The day that Robyn was set to meet her brother, her sister and her father had begun bright but was now overcast and chilly. The previous day had been cloudless and hot; she’d walked to university in a strapless sundress, the kind of thing she’d normally save for holidays abroad. But today it was another season entirely and she had promised Dean that she would be wearing a red dress. The dress she’d had in mind was too summery so she surveyed her wardrobe, searching for glimpses of red. And then she saw the burnt orange prom dress, the one Jack had bought her for their anniversary. She touched the fabric of it and thought that, in a way, it would be the perfect dress to wear today. Because today was going to be the dictionary definition of auspicious and because the dress itself was auspicious and because in a way she quite liked the idea of wearing something completely inappropriate.
She pulled on the dress and covered her arms with a red zip-up hoodie. On her feet she wore red ballet pumps, and she tied her hair up into a messy sideways-leaning bun, making sure to clear the back of her neck so that her tattoo would be visible. She looked in the mirror and thought, I look very young. She applied some black eyeliner and red lipstick. She looked at herself again and thought: I look like Lily Allen. And the thought made her laugh, in spite of her nerves.
Jack smiled as she stood in front of him in his study a moment later. “You look really pretty,” he said.
Robyn smiled.
“And this is the last time I’m going to ask you this, but are you totally sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“Totally. Honestly.” She pulled a piece of fluff from his brown polo shirt and let it fall to the floor. Then she put her hand out and cupped his cheek. He felt stubbly and warm. He held her hand there with his and then kissed it. “Now remember,” he said, “I want you to make notes. I’ll need all the detail I can get my hands on when I write the novel of this.”
She laughed. “Yeah, right,” she said. “And what would you write about this precise moment, then?”
He leaned back and appraised her with a small smile. “I would say: She wore her favorite dress. Her amazing boyfriend had bought her the dress three months earlier. She loved her boyfriend. She was so very lucky to have him.”
She punched him affectionately in the shoulder and laughed. “Okay,” she said, “I’m off. Last train back gets me in at midnight. Will you wait up for me?”
“Yes,” he said, “of course I will. But . . .” He stopped and looked at the floor, as though considering his next words.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said.
“No, come on, you can’t do that—what?”
He sighed. “Well, what will you do if he’s on his way out, and . . . well, I mean, if it looks as though he won’t last much longer but you have to go and get your train?”
She shrugged. She hadn’t considered that. “I suppose I’ll just have to come home and go back the next day.”
Jack nodded. Robyn could tell he had other thoughts on his mind but she didn’t have time to hear them. She kissed him again and left the house. The world reeled toward her like a slightly frightening drunk as she walked the few yards to the tube station. Nothing seemed as it had the day before. Nothing seemed as she’d expected it to seem. In her burnt orange prom dress and dark glasses she felt herself taking on another persona as she walked down the road. For a while she couldn’t quite think who it was she was pretending to be, and then, with a start, she remembered: she was pretending to be herself.
∗ ∗ ∗
Robyn retained this strangely unnatural sense of impersonating herself as she climbed the escalators at Liverpool Street half an hour later. In fact, the closer she got to the appointed meeting spot of “next to Burger King,” the more thickly she plastered it on to herself. She’d been such a reedy, insubstantial thing these past few weeks and she could not possibly come to these new people, her brother and her sister, as anything less than the person she used to be. She checked the time. She was two minutes late. She checked her hair, she pulled at the neckline of her dress, she adjusted the waist. She felt a sheen of perspiration spring to her skin and quelled her sense of rising nerves with a deep breath and a reminder to herself that she was Robyn Inglis, the Robyn Inglis, and that this was cool.
She slowed her pace and then she stopped entirely when she saw them. And she knew it was them. There had been no need for anyone to describe dresses or accessories. It was absolutely beyond doubt. A tall thin woman with dark hair in a side parting, and a tall thin boy with dark hair, cut short around his face. The woman was dressed expensively in smart jeans, a blue T-shirt and a fine-knit cardigan, and the boy was dressed cheaply in what looked like Primark casual wear. Standing separately there would have been nothing obvious to connect the two people, but standing as they were, side by side, they could only be brother and sister.
Robyn walked toward them in a daze, all her concerns and preconceptions fading away, all her efforts to present a certain façade forgotten. As she drew closer she saw their noses, their hollow cheeks, their full lips, their square jaws. They were not identical, but they were alike. They were like her. She increased her pace now as the enormity of this moment began to well up inside her. She wanted to get closer and closer, she wanted to see more and more of these people. She wanted to be inches from their faces and to stare deeply into their eyes.
The woman looked up then and saw Robyn approaching and immediately her beautiful serious face opened up into a smile. She said something to the boy and he turned, too, and looked and smiled a smaller smile. And then they were all walking toward each other, like particles of metal toward an invisible magnet.
Robyn would remember this moment in minute and full sensory detail for the rest of her life. She would remember the smell of oil and meat coming from the Burger King kiosk, she would remember the disembodied boom of a train announcement from the other end of the concourse, she would remember a slice of sunshine falling from the glass ceiling and onto the marble floor beneath her feet, and then she would remember being held in a brief embrace by a woman called Lydia, who smelled of clean hair, and then by a boy called Dean, who felt like a child in her arms, and she would remember their faces, their eyes, all three of them searching each other for whatever it was that had been missing for all their lives: that vital sense of recognition. It was almost as though she were watching the meeting from above, as though she were both studying and participating in the moment. It was like something from a dream.
She couldn’t really remember what was said; it was all just words. If the moment had been a scene in the film of the book of her life there would have been no dialogue, just a rousing sound track playing behind it, maybe something epic like “Chasing Cars.” But she could remember the overwhelming sense of being part of a gang, and her unparalleled feeling of pride as she walked with her beautiful sister and her handsome brother toward platform nine and onto a train bound for their father.