I stood still, my heart yammering, while Laika walked straight across the room toward the door, her chin held up and directly ahead.
“And stay there,” he said. “Don’t think we want you at the table. And you,” he said, jabbing a finger in my direction, “you stay here.”
My mother met my eyes for a moment. Then my father took her by the upper arm so gently it barely looked like he was touching her at all, and slowly, slowly, turned her away.
“Bianka,” he said, his voice soft and low. “How’s that lunch doing?”
My mother touched her arm. She dropped her eyes to the floor. “I’ll just check,” she said. She walked toward the kitchen door. “It should be ready in a mo.”
Silence filled the room.
Freddie said, “Laika’s always entertaining, right?”
My mother and I ate the lunch in silence. It was my father’s favorite, roast lamb.
That’s the truth. At Laika’s last birthday meal, she wasn’t even there.
***
There is no such thing as midnight, not really. In the hazy loam of the night, I kept my eyes on the glowing second hand of my watch. It was one second to midnight, then, instantly, one second past. And then it was the third of November and somewhere, somewhere far away, I didn’t know where, Laika was turning fourteen. I groaned and put my arm across my eyes.
“Willa?” A soft voice, Robyn, in her pajamas, bending over me in the dark. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not, though,” she said. “I can see that.” I felt her sit down, half perching herself on the edge of the bed. I took a deep breath, then removed my arm. Her face was fuzzy in the dark, her expression concerned.
“Talk to me,” she said.
I turned my head so it was facing the wall. I closed my eyes.
“I’m okay,” I said.
She reached out a hand and lightly stroked my hair. My skin prickled under her touch. I kept my eyes shut. Her fingers were slow, light, hesitant, soothing. Eventually she said, “Okay, if you need anything, or if you want to talk, I’m right here, okay? I’m just across the room.”
She made to move. I said, “Don’t go.”
She stopped, half standing. She sat back down.
I said, “Will you—I mean, could you, would you—stay here, with me, just for tonight? Please?”
I lifted the covers a little. Robyn hesitated a moment, then slipped in. Slowly, she put her head on the pillow next to mine. The bed was small. I turned on my side so I had my back to her and she curled her legs up into mine. Then she put her hand around my waist. Under the covers her fingers found mine.
“You’re okay,” she said. “You’re okay.”
I could feel her warm breath on the back of my neck slowing as she drifted back off to sleep.
And I slept too.
***
It just became something we did. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t even a thing we discussed. For the rest of that term, at night, I slipped into her bed or she into mine. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been longing for physical touch. With Robyn next to me, I could finally sleep.
The days got easier too. Sometimes I would spot Robyn in a crowd of other girls, or we’d pass each other in the corridor and she’d catch my eye and smile. Her presence somehow made me feel better, safer, more myself. I needed the uncomplicated steadiness of her. Laika was there too, always, always at the back of my mind, but I could think again, I could concentrate. I was okay.
***
When I went home for the Christmas holiday, I missed Robyn with a force that took me by surprise. I missed the nights with our arms around each other, waking up with her in the gray early dawn.
And being home was strange. Without Laika there, everything felt different. And it actually was different. The extension my parents had started in the summer had been completed. The last I’d seen, it had just been foundations. Now it was a vast, elegant structure with large glazed windows, a tall lantern roof and three sets of double doors that led on to the terrace. The whole thing had been my father’s idea, and, like all his projects, designed on a grand scale. If ever my mother, sister or I had referred to it as a sunroom, he had corrected us. It was, he said, a conservatory. And now, to my utter astonishment, it wasn’t just finished but decorated too, with a vast gold Christmas tree at one end. I couldn’t believe it. We had a Christmas tree. With Laika missing. I looked at my mother, mouth open in surprise.
“Deedee,” she said.
Throughout that entire holiday my mother, father and I crept around each other like solitary foxes, each of us holed up in our own defined territory. My father, always a shadowy figure in our lives, kept to his study; my mother to the den, curled up on the sofa watching The X-Files with a gin. And, as for me, I mostly stayed in my room. I didn’t even really want to see my old friends.
“Go,” my mother said, when for the umpteenth time they invited me out. “It will be good for you.” I did it for her in the end.
We met in a café in town. Sixth form life clearly suited them. They looked older, more stylish, sophisticated. They cooed over me like a bird with a broken wing, asking me softly about my new school, were there any nice shops within reach and did everyone talk like farmers? After a while one of them mentioned the hordes of reporters that had plagued their school gates. Then they all joined in. They asked me about things they’d heard on TV and wanted to know if I had any inside information. How had Ian Cox got away with it? The man was clearly as guilty as hell. You could tell that just by looking at his photos, a definite pervert: he had an evil face. Plus, when the police had searched his home, they’d found a whole bunch of depraved stuff: porn, horror films, drugs, women’s jewelry, even a hunting knife. Did I know that? The whole thing was on the news. He kept a hammer in his bedside drawer. They leaned forward, tipping their heads in a way that made their hair fall in glassy waterfalls. So sorry, they whispered, so awful, just tragic. And in our town too. That’s what no one could really believe—it was such a nice place. Turns out nowhere was safe. It had definitely made people think twice; everyone was a little more wary. In fact, the whole thing had been hard on everyone. Their parents had collectively developed a deeply irritating need to know where they were all of the time, and it was unbelievably tedious. Then they spoke about the shows they’d seen, the school cabaret, the sixth form ball, the lights on Oxford Street and what they were getting for Christmas.
***
Christmas Day itself we spent at the house of Aunt Deedee and my cousins, where the atmosphere was as brittle and fake as the fine glass ornaments. There wasn’t a place for Laika laid at the table. No one had bought a gift for her either. Not even me.
***
I saw in the New Year on my own. My mother stood on the threshold of the house, hesitating, with my father already halfway down the stone steps.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” she asked. “We don’t have to go. Just say if you’d rather I didn’t leave you. I could quite happily not go.”
