Five days missing, p.10
Five Days Missing, page 10
Two, maybe.
We are both aware who those two are: the evidence is in the way they know where the mugs are in my house; in the way they quietly place another bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the wine rack, ready for their next visit. Put the empties in the right recycling bin.
I take Fleur downstairs. Hand her over to Auntie Loll while I make a coffee.
The light flickers on, off, on, off.
When Adam arrives at 10 a.m., Robin the midwife is heading to her car and I am at the door saying goodbye to her in pyjamas that have an obscene hole in the crotch. Fleur is clutched close to my chest.
Adam and Robin nod hello to each other as they pass in the driveway.
I groan, audibly, like a toddler doing an impression of a T-Rex.
Adam doesn’t notice.
He is looking at his phone, which is ringing. He turns it off and flips it to silent.
‘Steffie?’ I ask, trying for normal.
He nods. ‘I can call her back later. You, my friend, have my undivided attention. And a … massive fuck-off hole near your balls.’
‘Bye, Robin!’ I shout after the midwife.
‘Bye, Robin!’ echoes Adam.
‘Could have made an effort for her, mate,’ he says as I shut the big green door behind him.
I shake my head, wince.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘We slept in. I feel sick. What if she writes it down somewhere? That I basically exposed myself? Thinks I’m not coping? She says no one gets dressed for the first month after they have a baby but I’m not sure. Suspect she is being nice. And also that she means wholesome mums breastfeeding in their pyjamas, not dads in their crotchless pants asleep on the sofa.’
Adam laughs and our house now is so desolate that the noise sounds odd and tinny and out of place.
I don’t smile. Nothing is funny.
We walk into the kitchen.
‘Did you ask her about CCTV at the hospital?’
He had brought it up with me yesterday.
I nod. ‘Yep. She’s going to ask someone on the front desk. But Loll asked already on the first day and she keeps getting passed back to the police. It’s infuriating.’
And whenever I start to turn on Loll, I have to remember this. Chasing the CCTV, educating everyone on postpartum psychosis, changing my baby, dealing with the police.
Any paranoia directed at Loll is exactly that: paranoia. Surely.
I hold Fleur with one arm and drape the other in front of my trousers for decency, as I did for the entire duration of Robin’s visit. But I can’t stop pacing.
‘Oh, she’s forgotten her scales.’
I scoop them up with my spare hand, run out barefoot and give them back to her. Hoping to claw back a few points.
When I come back in, Adam is standing in the centre of the kitchen, staring.
‘Jesus,’ he says before he can stop himself.
Loll arrived last thing to sleep here and left first thing to see the kids before school: she’s had no time to tidy.
Which means that the odd version of a boys’ night in that Adam and I had last night, which involved two beers and a lamb balti each, Fleur on alternate laps, is still spread out, scent and all, across the kitchen.
Adam scrunches up his nose.
Unlike most boys’ nights in, last night also took the form of a planning session on how I would find my absent wife and a scouting of a lake in the South of France, using scant information from a scrawled note and a radius that seemed reasonable around Nîmes Garons airport.
I fell asleep twenty minutes into Toy Story 4. We decided on that in case Fleur was taking it in. A Breaking Bad rewatch felt risky and in truth, I prefer Woody and Buzz.
Now, last night’s foil cartons of congealed goo and empty beer bottles have joined half-drunk bottles of formula and crisp packets. Despite its low-key nature, it is somehow giving the impression of us having had a party. Albeit a strange one.
‘The midwife didn’t come in here,’ I tell him quickly – when did I get so paranoid that I am worried about being judged even by Adam – but he knows it too. Eyes are turned my way a bit more often than for your average new parent. The midwives are awaiting news of Romilly but their focus, their responsibility, is Fleur. ‘I don’t even think Loll did.’
‘I’ve got an hour before I need to leave for the airport,’ Adam says. ‘Want me to help?’
I nod, beaten and unable to be stoic. I look around and it’s too much.
So Adam clears up while I hold Fleur, and then he makes us both a coffee in mugs that Steffie had designed for Romilly as a Christmas present when they were younger, adorned with a selection of pictures from their school days together. They met when they were five.
I look at the snapshots of the two of them on there, Steffie towering above Romilly, tucking her into her armpit in school uniform. Both in eyeliner that stared you down at a gig in the early Noughties. Eyes closed on matching Lilos in a swimming pool. Face masks on in sleeping bags, twelve perhaps, or thirteen.
Romilly, Romilly, everywhere and nowhere.
I sip my coffee.
Fleur is in her rocker on the floor, dummy now a familiar sight. We sit down. The silence isn’t that comfortable, for me at least: I am trying to build up to something.
Adam drinks fast. ‘Is there anything new from the police I need to know before I head off?’
I sigh. ‘Not really. Loll is hammering away to make them grasp that she has a mental health issue, so it’s different to another adult leaving. But it’s awkward. They say she doesn’t have a diagnosis. It doesn’t go to the top of the pile. But they got that CCTV from the airport. That’s something. We know she was alone then.’
Adam nods. ‘Good that it backs up the woman from the airport too. She says Romilly was definitely alone. And she saw her at both ends of the journey.’ Adam opens the cupboard and hands me a packet of biscuits. I shove in a custard cream, whole.
‘Still,’ I concur. ‘It’s lucky we have this eyewitness. The police have been pretty shit. Loll is going crazy with it. Did you hear her losing it on the phone yesterday? They just don’t comprehend postpartum psychosis at all. Have no grasp of the severity.’
I see a shudder run through Adam. We all know what we mean, when we talk in code like this.
Romilly could already be dead.
A bang makes me jump.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Goodbye cuddle.’
His coffee cup, on the table. That’s all. What is wrong with me?
Adam leans down to unclip Fleur from her rocker and to snuggle her in. She sighs, happy as ever to be next to a body. ‘Won’t be long, girl. I’m going to bring your mamma back.’
But he doesn’t sound convincing; instead he looks distracted, staring out of a window.
There is a lot of footfall outside our house, a regular stampede to the beach in muddy wellies in autumn, winter, the tread lighter in its sandals by summer, buckets and spades clinking as they go.
I am convinced more of them look to their left at our window now than they used to, now we are intriguing, now tragedy lives here.
And when they look, I think, as an old guy catches me at the window and glances back down at his whippet, we appear like prisoners. One or other of us is always at that window, staring out like we are locked in.
I feel like I am, often.
What would Loll do if I put a sign up in the window?
Help me, help me, help me.
‘Adam, am I right to trust Steffie?’
I blurt it out before I can change my mind. Before he can leave.
Slowly his head turns back to me, brow furrowed.
‘What?’ he answers. I glance over my shoulder on autopilot but she isn’t here, she’s at the café.
‘Of course you are,’ he says, an unreal laugh. ‘She’s Romilly’s best friend. Mate, she’s my girlfriend.’
There’s a pause. No laughter now. Adam looks awkward.
‘In the end though, her loyalties are with Romilly, aren’t they, not our family?’ I push though I know it might be the wrong choice; that though Adam is my friend, he is Steffie’s boyfriend first. ‘It isn’t like Loll, who loves Fleur just as much, who knows she needs her mum. Steffie is Romilly’s friend. That’s where her attention is. She isn’t exactly maternal. So who’s to say she didn’t help her? And who’s to say she isn’t still helping her? She’s always checking her phone. Always.’
I can hear myself and I know I sound paranoid, but I am sure there is something in this. That I was wrong to turn on Loll but in this, I am right.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘By that score, my loyalty is to you and I don’t care about this kid either.’
Adam snuggles down into my baby. I see three of her fingers cover a small part of one of his. In Fleur’s limited world, Adam is one of the most consistent figures. But by the same score, he is right, so is Steffie.
‘And that’s obviously not true,’ he pushes on, and am I being paranoid or does he sound irritated now? ‘If you’d done a runner I would want you back here with your family because I’d know that’s where you belong and that’s what would be good for you. Mate, Steffie … no. You can’t say this to me.’
I look up from Fleur. Meet his eyes. But we all know that Steffie and Romilly’s friendship runs deeper than Adam’s and mine.
‘What if you believed that coming home wasn’t what was good for me?’ I ask.
He raises an eyebrow in silent question. He’s singing a lullaby under his breath. When I look at her, Fleur’s eyelids are drooping.
‘You’re getting pretty good at that,’ I tell him, in an almost whisper so I don’t break the sleep spell.
We sit in silence for a few minutes until Fleur is in a deep nap, crumpled into Adam’s stomach. A stomach that I used to tease him about, little beer belly, but now looks like a gym body compared to mine.
‘Whoever is supporting Romilly clearly thinks that this is the right thing for her,’ I whisper. ‘Even if it’s for a reason we haven’t figured out yet.’
‘Either that or they felt like they had no choice,’ he counters, hushed tones too. ‘Like they had to support her. No matter what. Because of her mental health. Or because they love her, and you always support the people you love.
I nod my head. True.
‘Fuck!’
There’s a loud knock at the door. I am so in my own head that I jump when it comes. Again.
‘It’ll be my taxi,’ he says.
As he hands Fleur over to me, he speaks again.
‘I know we said someone close, but there has to be someone else. Not those two, mate. Loll and Steffie … there’s just no way.’
He’s right. If Steffie had helped Romilly, he would know, wouldn’t he?
I watch his face.
It ducks away from me as he picks up his bag to head for his taxi.
‘I’ll be in touch when I get there,’ he says, standing up.
‘Don’t forget to keep me in the loop with everything,’ I tell him. ‘However small it seems. Everything.’
He reaches up to rub me on the head at the crown. He examines it. ‘Yep, you’ve definitely lost an inch or so there.’
Then he smiles, but sort of grim, and picks up a backpack and tent that normally go on camping trips and did a month in South America with Steffie last year and now are going on this odd, odd rescue mission, over his shoulder.
He would know.
He slips out of the front door.
And I stand in our big bay window in the living room and watch his cab pull away.
He doesn’t see me there, Fleur in my arms. Has his head down.
In the last second before the cab pulls away, I see Adam with his phone to his ear.
Come to think of it, he’s been attached to his phone a lot too.
Day #4, 10.30 a.m.
The Best Friend
By the morning, she has stopped typing and no reply has actually made it to me and so I think she’s changed her mind. But then she starts again.
Romilly is typing.
The reply, when it finally comes, only contains one word.
But one word is all I need.
No.
Then, though, comes more.
Don’t trust Marc, Steffie. Do not trust Marc with anything.
Oh my friend: I’m sorry.
I have given Marc the information and sent him – via Adam – straight to Romilly, when Romilly does not want him near her.
Fuck.
But I stop myself.
Calm down.
Romilly is experiencing postpartum psychosis.
We are all sure of that.
Aren’t we?
So whatever Romilly thinks she wants, doesn’t mean that’s the right thing for her.
Post, post, post.
I think of Marc making that phone call. I think of the word postpartum; of whatever went on with Romilly before birth, pre, pre, pre.
If we have this wrong, the only way I can change things now, the only way I can make this up to Romilly for giving Marc such a focus as the lake, is to cut off his source.
At least until I figure out what’s going on.
Outside work, I slip my phone out of my pocket and call Adam. I can hear the noise of a bad local radio host shouting in the background, something Adam – slave to a Nineties indie playlist that expands constantly but that he plays at all times – would never have put on himself.
He’s in a taxi. To the airport.
‘Ad, listen,’ I say, walking round the corner towards the beach. My breath sounds as loud as my voice. ‘I know this sounds crazy. But please if you find out any information about where Romilly is, don’t pass it on to Marc. Come to me first. I’m probably being ridiculous but I’m not sure we should be telling him—’
He interrupts me.
‘What do you mean?’ he says, careful. ‘This is the entire point of me going. To get Romilly back to her family.’
I sigh. How can I explain this to him when this is so difficult for me to comprehend too? When I don’t know why yet.
It’s been our sole aim, our only focus, to find Romilly.
‘Okay, okay,’ I say, trying to take the conversation down a notch, keep him with me. ‘Don’t tell Marc this either. But there are a few things that have started to not add up for me, with this postpartum psychosis thing. And then … Ro messaged me.’
There is a beat.
I walk back on myself, towards work.
Pace.
‘She messaged you?’ he says. ‘And you kept this to yourself?’
‘It was short.’
‘Oh that’s okay then!’
The radio sounds even louder.
‘And you didn’t say?’
‘It was only an hour ago, Adam, and I’m saying now.’
‘Not to the police.’
‘No. Not to the police.’
‘Not to Marc.’
I am quiet. ‘No. Not to Marc either.’
‘He thinks she could be dead, Steffie.’
Silence.
How to answer that?
I’ve betrayed the team. Am potentially doing something torturous to someone who doesn’t deserve that.
Adam is – I know him well enough to establish from his breathing alone – boiling with rage.
One of the waitresses, Meg, sees me outside the café and knocks on the window. Arms and rolled-up sleeves out in question. So much for being non customer-facing: my shouting at customers is suddenly forgotten when there are tables crying out for their micro salad.
‘Give me a second, Ad,’ I mutter.
I hold up two fingers to the glass. ‘Two minutes,’ I mouth.
‘So what exactly did she say, in this message?’ he says.
The tone is more Loll, no messing around, straight to the point; not Adam.
The mood until now has been kindness; compassion. An understanding that for somebody to do this, something must be very wrong.
I make this point.
‘Exactly,’ says Adam. ‘Something is very, very wrong. But that thing is happening inside her own mind. One thing I do know is that the only way to make it right is to get them all back under their family roof. Get her medical help. We won’t make it right by leaving Romilly floating around Europe with undiagnosed postpartum psychosis.’
It was a theory, I think, a theory. Since when did this psychosis become fact? Or is that often how facts become facts, simply by being repeated until they’re accepted?
‘She’s not exactly floating around Eu—’ I start but Meg is in my vision again, pointing at a watch she isn’t wearing. I can hear the pre-lunchtime rush of plates and voices and teacups on saucers starting now.
I sigh.
‘Anyway, Adam, we’re veering off the point,’ I whisper, quieter now as I am conscious of people walking past, on their way into the café, hearing. ‘She didn’t say much. She disabled her phone straight afterwards. But she did say that it was crucial that we don’t tell Marc anything.’
There is an angry silence, a disbelieving one, a silence that contains hundreds of words, a shouting match, maybe even a hug at the end as we make up but have to agree to disagree. All of it’s there but none of it as well as I listen to tinny music on the other end of the phone, see the face of an angry waitress.
We can’t do this now.
‘Adam?’
‘Yeah, mate, that’s great,’ he says to the cabbie. ‘Steffie, I have to go. I’ve just got to the airport.’
And he hangs up. When I call back – ill-advised, given the work situation and the fact I am now so late but I need him to understand this – he has turned his phone off.
I shove my phone into my pocket.
Trust me, Adam. Trust me more than Marc.
Marc carries a tiny baby in his arms in his pyjamas. He gulps coffee in desperation. He pushes his hair back with two hands and ages weeks, months in hours.
He does not appear like a guilty man; if he’s acting he’s gone method.
Do I believe he is a threat?
Especially when he is telling me that Romilly is experiencing postpartum psychosis?
Can I trust her judgement?
Can I trust his?
I dart behind the counter, serve a couple of customers. It is getting busy now, the lunchtime rush on. But I am twitching to be somewhere else.
