Her Page 6

‘I’ve heard that before,’ I say, deciding not to take her on about the phone right now: pick your battles, first things first. ‘I was worried! Anything could have happened.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t,’ she says, and then, more quietly, ‘For God’s sake. It was only an hour.’

  I check my watch. ‘Two, nearly three, actually. Where were you, anyway?’

  ‘At Tasha’s. She asked me for supper.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her mother tomorrow,’ I say, but she interrupts: ‘Oh, don’t make a fuss, Tasha had to keep an eye on Tilly, their parents were going out. I said it would be OK.’

  ‘Oh.’ I feel my anger slackening slightly, my desire to believe.

  ‘Look, I won’t do it again,’ she’s saying, and as I say, ‘You’re running out of chances,’ she shrugs off her school blazer in an attempt to delineate the end of the episode. Her head lowered over the phone as she walks away, up the stairs. ‘Yup, yup, yup.’

  Charles has tidied up the kitchen after supper and is in the sitting room, socked feet on the footstool, reading the Evening Standard. He raises an eyebrow as I come in, nods at his single malt. ‘Can I get you one?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ I can’t sit down quite yet. I move around the room, between the white sofas, putting another log in the wood burner, collecting the Economist and adding it to the pile of last weekend’s supplements. Rain hits the window in fits and starts, as if it’s being flung in handfuls. I pull the curtains against the black night.

  ‘She’s fine,’ he says in a low comforting voice. ‘It’s normal. It’s what they do, teenagers. School’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘As far as I know. No, nothing to worry about there. All on track.’ I find it hard to put it into words, this sense that I’m losing her, that she’s moving away from me, into a room that I can’t see clearly, as it’s badly lit or full of smoke. A place where anything might happen.

  What am I scared of? Perhaps it’s a car. A dark street. A drink briefly left unattended. A careless boy or an older man. The usual horrors. Or it could be something more prosaic, more everyday. Perhaps I’m frightened that she no longer needs me in quite the same way. That my authority is being diminished, and I can do nothing about it.

  ‘She’s a sensible girl, more sensible than Jess was at her age,’ Charles says, as he always does, and thinking of Jess – the fast druggy crowd I’ve been told she fell in with at school, her job at English Heritage, her window boxes and stew-making – I laugh a little and switch on the TV and watch the last half-hour of a spy thriller.

  Upstairs, Sophie moves from her bedroom to the bathroom and back again, and finally shuts her door for the night.

  Emma

  It could have happened to anyone. So easily done, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Anyway, it’s all fine, people behaved as you hope they will, with kindness and decency – after all, the world is full of good people, we need to remember this – and Christopher has already forgotten about it. He hasn’t mentioned it since.

  Just one of those things.

  Everyone agrees it’s not my fault: Ben, Lucy, the Monkey Music mothers, as we sit cross-legged on the carpet in between ‘Wheels on the Bus’ and ‘Mary Mary’, the children’s raincoats piled on a chair at the edge of the community hall. The other mothers make offerings of their own stories: Ruth’s Max ran off at London Zoo; Miranda came this close to leaving Jimmy in Sainsbury’s car park; when Fran was away for an uncle’s funeral, Luke forgot to pick up Ruby from the childminder (‘I came out of the wake and there were six messages from her on the phone. It was seven-thirty!’).

  People couldn’t be sweeter, more understanding, more sympathetic. But I know what they’re thinking. I don’t blame them. I’d be thinking the same thing, in their shoes.

  During the very earliest weeks of my first pregnancy I had a dream about motherhood. I dreamed that I had a newborn baby of my own, the size of a thimble or a larva, a tiny mewing scrap of dependency that I kept in a walnut-shell cradle. I can’t remember if it was a boy or a girl, blond, dark or a redhead: the key thing was, I was forever losing it. The dream was one long desperate ransacking of cutlery drawers and recycling boxes and laundry baskets. When I woke up I told Ben the dream, gratefully turning it into a joke, a riff on my own entirely appropriate anxieties (the phrase ‘elderly primagravida’, boldly scrawled across my hospital notes, did not fill me with confidence); but even as we laughed, I was still feeling the cold sickening buzz of panic in my blood. I’m not sure that sensation has ever really left me.

  An afternoon in the park. Early spring, the long wet paths gleaming in thrilling bursts of sunshine, buds punctuating the chestnut branches to mark the end of winter. I have lifted Cecily out of the buggy and I’ve wedged her into the little swing in the babies’ playground. It’s the first time I’ve bothered to do this, and at first she’s terrified, hating it, her mittened fists flailing, unable to fathom the pendulum rhythm; and then suddenly the penny drops, and she starts to enjoy herself, her mouth open in a great astonished O of delight. Christopher is on his Christmas micro scooter, racing up and down along the flat stretch between the playground and the park gate, sailing through and around puddles bright as mirrors.

  After a few minutes I look at my watch, and then I glance around. I can’t see him.

  I turn my head, checking the paths. A woman jogs past, earphones in, lost in her own secret soundtrack. A man bends down for a stick and throws it for his spaniel.

  I scan the shrubbery, the battered huddled outline of the ornamental walk, the view over to the kitchen garden, and then I turn in the other direction, towards the pond, the boardwalk around it, the disused drinking fountain and the line of empty benches leading to the adventure playground. Two women walk past with pushchairs, chatting and laughing. The sun slides into cloud.

  He’s wearing a bright green anorak and a knitted wasp-striped bobble hat. I search for that acid flare of yellow, and I can’t see it anywhere.

  I pull Cecily out of the swing, ignoring her complaint, the crumple of her face, and I clip her into the buggy. Which way? I come out of the playground, the weighted safety gate knocking my thigh. I turn right, to the pond. ‘Christopher!’ I shout, and then I shout it again, hurrying the buggy along, my eyes on the black water through the iron railings, snarled with leaves and twigs; and, hearing me, two fifty-something women glance up out of their conversation and come towards me.

  ‘He’s nearly three, he’s wearing a green jacket and a yellow striped hat,’ I tell them. ‘His name is Christopher, he was just there, on his scooter,’ and I point, and they say they didn’t see him by the pond, he didn’t come in their direction, they’re fairly sure of that, but they’ll do a quick circuit and they’ll check the adventure playground as they go past. ‘Thank you so much,’ I say, for something to say, and then I’m off again, hurrying in the other direction this time, towards the kitchen garden and the shrubbery.

  It’s dark under the trees, and as I pass, calling for him, heavy fat drops of water slide from the overhanging foliage and fall on me, little detonations on my cheek and hands, spilling through my hair.

  I’m calling for him, and Cecily has stopped crying, maybe it’s the motion of the buggy or maybe she can tell from my voice that something’s wrong.

  A few people hear me shouting and approach, concerned, wanting to help, and then they join the search, but it’s all hopeless, I know it, he’s not here. ‘Thanks, that would be great,’ I say to them, and then I run off, heading uphill to the little café, the terrace deserted, chairs tilted to the tabletops, the windows opaque with breath and steam from the Gaggia, and there’s no sign of him, and I can’t see him on the lawn, and – oh Jesus – he’s not near the fountain either, though it’s a source of endless fascination. I run up to the fountain, and I look in, and then I turn on my heel and bump the buggy down the broad steps, between the broken stone urns, heading downhill again, taking the path that comes out by the compost bins and the lower gate.

  When I reach
the road I stand there for a moment, looking up and down, my chest rising and falling, the air scouring my dry throat. The road’s quiet as dusk begins to settle, the jolly lollipop flash of the Belisha beacon starting to assert itself in the fading light. I realise a Fiat Punto has halted to let me cross. I wave it on. ‘Christopher?’ I shout, into the trees, and it’s a pathetic sound, weak and insubstantial, nothing like it feels.

  This isn’t happening.

  I need to call the police?

  ‘There she is.’ A voice behind me. I turn around, electrified by hope. The two women from the pond are hurrying along the path towards me, and a park attendant is with them, a man with a radio, but no child in a green anorak. The park attendant sees the expression on my face and puts the radio to his mouth.

  It has only been five or ten minutes, I realise. It doesn’t sound like much. Anything could happen in five or ten minutes.

  No.

  I describe Christopher to the park keeper, who bends his head into the crackle, passing on the information to the police: Christopher Nash, nearly three (‘No, it’s Christopher, not Chris,’ and I nod dumbly, confirming this again, horrified by the contrast with the normal circumstances in which an explanation is required: We always expected we’d abbreviate it, but he doesn’t look like a Chris. He just looks like a Christopher). Blond hair, blue eyes. Green quilted jacket, yellow-and-black bobble hat, navy trousers and wellingtons painted with beetles. Purple micro scooter.

  This high, I say, showing him, not sure how to quantify it.

  Someone says my name, and it’s Fran from Monkey Music, with Ruby on her balance bike, heading for the gates and home. I see Fran’s face change as she comes closer and sees the look on mine. I start to cry then, and the park keeper, whose name is Gareth or Gary, says, ‘The police will be here any minute,’ and moves away, letting Fran get closer. As she hugs me, Ruby looking up at me with huge curious eyes, I see that Cecily has nodded off in the buggy. Part of me is still stuck in that old, safe life, because for a moment I feel the echo of that tinpot panic: too late for a nap, she won’t go down easily at seven. Then, contemptuously, I let the thought go, because it means nothing.

  The dark is racing across the park now. The two ladies who have been standing around talking in low voices shuffle off apologetically, muttering reassurances. Then we hear the siren. A moment later I’m being helped into a police car while Fran takes the buggy. ‘Thank you, I’ll call you,’ I mouth as the car pulls off, and I see her face as I go, strobing in the light.

  They’ve switched off the siren, I don’t know why.

  There are two youngish police officers in the car, they tell me their first names, John and Lauren, and they do their best: they seem organised, reassuringly invoking protocols, but I can sense the undercurrent beneath what they say. ‘We’ve got another car out locally and two foot patrols doing the park,’ Lauren tells me, leaning back so I can hear what she says as John takes a right towards the cemetery, ‘And the chances are, he has just wandered off, got lost somewhere. We’ll just drive around the neighbourhood and see if we can spot him anywhere. Chances are, he hasn’t gone very far.’ She asks if I wouldn’t mind buckling up.

  The radio hisses and whistles, another unit reporting from higher up the hill. My heart soars and then plummets. ‘Just keep your eyes peeled,’ John says. ‘We’ll go nice and slow, so we don’t miss anything.’

  We’re driving along the edge of the estate, the white stepped terraces chalky under the sodium lights. Behind the little balconies, windows are lighting up. The aquarium flicker of TVs, the snub as people pull curtains.

  By the wheelie bins, six or seven kids kick a football against a wall. They scatter when the police car slows to a halt alongside, but John rolls down his window and calls, ‘We’re looking for a lost toddler,’ and the boys come closer, interested, possibly even concerned, despite themselves. They haven’t seen anything. Thanks. If you do . . . Window up, drive on.

  This is it, this is really happening.

  A bus sails by, full of light, people inside reading books, checking their phones, looking bored.

  ‘Is there anyone you need to call?’ Lauren asks, and I say no, though I know I must ring Ben. But I’m trying to put that off for as long as I can. Telling him, like telling Fran, requires a vocabulary that I don’t possess. I keep my eyes on the pavements, the deep dark patches of shadow at the edges of things: buildings, bushes, stairwells.

  We turn left at the library and slowly work back towards the hospital, which rises up in front of us, huge and illuminated, like an ocean liner. As we drive past the entrance, I see the shuttered florist’s kiosk, the empty escalators endlessly rolling up and down. Three smokers in wheelchairs are spaced out in the concrete plaza, one trailing an IV stand.

  Here the streets are a little busier, people coming home from the tube or changing buses. Pizza-delivery signs, the cold white of cyclists’ LEDs. Up the hill, a snaking impatient chain of ember-red brake lights.

  It has been several years since I’ve been out alone at this time of day, able to notice such things. These are sights I seldom see.

  The radio crackles now and again, officers checking in, nothing to report.

  ‘You’re in Carmody Street, aren’t you,’ says Lauren, consulting her notes. ‘So we could just head down there, just to make sure.’

  My face is wet with tears, and the sensation makes other tears come faster. He’s not quite three. Last week, I forgot the bananas in Sainsbury’s, so I left him in the checkout queue with the basket, I said I’d only be a minute, but he came to find me. ‘I was scared,’ he said, ‘I was scared you wouldn’t come back,’ and even as I picked him up and hugged him, I felt a rush of irritation. Just thirty seconds, is that too much to ask? I squeeze my eyes shut; and then, quickly, I open them again, because I might miss something, and I mustn’t miss anything.

  Bus stop. Railings. Postbox. All the familiar things.

  The tick of indicators as the police car pulls out, crossing the main road and taking the first right down Carmody Street. Sunil Faradosa lifts his bike through the front door, Kay Callaghan is hauling Morrison’s bags out of the boot. ‘Nothing,’ I say, as the front step of our house comes into view. ‘Can we go back to the park?’

  ‘I think we should probably go down to the station,’ Lauren says, and I close my eyes, just for a second, unable to bear the implications, assailed by an overwhelming sense of him – the softness of his skin, his hand sticky in mine, the way he smells when he is asleep, Blue Bunny tucked under his cheek – and I think I’m going to be sick. I open my window and inhale. In, out. In, out. I see John stretching up to check me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Just hold on,’ he says, switching on the siren.

  The radio crackles again, and a man’s voice says something very quickly, I can’t quite understand what, but Lauren has picked up and says, ‘Ten-four, that’s good news,’ and I can hardly accept it, not at first, it feels like the sort of luck I’m not in any way entitled to; but when she leans back towards me, the handset still held close to her mouth, I see the expression on her face.

  They keep the siren on so we get to the police station in maybe four or five minutes. But I won’t believe it. I won’t believe it when we’re pulling up in the car park, and I won’t believe it when Lauren stands back so I can run on ahead, into the bleak illumination of the reception area, where Christopher is sitting with a woman in uniform who is placing a little plastic cup of hot chocolate on the table in front of him. He glances up eagerly when I call his name, and he looks fine: exactly the same, as if nothing has happened. Behind him, the clock on the wall says it’s not quite six. He has been missing for just under an hour. Fifty minutes, maybe.

  I kneel down in front of him and wrap him in my arms, and he lets me, for a moment, and then he starts to struggle, and he says, ‘Look, hot chocolate,’ and I allow him to wriggle away from me, just for a moment, so he can take a sip, and then he looks up, distressed, It’s too hot, and Lauren laug
hs and says she’ll go and top it up with some milk from the fridge. So I sit down and pull him onto my knee and press my head against him while he eats another biscuit, and I can feel the detonations as he crunches through the Bourbon Cream.

  When she comes back with the cup, Lauren tells me he was found just outside the park at the top of the hill, about ten or fifteen minutes ago. He was on the street, sitting on someone’s front step, playing with their cat. Lady was on her way out, so she called the station and dropped him off on the way.

  ‘These things happen,’ Lauren says.

  I guess so, I say. Thank God.

  ‘Where did you go?’ I ask him some time later. I’ve read the story (Goodnight room and the red balloon, Goodnight kittens, goodnight mittens), and I’m lying next to him on his low bed. He’s in his flannel sheep pyjamas, his hair still a little damp, the emerald-green towel hanging on the doorknob, a beaker of water on his bedside table next to his Moomin collection and the Playmobil guinea pig pen. Fran has dropped Cecily back, I’ve fed her, and now Ben is putting her down in our room.

  ‘Where did you go? You know, you mustn’t wander off like that, darling. I missed you.’

  He picks up Blue Bunny, presses one long velvety ear to his top lip: something he does when ready for sleep. ‘Don’t go away again,’ he says.

  ‘I won’t. It’s easy to get lost, isn’t it. It was a bit scary. You need to stay with Mummy.’

  ‘I want my scooter,’ he says.

  ‘I wonder where it is,’ I say. ‘Never mind, we’ll get you another one.’

  He looks sad. ‘Poor scooter,’ he says, ‘All alone. The lady said to leave it.’

  ‘What lady?’ I say, but he’s yawning, and I pull the duvet up to his chin. ‘Maybe another child found it,’ I say. ‘A little boy who always wanted a purple scooter, but didn’t get one for Christmas. He’ll look after it.’

  He rolls over and I lean across to switch off the lamp. On the chest of drawers his toadstool nightlight glows: the china mice silhouetted in the open doorway, the cosy little golden windows. I remember Christopher’s bitter disappointment when we presented it to him, when he first peered in those windows, and at first I didn’t know what was wrong, and then I realised – some distant echo from my own childhood – that he was expecting to see beds and a little stove in there rather than electrics and a low-voltage bulb. ‘It’s just pretend,’ I explained. ‘It’s to look at. It’s not real.’