Don't Close Your Eyes Read online

  She couldn’t see much when she resurfaced a few minutes later. As she stared into the empty kitchen, Mr. Magpie suddenly stormed out into the garden, sending the back door to the apartments flying so hard that Robin ducked again as if it might leap up and hit her.

  She sat on the floor, catching her breath, trying to catch her imagination. Half an hour or so later, she heard the singsong giggles of the little boy outside, poked her head up and saw Mr. Magpie’s frown. The little boy seemed oblivious, scooting ahead toward home without his father pulling him back gently like he usually did. The little boy dropped his scooter on the ground and they disappeared into the back door, Mr. Magpie looking around anxiously before closing it.

  —

  It’s the evening now, but her heart had continued to beat frantically all day. Every little sound added to the groundswell of panic rising steadily inside her.

  This person—the Knocker, as she’d started to call him—was coming again and again, trying different times of day, to trick her. It was affecting her routine, and she needed her routine to cope.

  Music used to help. Before. When the panic came upon her, draping over her like a blanket, she could fill the house with sound and fury. Build a wall of drums and strings. But she can’t risk giving away her presence with sounds that might be heard from the street.

  Who could want to talk to her this badly? Robin had an inkling but refused to follow that thread. Knowing would be worse—it always was.

  And she couldn’t play any of her guitars to fill the wide-open silence, her own music poisoned with memories. She couldn’t even pick up the fifties-style Hayride Tupelo, its thin maple neck weeping to feel hands around it. Nor the old acoustic Eastman that for years she wrote the bulk of Working Wife’s songs on, only transferring the music to dirty electric when she’d got it sounding clear and sweet. Nor the gorgeous Duesenberg picked up in Berlin, “Caribou Narvik Blue,” a cross between a mad cowboy’s shirt and a tropical bird. Gathering dust painfully. Unfairly. And certainly not the Fender ’56 Strat. She certainly didn’t deserve to touch that sunburst body. Didn’t deserve to hear the precise wail of its notes, the grind of its chords. Or think about how he, the unmentionable he, would have loved to even touch it, let alone play it. How he deserved to, far more than she did. How cruel that something purchased on another continent, with a royalty check ten years after she last saw him, could make her miss him more.

  Her guitars had been gathered from around the world the way some people collect postcards. Now guilt, fear and silence hold the poor, beautiful things hostage like animals in a zoo.

  She especially missed music this evening. Rain lashed at the windows, the city outside irascible and jumpy. Drivers beeped, teenagers fought, kids screamed. And inside, the dishwasher beeped and imaginary clocks ticked. Everything was irritating. She misstepped on the stairs, stubbed her toe. She screwed up the order of her washing, doing dark day clothes when it was time for light nightclothes. She realized too late, the water rushing into the drum as she clawed at the door. Kicked it with her stubbed toe. Refused to cry. Cried.

  She needed a blanket of sound to muffle the rush of dark feelings, but headphones weren’t the same, and with this Knocker, they weren’t safe either. A wide, deep bass line through a big dirty speaker, that’s what she needed. And guitars like claws on a blackboard. But that doesn’t scale down, it just withers.

  And now she scratches herself seven times on the left arm, good satisfying scratches. Tries to do the same on the right, for balance, but her left hand is so much weaker that the scratches waver and her skin drags. By the time she gets seven good scratches, her right arm is pink and lined all over. The pain blocks the thoughts of what she saw in the Magpies’ kitchen, the image a constant ticker tape at the top of her mind. His fist. Her fear. Scratch. Scratch.

  —

  Robin looks in the mirror while she brushes her teeth.

  She doesn’t look very different to the way she’s always looked. Dark curly hair, chopped and sitting around her ears. She has very dark eyebrows—like Elizabeth Taylor, her mum used to say, generously—and dark brown eyes. She has the palest skin she’s ever seen.

  She’s wearing a dark gray Motörhead T-shirt with some black jersey shorts, no socks. Her left arm dangles while the right brushes. A tattoo peeks out of the short sleeve, a forties-style pinup girl with a rockabilly fringe and a guitar. The stockinged feet are all that’s visible.

  On her right arm, her first tattoo is clearly visible. The one that really hurt. A quote from Labyrinth: “It’s only forever, not long at all.”

  EIGHTEEN

  SARAH|1992

  My mother knew the call was going to come before Drew did. He’d been nervous—I’d never seen him nervous before—and was laying down the groundwork for a rebuttal. “I didn’t want the job anyway,” that kind of thing, but laid on thicker and polluted with business-speak.

  When the “headhunter” had called him months before, he hadn’t stopped going on about it. It was a win in itself, it seemed, to be someone whose head was hunted. And by America, no less.

  “The land of opportunity, Sarah,” he’d said the first time, his hand on the small of my back like he was going to swivel me somewhere and show me a chart of opportunities. It’s all they—we—talked about for weeks.

  “But I’ve got a clear path where I am,” he said to Mum as he drove us around the M25 in the overtaking lane. “I’ve done all the groundwork for VP, so it would be reckless to start again somewhere else.”

  “What if the Americans want to take you on as a VP now though?” Mum had said, a slight twitch of excitement in her eyebrows. Until moving in with Drew, she had no idea what a VP was, I’m sure. I’d never even heard of a director.

  He seemed to like this idea. Pondered it awhile as he took the junction signposted LAKESIDE, a big out-of-town shopping center in Essex that Mum had wanted to visit ever since it opened a couple of years before. “Hmn,” he said again. “You’re a smart cookie, Angela. Your mum’s a smart cookie, Sarah. Okay, worth hearing them out, yes?”

  “Yes,” Mum had said, a smug warmth in her voice.

  They’d spent that trip around the shopping mall talking themselves into a frenzy, imagining how much bigger the mega malls of America would be. You know, if, if. They nudged each other at every American shop or fast-food place, even though Drew would never have agreed to go into a fast-food place. Instead, wherever we were, we had to seek out the kind of café that’s called “Ferns” and has indoor plants and a large non-smoking area and sells jacket potatoes with fancy fillings like “prawn delight” rather than beans and cheese.

  Well, he got the job, as Mum had known he would. He could have been terrible at his job, for all she knew. She’d never even met someone with Drew’s kind of job before, so she saw him as the absolute pinnacle of executives and businessmen. And perhaps her resolute faith and fandom bolstered his confidence so much it became self-fulfilling. Who knows.

  ROBIN|1992

  She’d been told about the toilet rule. She’d forgotten the toilet rule. At Robin’s home with her dad, if one of them goes for a wee in the night, they don’t flush the chain. It’s a small house and the noise of the old cistern chugs and rattles, waking everybody up. The Granger house is loaded with modern toilets, and the rule is different. If you go to the toilet at any time, you flush the chain. After the first time Robin stayed, Angela had pulled her to one side in the morning, spoke urgently and seriously about something so trivial Robin had actually laughed.

  “I’m serious, Robin, if you go for a pee in the night, you need to flush it, okay?”

  “All right.”

  But she’d forgotten. She’d forgotten a stupid rule about flushing the stupid toilet. She barely remembered dragging herself out of bed in the night, sitting on the loo in her nightie, blinking in the bathroom light, washing her hands and then slipping back under the crackly feather duvet.

  The next morning, she was woken to the sound of Drew s
houting.

  “Fucking animal!”

  She didn’t realize that she was the animal.

  Her mother had rushed to him. “What’s going on?”

  “Look at this,” he was saying. “It’s disgusting!”

  “I’m sorry, I was in the en suite—” Angela had started to say, but he cut her off.

  “Don’t you take the blame, gorgeous, this isn’t your fault. You told her the rule, right?”

  “Yes,” Robin’s mother said emphatically, “you know I did.”

  “It’s bloody disrespectful.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I told you, it’s not you who should be sorry. Robin!”

  Robin had walked slowly into the bathroom and was greeted by a scene of such drama and overreaction that she couldn’t help smirking. “Why are you two looking at my wee?”

  Drew had looked at her in astonishment, looked back at Angela with the same open mouth. “So you admit it?”

  “Admit what?” Robin had asked, the smirk wavering.

  “That you urinated all over the place and just left it for us to find?”

  “I…no, I went to the loo in the night…I didn’t…” Robin didn’t know how to find the words to explain something so obvious.

  “Robin,” her mum said in her parents’ evening voice. “We were very clear about this rule, weren’t we?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “About flushing in the night, remember?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I just forgot. It’s not the same as at home.”

  “Goddammit!” Drew had shouted, slamming the wall with the heavy side of his closed fist and making Angela and Robin jump. “You’ve not even said you’re fucking sorry!”

  “I’m sorry,” Robin spluttered, “I just forgot.”

  “Well,” her mother said, more to Drew than her, “just make sure you remember next time, okay? Or we’ll have to start punishing the rule breaking.”

  I don’t even want to be here, Robin thought as she walked back to the bedroom to tug her clothes on, ready to go home. Home. As she’d left, she heard Drew call her a “bone idle little shit.” Her mother’s silence upset her more than Drew’s insult.

  So when Drew and Robin’s mum had asked to come around a few days later, Robin had thought it was so they could tell her dad that they didn’t want her to come to stay anymore, after she’d got in trouble.

  I’ll be glad if they don’t want me over there, Robin thought, though that wasn’t exactly the truth.

  But they didn’t want to talk about that. The adults had gone into the living room and perched on the new sofas that Hilary had chosen. The gardening business was doing a little better now that she was helping out, sending out the invoices and talking to “clients.” They’d celebrated with a pair of two-seater sofas from a big store in Reading and a new kettle that lit up when it boiled.

  “These are new,” Robin’s mum remarked, rubbing her hands along the sofa cushion briefly. “They’re nice,” she added, smiling quickly and disingenuously at her former friend.

  “Thank you,” Hilary said.

  Callum and Robin listened at the door as the adults started to talk. Gone were the conversations interspersed with bursts of laughter. Now they all used their polite voices all of the time.

  They listened as Drew told Hilary and Robin’s dad about the job he’d been offered.

  Robin and Callum looked at each other. Why was he telling them this? Why would they care?

  And then it became clear why.

  “And they’ve asked us to relocate to Atlanta.” There was a pause.

  “Atlanta in America,” Robin’s mum added.

  Behind the door, Callum looked at Robin and Robin stared back. What did this mean? Was Sarah going to come home? Where would she sleep? It didn’t matter, Robin decided—they’d make it work.

  There was a heavy pause from inside the room.

  “And Sarah?” her dad said finally.

  “The company will pay for an excellent school for her—” Drew started to say.

  “In America?” Jack had interrupted.

  “Yes,” Drew and Angie answered in unison.

  “But you can’t take—”

  “We can, Jack. You know we can.” Drew was speaking louder now. Using his business voice that he used on the phone to “get things done.”

  Robin burst into the room.

  “You’re not taking my sister to America,” she said, pointing her finger at Drew, her eyes filling with tears. She whirled around. “Dad! You can’t let them. It’s bad enough that you let them take her away in the first place. You can’t let them do this.”

  Callum hovered in the doorway but didn’t say anything.

  “We’ll talk about this later, squirt,” her dad said quietly. But she didn’t leave. Her dad looked back at Drew and Angie. Angela, as she apparently liked to be called all of a sudden.

  “You can’t just take my daughter out of the country,” he said at last, Robin nodding frantically. “And what about Robin? And Callum for that matter. When do they see Sarah? When do you two see them? How can you leave your kids?” As the questions flowed, the conversation got louder and more confusing. Things were being said that the kids had never heard before, accusations and threats. The upshot was this: if Robin’s dad fights to stop Sarah being taken abroad, he risks losing both of them. The mum always keeps the kids; everyone knows that.

  “At least this way,” Hilary had said later, when Jack was out, “we can arrange it so Sarah can stay on holidays and you two can go and stay over there sometimes.” She saw the look on Callum’s face. “Maybe,” she added, “if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to,” he said quickly. “But that’s not what I’m worried about. What about Sarah, Mum? No one will be able to check she’s okay.”

  “What do you mean?” Robin asked, looking between both their faces, but they ignored her.

  “Cal…” Hilary started, but he shook his head.

  “Can’t she come and live here?” he said, his eyes wide and desperate. “This is her home too, isn’t it? I can sleep on the sofa or…or she can share my room! Why are you and Jack letting her go?”

  “You know it’s not that simple, darling. Jack doesn’t want her to go at all, but Angela is Sarah’s mum and—”

  “So she’s going to keep her safe, is she?”

  Robin had never seen Callum so openly upset, had certainly never heard him questioning his parents or arguing. For once, she didn’t wade in. She just watched.

  “You know what your father’s like, Callum,” Hilary said, growing pink, her words hurried. “He will fight tooth and nail—”

  “Then Jack should be fighting harder!”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Cal!” Hilary’s eyes were filling with tears, and as soon as one broke free, Callum stopped arguing and apologized, turned and walked rigidly from the room and up the stairs.

  Robin followed him to his room and knocked on the door. He was sitting on the bed, arms around his knees in a spiky triangle.

  “What was that all about, Cal?” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t look up.

  “It does matter, actually. Sarah’s my fucking sister!”

  “This isn’t about you, Robin.” Callum looked up slowly, held her gaze. Robin said nothing but stepped back.

  “I know you might find it hard to believe, but the whole world doesn’t revolve around you.” He looked back down, hugged his knees tighter.

  SARAH|1992

  Drew’s on “gardening leave” now. A full two months off before he can start working for the competitor that he’s moving us to America for. I thought that meant we had two months before we left, but I was wrong. A real estate agent and an interested family walked into my room this evening. Mum hadn’t mentioned they’d be coming. The real estate agent apologized to the family when she found me in there. I’ve only just got used to this new house, this new life, and now it’s all going to change again. And
no one has asked me what I think about that. Not even Dad. He’s just going along with it. I notice that not once has anyone asked if he would want to take Callum. Drew’s not even mentioned that he’ll miss him. “I have you now,” he says.

  Mum is spending a lot of time in the evenings calling “real estate people” in Atlanta but not—as I’ve asked several times—any schools yet. “Drew’s company will take care of that,” she says. “They’ll pay your fees for somewhere really good. Not like that falling-down shithole you’re in at the moment.” I don’t remind her that her other daughter goes to that school too and no one’s offering to pay her school fees.

  I don’t want a cola company to decide where I go to school. I don’t want any of these “golden opportunities” at all. I just want to go back to my old house and for everything to be the way it used to be.

  One evening, sick of the giddy excitement at home, I stuff some clothes into my bag and tiptoe down the stairs and out of the house. I don’t leave a note. I don’t need to—any fool could work out where I’m going.

  I walk the path to my old house with new eyes. Knowing all of this will be a memory soon makes it fresh and vital. Past the sweet shop, past our old primary school, the cricket field with the nearly finished pavilion being painted white.

  I turn onto my old road, see the house looking smaller than it used to. Hilary is on the front lawn, knees on a pad and rose secateurs in her hand. She has her hair swept up behind a silk scarf and looks straight out of another time. A more glamorous time, even wearing gardening gloves.

  “Hello, Sarah,” she says, jumping a little as she notices me. “What are you doing here? Not that it’s not lovely to see you,” she adds in a hurry.

  “I just…” I trail off, feel my throat tighten and my eyes fill. “Is Dad here?” She shakes her head ever so slightly. “Or Robin?” Her head shakes again, the perfect scarf slipping just a fraction. “I’m sorry, darling, Callum and Robin are out somewhere. Maybe they’re at the cricket field? Did you want me to come and look with you?”