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.