by Harriet Tyce
“OK,” I say with such decision that Robin sits bolt upright. “OK. Till the end of term. You are going to give it to the end of term. And if it keeps being as bad, then we are getting you out of there. I don’t care about it being such a good school. There are loads of others. And I can teach you at home in the meantime. We will sort you out.”
“But what about the will? This house? I thought we couldn’t live here if I don’t go to that school.”
“I’ll take it to court if I have to. And we can stay at Zora’s if we get kicked out. But we won’t.”
“Really?”
“I will do my absolute best, I promise. I’m not having you so miserable—it’s awful to watch. I can’t promise it’s going to get better, but I can promise that if it doesn’t get better by the end of term, I will take you out. Deal?”
Robin’s face has lit up, pink back in her cheeks.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Zora arrives at this point and we take her upstairs to look at the carnage in my old room.
“I never wanted to come up.” Zora shudders. “I once took a couple of steps up, then I felt something turn me back.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t listen to a word of it,” I say to Robin. “Zora has always had a taste for melodrama.”
“OK, maybe that’s a bit much, but I didn’t like the vibe. The house didn’t feel great, you know?”
“It still doesn’t. Though we’re getting there. Making it our own, aren’t we, Robin?” I say and Robin laughs, almost convinced, and the conversation moves straight on to the incident with the owl, which Zora finds funny.
Robin then takes Zora to show her the recent improvements in her own room—a new rug and some big floral stickers on the wall.
When Zora comes back downstairs she’s encouraging.
“It’s coming together,” she says. “Robin likes her room, at least. I’m so pleased she still has that punk meerkat I knitted her—I never thought it would survive this long.”
“She loves that meerkat. She won’t be parted from it,” I say. “It was always the nicest bedroom—I think because it didn’t get as filled with my mother’s stuff.”
“It must be tough for you being in her old room.”
“It’s OK, actually. I guess I’ve got used to it. Or I don’t let myself think about it. That’s probably closer to the truth.”
“I can’t believe you’ve done this, you know,” Zora says, sitting down heavily.
“You made your feelings pretty clear the other night,” I say. “Clear enough. I don’t need you to say it again.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Zora says. “I just worry about you. You didn’t see your mother for the last few years of her life—you didn’t even come to her funeral.” She catches my eye, holds up her hand. “Sorry. I know it was her decision to cut you off. I know she barred you from the funeral. But now you’re back, sleeping in her bed, sending your daughter to your old school. How did it come to this? Was it really so bad with Andrew?”
I nod, look at Zora. Hold her gaze until Zora looks down.
“OK,” Zora says. “OK. But look, you’ve a miserable little girl upstairs who misses her dad. Do you think you could try to talk to him again? See if you can work things out?”
I could laugh. “No chance. This is on him, Zora. This is what he wants.”
Zora looks over at me. There’s a moment’s hesitation. “You can’t know that.”
“Can you just take it from me? I know what I’m talking about. This is exactly where he wants to be, and there’s no other way. Anyway, it’s good for my work, isn’t it? You’ve lectured me enough about it. All those years I gave up after having Robin, living in a place where I couldn’t use my qualifications, all for Andrew’s job. At least I’m back in court—thanks to you. A school place for Robin, a place to live, enough money from the trust to keep us so that I’ve got time to build up a practice. We’ll make it work.”
“I still think you’re wrong about Andrew, though. I think there must be something else going on, something that isn’t to do with you. It’s just too odd otherwise,” Zora says.
I shake my head. “You don’t know, Zora. Stop standing up for him. He’s checked out. It’s over.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” Zora says. “You can’t just give up on him like that. Think about Robin.”
“They speak to each other,” I say. “This is what he wanted.” Anger flashes through me for a moment, fury in my eyes, before it subsides and I shrug, helpless. Zora gets the message. We move on to discussing the evidence I’ve been going through, and we don’t mention Andrew again.
20
I’m in the middle of a dream about a crash, my car flipping across three lanes of oncoming traffic, when the alarm cuts through it, just as I’m thrown from the vehicle. I wake to discover that I’m caught up in my sheets, sweaty and hot, heart pounding. As the rate of my breathing subsides, I look at my phone: 6:30. Monday morning. I only got to sleep at four and now it’s time to go.
I thought Robin was nervous on the first day of term. That was nothing. Today, the poor child is pale, lethargic. I have to tell her to get up three times before she emerges, and the face of desolation on her would melt a heart of stone.
“My tummy hurts,” Robin says. “I feel really sick.”
“Robin.”
“Seriously, Mom. I think I’m going to throw up everywhere.”
I walk around the table and hug her, before sitting down next to her, my hand on her arm.
“Running away isn’t going to sort it out.”
“I’m not running away. I can’t help it if I feel sick.” Robin’s air of lethargy is overtaken by indignation.
“You weren’t feeling sick when you got through that massive Yorkshire pudding yesterday.”
“Maybe it’s because I ate too much junk in the evening? I had all those sweets. You said I’d make myself sick,” Robin says, sitting bolt upright in triumph at her comeback before remembering the dying-duck-in-a-thunderstorm act, head drooping again against my shoulder.
“I know you don’t want to go to school,” I say. “I completely understand that. I don’t want to face them either. But you did nothing wrong. Daisy and her mum are being completely unreasonable.”
“I just hate the way no one will talk to me,” Robin says. “It’s miserable. I sit there and it’s as if I don’t exist.”
“Wasn’t Pippa being a bit friendly at least? Her mum is organizing for us to go over, remember?”
“I suppose. But even Pippa will only talk to me if no one is looking. I hate it.”
“I know you do. And I totally understand it. Just a bit longer. Let’s see how it goes. And then we’ll take it from there.”
Robin makes a grumpy noise through her nose, but she sits up and eats her toast.
“You can do this,” I say. “I know you can. It could turn out to be the best school you’ve ever been to.”
Robin crunches down on the final mouthful of toast before looking at me with a withering expression, and I raise a hand and laugh, backing off.
I’m not laughing when we get off the bus near school. Nor when at least three mothers I recognize from the coffee morning walk past me, faces averted. Robin hunches down, her face pinched, and it takes all the self-control that I possess to continue walking toward the school, not to pull Robin by the hand and take her away from this terrible place.
Even the weather is muted to match our mood, a pathetic fallacy of heavy gray clouds and a deadening light.
“Here goes,” Robin says, when we arrive at the school gates. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” I say. “Just give it a go.”
I watch Robin stomp up the steps before turning away. Walking back from the school, I see Julia on the other side of the road and I put my head down, determined to avoid a further confrontation. I’m not fast enough, though. Julia darts across the road and stops me dead in my tracks.
“Your daughter had better keep away fro
m mine,” Julia says, standing right in my face. I take a step back, not keen for the situation to escalate, but Julia follows, cornering me against the railings. “If I hear one more complaint from Daisy about anything that girl does, I swear to God I will not be responsible for my actions.”
She’s so close that I can see the small red veins in her eyes, the pores on her nose where her makeup has caked. Cracks in the mask. The flaws give me a jolt of courage and I set my jaw, pushing my face in closer to Julia instead of following my initial instinct and pulling away.
“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but I’ve had enough of this. You’re behaving like an absolute cow, and your precious daughter is too. She had better stay well away from Robin,” I hiss. “Or you won’t be the only one taking action.”
“Who the fuck do I think I am? I’m head of the PTA, that’s who I am,” Julia says. “And I’m an old girl. I know this school. This school is mine.”
“So fucking what? I’m an old girl too. And you know what? I hated it then and it’s no fucking better now, thanks to people like you.”
We stand nose to nose, motionless for a few long moments.
“Mummy!” a voice calls and the spell is broken. I loosen my fist and step back. It’s not Robin, though the note of panic could have been hers. It’s Daisy, Julia’s daughter. She’s run up to us and is now clutching hold of her mother’s arm.
“Just leave my daughter alone,” Julia hisses, and pivots away from me so sharply she nearly pulls Daisy over. The girl lets go of her mother and staggers before regaining her footing. Julia’s already meters ahead of her, striding away down the road toward the gates. For a short moment, Daisy looks at me, an expression almost of pleading on her face, before she turns and runs after her mother, schoolbag banging on her back.
I walk to the tube, feet heavy, heart heavier. The week couldn’t have got off to a worse start.
21
Every day this week proceeds in the same way. Violence doesn’t threaten again, but I feel there’s tension whenever I get close to the school building. Groups of mothers huddle tight or part like the Red Sea at my passing. I’m doing my best not to be paranoid, but I’m sure I’m not imagining it. I might as well be swinging a bell in front of me and intoning, Unclean! Unclean!
That’s not the worst, though. The worst is Robin. She’s growing paler, the strain of the ostracism preying on her. She’s bitten her nails down into bloody little stumps, and a dry patch of skin by her mouth is spreading. But she won’t talk about it.
“It was fine,” she says to me on Wednesday evening when I ask about her day, picking at her pizza. She won’t look at me.
“Did anyone talk to you?” I say.
A long pause. She gets under the edge of a big bit of cheese and peels it off in one go from the pizza base. She opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something, closes it again. She shakes her head.
“How about netball?” I’m going to persevere with this until I get something out of her. She’s quiet for a moment longer, before she shakes her head, the motion slight, but enough.
“They won’t pass to me, Mom. I was in just the right place for Daisy to pass and she let the other team have the ball deliberately rather than let me have it. And her mom didn’t even tell her off. She just laughed.”
“Her mum was at games?”
“Yes, she likes coming to watch practices as well. She’s got lots of coaching tips.”
“For netball?” I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.
“Grown-ups play it too, Mum,” Robin says. There’s a pause. “She shouts a lot, though. She made Daisy cry earlier.”
“How did she make her cry?”
“She missed a shot at the net and her mom got really mad at her. Kept telling her how useless she was and how she’d never get into the A team.”
“That’s horrible,” I say. “How stupid to care so much about Year Six netball.”
“Mom,” Robin says. “It’s important.”
“Oh, I know it’s important, but you know what I mean. It’s not that important—not important enough to make someone cry about it. I didn’t even realize parents could come and watch practices.”
“Daisy’s mom is the only one.”
“Doesn’t the teacher try and stop her when she’s shouting?”
Robin looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “The teacher’s scared of her, too. She shouts a lot.” She pushes the rest of the pizza aside and stomps off upstairs. I want to follow her and get her to talk more, but I restrain myself, sitting on the sofa downstairs trying to read a book, leafing through the pages though I don’t take in a word in front of me, images of the violence I’d like to wreak on Julia swimming in front of my eyes.
It’s nearly eight when I decide to go upstairs to make sure that Robin is getting ready for bed. I’m halfway up the stairs when I hear a muffled cry from her room. I run the rest of the flight, taking the steps two at a time.
She’s sitting on the floor beside her bed, the contents of her schoolbag spread out around her. There’s a box in her hand that I don’t recognize, square and blue, the color of a duck’s egg. It looks just like a Tiffany box and, as I move closer, I see the logo on the lid on the floor beside her. That’s exactly what it is.
Robin looks up at me, the box in her hands. I realize she can’t move. I go and gently take the box from her. Then I look inside. I can’t make out what it is at first, an indistinct mass of brown and white in the bottom. I look more closely. It looks like bits of rice. But they’re moving. I’m as frozen as Robin for a moment, looking at this without fully grasping what it is I have in my hand. But then the realization hits properly.
“Maggots! It’s full of maggots!” I scream and throw it away from me and watch in horror as the maggots shower out over Robin, the box landing on her bed. She starts screaming and runs frantically into the bathroom and I hear the water start running in the shower, her screams continuing until they subside into sobs.
I’m screaming too, brushing my hands down myself, trying to get rid of any that might have landed on me, until I suddenly remember it’s Robin I need to look after. I go to the bathroom door and shout through, asking if she’s OK. She’s stopped sobbing now, and all I can hear is water from the shower, the occasional splashing. I leave her to it, run downstairs to get cleaning stuff, a rubbish bag.
Rubber gloves at the ready, I grit my teeth and get down to clearing it up. At first, I’m loath to pick up the maggots, even wearing the gloves, but the thought of Robin stiffens my nerve and soon I’m over it, picking them up one by one with grim determination.
Robin has finished by now and she stands at her bedroom door, wrapped in a towel. The shock seems to have worn off a little, but she still looks very shaken, refusing to come anywhere near where the maggots landed. I clear the floor as much as I can and move over to the bed where the box landed. It’s on its side and I tip it back onto its base. I’m really trying to overcome my disgust but it’s hard. I look at Robin, her misery, and it spurs me on. I look back inside the box, poking the contents gingerly, trying to shift the maggots to see what’s underneath. There’s a small body, not much of it left now, and some feathers. Brown feathers. And red.
It’s a robin. The remains of a dead robin.
“What is it, Mom?” Robin says from the door and I push as much of the mess as I can back into the box and shove the lid back on. She doesn’t need to see this.
“It’s a dead bird,” I say. “Where did you find this?”
“Someone must have put the box in the bottom of my bag. I only found it now.”
“Where was your schoolbag?”
“In the changing room at netball. Anyone could have done it.”
I nod. Anyone could.
I’ve scraped up every maggot I can see now. I put the box into a plastic bag and tie it up firmly. Then I strip the sheets off the bed—I’m going to put them through a boil wash.
“Can I sleep in your room?” she
asks.
“Of course you can,” I say. She pads off through. I take the sealed bag downstairs, and the sheets, sticking them straight into the washing machine, adding bleach to the detergent. Then I go back up to check that I’ve got rid of all the mess. I pick through the things on the floor, the books from the schoolbag and the pencil case, piling them up neatly. Then I get hold of Robin’s bag and look inside it before turning it inside out to make sure there’s nothing else nasty lurking in there.
No more maggots. But a folded piece of paper falls out. I pick it up in my gloved hand and unfold it. It’s A4, from a spiral notebook, one edge torn. And scrawled on it in uneven capital letters:
A ROBIN FOR ROBIN. HOPE YOU ENJOY MY PLACE.
My scalp is prickling. I fold the note carefully, go through to my room to find Robin curled up in my bed.
“Has anyone talked about you taking someone’s place at school?” I ask. I try to keep my tone light. I don’t want to tell her what else is written on the note.
She sits up and rubs her eyes. “No. Someone called me a vampire, feeding off the dead. I didn’t want to tell you, but that’s all they say now. Daisy had garlic with her today—she kept waving it at me whenever I went near her. I don’t know why, though.”
“Oh, sweetheart…”
“I know it’s stupid. But I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it either. You know I’m going to have to tell Mrs. Grayson about this, don’t you?”
She jerks upright, her face distraught.
“Mom, no. Please, no. Please can we just ignore it? It’ll only make things worse. Please. You have to promise not to tell anyone.” Robin starts crying, her sobs increasing in intensity until I acquiesce, albeit with reluctance.
I lean forward and hug her until she quiets, lie beside her until she goes to sleep. I’m desperate to email the school and report what’s happened, but I’ve promised Robin not to… Besides, I don’t even know who I’m accusing. Julia seems the most likely suspect, or her daughter, but it could have been anyone with access to the changing room. Surely this is just malicious teasing, not anything more sinister. Maybe whoever did it was only meaning to give Robin the bird, didn’t realize that maggots might hatch out of it, giving such a sinister edge to it all.
