Work is a confusing concept, isn’t it?
We complain about it, celebrate like we’ve been released from a long jail term when we have some time off from it, but sling us a bad time in life and it is stabilisers on a toddler’s bike, the only thing that keeps us upright.
My days need the café and its chatter so much to counter the buzzing silence at Romilly’s house. Here feels open, airy. There the bathroom tap drips, drips, drips. There it feels like I can’t breathe.
I need work so I have a reason to leave there, and so I can recharge myself enough to head back.
So I can think.
So I can work stuff out.
Who was Marc speaking to yesterday on the phone?
The words might have been too muted for me but his tone wasn’t. Panic. Desperation.
Pleading?
I put the soy milk back into the fridge.
Give the granola on the counter a quick stir.
I see table five looking around irritated and muttering about their wait for their breakfasts. The chef we employed a few months ago moves at bloody snail’s pace. I make a note to myself to have a word, the manager now in Ro’s absence, even though confrontation is my idea of hell. I laugh: it’s hardly like my best friend is any better at it.
And then, I stand still. Look around. Try to see the world – our little dot of it – through Romilly’s big brown eyes. What did my friend look at, in those months before she gave birth? What was she thinking?
I feel for Marc, you know.
I know he thinks that whatever we know about her mental health, everyone always suspects the husband.
But the truth is that I don’t.
Everything about the explanation he is offering of postpartum psychosis does – terrifyingly, given what it means for Romilly’s safety – make sense.
I don’t believe Marc has any involvement, even after that phone call.
I just don’t think he’s telling me everything.
More crucially, I have no idea – when we are all on this team together and so focused on getting Romilly back – why that would be.