2:58 and Mum’s footsteps are crunching on the gravel path. At one minute to three, the doorbell rings.
Tom watches from the living room with Grace in his arms. He’s annoyed that I’ve agreed to let her go like this, without consulting him. And he’s angry on my behalf. Our quiet afternoon of baby time is gone and on Monday I’ll be back at work and complaining that I hardly see her. He shakes his head at me as I tuck Frankie into the pram and open the door.
Mum is a little taller than me and still battling the grey in her softly permed hair, which was once the exact colour of mine, but is now faded to steel. We have the same eye colour, but nothing else matches. Her nose is slightly hooked, mine turns up. Her skin is alabaster, mine is pale. She is curvy, I am fat. She is elegant, I am clumsy. She dresses well, I’m wearing jeans and a jumper.
I step backwards so that she can come in. ‘Hello, darling.’ She puts her arms around me. ‘You look tired,’ she murmurs. ‘Are you getting enough sleep?’ She pulls away and looks at me with concern. ‘You must look after yourself as well, you know. Mummy should come first.’
I nod.
‘How is my Grace?’ Her eyes dart past me, in search of her granddaughter.
‘She’s had a nap, so she’ll be in a good mood.’
‘That’s nice.’ She raises her voice. ‘Grace, Grandma’s here and I have Jelly Tots!’
Grace squeals and Tom struggles to hold onto her.
‘Mum!’ I lunge for the sweets but she’s already dropping the packet in her handbag. ‘If you want to treat her, give her rice cakes or a banana. She’s only been on solids a couple of months. She shouldn’t be eating sugar.’
‘A little sugar won’t hurt her.’ Mum smiles. ‘Anyway, I don’t give her the whole packet, just one or two when she’s being a good girl.’ Mum turns to the hall cupboard. ‘I’ll need her car seat – we’re going into town.’
I can feel Tom tensing behind me. ‘If you’re busy, we can keep Grace with us this afternoon.’
‘Don’t be silly, Tom. Gillian can’t wait to meet her. We’re going to Costa for a coffee.’
I reach for the car seat as Tom offers a warning. ‘She’ll be bored just sitting in her pram.’
Mum laughs. ‘She’ll be fine. There’re always babies in Costa on a Saturday afternoon. She might make a friend.’ She moves Frankie-Lion and fits the car seat onto the pram. Then she looks at me again and lowers her voice. ‘Maybe pop a little bit of make-up on for Tom, Bridget.’ She puts the bag over the back of the pram as my heart sinks. When I turn to get Grace from Tom, I avoid the sight of my reflection in the door pane.
Mum clips Grace neatly into her seat, crushing Frankie-Lion, and, as Grace starts to cry, whips out the bag of sweets and waves them in front of her.
‘Alison—’ Tom starts forwards, but she’s already backing out of the door.
‘Say bye-bye to Daddy,’ she coos. ‘Wave to Mummy.’
I clutch the doorframe as Grace bumps backwards down the steps, focused entirely on the unopened packet of Jelly Tots. At the last moment, she looks up and waves, her little fist opening and closing. She’s just learned that. It hurts me every time I see her wave at me. She should be waving other people goodbye, not her mummy.
Tom takes my hand, as Mum walks Grace to her car. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘What if she takes her eyes off her?’
‘Your mum?’ He shakes his head. ‘She wouldn’t. She adores Grace.’
‘True.’ I lean my head against the side of his, neither of us willing to look away until Mum pulls away and Grace is out of sight.
‘Who is Gillian anyway?’ Tom looks at me, finally.
I frown. ‘Aunt Gillian. I’m sure you’ve met her. She was at the wedding.’
Tom shrugs.
‘They’ve known each other since Mum was at school. She’s a therapist. She treated me after what happened with Dad, and then again when I was a teenager. High school wasn’t easy after being home schooled.’ I smile at him. ‘She’s just back from France and Mum’s giddy with excitement.’ I hesitate. ‘Do you want me to get dressed up? I can put on some make-up and we could go to the—’
Tom frowns. ‘What makes you think you need to get dressed up to spend time with me?’
‘I didn’t mean—’ I turn from the empty road. ‘I just thought you might like to go out.’
Tom rubs his eyes. ‘I’ve already been out, remember? Why don’t you have a shower? Not because I think you need it, but because I think it’ll make you feel more … human. Then we could have a bite to eat or a lie down.’ He sounds almost as tired as I am. ‘I wish you’d …’ He lets the rest of the sentence hang and abandons me in the hallway. I hear the television go on in the living room, the muted hum of theme music and voices.
I stand for a moment, then close the front door. I wish you’d stand up to your mum. I think that’s what he was going to say. But it’s not a question of standing up to her. I wouldn’t want Grace standing up to me. Or needing to. That’s not what a good daughter does.
I walk heavily upstairs.
I let the shower run, but don’t get into it, not immediately. Tom is watching television. The water is running. He can’t hear me.
I pick up my mobile and dial, feeling uneasy, as if I’m sneaking around, having an affair. As soon as it rings, I regret making the call and start to take the phone from my ear to hang up.
‘James Ward?’ The voice comes through the speaker, distant and tinny. Quickly, guiltily, I put it back to my ear.
‘H-hello?’
I was hoping for the other one, for Naomi Shaw. Are they partners? Is that why he’s answering the number she gave me? I picture the police station, desks facing one another. Do Sergeants have desks? Or am I thinking of Detectives? But I suppose they must. They can’t just drive around all day, going from door to door. They aren’t itinerant.
‘Um, Sergeant Ward? It’s Bridget Carlson. I was just wondering … is there any news on the little girl who was kidnapped?’
There’s a long pause.
‘Sergeant Ward?’
‘Yes.’ Another pause. ‘Look, Mrs Carlson, it’s early days.’ His voice is professional, sharp.
‘I know, it’s just …’ I remember something I heard from a maternity leave spent in a fug in front of late-night television, a wakeful Grace clutching at my breast. ‘I thought if the child isn’t found in the first twenty-four hours – I mean, don’t the chances of finding her go down and …?’
‘Mrs Carlson, we’re doing all we can. But …’ Another pause. ‘We’ve been looking at CCTV.’
‘You found the station?’ I’m delighted.
‘Sergeant Shaw had the idea of looking at the camera on the train. She thought if we could spot the moment you saw the kidnapping, we’d be able to tell which station you were going past. But I’ll be honest, Mrs Carlson, it looks to me a lot like you get on, find your seat, then you lean your head on the window and go to sleep.’
‘No.’ My rising heart sinks. ‘I mean I do rest my head on the window, but I’m not sleeping. Maybe I doze – a little – but I’m awake when—’
‘Mrs Carlson,’ and now his voice is low, sympathetic, ‘I’ve been doing some digging. No more than I would into any other witness. You’re on medication, right? Anti-depressants?’
‘Y-yes, but …’
‘Fluoxetine, is that the one?’
‘Yes, but I don’t underst—’
‘The thing is, Mrs Carlson, among the many, many side-effects listed for Fluoxetine are tiredness, confusion, abnormal dreams and nightmares.’
‘What are you saying? You think I dreamed this?’
Another heavy pause. I imagine him playing with a pencil, doodling on a notepad, his deep-set eyes hooded, perhaps a desk lamp casting shadows on his face.
‘Listen, Mrs Carlson. You’ve just had a baby. You’ve been diagnosed with depression and I imagine that losing that child is the worst thing you can think of. It makes sense that you would have a nightmare about a child being kidnapped. And if not – I’ll be honest here – you don’t look that well. And I guess the baby gets a lot of attention. Maybe you wanted someone to look at you for once, huh?’
I gasp.
‘We can’t find any evidence of a kidnapping, no-one has reported a child missing in this area and the only witness to the event looks as if she was asleep and is on medication that causes nightmares. What would you think if you were in my position?’
‘You really think I dreamed it?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carlson. Listen, we aren’t closing the case. But until we find some evidence that there really was a child … we’re struggling under budget cuts, we have no time, no resources and no evidence.’ He hesitates and then, finally, he answers my question. ‘And yes, frankly, I think you dreamed the whole thing. Which is lucky for you because if we thought you were deliberately making this up, I’d be talking about charging you for wasting police time.’
I don’t say goodbye, I don’t say another word. I press the red button and drop the phone. It lands in the laundry basket.
The shower is still running. I can no longer see my face in the steamed-up mirror, only a ghost, haloed with a frizz of dark hair. I shed my clothes and step out of my knickers. I don’t look at myself. I open the door and move into the shower. The hot water patters on my head, wetting my hair, dragging it over my face. It batters my shoulders, runs over my heavy breasts, makes rivers on my soft stomach, streams over the road map of my stretch-marked thighs. Was it possible that I did want to be noticed, to be seen? Did I dream the whole thing? I look at my reflection in the steamed-up glass and think again of the girl. Her terrified screams, her dark curls, the way she fought not to be taken.
The memory didn’t have the quality of a dream.
But then, how would I know? My whole life had something of a dream-like feel. I’d always been a little confused about things, especially since Dad. Afterwards, I developed a kind of dissociative amnesia, my whole childhood lost in a kind of blur. Aunt Gillian told me it was grief and anger that made me block my memories of him. Then, when I left home and started university, I lost a whole month to anxiety and nausea before I dared venture out of my accommodation.
Since Grace there’d been adrenalin, then exhaustion and then depression, moving in like a cold front, taking me over as my life diminished to a bubble, dark around the edges.
So, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I did dream it.
I jump as the shower door slides open and Tom steps in behind me, pressing his long body against mine. My heart should rise but it sinks. I’m still going over Ward’s words. I’d be talking about charging you for wasting police time.
‘I thought of you in here all by yourself, you sexy thing.’ There’s a smile in his voice and his big hands slide around my waist, heading for my breasts. I block them.
‘Not the—’
‘I know, I know, sorry. I can’t wait for her to stop breastfeeding!’ He shifts direction, heading for my stomach and further down.
‘I haven’t washed my hair.’
He reaches around me for the shampoo. ‘Let me.’
Plastic creaks as he squeezes the bottle into his hands. Yet another thing to feel guilty about, all the plastic in here. Then his fingers are on my scalp and I lean back into his grip, letting him massage my head, his chest against my back.
‘You’re so sexy,’ he breathes and I stiffen. I’m not sexy, he’s horny. Not the same.
‘I wish you wouldn’t say that,’ I sigh.
‘Why can’t I say it? It’s true. I wish you’d believe me.’ He presses harder and I groan with pleasure, trying not to think about what comes next, how I dread his hands moving downwards, running over all the places I’ve gone soft and saggy.
How could he possibly find me sexy? He had to be comparing what I’d become with what I’d once been. How could he not?
‘Tom. I know you’re lying. I wish you wouldn’t. It makes me feel … awkward.’
He freezes, then he pulls his hands out of my hair. ‘I don’t know what I can say to make you believe me.’ Chill air hits my back. He’s stepped away, opened the shower door and moved back into the bathroom. He grabs the towel from the radiator and leaves me alone.
Part of me wants to make him stay. I could invite him back in and give him a blow job, that way he wouldn’t have to touch me. I’d be in control. He’d be happy with that, wouldn’t he?
But another part of me is relieved. I let him go and stand in the shower as the bathroom door closes behind his bowed shoulders.