but tied that rope. I should have saved him years before so he shouldn’t have needed someone like Rez.” She lowers her voice, picks her words more carefully than I’m used to.
“Callum was lonely and different, yeah? But I’d lost my twin, my other half, and I felt different too. Together we weren’t so lonely. It’s not that I didn’t miss you, but it helped having him there and we fit together. And you know the worst thing? I think it was because I was jealous when he got a boyfriend. That’s when we started to grow apart.”
“Rez?”
“No, not Rez. John. A boy at school who broke his heart before he met Rez. John was his first proper boyfriend. Callum was head over heels with him. And when they got separated by John’s parents and the school, I guess I didn’t see what a hole that had left, because I was excited to have him all to myself again.
“But he was never the same after that, Sarah.” She puffs all the air from her lungs and flops onto her side. “So there it is. I could have prevented all this if I’d been a better friend, a better sister, but I didn’t. And if I’d saved him, then what happened to you wouldn’t have happened, because he wouldn’t have been there with that shithead nicking his mum’s stuff. And you know what, maybe Rez wasn’t even that much of a shithead. Maybe C—” She swallows. “Maybe Callum could be a bit of a shithead too.”