Sam gazed at Robyn over the top of her bunched-up knuckles. Her eyes were serious and sad. By her elbow was a mug of peppermint tea that Robyn already knew she would not drink. There was too much talking to be done.
“Why are you hurting my son?” Sam asked quietly.
Robyn flinched. She had not been expecting those words. She had expected Sam to know exactly why she was hurting her son. Because he’s my brother, of course! a small voice inside her head shouted out.
“Do you not know?” she asked, picking at a loose thread in the tablecloth, unable to meet Sam’s intense gaze.
“Know what?” asked Sam.
“I thought you knew,” she muttered.
“I’ll tell you what I know, young lady, and that is that my son has never felt the way he feels for you about anyone else. He’s a sensitive young man, a beautiful, gentle, wonderful man, and he’s given you his heart in a bag. And he thought—and I thought—that you felt the same way. It’s been clear to me that you’re both crazy about each other . . . and now you’ve just left him in limbo and I know he’s a grown man and I know it shouldn’t be any of my business and I shouldn’t be here and that I should just butt out but I can’t, because he’s my only boy and I love him so much and I can’t stand what you’re doing to him. I can’t stand it!”
Her voice caught on the last words and Robyn looked up at her. She was crying.
Robyn looked away. “Look, it’s not as simple as that,” she began. “It’s—I thought you knew. Do you really not know?”
“Know what?”
“Jack’s father—was he really a Barnardo’s orphan? Did he really die in a car crash?”
Sam blinked away her tears and glanced at her in horror. “What?” she asked blankly.
“Is it all true? The story about Jack’s dad?”
“Of course it’s true.”
And as she said the words, Robyn knew they were true and she felt everything inside her fall and flood, like a sluice sliding open in a dam. Her legs weakened and her heart slowed and then it picked up again as she felt a huge burst of maniacal laughter forming in her chest. She swallowed it and smiled calmly at Sam. “Really?” she said.
“Yes. Of course it is. Why on earth would I lie about a thing like that? And what on earth does it have to do with you and Jack?”
Laughter bubbled under the surface. Robyn’s smile widened. “I thought—you’re going to think I’m mad—but I thought he might be my brother.”
“What!”
“Yeah, I know, it’s nuts, isn’t it? But there were so many things . . . we look so alike, and then I signed up to the Donor Sibling Registry and they told me I had a brother born in 1983. And I just thought . . . And you!” she remembered suddenly. “You were so weird, that night at your house, when we were talking about me being a donor’s child. You were looking at me so strangely . . .”
Sam blinked at her and shook her head. “Was I?” she said.
“Yes! Like there was something you were thinking. Like you’d used a donor yourself.”
Sam laughed. “Really?” she said. “I honestly don’t remember. But if I was looking at you strangely it was probably because I just find anything to do with parentage interesting. Because Jack doesn’t have a father. I suppose I’m always subconsciously looking for reassurance, for other views, for different ways of looking at things. Because I’ve felt guilty all my life that I couldn’t give him a dad.”
Her strong face softened then and she put one large hard-skinned hand against Robyn’s. “Oh, sweetie,” she clucked. “Sweet girl. I can’t believe you’ve been going around all this time, thinking that you were doing something wrong. You should have come straight to me, sweetie. I could have put your mind at rest a long time ago and saved you all this pain. Because you and Jack, well, you’re perfect together. And, trust me, I will do anything it takes to support the pair of you. I believe in you two, and that is a hard thing for me to say. This is my boy, my only child, no one was ever going to be good enough for him. But you are. I honestly believe that. I mean—why else would I be here?” She paused for a moment, her mouth still open from her last syllable, her hands spread wide in front of her. And then she leaned back in her chair and laughed.
Robyn smiled. Finally. It was over. She felt all the wrongness inside her melt away. She had not slept with her brother. She was not a pervert or a freak. She was normal. She was totally, splendidly, beautifully, utterly normal.
“So,” Sam continued, leaning back toward the table, “is that it now? Are you reassured?”
“Yes.” Robyn smiled. “I am. But promise me one thing? Please?”
Sam looked at her expectantly.
“Don’t tell Jack. Please don’t tell him. I’d hate to think of him knowing about all the weird shit I’ve been worrying about. I just want everything to go back to normal . . .”
Sam smiled and nodded. “Don’t you worry,” she said, “your secret is safe with me.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The first thing Robyn did when Sam left half an hour later was to call Jack. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been freaking out. And I’ve been crazy. But I’m not crazy anymore. I’m totally sane. I’ve missed you. I love you. I’ve got your keys in my hand. I’m ready to go. Can I still move in?”
There was a moment’s silence and then Jack laughed. “What, now?”
“Yes,” Robyn said, breathlessly, “why not? I can be packed and there by early evening.”
Jack laughed again. “Wow,” he said pensively.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m great. I’m good. I’m just, shit, I don’t know. I’ve been so . . . God, I can’t even put it into words. I’ve just been totally desperate. I’ve missed you so much. I thought . . .” He paused and sighed. “I thought it was all over.”
Robyn smiled and breathed lovingly into the phone. “I hate myself,” she said. “I hate myself. And this—this isn’t me. Honestly. I don’t do this kind of thing. But then, no one ever asked me to live with them before.”
“It’s my fault. I knew it the minute I said it. I knew it was too much. You’re so young. We’ve only just met. I was an idiot.”
“No!” she cried. “No! You weren’t an idiot. I was an idiot. An idiot ever to think it wasn’t a great idea. I’ve been ill. I’ve lost half a stone. I look awful. I love you. I really love you. I’m going to pack. I’ll see you in a few hours. I love you.”
“I love you too,” laughed Jack.
“Shh, now. Let me go. I love you.”
“I love you.”
“Stop telling me you love me! I love you!”
“I love you more.”
She sighed. “You win. I’ll see you soon.”
She switched off the phone and she rested it on the kitchen table and she grinned at it. She tried to stop smiling but she could not. Her smile was stuck. She glanced then around her parents’ kitchen. She looked at the biscuit-colored tiles impressed with purplish bunches of grapes, the chunky ceramic pots in a line: TEA, COFFEE, SUGAR, with their fat cork lids. She looked at the magnetic noticeboard studded with plumber’s bills and dental appointments and receipts for wheelbarrows and car batteries, at the stable door hung with stained aprons and rusty barbecue forks. This had been her kitchen since the day she was born. The kitchen had changed not one iota, just tarnished and faded and cluttered itself. But Robyn had changed. Not slowly, not in barely perceptible increments, but overnight, from the moment she met Jack. And now that change was taking her away from here, away from Essex, from her parents’ home. And she was ready now. Ready to be an adult. Ready for Jack. Well and truly.
Except, it wasn’t that simple. Because somewhere inside the grubby chaos of the past few weeks she had brought something else into her world. Two brothers. And a sister. She’d never wanted to know about them. She’d had no interest in these people. They were not relevant to her journey. But now they were here. The “sister” person had requested her information. And now there was another one. He’d signed up just last week. It was the younger of the two brothers. And there they were, in black and white. Real people, fleshed out from translucent shadows to two dimensions, one click of a button away from standing in front of her complete with smells and voices and blemishes and preconceptions and needs and wants. She kept trying to force them back into the box of her past but they refused to stay, bursting out of the sides like excess clothing in an overpacked suitcase. She’d breathed life into these people and now that she was done with them they refused to die. Sister. Brother. Brother. Sketchy, indistinct, sinister as ghosts.
“What are you going to do about them?” her mother had asked her the night before.
“Nothing,” she’d replied, knowing even as she said it that it wasn’t true. However much she wanted it to be.
Her mother had stopped stirring the gravy granules in a Pyrex jug on the kitchen counter and Robyn had seen her inhale, breathing away her natural reaction. A moment passed and then slowly she’d begun to stir rhythmically at the gravy again. She was trying to find the right words.
“Well,” she’d said eventually, resting the jug in the middle of the table, “maybe not now. No. Maybe later on. When you’re more settled.”
Robyn took her mother’s well-intended words and let them sit with her for a short while before saying, circumspectly but not without feeling, “Yes. Maybe later. Maybe soon.”
The conversation was over. Dinner was served.