Don't Close Your Eyes Page 3

  I tried to explain. Sleep when baby sleeps, that’s what they say. It should have been okay. I’d put her in the Moses basket from now on. It wouldn’t happen again. He nodded slowly, looked back to the blue light of the screen.

  While I shakily packed up my things four days ago, watched by the awkward parade of Jim’s family, I’d asked pointlessly, “What did you mean by neglect?” I just wanted to hear him say it. Because it really seemed like such a small and common thing to fall asleep like that, and I wanted his voice to shrink it back to size for him and for them.

  “When Violet was younger, sometimes you’d stare into space, ignoring her. She’d cry for you and it’s like you didn’t hear. She’d need her nappy changed, she’d be sore and you would fucking—sorry, Mum—fucking ignore her, Sarah. That’s what I mean. I caught you. I caught you once and I told myself it was a one-off but it wasn’t. Because I caught you again.”

  I’d lowered my eyes, zipped up my holdall and left the room. My God, I’d thought, I really believed that I’d managed it.

  SIX

  SARAH|1990

  Our dad is a gardener.

  “Landscape gardener and tree surgeon,” he’s started to say, because he had this big talk with Drew Granger, who “sells big ideas” for a living. Drew Granger told him that you can call yourself anything you want and people will believe you. That if you say your services are better than anyone else’s, and if you look confident enough, you can charge more. Dad didn’t seem sure but Mum got some new leaflets printed up that made it sound like Dad had been trimming the lawns of mansions with nail scissors all his life, and he started to get more work from big houses on the outskirts of the village.

  Mum’s never really taken an interest in the actual gardening side of things. Like me, she likes a nice green lawn or a pretty flower, but it’s not something she’s obsessed with. Robin likes gardening. I think it’s because she’s allowed to get muddy and dirty if it’s with Dad in the garden. It’s funny because I would have thought Hilary was the same as Mum and me. She has flowers on her dining table and neat little flower beds outside their modern house, but the thought of her so much as kneeling down let alone touching soil is at odds with everything I’ve seen so far. And yet the last time we went to Wellington Country Park, I noticed that Hilary had dropped back to ask Dad something about soil acidity, and hours later at lunch they were still nattering away about seedlings and polytunnels and the best secateurs for roses.

  There was something I struggled to read on Mum’s face. Gardening wasn’t her passion but Hilary was her friend, and maybe she was jealous that Dad was leaning over the beer-garden table to talk to Hilary, that he seemed so excited that someone besides Robin was finally interested. Mum was sitting next to him but had to make do with listening to Drew Granger tell her why it was the best time to get an Access credit card and that the economy was booming and she and Dad should sell our house and buy something bigger. Mum muttered something and they both looked at Dad and then started laughing. Robin knocked her knife onto the floor near me, and when I dropped under the table to pick it up, I thought I saw Mum’s and Drew’s feet untangling.

  ROBIN|1990

  Robin didn’t want to like Callum. He was “boy Sarah” and her sister was everything that Robin wasn’t. The girls clashed a lot, as sisters do. But there was something else with Callum, something she couldn’t help but be drawn to. A look in his eye, like he had seen something amusing that he couldn’t dare share. Or like he knew something secret and had zipped his mouth shut. Like maybe, if he really trusted you, he might unzip it.

  At school, the kids had their own clusters of friends. Callum was tall and poised, and when he wanted to, he could jump into a soccer game and dribble, kick, header the ball perfectly well. But most of the time he preferred to read or chat about books or television with whoever might be nearby. His ability with the ball and his height meant that the other boys—the loud, fast, brash boys—afforded him space to do both.

  When the Marshalls and the Grangers got together outside of school, Sarah would practically perform for Callum’s approval. The three kids would climb trees or make up spur-of-the-moment, complex, ever-changing games, but Sarah seemed to care the most. And yet. Robin noticed that Callum’s shoulders seemed to shake more at the things she herself said and did. He’d never say anything cheeky or rude to his parents, but if Robin backchatted her mum or dad, Callum would practically vibrate with excitement, his eyes wide.

  This thing had started with Robin’s mum and Hilary, but the two families had soon squished together to form a new shape. Despite herself, Robin started to look forward to staying over at the Grangers’, watching films or learning card games like Shithead, which they had to play in late-night whispers.

  She noticed that the lines were blurring with the adults too. The mums were still the organizers, the confidantes and the ones who met up the most without the others, but the adults were more of a group now. Sometimes, Robin’s dad and Hilary would even pair up. Hilary had turned up at the Marshall house once in jeans and a sweatshirt, hair tied up in a scarf, so that Dad could take her to the nursery he bought his seeds and soil from and help her with her garden. And Drew and Angie started to have their own little smirks and jokes. Robin noticed that her mum had started to repeat things that Drew had said, as if they were the gospel. Or she would begin sentences about money or shopping with “Drew says…” Robin didn’t like that and expected that her dad wouldn’t like it either, but it looked like he hadn’t noticed.

  SEVEN

  SARAH|PRESENT DAY

  4. Anger

  Anger was number four on Jim’s list. “Everyone gets angry,” I’d said quietly. They’d ignored me. It wasn’t fair. I worked harder than anyone to crush those feelings. Even as a child, I’d always tried very hard not to get angry. I’d make a fist, bite the flesh of my cheeks, think about ponies. I wanted to be described, always, as “a good girl.”

  But Violet, Violet is a good girl. She could push my buttons with the endless questions, she could drain my patience with the odd tantrum, but she didn’t make me angry. Not really.

  I think it took about six months to really slide into clichés—hardworking man who just wants some peace and quiet when he gets home; frazzled woman, alone all day with the endless demands of a child. I remember reading an article somewhere that highlighted all the ways caring for an infant compares with mental torture. It’s impossible to be your best self in those conditions, and it’s the time you most want to be.

  Violet was not a “difficult baby,” but babies are difficult. The constant noise, the sudden escalations in volume, the never-ending roller coaster of needs and wants, of juggling risks and teaching lessons and pleading for just a few moments of silence in which to think. Thinking, before kids, is just something you do. Afterward, it’s a luxury.

  Today’s parenting is about gentle and reasonable negotiation. When Robin and I were little, my mum would just tell us to shut up. Or if we were bickering she’d suddenly swing her arm back from the front of the car and clobber whoever’s knee was nearest. That stuff doesn’t work now. But Jim didn’t see the balancing act and the diplomatic effort. Jim went out to work and returned to a cooked meal and a bathed, fed baby whose toys were packed away. That I was exhausted was neither here nor there; we both had our roles. Mine was twenty-four-hours-a-day caregiver. Jim’s was sensible, caring dad.

  And Jim is a good man. No matter how I angry I am with him today, I can still see that. From the Jim I first met to the Jim keeping our girl from me today, he’s always been a good man. He thinks he’s doing the right thing, for the right reasons.

  Jim has a slight stoop, because he’s apologetic for his height, and dark brown hair that’s thinning on top and just-gray at the sides. He’s good-looking, I think, in a kind of understated way. Is that a backhanded compliment? Maybe.

  I have no right to complain about any of his foibles and any of the difficulties that come from round-the-clock parenting. It
’s what I wanted. It’s what I want. But I wasn’t perfect, and there were times that I slipped. Shouted. Grabbed rather than cajoled.

  “Can you just get your fucking shoes on, Violet, please!”

  I know I shouldn’t have said it and certainly not in front of him. Jim had rushed into the hall and ushered me off to the kitchen like some kind of bouncer.

  “I’m sorry,” I’d said, looking at my feet. “I just got frustrated.”

  “You’re an adult and she’s a little girl. You need to control yourself.”

  And that was that. Another card marked.

  ROBIN|PRESENT DAY

  The apartment block that Robin’s house backs onto is a classic red-brick Mancunian monolith. It has its own rhythm, almost tidal. Hundreds of breakfasts every month, hundreds of dinners. Iron filings drawn out of the door in the morning by a big magnet just out of sight, swept back home at night. Lots of lights turning off for bed, dark blocks appearing in the place of lit windows, one after the other.

  But the ones who linger in late yellow light, whose blue screens stay flickering long into the early hours, those are the ones Robin notices. Hundreds of worries, hundreds of nightmares. And as she watches them, the lone colors in a sea of dark brick, the quiet little faces at windows, those are the people Robin falls in love with and watches carefully from a distance, with concern.

  Mr. Magpie is a night dweller. Last night, as Robin took slow and heavy blinks, she had watched Mr. Magpie walk out from the main room, open the door to his boy’s room slowly and then stand at the side of the bed. He’d squatted, held his hand near his son’s head but stopped short of touching him. Probably afraid to wake him; instead he’d sat down next to the bed with his back to the wall and rested his own head on the edge of the pillow until his wife had come home, teetering on pinprick heels and collapsing onto the sofa. Mr. Magpie had crept back out, stood over her drunken form. Eventually, he’d pulled her up by the arm and hustled her away. No doubt to bed.

  The flat above his was occupied by a young woman who would sit hunched at her laptop every night, occasionally getting up and coming back with a bowl of cereal. Robin wondered if she was a student. She would sit with one pajamaed leg under her for hours on end, tapping away at the keys.

  Below and to the right of the Watkinses/Magpies live an old couple, who often wear their coats inside for ages after returning home. Perhaps it takes a long time for the heat of their living room to thaw the Manchester chill in their bones, thinks Robin. Perhaps they just like their coats. Her coat is a kind of teal color and she wears burgundy gloves and a purple hat. When they get inside, she comes into the kitchen, where Robin can see her more clearly, takes off her hat and gloves, rubs her hands together and fills the kettle.

  Later, the old lady will generally reappear in the kitchen without her coat. She’ll slip a blue tabard over her shoulders slowly, drag unyielding yellow gloves over her hands and slowly wash up with the precision of a surgeon.

  For months after Robin had first moved in, Mr. and Mrs. Peacock—named for her coat—just seemed like cold, old people. Robin watched them only if there was nothing else to do, no one else to watch, all the daily steps done.

  And then one evening in late spring, the sun still high in the sky and with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, Mr. Peacock had carried two dining chairs out to the shared garden, one by one. The couple had eased themselves into the chairs, drinking what looked like gin and tonic, clinking their glasses together. After taking his first sip, he’d placed his drink on the floor by his slipper and pulled something out of his pocket.

  Mrs. Peacock had smiled girlishly as her husband played a harmonica, his hands and mouth working fast, like a zip, up and down the instrument.

  Watching the Peacocks often made Robin think of her own parents and how they could never be like this. The Peacocks had grown-up children who visited them in batches. Middle-aged, they’d often be jostling together like children as they spilled out from the patio doors to help their parents with their patch of garden. Sometimes, Robin tried to imagine this kind of easy tactile moment with her own sister, Sarah. But she could barely picture Sarah’s face, let alone her shape or her presence. It had been several years since they’d spoken. Sniping words had cut through the last little threads that had bound them. And those last little threads, it turned out, had been all that tied Robin to her childhood. She was free, she supposed, but also alone. Entirely alone. Perhaps her sister was too.

  —

  At times, Robin’s pacing can turn to prowling. Frantically turning over ideas as she stalks the house. Memories can collide, fray, rejoin all wrong. She feels anxious, antsy, unable to settle.

  This kind of itch used to get scratched in the studio or channeled into sketches of lyrics.

  When Robin had moved to her current house in George Mews, she’d told herself that it was to recover from the strangling fears she’d given in to and that her recovery would be set to music. She’d do a Bon Iver, just in a three-bedroom terraced house in Chorlton instead of a log cabin. She’d ordered numerous bits of kit, most of which were still boxed. She’d searched the Internet for the perfect pen and writing pad, secondhand copies of the guitar magazines she’d first learned from. She’d written nothing, recorded nothing, had no ideas.

  Instead, walking ten thousand steps filled her day and hundreds of squats, burpees, press-ups, dead lifts and bench presses pushed her limbs to a shaking point.

  The rest of the empty hours were simply spent watching. She cataloged and reviewed, compared what she’d seen from one day to the next, one apartment to the next. Most of the time there was nothing much happening. Just day-to-day life. Straining pasta or potatoes into colanders. Washing up. Women and men sucking their tummies in and turning this way and that in the reflection of the nearest window.

  When the flats lie still and Robin’s limbs are too heavy to stand, she watches TV, silent guitar next to her, hand draped over it like a special stuffed toy.

  Sometimes, she finds herself tapping out a tune, but then faces from her childhood flash across her mind and she catches herself. The tune disappears, scrunched away along with the memories, and she throws herself into pacing again or lifting weights in her spare room. If nothing else works, she takes one of the sleeping pills she bought online and climbs under her bed, where she feels cocooned. That feeling of safety, wrapped up and hidden, has been chipped away at recently. Signs were getting harder to ignore.

  The frantic knocks had come again today. A dry fear coating Robin’s throat as she again accepted that this was not a random visit, not a parcel for a neighbor, not a well-wisher. Being stuck in her house for years on end had given Robin an acute eye for patterns. And this was one pattern she could not ignore. Someone had tracked her down, and they weren’t taking silence for an answer.

  EIGHT

  SARAH|1991

  Downstairs, we can hear the top notes of music and bursts of laughter. The warmth of merry adults rising up. It’s the same every weekend, to the point where Robin and I think of Callum’s room as “our room” now. He doesn’t seem to mind, although I’ve noticed he hides things on top of his wardrobe so Robin can’t break them when she gets overexcited. For some reason, no matter whose fault anything is, it’s always Callum’s fault as far as his dad’s concerned.

  Tonight, Robin had smuggled Penguin Bars, leftover Easter chocolate and Golden Wonder crisps from our kitchen cupboards at home to Callum’s room. When we’d been put to bed by our mums, Robin opened up her rucksack and tipped it all out on the bed. Callum was immediately panicked. “I can’t eat in my room. My dad’ll kill me if he finds that stuff!”

  “But he won’t find it if we eat it all,” Robin had assured him. Still, he’d got up quietly and wedged his desk chair under the door handle to buy us more hiding time, just in case.

  Robin launched into a feeding frenzy. She is two-thirds of my size but she can eat like a lion. And now, within ten minutes of finishing, she’s whimpering and hold
ing her tummy.

  “You can’t throw up in here. It’ll go everywhere,” Callum says.

  “Help me take her to the bathroom,” I say.

  “No,” Robin sobs, “I want to go home.” She looks smaller now, shrunk back down to size and tugging at her pajama bottoms to hold them away from her skinny little belly. Only sixteen minutes’ difference, but she looks like she belongs to a different generation. It’s my time to shine. I love looking after people and taking charge of this kind of situation. I give Callum triage duties: “Get a cold compress for her.”

  “A what?” He pulls a face.

  “Some wet toilet roll,” I explain in a matronly way.

  He creeps down the hall to the bathroom and brings a dripping pad of loo roll, which we hold to her forehead like her life depends on it. While she whimpers, Callum and I help her along like a wounded soldier, holding her hands and stepping three abreast down the thickly carpeted stairs.

  I can hear music, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and the low rumble of my dad’s snoring. He sleeps like a dying fish, mouth gasping and breath catching in his throat and burbling back out. When Mum chides him, he says, “You know you love my cat purrs, Ang,” but I don’t think she does. We get into the living room, and on the large leather sofa that forms part of the new three-piece suite, Dad is lying with his feet up on the armrest, one arm flopping toward the floor and his flapping fish mouth open in the dim light. There’s zero point trying to rouse him—this is Mum’s domain. Where is Mum? Or Hilary; she’d do. A mum is what we need.

  We thread our way around the furniture and toward the connected dining room. No one at the table, the stereo playing obliviously, its graphic equalizer bubbling up and down. It’s a new piece of equipment and the CD player is the jewel in the crown. Apparently you can put jam on the CDs and they’ll still play. Robin’s been desperate to test the theory, Callum draining white every time she even steps near the stereo. There’s still no sign of Hilary as we enter the dining room and wind our way through to the shiny white kitchen.