looking dangerously like she was making a beeline for me, and decided on a tactical toilet break. I sloped upstairs.
The house had hardly changed in eighteen years. It had the same smell: furniture, polish and books. The wide, dark staircase seemed modest enough now, whereas it used to seem so grand to me, so full of mystique, probably because it led to Joe’s bedroom, which was the only place we could be alone, doing whatever we did in there – learning Zeppelin lyrics off by heart, discussing Potty’s eyebrows … Joe’s mum occasionally walking past with the Hoover.
‘Joseph, leave your door open, please, otherwise Robyn will have to go home!’
Behind that door, we’d be sitting, holding our breath, often in various stages of undress. It seemed like an age ago, another life ago. Like it didn’t even happen.
There was the same mahogany side table at the top of the stairs, with the photos on top. I paused to look at the one of all four boys, an eight-year-old Joe on the end, pulling a stupid face, desperate to dash off as soon as the picture was taken.
I gave myself a quick once-over in the long mirror just before you get to Joe’s room.
I was wearing a black Monsoon shift dress. Last time I looked in this mirror, the girl staring back at me was terrified, with peroxide hair: white face, white hair. I just remember that.
The door to Joe’s bedroom was half open, just a slice of the view of the rolling sheep-dotted fields, then the flat grey line of the sea. I couldn’t resist it. I went inside. It smelt different, of a guest room, but it was still completely Joe’s room. There was still the poster of Led Zeppelin’s album Physical Graffiti (Joe and I were alone and, it has to be said, slightly ridiculed in our appreciation of Led Zeppelin, which as teenagers was enough to make us believe we were destined for one another) and, above his bed, Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue pouted back at me. Clearly, Joe’s older brothers had introduced him to Betty Blue and the wondrous sexiness that was Béatrice Dalle, since we were only little when the film came out, but I’d often looked at her in that poster; the tough, gap-toothed poutiness and the cleavage, and I’d wanted to be Béatrice Dalle at sixteen. I wanted to be French and insouciant and wild and sexy. I was kind of annoyed with this gawky, traumatised teenager, who just desperately missed her mum. I wandered around for a bit, examining Joe’s odd collection of boy trinkets: rocks and fossils, and then – I couldn’t believe he’d kept it this long! – the ‘ironic’ pen in the shape of a lady; when you tipped her up, her knickers came off. I’d brought it back from Palma Menorca for a laugh, in 1997. That year – the summer we got together – Joe went to Amsterdam and bought me a wooden clog specially engraved with my name. The fact he’d queued up to get that done (because ‘Robyn’ was never on any merchandise in the land) thrilled me. ‘He must really like me,’ I’d thought, ‘If he’s willing to queue in front of his mum and dad, to get a wooden clog signed.’
‘He’s got tenacity, that one,’ I remember Dad saying. A few months later, Joe wasn’t allowed to set foot in our house. But I still have that clog, and sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I just like to turn it over in my hand; feel its wooden, smooth simplicity.
I stood in front of his bed – it was the same metal, tubular bed in 1980s grey that he’d had back then – and remembered how I’d had some of my most uncomfortable nights in it. It was like sleeping on a climbing frame, and yet, in the times we’d snatched together, it was also where I was happiest; where, for a while, I could forget about Mum, curling around Joe’s warm, strong body. We’d lie there in the dark, thrilled just to be naked together.
Joe was obviously sleeping in this room because there was a wash bag on the bed. I stood looking at it, feeling a wave of sadness. Imagine coming home, to sleep in your childhood bed, knowing your mother is to be buried the next day. Just then, the door flew open, making me jump. It was Joe. He slammed it shut, his back towards me, swearing, leaning his forehead against it for a moment, before fiddling in his inside jacket pocket and producing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He unscrewed the top, muttered something about Sorry Mum and have to do this, and then tipped his head back and took a swig. Then he saw me.
‘Bloody hell, you nearly gave me a heart attack!’ he said.
Then, when he’d realized what he’d said, ‘That’s going to keep on happening, isn’t it?’
I smiled. ‘Probably.’
‘Do you want some?’ he said, holding the bottle out. ‘Can I just say, it was a huge oversight by me not to have organised booze at this wake.’
‘Yup,’ I said, taking a gulp. ‘Still, I don’t need booze to relax.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘’Coz I do.’
I handed him the bottle back. ‘Jack Daniel’s? Going for the hard liquor, then?’
‘I can’t take any risks,’ he said. ‘It needs to reach my bloodstream instantly. I just can’t talk to people any longer.’
There was a long silence, during which we just sort of looked at each other.
‘So, er … the bathroom’s two doors down,’ he said, thumbing in that general direction when I just stood there, still clutching Miss Knickerless. ‘Same place it’s always been.’
I felt my cheeks grow hot.
‘God, sorry. I couldn’t resist, I just had this mad desire to—’
‘Snoop around my bedroom?’
‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry.’
‘I’m joking, Robyn.’ His eyebrows gave a little flicker of amusement. ‘It’s actually really sweet.’
He looked pale as anything, washed out. I’d forgotten about that bit, the tiredness, and he pushed the stuff to the side, collapsing on the bed.
‘I should go,’ I said. He’d come up here to be alone, lose himself, and here I was, making that impossible, but he said, ‘Don’t go. Why do you keep on wanting to go?’
He looked genuinely annoyed – Joe and his transparency.
‘I don’t know, because you want to be on your own?’
He tutted, dramatically. ‘I don’t want to be on my own. I just can’t take much more of people, of Betty. We’re only on 1978. There’s thirty-odd years to get through yet.’
I laughed, despite myself.
‘I needed someone to save me. Where were you, Robbie?’ he said, turning on his side.
‘Snooping round your bedroom?’
I sat down on the bed next to him. Up close, it was like he’d changed even less, and I had this urge to give him a hug, but wondered whether that was appropriate, him lying on a bed and all, so I said, ‘It’ll be over soon. They’ll all bugger off home and then you can go to sleep or watch a film. That’s what I did.’
‘Really, what did you watch?’
‘The Evil Dead.’
‘You are joking?’
‘I’m not, as it happens. It’s my job, you see.
