Not anymore.
Now she blames them both, which is what this weekend is really about and why she tricked them into coming here.
Robin has only experienced grief three times in her life:
When she stopped trying to have a child of her own.
When her husband cheated on her.
And when her mother drowned in a claw-foot bath.
The whole world thought it was an accident, but it wasn’t. Robin has always believed that Henry was responsible for her mother’s death. That was why he really sent her away to boarding school, and why she ran away as soon as she was old enough to leave for good. He removed almost every trace of her mother from the Scottish chapel she had lovingly converted into a home. The bathtubs were the first to go. Her mother loved to cook, so Henry emptied almost every kitchen cupboard and drawer until there were only two of everything left; two plates, two sets of cutlery, two cups. No saucepans, no pots or pans were left behind. The smell of cooking reminded him of his dead wife, so the old housekeeper would make big batches of meals at home instead, then fill the chapel freezer with them so they both didn’t starve. Robin kept what she could of her mother’s possessions, including two pairs of stork-shaped gold-and-silver embroidery scissors – her mother loved to sew, as well as cook – and hid them beneath her bed. She never believed that her mother’s death was accidental. People who read and write crime novels know there are an infinite number of ways to get away with murder. Robin suspects that it happens all the time.
It always felt as though her parents were performing a part in a play they would rather not have been cast in. Is disinterest a form of neglect? Robin thinks so. But things were much worse after her mother died. Her world became very small and very lonely very fast. Henry thought throwing money at the problem would fix it, just like he always did, and it was why she never wanted a penny from him as an adult. She would rather sleep in a freezing cold cottage, with an outside toilet, than spend another night under his roof. His money was blood money in more ways than one.
Henry bought the fanciest dolls house Robin had ever seen when her mother died. Each room had the same two little figures inside it. One looked like Henry, the other was a miniature Robin. A happy toy family to replace their broken real one. He carved the dolls himself with his wood chisels, just like the statues outside the chapel, and all the Robin-shaped birds he had whittled over the years, whilst puffing on his pipe, or sipping a glass of scotch.
Nobody else knew what really happened to Robin’s mother. Nobody suspected a thing. Henry even wrote about a man who killed his wife in the bathtub a few years later in his novel called Drowning Your Sorrows. It made Robin question whether all of his stories might be based on facts rather than fiction, and the thought terrified her. The book was a huge bestseller, everyone at her boarding school was talking about it, even the teachers.
It inspired Robin to write a story of her own. Her English tutor was so impressed that – unknown to Robin – she sent a copy to Henry at the end of term, saying that a gift for storytelling clearly ran in the family. It was about a novelist who committed crimes in real life, then wrote about them in his books, always getting away with murder.
When Robin came home that Christmas, Henry barely spoke to her at all. He stayed locked inside his secret study with his beloved books. Just like always. One afternoon she found her dolls floating in the bathroom sink. They looked like they were drowning, just like her mother had in the claw-foot bath. When she woke up on Christmas morning, there were no gifts in the stocking that hung at the end of her bed. The only thing that had changed in the night, was that Robin’s hair had been cut. There were two long blonde plaits lying on the pillow where she had slept, and her mother’s pretty stork scissors were on the bedside table.
Henry Winter didn’t just write about monsters. He was one.
He made her write lines as punishment for writing that story at school:
I must not tell tales
I must not tell tales.
I must not tell tales.
So Robin never wrote a word of fiction again.
Until Henry was dead.
After she buried him in the graveyard behind the chapel, Robin returned to the secret study that she had never been allowed to set foot inside as a child, and sat down at that antique desk. She took out her dead father’s laptop. Remembering the password was easy: it was her name. She found Henry’s uncompleted work in progress, and started reading. The idea sounded crazy inside her head at first. What other word was there to describe a woman who worked with dogs trying to finish a novel by an international bestselling author?