The morning is a barefaced cheek of a day, daring to call itself spring.
Wind howls like a wolf.
When the baby wakes at 8 a.m., I grab my dressing gown and pull it around me tight, shivering with tiredness as much as cold.
I take her downstairs. My eyes fly straight towards the front door.
The bag has moved.
In the living room the curtains are open. It’s light, technically, but so grey it barely makes a difference. I flick on a lamp switch on the floor with my bare toe, as I hold the baby.
No Loll.
I find my sister-in-law in the kitchen, leaning back on the kitchen worktop as she reads something on her phone while the kettle boils. The radio – always tuned to a local station in our house – is playing Classic FM.
It unsettles me. It’s still our house, mine and Romilly’s.
‘The story’s up,’ she says, passing me the phone. She takes the baby off me as a trade.
‘Bloody hell,’ I say, as I scan the link she’s showing me from our local website. I had sent the details to Sal last night.
The jolt, when I see that picture of us that I sent to them, taken in a restaurant on our honeymoon in the Lake District. I’m not sure why I picked it. It seemed to strike the right note. Happy, not flash – no one could think we deserved it like they might if we were posing with champagne in the Caribbean?
I look up. ‘That was quick.’
She raises her eyebrows.
When I finish reading the story, I check on the baby who Loll has put in the Moses basket in the living room, eyes open, learning to focus.
‘Hey, you,’ I say. Little kiss on her head.
In her mouth is a dummy.
I walk back through to the kitchen.
‘We’d made a decision not to use dummies,’ I say, holding it in my hand. ‘It was only in the drawer for emergencies.’
Loll makes a noise that sounds like her nose is blocked. Takes her glasses off and wipes them.
‘I’m sure you’ll change your mind at 3 a.m. one morning.’ She laughs.
In the other room, the baby starts to cry. Loll puts her glasses back on. Redoes her ponytail. Her face says: told you.
But I can’t put the dummy back in now.
I stalk off to my daughter.
‘Shush, shush,’ I say and inhale her as I bounce her in my arms, walk around the house.
‘Want one?’ says Loll, nodding at her mug as I pass the entrance to the kitchen. ‘This is my second.’
I get it: you’re shattered from sleeping on the sofa. Is there anything more irritating than someone who offers something then makes you feel shit for taking it? Plus I was up four times last night with a newborn baby. Is she kidding me playing tiredness wars?
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘About how much you’re doing for us.’
She cuts me off.
‘Marc, I offered,’ she says. ‘Stop saying sorry.’
I pull my dressing gown tighter around me. Loll pours the kettle over instant coffee.
‘Oh, there’s a cafetiere,’ I say. ‘If you want to …’
She is scowling at me. I’ve crossed a line.
‘It’s fine,’ I mutter, chastised, parched; whatever, just give me the caffeine. ‘I’m going to message Adam. While it cools.’
As I walk away, like a child, I whisper the words ‘fuck off’ from behind a wall.
‘Don’t listen,’ I tell the baby.
In the living room I close the door and my daughter has fallen back asleep on my chest. Fine, fine, I did put the dummy back in. But that crying. My poor girl was distraught. Clearly Loll’s given her a taste for it; what am I supposed to do?
I might go to look for her, I type to Adam. I can’t sit here drinking instant coffee and making baby small talk with Loll all day again. I’m getting grumpy with her and it’s not fair. I’m losing my mind.
I look at the wall. A photo I took of the sea where Romilly swims – her body in its wetsuit a dot in the distance – hangs on the wall. There you are, Romilly, everywhere and nowhere.
Adam replies straight away. Everyone replies to me straight away at the moment. I’m an emergency. They are my 999.
You can’t take the baby? he types. PS Loll’s coffee is shit though, you are right.
I laugh, despite myself.
I am desperate to get out of this house, its walls coming closer, closer. Could I take the baby?
Could I leave her with Loll?
I think of last night. That packed bag. No. Not alone, not with my baby.
And anyway, both parents gone? That isn’t fair. I feel a heaving swell of desperation to speak to Romilly. None of this is fair.
At some point too – and my stomach dives at the notion – Loll has to go back to her family. Not to mention her job. Compassionate leave only lasts so long, even in a freak situation like this. And with a jolt I realise: she isn’t the only one. Two weeks’ parental leave is my lot at the music shop I manage. Eleven days left. I make a mental note to call my boss.
Maybe I could take her? I type to Adam.
Is that possible? Me and a newborn. And starting where? How can my tiny newborn baby and I traipse around, trying to find an adult who presumably doesn’t want to be found, with no clue where she is, what she’s doing, to drag her home?
I think of Romilly, sitting at the kitchen table, little bump, bigger bump, balance-threatening bump.
I think of how soon after that she would leave us – me and that baby who was spreading out inside her – and how we could never have seen this coming. Unless it was building? Did that happen, before the birth? I make a mental note to ask Loll, who knows far more about the condition than I do, what was likely.
I look around at our home.
Any updates from the police yet? Adam types.
‘Nothing but I’ve had to just let Loll deal with them,’ I voice note him back. ‘You wouldn’t believe this newborn thing could take up every second but Jesus, it does. I can’t make a phone call, I barely have time to eat. And the sleep deprivation …’
‘Loll is a good one,’ he says. ‘Thank God you’ve got her for support.’
Yep. Saint Loll.
I stare at the hand cream of Romilly’s on the coffee table; the baby name book she had been highlighting.
It’s relentless, the ache of being in a Romilly museum.
A few hours later, I reach for the baby name book and pick one I have liked all along. If my daughter and I are going to bond like we need to, to make up for this chasm, then I need to be able to call her something. This baby is missing enough; she shouldn’t be missing a name.
‘We’ll find her,’ I say to the seven-pound baby, frog-like on my chest. ‘We’ll find her because we have to find her.’
Name decided, I absent-mindedly check my email.
And just like that, we know where Romilly is.