by Zosia Wand
Loving someone, needing them so desperately, makes you vulnerable. You could lose them suddenly, brutally. When Neil’s away I try not to imagine car crashes, random accidents. I’m not paranoid, I don’t sit fretting the moment he’s out of my sight, but sometimes the possibility that my happiness might end crashes in front of me. He feels it too; a call out of the blue, a need to hold tight for a moment.
It’s the price of love, that fear.
But loss comes in different shapes. It isn’t always solid and sudden; sometimes it trickles in. I’ve become a mother and now, more than ever, I need to talk to my own mother. And Milly needs her. Milly needs a grandmother. But I haven’t seen my mother for more than two years. She no longer speaks to me.
Neil swings back through the gate. ‘All sorted.’
‘I didn’t know what to do.’
He laughs, but stops when he sees I’m serious and takes my hand. ‘Come on.’ He points to a small coffee van parked just the other side of the low playground fence. ‘He’s got a proper espresso machine.’ The van is within clear view. I follow him through the gate, glancing back to check on Milly. She waves from the swing as her new friend pushes her towards the sky.
As I warm my hands on the hot cup and sip the froth, watching Milly swing, I ask, ‘What if I was here on my own with her?’
Neil pulls his head back, as if to say, Really? You need to ask? ‘You would have rushed over to the girl and helped get her up. You would have told Milly to apologise and you would have gone and explained what happened to the grandmother.’
‘That’s what you did.’
He traces the line of my cheekbone with his thumb, his eyes on mine, that energy he has, that confidence, pouring into me. He believes in me, even if I don’t. ‘You would have been more apologetic.’ I wouldn’t have been as strict with Milly. I would have been too worried about upsetting her, but I can see Neil was right. She jumps down from the swing and takes her turn with the pushing. Neil adds, ‘You would have assumed entire responsibility for what happened and set about trying to make peace.’
I look over towards the grandmother who is wiping the little boy’s face with a tissue. ‘She managed it really well,’ I say.
‘She’s had years of experience.’
Was she like me once? Did she feel this incompetent? These are questions I’d like to ask my mother, but I can’t. Is it like this for everyone or is it simply because Milly is a little girl already? If I’d adopted a baby, I’d have had time to build up to this, time to grow confident as she grew more independent, but we have been thrust into it. For all the assessment and preparation, there is no training you can do to become the immediate parent of a child who is about to turn five. ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’
Neil removes my coffee cup from my hand and places it on the ground alongside his. He takes me by the shoulders and looks right into my eyes. I love his face, the fine lines that creep out from the corners of his eyes, the ruddy flush to his cheeks, the coppery glint as the sun catches his hair. He is a good man. An attentive, kind and decent man and he loves me. Warts and all. I should have told him about the photograph. I should have talked it through with him before I wrote. Neil and I always talk. There are no secrets between us. I would like to talk to him now, but I don’t want to spoil this moment. This is our time with Milly and I want to keep it for her. ‘You,’ he says, dropping a kiss on my nose, ‘are going to be a wonderful mum.’
I try to believe him.
2
Three Days Later
‘Gone?’ There’s a fist in my throat. I force my words past it.
‘I can’t find her. She was in the garden, on the trampoline. Is she with you?’
‘No.’ I’m in the park, looking towards my house, having gravitated out here to wait for their call. I manage this park – it’s a community initiative – and I know most of the people who frequent it. I spin round, pulling my hair away from my eyes, searching for her. The young saplings that line the path bend in sympathy with the wind. Neil is head of sixth form at the high school and term doesn’t start back for a few more days, so he was at home with Milly. I was going to meet them for lunch. I can see our house through the trees. Bay windows and sloping slate roof, a garden that rolls down to the park boundary. Perfect for a family. That’s what I said. Perfect.
Please no. Don’t let this be true. Let it be a mistake. Let it be all right. My fear has become flesh; a ghostly figure in a grey coat, hair damp-darkened and dripping, colourless lips whispering, ‘You don’t deserve her.’
Don’t take her away. Please! Let us have this joy, let us keep this!
There’s a family making their way through the gate. Two adults and a child. A girl. I run after them, wishing that the girl will be Milly, that, for some reason, I hadn’t recognised her, but, of course, it isn’t Milly. I apologise and look about frantically. I’m both part of what is unfolding and outside it, observing. I can see myself in the scene and hear what I’m saying, but I can’t feel it. They haven’t seen another little girl. They’re distressed, I’m distressing them. They’re saying something, trying to reach out to me, but there’s nothing they can do. I pull away. I’m drifting somewhere outside all this; I’m not really here.
There are two of our volunteers working on the beds in front of the café: Kath and her daughter, India. I run over to them, but they’ve had their backs to the tarn and haven’t seen anything. I run on, past the tarn towards our house. Why didn’t I check the garden earlier? Was she there then or had she already gone? I scramble up the bank to the wall with its loose stones that we should have replaced. Neil is running towards me, his face stripped of colour. He’s a big man, substantial. Seeing him, the bulk of him, should be a comfort, but the look on his face is as vulnerable as a child’s. His huge hand reaches down and grabs mine and, in that moment, I am yanked back into the reality.
It’s quieter here, the air stilled by the trees that divide us from the neighbouring gardens. A sudden and chilling quiet. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. She was here. She was fine.’
There’s a tray on the grass beside the trampoline. Three doorstep sandwiches on individual sheets of kitchen roll. Milly’s is made with white bread and has the crusts cut off. Three plastic cups of juice. Green, pink and blue. The pink one has toppled over leaving a pool of orange across the surface of the tray.
‘She wanted lunch on the trampoline.’
‘How long was she out here?’
‘I don’t know. Five minutes? I don’t know!’ He runs his hand through his hair. ‘She asked for a drink. I don’t know!’
His mud-spattered mountain bike is propped against the garden shed, the two prongs of the tailgator, which attach it to a child’s bike, project from the back like two fangs. Milly’s gleaming purple bike has been detached and lies beside it in the grass. She has been insisting she can cycle without help and has resisted stabilisers. Did she fall off and lose her temper? Stamp off in a strop? Is she hiding somewhere, crying? ‘Maybe she’s headed up the street? She might have seen someone. One of the neighbour’s kids?’
‘I’ve been up and down. No one’s seen her.’
‘The Thomases?’ They have a son a year or two older than Milly. She might have gone to play with him.
‘They didn’t answer.’
‘She could be there. They leave the front door unlocked. She might have gone in and they didn’t hear her?’
Kath calls to me from the other side of the wall. ‘We’ll keep searching the park.’ I nod dumbly. Behind her, India’s face is stricken; my own terror reflected back at me.
We start to walk along the access road that effectively divides our garden in two. There is the long, lower garden with the shed and trampoline that borders the park and, higher up, on the other side of the road, a smaller front garden that leads to our front door. These large Victorian houses were built in a crescent to overlook the park and tarn. Our street is a dead end, leading to a kissing gate, open fields and the fell beyond.
Early leaves fill the street gutter. I’m dimly aware of the sharp bite of the wind that sweeps them into a soft bank against the garden walls. The Thomases live four doors up. I can’t run. I don’t want to run. I want to hang on to this possibility for as long as possible. Neil climbs the steps up to the front door ahead of me. Their garden is much neater than ours, with a clearly defined front path, tidy borders and a bay tree in a terracotta pot. The door is a shiny red with a gleaming brass knocker. Oliver Thomas goes to school in a neighbouring village, a school with an Outstanding Ofsted report, his mother drives him in and back every day, but today is not a school day. I haven’t seen the Thomases for over a week. They’re very likely to be on holiday. We wait and I know there’ll be no answer, but still I cling to hope, as it slithers away from me. I don’t want to turn away from this door and face what comes next.
‘A cat? She might have seen a cat and followed it. Got distracted. Got lost.’ I can imagine Milly leaning over to stroke a cat, watching it arch its back and walk away, calling after it, following it up the hill. ‘It maked me follow it, Mummy!’ I walk back to the gate, expecting to see her standing there, waiting for us, but the road is empty. The Thomases’ car isn’t there.
Neil looks at me. His rusty hair stands up in tufts. His face sags. I don’t want to see his fear. He says, ‘I shouldn’t have left her. Why did I leave her?’ This isn’t the Neil I know, but we’re not the people we were. Milly has changed us. Being responsible for her, loving her, has made us vulnerable. He isn’t saying it but I know what he’s thinking. He’s imagining Shona, the people on the adoption panel, social services. What will they say? We’ve been careless. We’ve proved ourselves inadequate. A row of stern faces glaring down at me. I prickle with shame. We’ve let them down. We’ve let Milly down.
This fear is both old and new. Red hot and angry, it breathes fire in my face. I can hear the roar of the flames, feel the singeing of my flesh, but there’s more. This is vicious, a thing with claws. It reaches up inside me and tears at the underside of my skin. I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself. ‘We need to calm down. This is Tarnside.’ My breaths are short, my chest so tight, my skin burning. I can hear the wobble in my voice. ‘She was in the garden. Children play in gardens. Parents don’t have to stand guard over their children every moment of the day.’ I’m trying to sound certain but I’m not certain. I don’t know the rules. There are so many unwritten rules of parenting and I have no one to guide me. Have we made a mistake? Should Neil have taken Milly back into the house with him? ‘There’ll be an explanation.’ I push on. I need to wrestle control of this. ‘We need to think.’
‘She might be hiding. She might think this is funny. All a game?’
I clutch this possibility for an instant, but I know that’s not Milly. She’d have heard the anxiety in his voice. She’d have called out.
‘Maybe she’s trapped somewhere. A door swung shut?’
‘How long has she been gone?’
He looks at his watch. Frowns. ‘I was thinking it was getting late for her to eat. I was trying to get lunch ready for twelve. If we say just after twelve…’
It’s nearly one o’clock.
We look at one another. There’s nothing else we can do. He says it first. ‘We have to call the police.’
3
I’m both relieved and terrified by the speed and energy of the police response. The police car pulled up outside in a matter of minutes. A young police officer now sits on the smaller sofa facing us with notebook and pen in her hand. PC McAdam. Police constable, not a detective inspector or a sergeant – she’s too young for that. How old could she be? Late twenties? From the knowledge I’ve gained from countless television dramas, which I know isn’t reliable, but will cling to now, things can’t be so serious if it’s a police constable. But outside I can hear the blades of the helicopter slicing the air as it circles the park, and through the bay window I can see uniformed officers struggling in the wind, with dogs on leads, snouts to the ground, searching for a scent.
The wind smacks against the bay window, rattling the frames, seeking cracks and weaknesses. PC McAdam is wearing a bulky black uniform which rustles when she moves. Her hair is pulled back in a rough ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her face is clear of make-up. She asked for an item of Milly’s clothing. I brought down her pyjama top. In her bedroom, I hesitated for a moment and pressed it against my face, sucking in the memory of her, closing my eyes as I felt my way back down the stairs. Handing the thin turquoise T-shirt over was like giving up a part of myself. PC McAdam took it gently, as if she understood. ‘She likes unicorns,’ I said, though the picture on the front wasn’t visible. We bought it the weekend Milly did her first sleepover with us. At Marks and Spencer in Kendal, where we stopped off to buy something for tea on the way home. She saw it on the hanger as we walked through to the food section and asked if she could have it. I knew she was testing me, pushing her luck, sensing that I would have bought her the world right then, and I should have been setting some boundaries, but I couldn’t resist.
Above us I can hear the officers moving around, searching every cupboard and hidden corner of the bedrooms, though we all know she’s not in the house. Other officers are searching the outbuildings and sheds up and down the street. Tarnside is on alert. People have joined the search party in the park and further afield. I don’t want to think about the tarn. I’m sure they’re thinking about it; they will consider that awful possibility too.
Neil is pacing the room. He is no longer substantial. He doesn’t know how to play this role. PC McAdam asks how long Milly was left outside. Neil says about ten minutes or so. No more. ‘I was making sandwiches. How long does it take to make a sandwich?’
I thought he came up to the house to get Milly a drink after he made the sandwiches. My stomach drops. I know how long Neil takes faffing about in the kitchen when he’s preparing any kind of meal. He’ll have been singing along to the radio. Did he unload and reload the dishwasher while he was there? Did he lose track of time? Why didn’t he tell me he was making lunch while she was outside, alone?
He walks from the fireplace to the door and back to the fireplace over and over, like one of those wind-up toys, but he can’t slow down. ‘I have to do something.’
‘We have a team out there looking for her.’
‘I can’t just sit here!’ I follow him into the hall. He yanks his jacket from the hook. ‘I have to help.’
I nod. I want him to stay here with me, but I want her found, and I want him to resume his role. To take control. He may be able to help.
As he slides his arms into his jacket he checks automatically for his phone. He feels the inside pocket, then the back pocket of his jeans, where he finds it, looks at the screen, then at me. ‘Your phone? Have you checked your phone?’
I have checked it, repeatedly, but not since PC McAdam arrived. My phone is not a smartphone like Neil’s, but an old Nokia. Smaller. More robust. I feel my back pocket. It isn’t there.
‘Where is it?’ he asks, urgently. ‘Where did you last have it?’
I try to picture where I was standing when I last checked. I had the phone with me. I put it in my pocket when I scrambled over the wall. Neil was the one to call the police, but I had my phone in my hand. We were in the kitchen. I turn and run the length of the hall. The cellar door is open and the door into the back yard, but the officers who’ve been searching have moved on. My phone is on the dresser. I grab it. There’s a yellow envelope on the screen.
‘What is it?’
‘A message.’
My fingers slip on the keys. I can feel him next to me, willing me to get it right, ready to snatch the phone from my hand. I try again. Menu. Messages. A list of names appears down the left-hand side with a series of yellow envelopes opposite, one unopened envelope at the top. I read the name on the screen beside it, and freeze.
I step away from Neil.
‘What?’ He moves towards me, but I can’t speak.
4
‘Why, Eve? Why?’ His wounded eyes search me. He has every right to be furious. I could cope with furious, but not this. I’ve betrayed him.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Talk to me?’
‘I miss her, Neil. I thought if she saw a photo—’
‘She’d what? Phone you? Say everything is all right now? Let’s play happy families?’
‘This is why I didn’t tell you! I can’t talk to you about her.’
‘And why is that, Eve? Is it me? Am I the one playing mind games?’
A police officer coughs, emerging from the top of the cellar steps before sliding out to the hall. Will he say something to social services? What will they do?
Neil’s body is taut and trembling. I feel suddenly tired. I’d like to sink down onto the floor, close my eyes and sleep through whatever has to happen now and wake up when it’s all over, but somehow I remain standing. In the back yard, the plastic lid of a recycling box has been blown against the stone wall. Bits of cardboard wrapping and newspaper flutter across the gravel. I’m desperate to reach out and touch his hand, but scared he’ll pull away from me and I couldn’t bear that.
He shatters the silence. ‘Where the hell is she?’
I can hear footsteps in the hall, the rustle of PC McAdam’s uniform as she approaches. ‘Everything all right?’
‘My mother,’ I say, not knowing how to explain, where to begin. ‘There’s a text.’ Her face is impassive. I’m grateful for that. I don’t want to imagine what she thinks of us. ‘She’s with my mother,’ I add, and then, ‘Milly’s safe,’ reassuring myself as much as her.