by Lisa Jewell
“I promise you, on my life,” said Jack, “that I will never knowingly let you go to Bury St. Edmunds.” He brushed his nose against her hair and Robyn let him. He was right. She was being silly. But so far none of this had gone according to plan. She’d made contact with both of them. The woman and the boy. And neither of them had responded. This was remarkable to Robyn. She’d been sick with nerves from the moment she agreed to have her information shared with them. Every morning she watched the postman pull up outside the house with his red cart and sort through bundles of post. Every morning she scurried down to the communal hallway and sifted through the pile of mail, and every morning she breathed a sigh of relief when there was nothing there from the Registry. But, at the same time, she was unnerved. She’d just assumed that they would jump at the chance to meet her. She assumed that they’d be slick, professional Registry users, all primed and ready to go. It had not occurred to her that they might be as uncertain as her. It had not occurred to her, she supposed, that they might be human.
And then this morning there had been a letter from the Registry. Her heart had lurched. Which one, she’d thought, which one? Would it be the boy, close in age to her, or would it be the woman, the terrible aged facsimile of herself? Or would it, in fact, be the missing man, the one who was the same age as her Jack?
But it had been none of those. It had been him. The one she hadn’t expected ever to encounter. Her father.
∗ ∗ ∗
Robyn and Jack left the house a few minutes later. They took a bottle of rosé from the fridge and a bag of chips and some olives and bread and they headed toward the park. Summer had crept up on them and the end of May was tantalizingly warm and sunny. They were meeting two of Jack’s friends, Jonathan and Leo, in Whittington Park for lunch and Frisbee. Wary of being the only girl, Robyn had asked Nush along. She hadn’t seen her friend for weeks. She missed Nush. Nush was her handle on her old life, the life she’d had before she met Jack when she was uncommonly self-confident, the queen of the scene, the center of her own tiny universe. Maybe, she thought, seeing Nush might help her remember how to be that person again.
Nush was already there when they arrived, stretched out in the sunshine on a beach towel, a glass of wine on the grass by her hand and Leo trying frantically, it appeared from this distance, to get on top of her.
“Oh my God,” she said, sitting up abruptly as she saw them approaching. “Who is this guy? I’ve told him about a billion times I’ve got a boyfriend, but he keeps trying to hump me.”
“I’m not trying to hump you,” said Leo, mock-hurt, “I’m just trying to cuddle you.”
Nush looked at him in amused horror. “But I don’t even know you!” she squealed. “Seriously,” she addressed Jack, “who is he?”
“Get off her,” laughed Jack, pulling his friend away from Nush by the arm.
“I only wanted a cuddle,” he said, pushing out his bottom lip.
“Sorry about him,” said Jack, “he’s a bit like a dog, you know, it doesn’t mean anything. Just pat him on the head occasionally and he’ll leave you alone.”
Leo smiled sheepishly and opened himself a can of lager. “It’s your fault for being late,” he told Jack.
“We’re ten minutes late! And I cannot be held accountable for your rampant sexuality.”
Jonathan arrived a few minutes later and Robyn and Nush sat together, with plastic glasses of wine and sunglasses, like a pair of twentysomethings, watching the three older men behaving like teenagers.
“So,” said Nush, linking her arm through Robyn’s and resting her head against her shoulder, “how’s married life?”
Robyn dropped a kiss onto Nush’s shiny black hair and smiled. “It’s lovely,” she said.
“I still can’t believe it,” continued Nush. “Can’t believe you’re living with someone. Seems like only yesterday you were being banged up against the wall by Christian thingy in that club on your birthday.”
“God, yeah, I know, don’t remind me!”
“I saw him last week, by the way.” She nudged Robyn in the ribs. “He asked after you.”
“Euf!” Robyn shuddered. “I don’t know what I was thinking. That seems like another life . . .”
“Yeah, well, I guess it was in some ways. I tell you what, though. We don’t half miss you. It’s dead up there without you.”
“Oh, now, I’m sure you’re keeping up the good work.”
“Nah.” Nush glanced down between her cupped bare feet and pulled at a strand of grass. “It’s just not the same anymore. You know, you’ve gone, I’m all coupled up, it’s the end of an era really. We’re all growed up.” She smiled sadly.
Robyn smiled back and brought Nush toward her for a shoulder-to-shoulder embrace. “Yes,” she said, “I guess we are.”
“So what do you do?” her friend asked. “What’s your big grown-up life like? Do you do, like, ironing and stuff?”
Robyn laughed and rocked back on her folded legs. “Nooo,” she said, “but I do do washing up. And I go to the launderette . . .”
“What, do you, like, take Jack’s clothes? Do you fold up his underpants?”
“No! I take things for a service wash!”
“What’s a service wash?”
Robyn smiled. She hadn’t known what a service wash was either until two months ago. “You take your dirty washing and you pay the lady in the launderette to wash it for you.”
Nush wrinkled her nose. “What, you mean she, like, touches your dirty underwear and stuff?”
“Yeah, and then she washes it and folds it all up for you.”
“Eugh!” said Nush. “That’s nasty.”
Robyn laughed. It had been a long time since she’d had an Essex princess conversation and she was enjoying it. “And the other day,” she said, “I emptied a trash can.”
“You emptied a trash can?” repeated Nush blankly.
“Yeah, a really disgusting one, full of, like, old cereal and stuff.”
“Oh, my,” said Nush, her hand against her heart, “you are now, like, a goddess to me.”
The men were showing off frantically, to each other and to the two beautiful teenage girls watching them. Robyn and Nush smiled at each other. “Cheers,” said Nush, holding out her plastic cup to Robyn, “to you, and your big grown-up new life.”
“Yeah,” said Robyn, “and to you and not having to empty trash cans.”
“Hallelujah to that, my friend,” said Nush. “And how’s college?”
“Don’t ask.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes, really. I’m fucking up, big time.”
“What! No way!”
“Yes way. I reckon they’re close to kicking me out.”
“Holy shit! But why?”
Robyn shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “My heart’s just not in it, not really. And it’s so tough. You really really really have to have your heart in it if you want to succeed. And part of me thinks, I don’t know, maybe I was just fooling myself about all this being a doctor stuff. Maybe I was just . . .” She paused, her thoughts still not fully formed. “There’s just a lot going on in my life right now, and when I started this medical school thing I was one person and now I’m, well, I’m not another person as such, I’m just sort of in a halfway place. You know?”
“What, you mean, like, between girl and woman?”
“Yeah. No. Well, sort of. I just mean, there’s stuff. It’s complicated. It’s . . .” Robyn inhaled loudly and let the daisy she’d been twirling between her fingers fall to the grass. “It’s my dad. My real dad. I mean, my donor dad. He’s been in touch. He wants to meet me.”
Nush’s professionally threaded eyebrows arched dramatically. “For real?” she said.
“Yes. For real. Got a letter in the post this morning.”
“Wowser.” She stared at Robyn, wide-eyed. “But how did he know where you live?”
“Oh, God, well, that’s a long story. There’s other stuff. There’s . . .
” She sighed again and then told Nush about the brother and the sister and the Donor Sibling Registry.
“Oh my God! That’s so exciting!” said Nush, grasping Robyn’s hands in hers.
“You think?”
“God, yeah! Imagine! Your very own brother and sister! And they both live in London. I mean, what were the chances of that?”
“Well, the clinic is in London, so I suppose . . .”
“And your dad! Your actual dad. I bet he’s so cool. Because you’re so cool. Not that your other dad isn’t cool. I love your dad. But, you know, you’ve always been sort of . . . special . . .”
Robyn blinked at these words. That was how she used to feel. When it was just her. Now she only felt special when Jack smiled at her. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I know what you mean, it’s just . . .” She was going to say, What if I meet him and I hate him and it totally destroys my life? But then she remembered that her “perfect” life was currently sliding downhill like a wooden house in a mudslide. And maybe what she actually needed now was something to come along and stop it. She’d already signed up to meet her brother and sister on the premise that they were going to show her where she was supposed to go next. Now, it occurred to her that maybe the place they’d been taking her in that very vivid dream, the place on the other side of those double doors, was actually to their father. Her life was unraveling and she was letting it. She needed to reel it back in again, and Nush was right; she was special. Her family thought she was special. Her boyfriend thought she was special. She herself had once thought she was special. Maybe her father would be just the person to help her to believe it once more.
“Would you do it?” she said, turning to face her friend.
“God, yeah! I mean, he’s not even that old, is he? Fifty-three? Younger than your mum and dad. He might be a laugh. He might even be able to help you with whatever problems you’re having at college. Don’t forget—the man’s an actual doctor.”
“Well, yeah, he might be a doctor. But he might be a total loser, too. I mean, surely if his life was that great, then he wouldn’t be that fussed about us lot, you know, about something he did twenty, thirty years ago?”
“’Course he would! Maybe he’s only just had children of his own, or grandchildren? Maybe he was waiting until you were all adults? Or maybe he just woke up one morning, in the middle of his perfect life, smiled at his perfect wife, made breakfast for his perfect children, got in his Lamborghini and thought: Today? You know, today is the day. Maybe he got in touch because his life is totally ‘that great.’”
Robyn blinked at Nush in surprise. She had not been expecting such a considered response from her friend. She swallowed, trying to gulp away the sense of impending drama. And then she smiled. “Yeah,” she said, “and maybe he’s dying and he’s only got six months to live.”
Nush threw her a look of exasperation. “Yeah, well, whatever,” she said. “But you asked me what I’d do, and if I were you then that’s what I’d do.”
Robyn paused for a moment. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger up and down the silken shaft of a blade of grass. “What if he’s a wanker, Nush? What if I hate him?”
Nush shrugged and picked up the half-empty wine bottle. “Well then,” she said, “at least you’d know. And that’s got to be better than not knowing, right?”
Robyn held out her plastic glass and nodded mutely.
Maybe she was right.
∗ ∗ ∗
Jack and Robyn got back to their flat at eight o’clock that evening. Jack had managed to shake off Jonathan and Leo, who had been hinting quite strongly that they would, in an ideal world, be joining Jack and Robyn back at their place and drinking themselves sick into the rude hours.
The flat felt melancholy when they returned. It was untouched since they’d left almost eight hours earlier. The sun had passed all the way around their terrace, through the front windows, through the back windows, warming the dust, the furnishings, the wooden floors. Now the rooms were cool and dark, silently awaiting their return.
Jack kicked off his flip-flops and pulled two cold beers from the fridge. He removed their lids on the edge of the wooden counter, like some dude in an American sitcom, and brought them to the sofa where Robyn sat, still and pensive.
She was feeling the arms of her current life wrapping themselves around her, squeezing her in a tight embrace. She was studying the minute details of her home; the worn patches in the terra-cotta kilim, the dark nodding tulips in a glass bowl on the dining table, the crack in the plaster behind the TV that looked like a bolt of lightning, the ornate ridges in the baseboards, the tasteful pencil sketch of a woman’s head that hung beside the front door, and a framed review of Jack’s first novel from the Guardian, entitled “Word Perfect.”
Every detail was so new, yet already so familiar. But still there was that tinge of melancholy about her surroundings. Her life should feel perfect, but it didn’t. Her love for Jack should have been enough, but it wasn’t. She should have been sailing through her first year at medical school, but instead she’d dragged herself through, painfully, and was now set to fail.
She turned to Jack as he joined her on the sofa. Her voice left her wine-dry mouth sounding bland and flat. “I want to meet my donor dad,” she said.
Jack’s eyebrows twitched. “Wow,” he said, “you’ve come a hundred and eighty degrees since this morning.”
She nodded.
“What made you change your mind?” he asked.
She shrugged and picked at the frayed hem of her cutoff shorts. “Nothing, really,” she started, “just . . .” She sighed. “Ever since I signed up with the Registry I’ve been feeling like something’s missing. No, more than that—I’ve been feeling like I’m supposed to be somewhere . . . like there’s, you know, unfinished business in my life. And I was so determined to get through my life without meeting this man, so determined for just my mum and dad to be enough, for me to be enough, and now . . . I’m not enough, anymore. D’you see? I’m just not enough.” She started to cry then and Jack took her in his arms. She pushed her face against the cotton of his T-shirt. It smelled of sun and fresh sweat.
“Good,” he said into her hair, “good.”
She pulled away and looked at him curiously. “What do you mean, good?” she asked.
He sighed. “I mean, good because I thought it was me.”
“Thought what was you?” she asked.
He sighed again. “You. The way you’ve been since you moved in here. Well, since before you moved in here. I thought you were . . .” He paused. “I don’t know what happened . . . after I gave you the keys. For a while it was as if you found me repulsive. And then you just went completely cold on me. I thought I’d blown it, you know? I was so angry with myself, for what I’d done, asking an eighteen-year-old girl to move in with me. But then you came back and I was just totally overwhelmed. I thought I’d lost you. But even then, you weren’t the same. You haven’t been the same. That sparkle you had the first time I saw you, that look you had in your eye, so cocksure and pleased with yourself—it’s gone. And I thought it was me. I thought I’d done that to you. That leaving home, leaving your friends, living with me had done that to you . . .”
Robyn wiped away tears from beneath her eyes. “No!” she cried. “No. It was never you. It was always me. You’ve always been the meaning of everything. You’ve always been perfect, Jack, totally. It’s me who’s broken down. It’s me who needs fixing. And once I’ve moved on from this, for better or for worse, everything will be about you and me. The world, the universe and everything in it. I love you so much, Jack, so much.”
He smiled at her with joyful relief. He pressed his forehead against hers and clutched her wet cheeks between the palms of his hands.
“Come on then,” he said, “let’s get writing to this father of yours. Let’s get fixing you.”
DEAN
I used to come down here with my dog,” said Lydia, her hands in the pockets of her jeans, neg
otiating the downward camber of the slope leading to an overgrown railway track.
“You had a dog?” Dean replied.
“Yeah. A German shepherd. His name was Arnie. I used to come down here with him and get drunk.”
“Cool,” said Dean, trying to envisage the poised woman in front of him skulking around on disused railways with a massive dog, necking Wild Turkey or somesuch straight from the bottle.
“Well, no, it wasn’t really that cool. It was pretty tragic actually.”
He followed her down to the bottom of the slope, where she perched herself on the grass. He sat himself next to her and viewed the surroundings with his arms wrapped around his knees. “Quiet down here, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes. Good place to think.” She placed her chin on her cupped hands and stared into the middle distance.
“Got plenty of stuff to think about now, haven’t we?” he said, glancing at the shopping bag hooked over the crook of his arm, thinking about its shocking contents.
“I think we should go to the police,” she said.
“What, seriously?”
“Yes, I do. This is fucking serious stuff. This is . . .” Lydia’s voice trailed away and Dean gulped. He was still reeling from the events of the past hour. He pulled a pouch from his jacket pocket and assembled a spliff. Lydia glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. She said nothing but returned her gaze to the tangle of weeds, litter and brambles on the other side of the tracks. “I think he killed him. My dad. I think he killed the baby and then I think he killed my mother.”
“No,” began Dean, because his brain could not process such a dark and depraved possibility. “No, there must be another reason, there must be . . .”
“It fits,” she said coldly. “It fits the mold. My dad, he was strange. He was really strange. He wasn’t what a dad should be and I always put that down to my mum dying and leaving him alone with me, I always put it down to him hating me for not being my mum. But now, I think about it and I can see it, do you understand what I mean? I can close my eyes and I can see him doing it, I really can.
