I spread over to Romilly’s side of the bed last night to make a point. To find a silver lining in all of this, even if it is only to do with big beds and long limbs.
Four wake-ups and feeds later, muscle memory has taken over and I have made space for an imaginary Romilly and curled up on my own side. Turns out: there are no silver linings.
My head throbs.
Fleur wakes.
I go downstairs, opening my eyes just enough not to fall and to see the time on the clock – 7 a.m. – and the formula box but not wasting any energy on unnecessary eye opening. I can hear Loll stirring in the living room.
She insisted on staying over.
‘You don’t need to,’ I told her yesterday, approximately seventeen times.
She nodded, each time. ‘Don’t need to; want to. Just in case. It’s a lot, Marc, by yourself. Good to have some back-up in these first days.’
Silence, then. Would replacement back-up return soon? How long would these solo days last?
I saw Loll pop into my room during the night. Checking on Fleur. Putting her dummy back in. Laying a hand on her chest.
She thought I was sleeping.
Loll needs to be in charge.
Now, I race back upstairs with the bottle as Fleur’s cries get more horrified; as she gets more panicked that she may never see food again.
The second the bottle is in her mouth Fleur’s little body sighs with the relief and she sucks hard, snuggled into me. I’m awake now, the adrenalin of the pace back up the stairs kicking in and I am twitching with the need to get on with something, to do anything.
I think of the conversation with Adam yesterday.
Of those words.
Two, maybe.
We are both aware who those two are: the evidence is in the way they know where the mugs are in my house; in the way they quietly place another bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the wine rack, ready for their next visit. Put the empties in the right recycling bin.
I take Fleur downstairs. Hand her over to Auntie Loll while I make a coffee.
The light flickers on, off, on, off.
When Adam arrives at 10 a.m., Robin the midwife is heading to her car and I am at the door saying goodbye to her in pyjamas that have an obscene hole in the crotch. Fleur is clutched close to my chest.
Adam and Robin nod hello to each other as they pass in the driveway.
I groan, audibly, like a toddler doing an impression of a T-Rex.
Adam doesn’t notice.
He is looking at his phone, which is ringing. He turns it off and flips it to silent.
‘Steffie?’ I ask, trying for normal.
He nods. ‘I can call her back later. You, my friend, have my undivided attention. And a … massive fuck-off hole near your balls.’
‘Bye, Robin!’ I shout after the midwife.
‘Bye, Robin!’ echoes Adam.
‘Could have made an effort for her, mate,’ he says as I shut the big green door behind him.
I shake my head, wince.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘We slept in. I feel sick. What if she writes it down somewhere? That I basically exposed myself? Thinks I’m not coping? She says no one gets dressed for the first month after they have a baby but I’m not sure. Suspect she is being nice. And also that she means wholesome mums breastfeeding in their pyjamas, not dads in their crotchless pants asleep on the sofa.’
Adam laughs and our house now is so desolate that the noise sounds odd and tinny and out of place.
I don’t smile. Nothing is funny.
We walk into the kitchen.
‘Did you ask her about CCTV at the hospital?’
He had brought it up with me yesterday.
I nod. ‘Yep. She’s going to ask someone on the front desk. But Loll asked already on the first day and she keeps getting passed back to the police. It’s infuriating.’
And whenever I start to turn on Loll, I have to remember this. Chasing the CCTV, educating everyone on postpartum psychosis, changing my baby, dealing with the police.
Any paranoia directed at Loll is exactly that: paranoia. Surely.
I hold Fleur with one arm and drape the other in front of my trousers for decency, as I did for the entire duration of Robin’s visit. But I can’t stop pacing.
‘Oh, she’s forgotten her scales.’
I scoop them up with my spare hand, run out barefoot and give them back to her. Hoping to claw back a few points.
When I come back in, Adam is standing in the centre of the kitchen, staring.
‘Jesus,’ he says before he can stop himself.
Loll arrived last thing to sleep here and left first thing to see the kids before school: she’s had no time to tidy.
Which means that the odd version of a boys’ night in that Adam and I had last night, which involved two beers and a lamb balti each, Fleur on alternate laps, is still spread out, scent and all, across the kitchen.
Adam scrunches up his nose.
Unlike most boys’ nights in, last night also took the form of a planning session on how I would find my absent wife and a scouting of a lake in the South of France, using scant information from a scrawled note and a radius that seemed reasonable around Nîmes Garons airport.
I fell asleep twenty minutes into Toy Story 4. We decided on that in case Fleur was taking it in. A Breaking Bad rewatch felt risky and in truth, I prefer Woody and Buzz.
Now, last night’s foil cartons of congealed goo and empty beer bottles have joined half-drunk bottles of formula and crisp packets. Despite its low-key nature, it is somehow giving the impression of us having had a party. Albeit a strange one.
‘The midwife didn’t come in here,’ I tell him quickly – when did I get so paranoid that I am worried about being judged even by Adam – but he knows it too. Eyes are turned my way a bit more often than for your average new parent. The midwives are awaiting news of Romilly but their focus, their responsibility, is Fleur. ‘I don’t even think Loll did.’
‘I’ve got an hour before I need to leave for the airport,’ Adam says. ‘Want me to help?’
I nod, beaten and unable to be stoic. I look around and it’s too much.
So Adam clears up while I hold Fleur, and then he makes us both a coffee in mugs that Steffie had designed for Romilly as a Christmas present when they were younger, adorned with a selection of pictures from their school days together. They met when they were five.
I look at the snapshots of the two of them on there, Steffie towering above Romilly, tucking her into her armpit in school uniform. Both in eyeliner that stared you down at a gig in the early Noughties. Eyes closed on matching Lilos in a swimming pool. Face masks on in sleeping bags, twelve perhaps, or thirteen.
Romilly, Romilly, everywhere and nowhere.
I sip my coffee.
Fleur is in her rocker on the floor, dummy now a familiar sight. We sit down. The silence isn’t that comfortable, for me at least: I am trying to build up to something.
Adam drinks fast. ‘Is there anything new from the police I need to know before I head off?’
I sigh. ‘Not really. Loll is hammering away to make them grasp that she has a mental health issue, so it’s different to another adult leaving. But it’s awkward. They say she doesn’t have a diagnosis. It doesn’t go to the top of the pile. But they got that CCTV from the airport. That’s something. We know she was alone then.’
Adam nods. ‘Good that it backs up the woman from the airport too. She says Romilly was definitely alone. And she saw her at both ends of the journey.’ Adam opens the cupboard and hands me a packet of biscuits. I shove in a custard cream, whole.
‘Still,’ I concur. ‘It’s lucky we have this eyewitness. The police have been pretty shit. Loll is going crazy with it. Did you hear her losing it on the phone yesterday? They just don’t comprehend postpartum psychosis at all. Have no grasp of the severity.’
I see a shudder run through Adam. We all know what we mean, when we talk in code like this.
Romilly could already be dead.
A bang makes me jump.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Goodbye cuddle.’
His coffee cup, on the table. That’s all. What is wrong with me?
Adam leans down to unclip Fleur from her rocker and to snuggle her in. She sighs, happy as ever to be next to a body. ‘Won’t be long, girl. I’m going to bring your mamma back.’
But he doesn’t sound convincing; instead he looks distracted, staring out of a window.
There is a lot of footfall outside our house, a regular stampede to the beach in muddy wellies in autumn, winter, the tread lighter in its sandals by summer, buckets and spades clinking as they go.
I am convinced more of them look to their left at our window now than they used to, now we are intriguing, now tragedy lives here.
And when they look, I think, as an old guy catches me at the window and glances back down at his whippet, we appear like prisoners. One or other of us is always at that window, staring out like we are locked in.
I feel like I am, often.
What would Loll do if I put a sign up in the window?
Help me, help me, help me.
‘Adam, am I right to trust Steffie?’
I blurt it out before I can change my mind. Before he can leave.
Slowly his head turns back to me, brow furrowed.
‘What?’ he answers. I glance over my shoulder on autopilot but she isn’t here, she’s at the café.
‘Of course you are,’ he says, an unreal laugh. ‘She’s Romilly’s best friend. Mate, she’s my girlfriend.’
There’s a pause. No laughter now. Adam looks awkward.
‘In the end though, her loyalties are with Romilly, aren’t they, not our family?’ I push though I know it might be the wrong choice; that though Adam is my friend, he is Steffie’s boyfriend first. ‘It isn’t like Loll, who loves Fleur just as much, who knows she needs her mum. Steffie is Romilly’s friend. That’s where her attention is. She isn’t exactly maternal. So who’s to say she didn’t help her? And who’s to say she isn’t still helping her? She’s always checking her phone. Always.’
I can hear myself and I know I sound paranoid, but I am sure there is something in this. That I was wrong to turn on Loll but in this, I am right.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘By that score, my loyalty is to you and I don’t care about this kid either.’
Adam snuggles down into my baby. I see three of her fingers cover a small part of one of his. In Fleur’s limited world, Adam is one of the most consistent figures. But by the same score, he is right, so is Steffie.
‘And that’s obviously not true,’ he pushes on, and am I being paranoid or does he sound irritated now? ‘If you’d done a runner I would want you back here with your family because I’d know that’s where you belong and that’s what would be good for you. Mate, Steffie … no. You can’t say this to me.’
I look up from Fleur. Meet his eyes. But we all know that Steffie and Romilly’s friendship runs deeper than Adam’s and mine.
‘What if you believed that coming home wasn’t what was good for me?’ I ask.
He raises an eyebrow in silent question. He’s singing a lullaby under his breath. When I look at her, Fleur’s eyelids are drooping.
‘You’re getting pretty good at that,’ I tell him, in an almost whisper so I don’t break the sleep spell.
We sit in silence for a few minutes until Fleur is in a deep nap, crumpled into Adam’s stomach. A stomach that I used to tease him about, little beer belly, but now looks like a gym body compared to mine.
‘Whoever is supporting Romilly clearly thinks that this is the right thing for her,’ I whisper. ‘Even if it’s for a reason we haven’t figured out yet.’
‘Either that or they felt like they had no choice,’ he counters, hushed tones too. ‘Like they had to support her. No matter what. Because of her mental health. Or because they love her, and you always support the people you love.
I nod my head. True.
‘Fuck!’
There’s a loud knock at the door. I am so in my own head that I jump when it comes. Again.
‘It’ll be my taxi,’ he says.
As he hands Fleur over to me, he speaks again.
‘I know we said someone close, but there has to be someone else. Not those two, mate. Loll and Steffie … there’s just no way.’
He’s right. If Steffie had helped Romilly, he would know, wouldn’t he?
I watch his face.
It ducks away from me as he picks up his bag to head for his taxi.
‘I’ll be in touch when I get there,’ he says, standing up.
‘Don’t forget to keep me in the loop with everything,’ I tell him. ‘However small it seems. Everything.’
He reaches up to rub me on the head at the crown. He examines it. ‘Yep, you’ve definitely lost an inch or so there.’
Then he smiles, but sort of grim, and picks up a backpack and tent that normally go on camping trips and did a month in South America with Steffie last year and now are going on this odd, odd rescue mission, over his shoulder.
He would know.
He slips out of the front door.
And I stand in our big bay window in the living room and watch his cab pull away.
He doesn’t see me there, Fleur in my arms. Has his head down.
In the last second before the cab pulls away, I see Adam with his phone to his ear.
Come to think of it, he’s been attached to his phone a lot too.