Don't Close Your Eyes Page 2

  Saying “Good morning, Mr. Magpie” is a fundamental part of Robin’s day. Once that was out, the day could begin. Until that point, there could be no tea, no toast, no steps, no weights, no comforting kids’ TV, no nothing.

  There are other essentials too, of course, that slot together to make Robin’s days. The sorting and careful disregarding of the post. The hiding. And the watching. Always the watching. When I don’t pay attention, Robin thinks, people die. Unlike most of her “what if” thoughts, this one carries a certain truth.

  —

  Robin hadn’t intended to see anything untoward in the Magpie house over the last few weeks. She was only watching to keep them safe. Robin hadn’t wanted to meddle. The Magpie family had represented all that was good in the world. Love, caring, normalcy. That was what Little Chick and Mr. Magpie deserved. Magpies mate for life. They’re supposed to mate for life.

  So when Robin saw Mrs. Magpie and her friend walking along the alleyway, talking animatedly, hugging, kissing and then more, she couldn’t look away. An impotent anger rooted her to the spot, behind her curtains.

  She watches now. The oblivious husband and a ticking time bomb of a wife, picking fights and pointing her finger.

  Downstairs, the post has fluttered to the mat and the letter box has snapped shut again. Robin is about to go down and collect it up, organize it—unopened—into the neat piles she’s been building. But just as she steps out onto the thickly carpeted landing, the knocks come. Robin waits. It could be a charity worker with a clipboard, a politician or a cold caller selling thin plastic window frames. Or it could be someone else. The only way to know—short of flinging open the door and allowing all that outside to rush in—is to wait.

  Knock knock. Still they land politely, but they don’t stop.

  Knock knock knock. More urgent now.

  Knock knock knock knock knock. Rapid, sweating effort. Now Robin knows it’s “someone else.” The eager caller, the angry caller, the nameless, faceless man at her door. She stays on the landing and counts the time it takes for him to give up. Thirty-seven seconds. His determination sets her teeth on edge.

  SARAH|PRESENT DAY

  2. Lies

  I understand why this was on the list. I did tell Jim a lot of lies. From the outset, I omitted. Then omitting turned to spinning, which turned to outright fabrication.

  Jim and I met at work, not long after I moved to Godalming in Surrey. My first job in a long time, flushed with drive.

  When Jim asked me about brothers and sisters, I said I didn’t have any. And my parents were dead. That first lie felt like the right decision for a very long time: I don’t have a family.

  He talked about his family and his gentle hopes and I knew he was the right man. I moved in. And oh my God, I could breathe. I could smile. It was normal and wholesome and good and I’d managed it.

  The lies flowed and then hardened. So many questions came that I hadn’t reckoned on. There were gaps to be filled, and they had to be filled on the hoof. Once you tell one lie, you’ve chosen your path and there’s no going back.

  I chose Jim. And I chose to be nice, normal Sarah, living in Godalming. And most important, I chose Violet.

  Jim and I had to learn how to be together, in our shared home. There were some awkward spots while we adjusted but our girl transcended those. She’d been born early, needed extra care. I loved her instantly.

  While the house slept, I gazed at the little rag doll baby with the skinniest legs I’d ever seen. My baby. I whispered it over and over like a mantra. “My baby, my baby, my baby.”

  My first night with her felt like a gigantic prank. This incredibly small, painfully delicate creature was being left with me. No instructions, no one from the hospital coming to inspect the house, no one watching my every move.

  I watched Violet’s tiny veins pulsing with her heartbeat. A miniature light blinking on and off. The held breath between pulses became more normal and less frightening until I relaxed and started to believe we were all safe.

  I couldn’t always stop her crying at first. And in the early months, I often cried with desperation in the small hours when there was no point waking Jim, because what could he do besides watch me being tired?

  But we got there, I got there.

  And it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t just this desperately tough time of night tears and warm milk. It was often a feat of endurance but all underpinned by a tidal wave of love.

  When he said number two on the list, “the lies,” I didn’t know what Jim meant. He said it quietly, like it was a curse word.

  I’d raised my eyes to his. “Lies?” I’d said. “What lies?”

  I should have said, “Which lies?” because there were so many. They’d spilled out of me like blood.

  FOUR

  ROBIN|1990

  Robin and her sister are staying at Callum’s house tonight for the very first time. Ever since their parents became friends with the Grangers—a chance meeting of the mums in the local hairdresser’s a few months ago tumbling into firm friendship—weekends have been turned on their heads. There are no more Saturday dinners on laps in front of the telly for the Marshall family. Saturday afternoons are for baths and hair washes; Saturday evenings are for sitting around a table while the adults talk about boring stuff and make jokes that seem designed—annoyingly—to deliberately exclude Robin, Sarah and Callum.

  Hilary—Callum’s mum—cooks things she’s seen on Masterchef with Lloyd Grossman or Food and Drink with Michael Barry. There’s often a “coulis” or a “jus.” Robin misses having Saturday night fish and chips or pizza. Callum’s dad spends the evening talking about money—how much he has, how much he expects from his “bonus,” what he’s going to spend it on—and Robin’s mum does a really irritating loud laugh and then all the next morning she and Robin’s dad argue because he won’t—can’t—buy the stuff that Drew Granger buys.

  Normally, the evening ends with a wobbly car ride home, the girls buckling up nervously, the air thick with warm, boozy breath from the front. But the police have been clamping down and using Breathalyzers more and their dad says it’s not worth it because if he loses his license, he can’t do his job. Robin’s suggestions to just stay at home were ignored, so instead they’re sleeping over.

  Although Robin would always rather be in her own house, eating her own food and wearing jeans instead of the dresses she gets wrestled into, there is a frisson of excitement about the night. She and Sarah will be top and tailing in Callum’s room—he has a bed even bigger than Robin and Sarah’s parents’—and they’ve been promised a film before sleep. Robin’s hoping for Labyrinth but Sarah will probably stamp her feet for something like Grease 2 or Dirty Dancing, the three of them given a note of permission and a quid to go and rent something from the video section of the petrol station. Maybe an extra note of permission to get Robin’s dad some cigarettes too.

  Callum is going to sleep on the floor next to them on a foldout bed, willingly giving up his usual digs for the girls he now spends much of his free time with. Listening to them talk, fascinated by the easy flow of conversion, in-jokes and bickering so abstract to an only child.

  SARAH|1990

  I’ve been so excited all week. I love going to the Grangers’ house. Everything is new and warm and soft to the touch. They have three toilets. One is downstairs and Hilary calls it “the cloakroom,” which makes us smirk a bit because a cloakroom is where you keep your coats and wellies. Sometimes Robin and I pretend that we’re going to wee in the cupboard at our house.

  One of the toilets at the Grangers’ is in the main bathroom, which also has a shower and a bath—I’m gagging to have a go in the shower. I’ve only ever had one at the swimming pool in town and that’s like a dribble of spit. And then the last one is in Drew and Hilary’s bedroom. It’s called an “en suite” and our mum is desperate for Dad to put one in their room. “Where am I s’posed to put it?” Dad says, laughing at her. “In the wardrobe?”

  I’m lo
oking forward to spending time with Callum. Robin is always pretty good fun, not that I’d tell her that, but she’s a bit less manic and crazy with Callum. And she doesn’t show off by kicking me or doing disgusting things when he’s there.

  At school, Callum circles Robin and me carefully in the same way we move around each other. There’s only one class in each year, so we’re all in the room together whether we like it or not, but it’s an unspoken truth that we’d have the Mickey taken if we played with one another. Boys don’t play with girls, and sisters don’t play with sisters. Almost right from the start of school, Robin and I acted like we had an invisible force field around each of us so we couldn’t get too close. It’s protection, I suppose. Some people think twins are weird, and some twins are weird. They close ranks, turn away from other people and make up their own language. We don’t do any of those things. Our mum says that when we were small, we used to sleep in the same cot. We’d be put down at opposite ends, but in the night we’d wiggle around until we were next to each other. And when we started school, it took us a week or so to realize the unspoken rules. So on the first day, we’d sat down together in the classroom that we’d gone into holding hands. I suppose it makes me sad that we’re not like that anymore. I don’t think Robin wants much to do with me, and I don’t really know how to tell her that I like being her sister and I enjoy it when we get along.

  Perhaps it’s because we’re not identical twins. Quite the opposite. In fact, if someone looked in at us playing with Callum, they’d think he and I were related. We’re both tall and golden-haired. He carries himself upright like a dancer and I try to do that too. Robin is small and dark-haired. She’s bone-skinny and her clothes never seem to fit her right so she’s always tugging at them and yanking them up or down.

  Callum is different at his house. When we’re playing in our respective groups on the playground, he’s at the quieter end of “normal” boy behavior, but he seems okay, unburdened. When we’re in the woods or a country park or the beach, pooling flasks and picnics, the mums rubbing sunscreen on whichever skin is nearest, he’s fun and playful. He freely does his funny little shoulder-shaking silent laugh. But when we’re in his house, Robin says he’s like an old woman. He fusses and flaps. If Robin picks something up, he goes red and hovers near her like he’ll have to rescue it. She is clumsy, but she’s not that bad. “You don’t understand,” he says. “Even if she drops it, it’ll be my fault.”

  We arrive at the Grangers’ in our old Rover. The mums do this kind of stagey air kiss. It started as a joke but now it’s a habit. I notice that my dad has to gear himself up for the night. He sort of takes a breath and puffs his chest up as we knock on the door. His other friends aren’t like Drew Granger. They’re gardeners, like Dad, or bricklayers or thatchers. They don’t really talk; they just crack jokes and buy rounds in the local pub. Standing at the bar with their crusty work trousers on and tapping their cigarettes on chunky ashtrays. With Drew, it’s all talking and sort of jokes but not the same, nothing with a punch line. I think we’re here more for Mum. She and Hilary are the friends, and everyone else fits around that. He’d never say it, but Dad would do anything for Mum, and she seems to like this new life of cordon bleu food and wine that makes her chatty and shared days out. I like it too.

  FIVE

  ROBIN|PRESENT DAY

  Snap. Flutter. Crash.

  The post arrives a little earlier than usual but it will be dealt with in the same way. Flyers and junk will be placed in the recycling box, lying dormant until Robin can summon a surge of nocturnal energy and rush it all out to the brown wheelie bin under a protective night sky. The bills will be filed away in trays in the office/spare room, still in their envelopes, most recent at the front. Everything is paid by direct debit, but Robin likes the feel of a hard copy. Generally, that will be all, but sometimes a white envelope will sit among the rest, looking shiny and other. It will not be opened. It will not be filed. It will be picked up gingerly and placed on the pile of identical white envelopes, up high on the unused wardrobe, where they can do no harm.

  Robin is not alarmed by bills. Bills get paid. Robin has money; the pot has diminished but there’s enough to last awhile longer.

  She was—nominally still is—the lead guitarist of a British rock band, Working Wife. A string of top 20 albums, a handful of singles that caught the imagination of the radio programmers and burst out of their niche, plenty of insertions on compilation albums through the noughties. Somewhere, she might still be hanging on a bedroom wall or two, her guitar slung over her shoulder, her lip curled. Maybe even the picture of her from FHM, when she was featured—in her trademark shorts and tank top, sulky in makeup she didn’t want to wear—amongst the gaggle of bare bottoms. The headline: WEIRD BUT WOULD.

  Onstage with Working Wife at their peak, she’d come alive. She’d grown from five foot nothing to five thousand feet tall. A Catherine wheel of energy, grinding out chords that cut through the air like chainsaws. She could make whole audiences sway or pogo up and down like a tidal wave. Storming off the stage while the last notes still rang through the air, wet through with sweat, heartbeat as loud as drums. She’d fed from their adulation until it choked her.

  When she’d crawled out of the limelight, the band was already old news. But the embarrassment at those memories was still acute for Robin, even though very few had seen those last public moments.

  What would those once-keen fans think if they could see her now?

  Having filed the post—no white envelope today—Robin hovers by her bedroom window at the back of the house. The front is out of bounds. One of her curtains moves ever so slightly in time with her breath. She tries to keep it still with her fingertips but it just spreads against the glass. She does the same to the other curtain so at least everything is equal. She swallows hard and ragged, does it again to keep things even.

  In the Watkins/Magpie house, the adults are lying on the sofa in the back of the room. The little boy is sitting at his miniature table, tongue poking in concentration as he builds something out of LEGOs. It’s a mishmash of colored bricks, slabs of roof jutting out. He sits back to admire his work, smiles and gets down carefully to go and paw through a stack of soft toys, pulling out something small that looks like a bunny. He is lifting a few of the roof slabs from his building to carefully place the toy inside, when something makes him jump and he knocks the building to the floor, his little hands covering his face in defeat.

  Robin looks into the main room to see what spooked him and sees the adults in the kitchen, gesturing wildly and obviously arguing. It looks like Mr. Magpie has a phone in his hand and he’s shoving its screen at his wife’s face, pointing at it as she tries to grab it. The little boy appears and the adults spring apart and affect casual poses so disingenuous that Robin feels embarrassed. All couples fight, but there’s more to this. The man just needs to open his eyes to the full picture. Robin is determined to help.

  A young guy is moving into the ground-floor flat underneath the Magpies. He has a stream of helpers, and he is directing them as they cart boxes and bags around.

  He’s kind of handsome, smiley, but his features are loose and babylike.

  There are different types of boxes. Half of them are brand-new and have the name of a packaging company on them, while the others are bashed in and all different sizes. Robin wonders if he’s moving out of a relationship, if this is his new “bachelor pad” and he’s putting a brave face on everything.

  The boxes in Robin’s dining room have the name of the removal service she found over the Internet when arranging the unexpected move here. They are all lined up, logos facing out, like a soccer team having a one-minute silence. One day, she’ll be brave enough to open them. To let their grief spill out into the room. But not today.

  SARAH|PRESENT DAY

  3. Neglect

  This one I knew as soon as Jim said it. It was old. Over three years out-of-date, but even at the time, I’d known it wouldn’t be forgotten. It
was the look he’d given me that day. More of a pause, like he was taking a mental picture and filing it away. But he didn’t say anything more. He’d had a lot going on at the time and was only starting to surface himself.

  I’d fallen asleep while I was looking after Violet. The night before had been rough. She couldn’t settle, didn’t want to feed, didn’t have wind. I’d paced the house, jiggling her with increasing frustration. Jim had gone to bed, marching wearily up the stairs and falling into bed so heavily the mattress had squealed. Violet eventually relented and I grabbed a few hours of fitful rest, her cries echoing round my skull long after she’d stopped. The next day I shuffled around like a zombie while Jim went off to work as usual, the lunch I’d made him tucked under his arm.

  I’d laid down on the sofa, daytime TV chatting to us both. The cushion under my head, the warm sun through the window. My little baby with her baggy tights and pretty little dress had been contently kicking her squishy legs next to me, her plump pink hand wrapped around my finger.

  My eyes were open. The next second, they were springing back open. I’d been woken up by the cry as she hit the floor.

  “But she shouldn’t have been able to roll over yet,” I’d spluttered in disbelief to Jim as he rushed in through the door after my hyperventilating phone call.

  “That’s not the point,” he’d said, and I’d shrunk. “My poor little girl!”

  “I wasn’t blaming her,” I’d said to his back as he whisked her off, gently cooing her cries away. He didn’t answer me.

  Later that night, Jim nudged me awake in the flickering light of the TV set. Violet lay asleep on his chest, mouth open, eyes scrunched shut. She’d been glued to him ever since he’d rushed back.

  “We should have gone to the hospital to have her checked,” he’d said. Before I could answer, he’d asked, “Do you fall asleep a lot when you’re looking after her?”