Five days missing, p.8
Five Days Missing, page 8
I am standing on her doorstep by the time I send her the next message.
‘Not a word, Ro. To anyone. Nothing is off limits. Talk to me.’
I think again about the way I flipped at those old women. How I’ve never felt so angry, every second. And then I try to work out: who am I angry with?
Day #3, 5.30 p.m.
The Husband
I stare at the midwife.
She looks sheepish. Knows I am embarrassed.
I want to slam a fist into the wall.
Because it’s obvious, isn’t it, now that she is spelling it out to me.
I take Fleur off her and my baby starts to cry. I don’t reach for the dummy that I know is in the kitchen because I don’t want her to think I’m failing; that I’m bad at this too, as well as at realising the most basic of concepts when it comes to my wife being missing.
Someone helped Romilly run away from me and from our baby.
And for Romilly to trust them with that, it must have been someone close.
I think of all of Romilly’s friends, messaging, checking in, leaving bags of shopping outside the front door.
I think of Loll, out picking up supplies for us. Earlier I saw her sitting at the kitchen table. She didn’t know I was watching her and had her head down. She was silent; her shoulders shaking. The back of her neck was pink like sunburn.
I don’t have siblings. Don’t quite get that dynamic. But I do know how much this hurts.
The same thing happened to Steffie yesterday; as we hugged she erupted like a volcano.
I know that feeling.
Someone close.
Someone close helped my wife to leave me.
Someone close helped my wife to leave her newborn baby.
I look at the kitchen table. Think of Loll’s heaving shoulders.
The vegan carrot cake Steffie brought me yesterday sits on the kitchen counter, where I will it to morph into a KitKat. The light in there – the day so dark it is turned on already – still flickers.
A message pings in from Adam.
I take a deep breath.
Someone close.
The man who checks in constantly; my best friend.
The woman who hugs me and brings me sustenance.
The one who weeps at my kitchen table.
How close is close?
Day #3, 5.40 p.m.
The Best Friend
I stare at the bright green door Romilly painted on a whim one day – the reason she has a notable blob of green on the thigh of her favourite shorts – when Marc answers, smile thin.
‘Sorry,’ I lie, putting my phone in my back pocket. ‘Just work, checking shifts for the week. How are things?’
And then I sketch a smile on my face and rejoin the team. I find a task for myself as I go out to the kitchen and put the kettle on to make Marc a coffee.
I put the carrot cake I brought him yesterday on a plate. Shove it at him.
‘Eat,’ I say.
But he is holding Fleur and an overwhelming stench suddenly drifts upwards.
‘I’ll be at the changing table.’ He smiles, but his brow is furrowed. The exhaustion of repetition is showing. ‘Hold on to that cake.’
I nod, distracted. Then while he leaves the room, I lean against the kitchen worktop and stare at my phone.
A face appears around the door.
‘Oh!’
‘Sorry,’ says Marc’s head only. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’
His eyes travel down to my phone.
I shove it into my pocket.
Something odd passes across his face and I roll my eyes.
‘Work again,’ I mutter. ‘You’d think that place couldn’t run without me.’
His thin smile is now emaciated. But it’s still in place.
The kettle boils.
‘Was just going to say could you make mine black?’ he says through those tight lips, nodding towards it. ‘Thanks, Stef.’
He looks old, I think, as he walks away.
His stomach bulges; the lines around his eyes are deeper.
A bald spot I never noticed before retreats and leaves the room.
And when it does, my smile immediately fades.
I hide behind the kitchen door and send one last message to Romilly, typing this time instead of voice notes for the silence.
Then there was the night you gave birth, that message you sent me.
Ro and I were messaging on the evening she went into labour, just before things started. It was unlike her, she usually called, but when I had phoned her earlier she hadn’t picked up.
In the middle of our text conversation, the messages paused for half an hour.
When she came back with one last message, it was odd.
Everything is a lie, it said.
Made no sense. I didn’t pick it up for a couple of hours; I was at some birthday thing at a pub with Adam but when I saw it I went outside, tried to call her. Nothing. Minutes later though, I had a message from Marc: Romilly is in labour, on way to the hospital!
Everything else was forgotten. That’s what brand-new life does.
Fleur arrived, the delivery was safe, Romilly was healthy and I put that message down to her perhaps having been in early labour, delirious with pain.
To the nerves, the excitement, that feeling of oh fuck what is about to happen to my life. To a unique situation where you must feel like you’re standing in a queue about to access the next part of your existence.
Everything they tell you about being in labour is a lie?
Perhaps.
I don’t know. Not my area.
But then Romilly went missing.
And I kicked myself for ignoring that message and not digging deeper.
I know that logic says this is a moot point: she has a mental health condition, so all other theories are null and void.
But the feeling that I missed something that night – something that could have prevented this – won’t go away.
I can’t drop it.
The thought drips, drips, drips like Marc’s dodgy tap. I hear it in every step I take in Romilly’s slippers around her house.
If anything, it is getting louder. My thumbnail stings and I realise I have picked it so far down, the skin underneath is exposed. I wince.
Something happened in that window between Romilly’s flurry of messages on the night she went into labour, and that final one: sad, scared, desolate.
Whatever made Romilly leave, I feel sure happened then.
Which means that it happened before she gave birth.
And suddenly, something painfully fucking obvious occurs to me.
I google whether you can get postpartum psychosis before a baby is born.
Feel stupid even typing it.
The clue is in the name, surely. Postpartum.
And Google nods in agreement with a clear answer for me.
A resolute no.
Postpartum means post-baby.
If whatever happened to Romilly happened before she had her baby then it’s not postpartum psychosis that is to blame. it’s something else entirely.
Day #3, 6 p.m.
The Husband
It’s a tricky conversation, the one where you ask for extra paternity leave because your wife has abandoned you and your baby.
Not standard-issue.
No template available on Google.
‘Linds?’
My boss, the owner of the shop, has been quiet now for about ten seconds. I thought she might have seen the local news story. Clearly not.
Then she rallies.
‘Jesus, sorry. God! Sorry. Marc, I’m so sorry.’
My hand forms a tight fist. Sorry. Isn’t everyone? If I could fund a search for Romilly with sorrys, we would have no problem here.
‘I mean hopefully she’ll be back by next week and this won’t be a thing and …’ I hurry out.
‘Well even if she is, Marc,’ and she sounds appalled, ‘I think you’ll have some stuff to … sort out?’
My barrier goes up.
Everyone has their thoughts now. On our marriage. On what must be going on behind the scenes.
As if any of them has a clue about what has happened to Romilly and me.
‘Take the month, Marc,’ she says. ‘I’ll sort cover now. Then we’ll take it from there.’
Now comes the awkward part.
‘Will I … get paid?’
Linds sighs. The music shop where I work is her business. This comes out of her pocket. There is no government grant for people who misplace the mothers of their children.
‘I’m sorry to ask,’ I say quietly. ‘But there’s a baby and stuff to buy and …’
Linds cuts me off.
‘Let me see what I can work out, Marc. I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, take bloody care. I can’t believe this has happened to you. It’s like something out of a film.’
Helpful.
‘Yes,’ I mutter. ‘I’d file it in the horror genre.’
I dial off.
Next, Macca.
I stab the keys on my phone to my friend.
Can’t come to Andy’s stag. No babysitter.
I have slipped from my standard-issue abandoned victim husband character role because I am sulking. Loll had offered to babysit – encouraged me to go even – but I knew what it would look like. A stag do, while my wife was missing? Guilty, guilty, guilty.
I shake my head. No more sulking. No one is going to help you if you sulk.
So I can’t go because I am – I am reminded – the only parent here. The feeling is one of being tethered, but at my own choosing. I wouldn’t leave Fleur, even if I could. Not now.
Whoa, wouldn’t expect you to at the moment, bud, he replies, which makes me feel even worse. Is this my life now? Guilt if I expect to do anything, as the sole parent? Would they all have looked at me weirdly anyway, the absent dad doing a vodka shot in the corner while his wife swims across a French lake?
Steffie comes into the living room.
‘Another coffee?’ she asks, and I nod while typing.
I’ve barely finished the last one but all the rules of the bad times live in this house and we exist from hot drink to hot drink, clutching mugs close to us like candles at a vigil.
I look up after she leaves.
Stare into the space.
There’s a wariness that’s settled between Steffie and me that wasn’t there before. A distance. Fewer hugs. Do we just need fewer, as we get used to this situation? Now we’re moving on from the initial shock, is it too odd for adults to stand there with their arms around each other?
No. It’s something more.
I know Steffie heard me on the phone. And lately, she’s been pretty attached to her own phone too. Generally, Steffie is someone who replies to messages three days later and can’t remember the last time she logged on to social media. I know she is using it to update people about Romilly. But still. The thing is sellotaped to her palm.
Many times, Steffie has told me that Romilly hasn’t been in touch with her since she went missing.
Every time her phone beeps though, I stare.
In life, Romilly would rather speak to Steffie than anyone else. She sits in our tiny patch of garden and talks on the phone to her straight after they’ve been on a shift together.
Someone close.
As Fleur sleeps in my arms, I follow Steffie out to the kitchen.
‘Steffie, the midwife pointed something out to me earlier,’ I say.
She looks up as she spoons coffee into the cafetiere. Another bonus of her being here over Loll.
A tiny contented snore comes from Fleur; Steffie smiles in her direction, pure love.
‘Yeah?’
I choose my words carefully. I need them not to sound accusatory. Because Steffie, who told me Romilly was in France, who held my hand, who makes me proper coffee when my skin crawls with exhaustion? She can’t have steered this. Cannot have made this happen. Surely.
‘She said that this would have been difficult for Romilly to do alone,’ I say. ‘In fact she didn’t use the word “difficult”, she used the word “impossible”. Getting out of hospital. Boarding a plane. At that time.’
Steffie shrugs. Pours the water into the cafetiere. Puts it down and twists a ponytail that could do with a wash around her index finger.
‘She ain’t no ordinary woman,’ she mumbles in a weird fake American accent. It sounds like it’s something she says a lot; a catchphrase. Maybe something her and Romilly say to each other.
I nod.
‘Yeah,’ I say, irritated but trying to sound calm, patient. Sling in a laugh. ‘Sure. We’d all agree on that. But she’s still human. She had still just given birth.’
Steffie’s unreactive.
But of course she is; she hasn’t been through childbirth; wouldn’t get it.
She stands still, considers.
‘Well, I guess none of us can understand what it must be like to have … postpartum psychosis,’ she says. Nervous of the term. Out of her depth. But with an edge? ‘Mental health conditions can change the rules on a lot of things.’
I wince. The idea of Romilly dragging her tired, bleeding body abroad rather than coming home, getting in her own bed, cuddling her baby and eating peanut butter on toast in a clean dressing gown?
I feel the bile come up again.
I walk out of the room then before I am tempted to snap at Steffie.
As I head out, she plunges the cafetiere, hard.
Day #3, 6.15 p.m.
The Husband
I drain my coffee and think.
Maybe this conversation will be more pertinent to Loll, who has given birth herself twice.
And then I realise something else that would probably have been clear much earlier if I’d had more than two hours’ sleep: if Loll would understand more than anybody how impossible a solo mission like this would be after you have a baby, why the hell – in the hours we’ve talked this through and analysed the situation – would she not have brought this up herself?
I message my sister-in-law.
Can you come straight back? Need to talk to you.
On my way, she types back.
A few minutes later Loll lets herself in; I have given her a key.
‘Left the stuff on the checkout,’ she says, out of breath as she walks into the living room where Fleur and I are on the sofa, the baby still snoozing. ‘What’s happened?’
She slips off sensible shoes. Stands, in black tights so thick they are like trousers, staring at me.
I realise in that second that she thinks I have had some news about Romilly.
‘Has something happened?’ she prompts, impatient for the news. ‘Has she been in touch?’
I stare at her. Then shake my head. No, no. No news.
She lets out a breath. Her sister is not dead. Or no more dead than she was yesterday, at least.
I sit down on the sofa but Loll stays standing and then starts tidying up around me, putting letters and bits of paper into piles and taking coasters from the side of the sofa. Muttering about a mug of Steffie’s that’s been left on the floor; Steffie does it all the time as she likes to sit down there, cross-legged in her leggings. Less than seventy-two hours and we know each other’s habits; even starting to be irritated by them like true housemates.
She goes to move a side table out to get underneath it and I jump.
‘Can you leave that?’ I snap, and she looks shocked. Understandably. I have been letting her dust my living room without saying a word for the last three days and now I’ve just summoned her back but moved the goalposts.
It’s suddenly irritating me though that Loll is treating this like her house; treating me like her child.
She still stays standing. Her hands are now clasped together to stop them from tidying.
‘Do you think Romilly could have done this alone?’ I ask.
‘What do you mean?’
I start ticking the movements off with my fingers. ‘Gives birth, for the first time. Shell-shocked. Bleeding. Gets dressed. Packs. Leaves hospital. Sneaks past medical staff.’
I carry on. ‘Books a flight. Gets to an airport. Gets on a plane. Buys whatever she needs. Gets to bloody France.’
Loll stares at me and it’s like a stand-off. She pushes her thick dark hair off her face, then takes a bobble, coated in hair, from her wrist and ties it around her hair.
‘I don’t know the details,’ I say. ‘But there is physical stuff, right? Bleeding. Discomfort.’
I think of the antenatal classes we did when Romilly was pregnant.
Loll looks at me like she’s issued a dare.
‘Even pain,’ I say.
She still stares.
When Loll breaks, it’s to start tidying again.
‘Are you going to answer me?’ I ask, louder than I intended. My heart is taking on the rest of my body now, booming. What am I asking her? What am I getting at? She is here, isn’t she? Not with Romilly. And she backs up my thoughts, all day, every day: Romilly has postpartum psychosis, we both believe it.
So what am I getting at?
‘Please can you stop fucking tidying,’ I hiss at her.
She stops, with a dummy and a blanket and a TV remote in her hand, and I snatch the remote control out of her hand and throw it across the room. The back falls out; the batteries scatter.
Loll stares at me.
‘People can find strength they didn’t know they had when they want to, Marc,’ she says. There’s an edge in her voice; an accusation. ‘You know, when they are at breaking point.’
And suddenly it dawns on me that she and Steffie – they are reading from the same script.
Because they worked on it together?
Steffie sticks her head through the door.
‘Everything okay?’
She looks at Loll.
And a new thought comes in.
Loll and Steffie: they are trying to set me up for this.
Day #3, 7 p.m.
The Husband
Is sleep deprivation making me paranoid? Disjointed since Fleur was born. Barely an hour straight since Romilly left.
I weigh it up.
Don’t turn on the only people in the world who are changing your baby, feeding her, covering her gently in a soft blanket. Who sing to her and read her books even though she is less than a week old. Who make you coffee that may be the difference between you being sane and losing your mind. On the one who stays over, despite having her own kids, just in case you need her.
