Robyn

Steph went at half seven. The house has been doing that thing it does.

Robyn's at the kitchen table with the big light on, which she never puts on, and two mugs made, and one of them's been sat there long enough to have a skin on it.

"Sit down a minute."

There's a chair pulled out opposite her already.

"I'm going to say this all at once because if I do it in bits I'll stop." She's got both hands round her mug and she isn't looking up. "Fourteen months ago, Kirsty's wedding. Steph and Dean. Once, in a corridor, both of them steaming."

The fridge does the thing it does.

"He told me. Last thing he said to me, coat on, bag in the car. Four weeks ago."

She doesn't leave a gap long enough for anything to land in.

"I know. I've been sat at her table since. She's been washing my things." She turns the mug a quarter. "She doesn't know I know. She thinks he never told me."

And then she does look up.

"So here's the other thing, and then I'll shut up."

She says it exactly like she said the rest of it. Flat. All in one go.

"She had my husband once. I want you once. Then we're square and I can sit in a room with her again."

A long bit of nothing.

"I know how it sounds. I've heard it in my head about four hundred times and it sounds like that every time." She wraps her hands back round the mug. "You can say no and I'll never mention it again, and I mean that."

She waits.

Saturday. Steph's off till Monday and she's cooked, which she does about once a fortnight and makes a production of.

All three at the table. It's nice. That's the problem with it.

"—so he's stood there with the drip still in his hand," Steph's saying, "and he goes, no, love, I've discharged myself. Discharged himself. With the drip."

Robyn laughs. Properly, not politely. She's good at this, and she's had five weeks of practice.

Steph tops both their glasses up without being asked.

"I do mean this, you know." She's gone slightly serious, the way she does after one glass. "Having you here. I know it's been rubbish and I know it's not what you wanted, but honestly, Rob — I don't know what I'd do without the pair of you."

And there it is. Sat in the middle of the table.

Robyn's fork stops for about half a second.

"You'd manage," she says. "You always manage."

Steph laughs at that like it's a compliment, and gets up to get the other bottle, and goes out to the hall to shout at the cat.

The kitchen is very quiet with just the two of you in it.

Robyn puts her fork down and looks at the doorway her best friend just walked through.

"Don't say anything," she says, not looking round. "Not now. Not with her forty feet away."

Steph's shift started forty minutes ago. The car's gone off the drive and the house has done that thing it does.

Robyn's at the bottom of the stairs, and she's been there a while.

Hair's wet. She's in the grey jumper that isn't hers and nothing much else, and she's holding onto the newel post like it's the only thing keeping her upright.

"Right," she says. "I've been up and down these stairs about nine times."

She says the rest of it fast, flat, all in one go, the way she said it at the table.

"It's tonight or it isn't happening. That's not me being dramatic, it's that I can't keep waking up and deciding it again. I've done four days of that and I'm not doing a fifth."

Her hands aren't steady. She's noticed, and she's put them behind her, which doesn't help.

"She's on till eight. I've checked the calendar twice like a lunatic."

A beat.

"And if it's a no, say it now, properly, and I'll go up and I'll be completely normal at breakfast and we'll never mention it again. I'm serious about that bit."

She doesn't move off the bottom step.

"But I'm not asking twice."

It was supposed to be once. That's what it was for. That was the entire point of it.

It's been three times.

Thursday. Steph's on until eight. Robyn's stood at the sink with her sleeves pushed up doing plates that are already done.

"I've been thinking about what we said."

She doesn't turn round.

"The maths. It was one." She's still washing the same plate. "I've had a lot of time to think about how one turned into three and I've not come up with anything I'd say out loud."

She puts the plate on the rack. Picks it back up.

"It didn't work, by the way. That's the bit nobody tells you. I sat opposite her Sunday and it was exactly the same."

The tap's still running. She turns it off.

"So either I've been lying to you since the start," she says, to the window, "or I've been lying to me. And I've had a good look at both and I don't like either of them much."

She dries her hands very carefully, one finger at a time.

"Say something. Anything, honestly. I've been in this kitchen with it since Tuesday."

Eight in the morning. Steph's twenty minutes in the door off a night shift, still in her scrubs, lanyard still on, coat over the back of the chair.

Robyn's out. The house is empty and Steph has not sat down.

She's been watching him since she came through that door, and whatever she's seen in the last twenty minutes has already decided something for her.

"You've not looked at me properly since I walked in."

Steph says it flat. She doesn't make it a question.

"So she's told you. There's nobody else it could have been."

And then it comes out all in one go, like something she's been building in a car park.

"Kirsty's wedding. Fourteen months ago. Me and Dean." Flat. No air in it. "Once, in a corridor, we were both absolutely gone, it was about twenty minutes, and I have never been so ashamed of anything in my life."

The fridge hums. Steph keeps going before it can land.

"I told him the next morning it was never happening again and it never did. He rang twice after and I didn't answer. That's all of it, that's the whole thing, there isn't a version where it's worse."

Now Steph stops. She isn't crying. She's just getting to the end of it.

"I've started telling you about nine times. I'd get halfway up the stairs."

Steph finally sits down, which somehow makes it worse.

"And then Dean left her. Robyn had nowhere to go, and I thought, right, I'll have her here, I'll look after her, and it'll be worth something."

A long pause.

"It isn't worth anything, is it."

Behind Steph the calendar says she's on again tonight.

And then Steph asks for it, straight, with nothing underneath it.

"I want you to forgive me."

Steph looks up, and she doesn't dress it up or make it any easier to say no to.

"Not this morning. I'm not asking for an answer this morning." Her voice goes, just slightly, on this one. "I just wanted it said out loud by me for once. Instead of by somebody else."

Half nine at night and the doorbell goes, and it's him.

Dean. Coat on, car still running at the kerb, and no intention of being anywhere he isn't allowed.

"Alright. Is she in?"

Steph's on nights. Robyn's in the kitchen and has gone completely silent, which means she heard the bell.

"There's post. And her mum's ring's still in my safe, so she'll have to come for that herself." He's already looking past into the hall, unhurried, like a man pricing up a room. "Five weeks, is it now? In the spare room?"

Something crosses his face and he lets it stay there.

"She's told you. Course she has."

He waits, and lets himself enjoy it.

"Don't look at me like that, mate, I did you a favour. You'd still be sat in there like a lemon otherwise." A short laugh with nothing in it. "You've had one evening of knowing. I've had fourteen months."

He shifts his weight. He's settling in.

"Here's the bit she'll not have told you, because she doesn't know it." He says it like he's doing another favour. "Your Steph rang me. After. More than once."

He lets that sit exactly as long as it needs to.

"Ask her. Watch her face when you do — that's the good bit, that is. I've seen it."

The kitchen door hasn't opened. He glances at it, and raises his voice about ten percent, so it carries.

"Anyway. She's under your roof, and your wife's out three nights a week." He lets that sit exactly where she can hear it. "Busy house."

He's not going anywhere. He's waiting to see what happens next, and he's in no rush at all.

Three months since it went through, and the house has settled into whatever this is now.

Robyn pays rent. She asked to — sat at that table in January with a figure already worked out and would not be talked down from it. Her own shelf in the fridge. A key that is hers rather than lent.

Thursday. Nothing on the telly. She has her feet up on the arm of the sofa, which she never once did while Steph lived here.

Then the regional news does the thing where the presenter's voice changes.

The custody photo goes up, and it is Dean.

"— charged with fourteen offences including rape and administering a substance with intent. Officers who searched a rented unit on the industrial estate say they recovered a quantity of a controlled drug. Detectives believe the offending may go back at least seven years, and are appealing for anyone who thinks they may have had contact with him to come forward —"

Robyn does not move. Her feet are still up on the arm.

Then she sits forward, slowly, the way you would if something might break.

"Seven years."

She is not looking at the screen any more. She is looking at the middle of the room.

"It was once."

It arrives in her face one piece at a time, and it is the worst thing you have ever seen there.

"She kept away from him. From that night on. Wouldn't be in a room with him, wouldn't set foot in my house if he was in it, changed where she sat at a table."

Her voice does not rise.

"I never thought about any of it until Dean told me. Then I went back through the whole fourteen months of it in one night and had every bit of it as guilt. It fit as guilt. So I stopped looking at it."

The report has moved on to something about a bypass.

"It fits this way too."

A long moment.

"He never got another go at her. That's the only reason it was once."

She still has not looked at you.

"Say something. Please. I can't be the only person in this room thinking it."