Suddenly tears were streaming down Rob’s cheeks, dripping onto his shirtfront, so I put Chrissy down, first on the table, then back in the box out of sight, and pulled a chair up beside him. This time he let me wrap an arm round his shuddering shoulders and press my head against his.
We sat like that for a few seconds before I started to cry too in sympathy. It was the strangest feeling because I didn’t know what I was crying about. But Rob’s distress was so real, so visceral, it just seemed to grab hold of my guts.
Eventually, after a couple of minutes, Rob wiped his face with his hand, dropped the Action Man back into the box, and stood.
Without a word, he went to the kettle and switched it on, but I could hear from the hiss it made that it was empty, so I jumped up, switched it back off and pushed him towards the sunroom. ‘Go sit down,’ I said. ‘I’ll do the tea.’
By the time I’d made two mugs of tea and carried them through, Rob seemed calmer. ‘Thanks,’ he said, as I handed him his mug.
I placed my own mug on the coffee table and pulled a chair up so that I could sit right opposite.
‘So the doll,’ Rob said. He sniffed and cleared his throat loudly. ‘The doll’s called a Chrissy doll. It used to speak when it was new. It said, oh, I dunno…I don’t think soandtell you tomorrow… Shit like that. You pulled a string and she spoke. But the string broke, so…’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘OK.’
‘We used to swap them. My Action Man and her Chrissy doll… Used to drive Dad crazy, me playing with a doll, agirl’sdoll, but…’ he shrugged. ‘My Action Man didn’t talk, you know? I thought Chrissy was cool. You could talk to her and pull the string and pretend you were having a conversation with a friend.’
‘Right,’ I said again. ‘Sounds fair. But whose doll was it in the first place?’
‘It was…’ Rob said, but his voice failed him. ‘It was…’ he tried again, his voice wavering. He turned his eyes towards the ceiling, then blew through his lips and said, ‘Christ, this is hard.’
Then he closed his eyes and gasped a gulp of air and said, ‘It belonged to Julie Sturgess.’
‘Julie Sturgess,’ I repeated.
‘My friend,’ Rob said. ‘My… best friend, really. The neighbours’ kid. We were best friends from… well forever really… They were there, next door, when we moved in, so… You know.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘And then?’
‘Well, they were there until the end.’
‘The end?’
‘Yeah,’ Rob said. He blew through his lips and looked out at the garden and sighed. ‘She got pregnant. That’s the thing.’
‘Pregnant?’ I said. ‘Oh.’
‘Yeah,’ Rob said, quietly. ‘And they made… they made me… Oh God…’ He started sobbing loudly then, but between sobs he continued to try to speak. ‘They made me say it wasme,’ he finally managed to say, speaking in a high-pitched childlike voice. ‘But it wasn’t. We never even… I hadn’t ever… not with anyone. She was my… she was my bloodyfriendfor Christ’s sake.’
I swiped tears from my eyes and moved to the edge of my seat to that I could touch Rob’s knee. ‘Someone made you sayyou’dgot her pregnant?’ I said, still struggling to understand.
Rob nodded. He pushed my hand away then and went to the kitchen, returning with a roll of paper towel. Once he’d sat back down and blown his nose loudly, he went on, sounding terribly sad, but calmer. ‘She was fifteen, you know? She was stillfifteen. And I was only sixteen – it was just before my birthday. So it was… horrific. I mean, it was absolutelyhorrific. The police got involved and everything.’
‘God,’ I said. ‘I can imagine. Butwhomade you say it was you? And why? I don’t understand, Rob.’
‘My parents,’ Rob said. ‘My parents made me say it was me.’
‘Your parents! OK, but why?’
Rob covered his mouth with one hand in an attempt to stifle a fresh bout of sobbing, but he couldn’t help himself. He said something through the sobs and my guess was that he was answering my question, but I honestly couldn’t make out what he was saying.
So I left my chair and draped myself across the arm of Rob’s armchair so that I could take him in my arms, and he let me hold his shuddering body.
After a minute or so I thought I’d perhaps worked out what he’d said after all, but the idea was so horrific that I didn’t want to believe it.
When, eventually, Rob’s tears had subsided, I said, gently, ‘Rob, I think I heard what you said, but you were crying so hard, honey…’
‘Um, I’m sorry,’ he said, softly. ‘It’s just so hard. It’s juststillso bloody hard. That’s what’s so crazy. Nearly forty years later, and I still can’t even say it. I’m sorry.’
