By the morning, she has stopped typing and no reply has actually made it to me and so I think she’s changed her mind. But then she starts again.
Romilly is typing.
The reply, when it finally comes, only contains one word.
But one word is all I need.
No.
Then, though, comes more.
Don’t trust Marc, Steffie. Do not trust Marc with anything.
Oh my friend: I’m sorry.
I have given Marc the information and sent him – via Adam – straight to Romilly, when Romilly does not want him near her.
Fuck.
But I stop myself.
Calm down.
Romilly is experiencing postpartum psychosis.
We are all sure of that.
Aren’t we?
So whatever Romilly thinks she wants, doesn’t mean that’s the right thing for her.
Post, post, post.
I think of Marc making that phone call. I think of the word postpartum; of whatever went on with Romilly before birth, pre, pre, pre.
If we have this wrong, the only way I can change things now, the only way I can make this up to Romilly for giving Marc such a focus as the lake, is to cut off his source.
At least until I figure out what’s going on.
Outside work, I slip my phone out of my pocket and call Adam. I can hear the noise of a bad local radio host shouting in the background, something Adam – slave to a Nineties indie playlist that expands constantly but that he plays at all times – would never have put on himself.
He’s in a taxi. To the airport.
‘Ad, listen,’ I say, walking round the corner towards the beach. My breath sounds as loud as my voice. ‘I know this sounds crazy. But please if you find out any information about where Romilly is, don’t pass it on to Marc. Come to me first. I’m probably being ridiculous but I’m not sure we should be telling him—’
He interrupts me.
‘What do you mean?’ he says, careful. ‘This is the entire point of me going. To get Romilly back to her family.’
I sigh. How can I explain this to him when this is so difficult for me to comprehend too? When I don’t know why yet.
It’s been our sole aim, our only focus, to find Romilly.
‘Okay, okay,’ I say, trying to take the conversation down a notch, keep him with me. ‘Don’t tell Marc this either. But there are a few things that have started to not add up for me, with this postpartum psychosis thing. And then … Ro messaged me.’
There is a beat.
I walk back on myself, towards work.
Pace.
‘She messaged you?’ he says. ‘And you kept this to yourself?’
‘It was short.’
‘Oh that’s okay then!’
The radio sounds even louder.
‘And you didn’t say?’
‘It was only an hour ago, Adam, and I’m saying now.’
‘Not to the police.’
‘No. Not to the police.’
‘Not to Marc.’
I am quiet. ‘No. Not to Marc either.’
‘He thinks she could be dead, Steffie.’
Silence.
How to answer that?
I’ve betrayed the team. Am potentially doing something torturous to someone who doesn’t deserve that.
Adam is – I know him well enough to establish from his breathing alone – boiling with rage.
One of the waitresses, Meg, sees me outside the café and knocks on the window. Arms and rolled-up sleeves out in question. So much for being non customer-facing: my shouting at customers is suddenly forgotten when there are tables crying out for their micro salad.
‘Give me a second, Ad,’ I mutter.
I hold up two fingers to the glass. ‘Two minutes,’ I mouth.
‘So what exactly did she say, in this message?’ he says.
The tone is more Loll, no messing around, straight to the point; not Adam.
The mood until now has been kindness; compassion. An understanding that for somebody to do this, something must be very wrong.
I make this point.
‘Exactly,’ says Adam. ‘Something is very, very wrong. But that thing is happening inside her own mind. One thing I do know is that the only way to make it right is to get them all back under their family roof. Get her medical help. We won’t make it right by leaving Romilly floating around Europe with undiagnosed postpartum psychosis.’
It was a theory, I think, a theory. Since when did this psychosis become fact? Or is that often how facts become facts, simply by being repeated until they’re accepted?
‘She’s not exactly floating around Eu—’ I start but Meg is in my vision again, pointing at a watch she isn’t wearing. I can hear the pre-lunchtime rush of plates and voices and teacups on saucers starting now.
I sigh.
‘Anyway, Adam, we’re veering off the point,’ I whisper, quieter now as I am conscious of people walking past, on their way into the café, hearing. ‘She didn’t say much. She disabled her phone straight afterwards. But she did say that it was crucial that we don’t tell Marc anything.’
There is an angry silence, a disbelieving one, a silence that contains hundreds of words, a shouting match, maybe even a hug at the end as we make up but have to agree to disagree. All of it’s there but none of it as well as I listen to tinny music on the other end of the phone, see the face of an angry waitress.
We can’t do this now.
‘Adam?’
‘Yeah, mate, that’s great,’ he says to the cabbie. ‘Steffie, I have to go. I’ve just got to the airport.’
And he hangs up. When I call back – ill-advised, given the work situation and the fact I am now so late but I need him to understand this – he has turned his phone off.
I shove my phone into my pocket.
Trust me, Adam. Trust me more than Marc.
Marc carries a tiny baby in his arms in his pyjamas. He gulps coffee in desperation. He pushes his hair back with two hands and ages weeks, months in hours.
He does not appear like a guilty man; if he’s acting he’s gone method.
Do I believe he is a threat?
Especially when he is telling me that Romilly is experiencing postpartum psychosis?
Can I trust her judgement?
Can I trust his?
I dart behind the counter, serve a couple of customers. It is getting busy now, the lunchtime rush on. But I am twitching to be somewhere else.
‘Pol, can you cover for a second?’
She looks mad but she doesn’t have the confidence of old-hand Meg, pointing at imaginary watches even though I’m her acting manager. Polly has only been here six weeks. She won’t say no.
I go outside. Call Romilly. Come on. Tell me something else. Tell me anything else. Tell me what Marc has done. Or what, at least, you believe Marc has done.
But her phone is still disabled; I can no longer contact her. That is all I will get to work with. All I will get to make decisions that will change people’s lives. All I will get to persuade Adam with.
Inside, I say sorry to Polly.
‘Can you refill the coffee machine?’ I ask her and she goes to grab a bag of beans.
I turn to the next customer.
‘Right, what was it?’ I ask. I make sure I am friendly, no matter what’s going on in my head. Fake it, fake it, fake it.
Two wraps, a brownie, a lemon drizzle, and she wants a pot of the kimchi to take away.
‘Good choice.’ I smile. ‘The kimchi is incredible.’
She hands her card over.
As I wait for it to go through, I feel sweat on my back and it’s too much suddenly, the heat of the coffee machine. Too much.
The sweat streams now. I stumble slightly as I step. My smile feels like it requires effort. My head is light. The card machine seems to take forever.
Do I overrule Romilly? Trust to the people whose mental health I am not concerned about? Or do I go with my gut, as I have always gone with my gut?
‘That’s gone through for you,’ I say, pulling my grin up at the sides. ‘Do you want a receipt?’
‘That’s okay, love,’ she says, and walks away to her normal life, her everyday decisions. I stare at the spot she’s left behind.
It’s too late anyway.
Adam has gone now, moving across that blotched English sky to the more straightforward pastel blue of the South of France. Towards Romilly. Ready to find her, call home and report back: passing on everything he knows directly to his mate.
I head out to the tables, take an order. Fail to write any of it down.
Back at the coffee machine, I stare. Was it a cappuccino and an Americano?
I look at our giant rose gold metal mood grid, just next to the coffee machine. Touch a tiny bit of Blu-Tack. Think about that note.
I looked it up, of course, the lake. There was a sense of solitude; a vastness to it. How deep you could tell it was, even on a Google search.
It didn’t do moderation. Bodies of water never touched me like they touched Loll, but still I got it: there was something special about this one.
On the other hand, you could drown in it. Easily.
When I take my finger away, a bit of Blu-Tack comes away on the tip.
I press the button on the coffee machine. Two Americanos. That was it.
I picture Adam, on board the plane now, researching, crossing places off a list, narrowing down his targets.
How short is your list, Adam?
How quickly will you find her?
‘Argh!’
It cascades; boiling water that I have split all over my arm and I have it under the sink trying to take the sting out of the burn, prevent a scar.
I think of Adam, delivering Marc to Romilly, partly because of my hunch; my lead.
I think of Adam rescuing her, in the nick of time.
I stumble again, even as I stand still.
Oh, it hurts.
I look up.
Nothing.
The hum of people being social is too loud for anyone to have noticed me scald myself.
How much pain can happen in clear sight, because people are too distracted by their coffees, their conversation, that app they’re scrolling on their phone.
It gets worse. Hangs around as a sting. More sweat meanders down my back now. Springs up in my armpits.
And I realise what this other feeling is. It is the horror that comes with the realisation that I could have put my closest, oldest friend in danger.
That I no longer believe Romilly is ill.
And what does that mean, then?
The pain gets worse, and worse, and worse.