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  I can’t help but think back to that weird night when Robin got sick from eating too much, when Mum and Drew were together in the kitchen and Dad was asleep on the sofa. I know that when adults drink they get all cuddly, but it’s all sticking together in my head and I don’t like it.

  Callum is being odd too. He’s been quiet and a bit nervous ever since we met him but now it’s on overdrive. You say hello to him and he jumps. He looks on the brink of tears if an adult uses a loud voice near him. In class the other day, he ran out after Mrs. Howard yelled at some of the boys for doing something disgusting. He wasn’t even sitting near those boys, but if I didn’t know better I’d have thought he’d wet himself.

  We went to the Grangers’ house last weekend and stayed as usual. Normally we get to sit at the table and have dinner with the adults. Even though I don’t really understand the jokes and especially don’t understand it when talk turns to Drew Granger’s work or money or politics, I enjoy being near all that chatter. It’s like I can feel the edge of another stage, the one just out of the corner of my eye. Teenage years, adult life. I like to think that one day I’ll cook cordon bleu food and have a tabletop plate warmer and a husband who has a job that people don’t understand.

  It was different last weekend though. We didn’t eat together—we kids were given our dinner first. It was paella, which Robin picked at suspiciously, dragging the alien prawns to the side of her plate and lining them up like murder victims. We were even allowed to take popcorn upstairs—normally we have to sneak it like burglars. Drew had called Callum over to him first, whispered some rapid rules into his ear while Callum stood stone-faced. We ate that popcorn more carefully and slowly than any children in the history of time.

  We watched Labyrinth and I tried to sing along to all the songs like Callum and Robin did, but I could never remember all the words. When the film ended, my hurt pride made me snappy, and Callum went pink trying to referee my sister and me and keep us quiet enough that none of the adults would come up. By which I think he really meant his dad. I don’t know what that’s all about. His dad is definitely more demanding and—in Robin’s words—“stuck up” than my dad, but he’s always friendly to me. He’s always cracking jokes and laughing with this deep booming roar, and he’s constantly giving Callum and his mum presents. Jewelry for her, video games and new computers for him. Callum’s room is fully stocked with all the latest, flashiest toys. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with rules or with trying to keep nice things in good condition. (And they have a lot of nice things.) But that’s not a popular opinion, so I keep it to myself.

  I still can’t shake the picture of that day when I had all those nosebleeds a couple of months ago. I’ve never even caught my mum and dad doing that. It’s not like I’d want to see it, but at least that would be normal. Other kids at school have heard their mums and dads, and one boy even saw them “doing it” in the bath (“they looked like sea monsters”) when they thought he was out playing, but no one has ever mentioned seeing their mum with someone else’s dad. I don’t risk saying anything to anyone.

  Tomorrow is Saturday and the Grangers are coming to our house to stay. I don’t really know why, because our house is smaller and it means all of us kids have to stay in Robin’s room and Drew and Hilary will sleep in a single bed in my room. It’s funny because Mum didn’t seem that sure it was a good idea either, but it was Dad arguing that it would make a nice change and then flattering her about her cooking. “You just want to be able to go out in the garden with bloody Hilary,” Mum said later as she appeared in the doorway, hair all scratched up into a bun and Marigolds on her hands. She’s paranoid about the state of the house.

  “Give over,” said Dad, and he seemed cheerful. Mum gave him a sharp look, like she was about to argue, but Dad stopped smiling and stared at her until she left again, muttering: “I hope it’s nice enough for Queen Hilary.”

  —

  It’s Saturday night now and we’re in Robin’s room. Under her bed is a pit of broken toys and dusty abandoned bits of paper. I feel bad for Callum, who is on the floor next to the jumble, lying in a sleeping bag and coughing. We’re talking about the school holiday and how we’ll spend the summer. Robin thinks we’ll go down to Dorset, but something tells me we won’t. Granddad died last year and I think we’d be too much for Nana on her own, but who knows. Dad had cried so much when his dad died that I thought he’d throw up. I was embarrassed for him and sad, like a deep well had opened up in my chest and I had to drag something heavy over it as quickly as possible so the rest of me didn’t fall in.

  Callum says that they always go abroad during the holidays, that his dad doesn’t consider it a proper holiday if it’s not over eighty degrees and a plane ride away. He says it’s strange that his mum and dad haven’t mentioned going away—they usually book something for the next summer straight after they get back from a holiday. Robin says he should ask his dad where they’re going, or at least ask why they’re not going, and Callum looks at her like that’s the most bizarre suggestion he’s ever heard. “You don’t ask my dad anything,” he said after a moment. “You just wait for him to tell you what to do and make sure you do it.”

  —

  It’s Sunday morning now and we’re sitting up in bed playing Boggle. Robin’s furious because I’m beating her, even though she never tries hard with her spellings at school, so of course I’m going to do better. We’re doing best of three, but she’s changed it to best of five, and if this carries on then the winner (i.e., me) is never going to get to play Callum. It’s supposed to be a tournament but it’s turning into a tantrum.

  The smell of bacon and toast has taken over the whole house and I suggest we call it a draw so we can go and eat something. Robin, who is definitely not even close to my score, says, “Hmn, okay, but you know I would have won.” I see Callum turn away, smiling.

  ROBIN|1991

  S ay what you will about my mum, thinks Robin, but she can cook a breakfast. Angie may not do all that posh food like at Hilary and Drew’s house, but her bacon and eggs are legendary.

  When Drew Granger compliments her on the full English she’s placed in front of him, she giggles and compliments him on his taste in return. Jack pauses for just a moment but says nothing. If he was going to compliment Angie, it would look too staged now. Drew beat him to the punch. Robin wonders if her dad is just so used to these fry-ups that he forgets they’re remarkable. He’s been eating them for a lot of years now. Robin puts her knife and fork down to count on her fingers, one, two, three…“Twelve years!” she exclaims, spraying chewed-up baked beans and egg onto the table in front of her.

  “Robin!” her mum shouts, and she looks more tearful and embarrassed than angry.

  “Come on, squirt, you know how to eat nicely,” Jack says.

  Robin decides she’s onto a losing thing and apologizes, wiping the food away with her sweater sleeve as the corners of Drew Granger’s mouth tip downward and Callum goes red.

  “I was just working out that you and Dad have been together for twelve years,” she adds, looking at her parents and expecting some kind of ripple of warmth. Parents normally love being told that something they’ve done is extraordinary. Twelve years of going to sleep with the same person in your room, spending every night and every weekend with someone and staying friends, that is extraordinary. Sarah and Robin fall out after one night in the same bed, and even Callum has snapped at them both in close quarters before. But none of the adults seem to like what she’s said, so she tries something different, because nobody is talking anymore and it makes her feel weird.

  “How long have you two been together?” she asks Hilary, but it’s Drew who answers with a joke. “Too bloody long!” Hilary and Jack make a couple of polite “hmph hmph” noises, but Angie throws her head back and laughs. She laughs so loudly it’s more like she’s shouting “ha-ha” in a speech bubble, like a character in a book. The kids wolf their food down after this and, once Callum asks for permission fro
m his dad, they slide off their chairs and bound upstairs.

  After Callum is shouted down and the Grangers leave, Jack asks Robin if she wants to come into the garage to help him with something. She runs down and out of the back door so fast she skids a bit and grazes her knee on a bit of gravel. She doesn’t even slightly cry and hopes her dad notices how brave and hardy she is, but he’s doing that faraway look again. Just as they’re about to go into the garage, he grabs her hand and says, “Be quiet, squirt. Look over there, there’s a couple of fledglings.” Robin squints to see two brown shapes bobbing about on the lawn and a larger bird watching them nervously from a tall branch. “Starlings,” her dad says, but she knew that anyway. “Poor old mum,” he adds.

  Inside the garage, he starts to take off the legs of a chair that used to sit with the others in the kitchen. It got scuffed over the years—they all did, so one by one he’s sanding all the bits of each chair and polishing them again. The dust smells like Christmas, all woody and sweet, and Robin can’t help but feel calmer in the semi-dark dusty room with her favorite parent. They work silently, Robin rubbing her chair parts diligently with sandpaper wrapped around a block of wood. She hears her dad open his mouth a few times, his dry lips audibly parting, but every time she looks up expectantly, he closes them.

  Eventually they’re called in for sandwiches. While her dad packs away the tools in their special cases and canvas pouches, he says without looking up: “I know you think Mum’s on your case a lot, but it’s just because she loves you and wants you to be the best that you can be.”

  “She’s never on Sarah’s case,” Robin is surprised to hear herself say in a choked voice.

  “Yeah, but your mum and Sarah are peas in a pod, aren’t they, girl? And you and me are alike. So you’re always going to butt heads with Mum. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, it just means that, y’know, it’s a bit easier for her with Sarah and it’s easier for me with you. But you’re a good girl in your own way, Robin,” he says, looking at a deep cut on his hand, “so remember that.”

  —

  It’s nearly the end of term and school rules have gone out the window. The whole school piled into the school hall on Friday afternoon, filing into neat lines and sitting cross-legged like matches in a box. The head teacher played them an old Disney film through a projector, and even though they could barely hear anything, the excitement crackled over the hall like electricity running through wires.

  That night the girls slept over at Callum’s again, and the adults plain forgot about the rules there too. The three of them ate pizza out of the box, collected from the Italian by one of the dads. They watched films in Callum’s room until they fell asleep, no one knocking on the door with a five-minute warning, no kisses good night from the mums.

  The next day, the adults huddled around a special filter coffee machine in the kitchen, where they talked in low, hungover voices. The unattended kids were allowed to drag all the spare bedding onto the lounge floor and hide in the blanket fort they made, eyeholes focused on the TV. Callum let Sarah choose the film, much to Robin’s disgust. Thankfully she chose The NeverEnding Story and not something lovey-dovey. Robin had never thought about it before but Callum seemed to take a lot of pleasure in making sure everyone was okay, in offering to give other people their way. He let the girls slide backward into the fort first, waited as they settled into their chosen spaces before straightening the blanket carefully and wedging himself in however he could.

  He always offered to fetch them drinks. He listened patiently to their fights and, without taking sides, offered a suggestion that always seemed to flatter both their interests. Often not his own though. At first, Robin thought he was a kiss ass, sucking up to Sarah and showing off to the adults, but she noticed he was like this more when it was just the three of them, and if he was ever thanked for anything—like just now—he’d glow pink and change the subject.

  “There’s something going on in there,” he said, gesturing to the kitchen and lowering his voice. “My dad was yelling at my mum the other day and my mum was crying and saying Dad had done something wrong and she never says that, even when he…Well, anyway, I heard your mum and dad’s names too and—”

  “What?” the girls both asked, a shot of excitement and fear sparking between them. Adults falling out with each other was a riskier, more raw thing than when kids feuded. Both girls were moths to the flame whenever it happened. They had to be dragged away from gawping at drunks scrapping outside pubs, they automatically walked toward teenage lovers in the midst of world’s-end showdowns, they rubbernecked car crashes on the motorway, hands pressed to the window and sliding to whichever side was nearest.

  Before Callum could stop them, they’d scrambled free from the bedding and headed to listen at the kitchen door. If Callum had brought this up only to stop them from thanking him for his kindness, it had backfired.

  “You two are fucking mad,” Jack was saying, his voice that weird whispered shout that only parents can do.

  “Jack,” Angie said, “keep your voice down, you’re shouting.”

  “I’m not fucking shouting. You don’t know what shouting is. And what the fuck has that got to do with anything? After what you’ve just said, you’ve got a nerve telling me how to bloody react.”

  “Now, Jack…” Drew started.

  “Don’t.” Jack’s response was swift and sharp as a thrown knife.

  “Jack”—the girls could barely make out Hilary’s voice—“I need some air. Do you want to come into the garden with me?”

  A scrape of chairs, no words. The back door closed, a swelling silence. The girls held their breath, looked at Callum, who was jiggling nervously behind them.

  “My head’s banging,” they heard their mum say finally.

  “Mmn,” grunted Drew, “well, you were three sheets to the wind last night, eh?”

  A subtle laugh, a sigh.

  “Are we doing the right thing?” they heard their mother ask, in the voice she uses when red reminder bills fall through the post box.

  “Don’t wimp out on me now,” Drew said with an edge. “Look at them out there. Those fucking roses.”

  This obviously meant something to both of them, as they laughed and then sighed. Now more silence.

  “This is boring,” Robin said, an unease in her tummy that she wanted to crush. “I’m going to fix the fort.”

  With sighs of relief, the other two followed her and worked quietly and diligently until it was all neat again.

  THIRTEEN

  SARAH|PRESENT DAY

  7. The Blood

  I’ve arrived in Manchester, the city my twin heart beats in. I’ve never been here before, never had a reason to, but as soon as I found out Robin lived here, my mental map widened and the pin beckoned me. It’s taken a long time to shake myself onto a train so I can put the bad blood behind me. And it’s taken this horrible separation from Violet to give me a reason, but I’m here. And for a rainy city, it feels like I’m bathed in a pool of light. Hope, I suppose.

  But there’s a lot to do now. For a start, I don’t know exactly where my sister lives. Second, she isn’t expecting me and I don’t think she’ll be happy to see me. The last time we spoke was at the funeral. She was hurt and confused and I was hurt and confused and we repelled each other like two positive charges, the way we often did.

  It’s been a long journey, and I feel the brain fog that comes from traveling, my mind struggling to cover the distance my body sped through so easily. The first train, from Godalming to London, was half empty. I spent the first ten minutes rocking up and down the aisle, carefully choosing a seat. But the bullet-shaped train from London to Manchester was packed. A queue two people deep shuffled its feet outside the chemical toilet at any one time.

  I’ve never been north of London before. As kids, the farthest we’d go was to stay with my dad’s parents—Nanny Mary and Granddad Joe—in Dorset, where they’d retired.

  We’d drive in the old Rover, sick as dogs
despite the Joy-Rides tablets. Nanny Mary would wrap us up in tight hugs as soon as we arrived, making us sickly drinks with the SodaStream and wiping her eyes about how tall Robin and I had got, even though Robin never got tall in her life.

  On those Dorset days, we’d skim stones and eat fries that tasted totally different to Berkshire fries and Dad would say it was because of the ozone. Robin’s hair would go so curly in the sea air that she’d look like a lollipop and she’d always get the hiccups. I loved the seaside. I loved the salt stains on my shins from paddling in the sea, loved collecting pretty little shells and pebbles, arranging them on my bedroom windowsill when we got home or filling little bottles with them. My favorite gems to find were tiny pieces of glass that had been buffed into hearts or diamonds by the waves.

  —

  My first holiday with Jim and Violet was also to Dorset. To a little village near Charmouth, with a thatched pub and an ice-cream hut on the beach that was open only four afternoons a week. It wasn’t a deliberate nod to my childhood, of course; we’d just found a good deal online for a holiday flat and it was only a few hours’ drive from our house if we left after rush hour. We’d looked forward to it for weeks, imagining ourselves paddling and walking on the sand with a newly toddling Violet. I bought a lemon sundress for me and a matching one for Violet. I wrestled her into hers the weekend before we left to check it fitted. I still have the picture I took of her wearing it. I can’t look at it now.

  Throughout the evening before we left, Violet developed a summer cold. By the end of our sticky car journey the next day, she was a pulsating red orb of snot and tears. The holiday was a long week of having to deal with a sick toddler in a flat without our stuff and nowhere near a pharmacy. A week we spent looking forward to being back home, with Tylenol, and nostalgic about the sea.