Loll made me a terrible cup of tea just before I looked her in the eye and called her a liar.
Too milky, like always.
She never listens.
When she went to leave my living room, I touched her arm lightly. Well, not lightly, but the way she looked at the sleeve of her hideous blouse was like I had bloody assaulted her.
‘What are you doing?’ she spat, and the room contracted. The teammate tie between us was slackened. We could feel it for the lie it was.
‘I think there’s something we need to talk about, Loll,’ I told her.
She nodded. Turned. Came back into to the living room and sat down on my sofa, where she had become so at home. She used to visit once a fortnight, perhaps, if that. Stay for an hour with the kids. Neck a cup of tea.
Now it’s home. One leg was crossed over her knee and dangled, Loll stocky in her thick black tights, Romilly’s slippers.
Neither of us drank our tea. Tea was not for conversations like this.
‘You never went to the police,’ I told her.
Our eyes didn’t move from one another’s.
I smiled at her the whole time I was speaking. Well, I would; we’re family.
She smiled back, and it was made of ice. Family, family, family.
‘Of course I did, Marc,’ she said. ‘Why would I not go to the police when my sister is missing?’
My eyebrows flitted upwards. Light. Relaxed.
Light, Marc.
Relaxed.
‘Right. Exactly. Why wouldn’t you?’
A second passed.
‘I did.’
‘I never bothered seeing that CCTV in the end. Put my faith in you, too distracted by Fleur, whichever. But you never chased it.’
Silence.
‘Do you have any documentation from them?’ I asked. ‘To prove that you went to them?’
‘To prove it?’ She was fizzing then, with something, with everything. ‘Why should I need to prove that, Marc?’
And she shouldn’t. Except she did need to prove it. Because when I asked the midwife if the police had been in touch with the hospital staff, she checked for me: nothing. When I asked her if there was any update on the hospital CCTV, she had no idea what I was talking about. When I had called our local police department, feeling my way around something that seemed off, they had no record of Loll ever getting in touch about this, or about Romilly being missing at all.
‘Well that’s just an admin thing clearly,’ she said. ‘You know what they’re like in organisations like the police; it’ll all be a paper trail, nothing in any decent system. Yes I have stuff – evidence – but not with me. At home.’
The wind gathered pace outside, fierce for summer again and whistling at us, louder, louder, louder.
‘Do you think you could go home and get it now?’ I asked.
‘To be honest, Marc, no. When I go home, I’m staying home. I have things to do. Lucy is at a tricky age. I am spending a lot of time here, looking after Fleur.’
Yeah. She was.
I looked at her then, this single mum who had given herself a transfer to our family.
‘Why have you been staying here every night, Loll? It’s a bit much, isn’t it? Like you say, you have your own kids.’
‘I think the word you’re looking for is thanks, Marc.’
Martyr is one of Loll’s favourite fucking roles.
‘I’ll come with you then and see the documents,’ I replied. ‘I’ll stick Fleur in the car seat.’
She stared at me but I didn’t break.
‘I’m not sure where the stuff is, Marc. I don’t want you and Fleur sitting there for hours if I’m turning the whole house upside down.’ The eyes. She did not relent.
‘I’m sure it won’t take that long,’ I said.
She smiled, deeper frost setting in. ‘You clearly have never lived alone with two children,’ she answered.
Bullshit. I’d seen that woman on a cleaning mission.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just one. I was hoping your paperwork could help me figure out where that child’s mother was, Loll.’
She grimaced. Finally glanced away, shoving her phone into her bag.
‘Marc, to be honest I’m not sure why you are so fixated on this,’ she said, sharp. ‘I told you everything I’ve been through with the police. It was brief. She’s an adult.’
‘An adult with psychosis. That would up the ante, Loll.’
A howl from outside; a gust that felt like it was lifting my tiny house clean off the ground; Loll and I just doll figures inside. Able to be flung around. Snapped apart.
‘You’d think, wouldn’t you?’ she said, eyes right on mine. ‘Sadly mental health awareness is still not as good as we’d like it to be.’
She’s never been good at doing ‘light’, Loll, and now she was worse than ever as she gave a flimsy laugh.
‘This is getting irritating now, Marc.’
‘Why?’ I queried. I stood up. Over there on my sofa, making herself at home, just like Steffie did.
‘Why is it getting irritating, Loll?’
Fleur stirred in her Moses basket. Loll went to get her. She was halfway up to standing when I felt a flash of rage and pushed her back down onto the sofa.
‘She’s my daughter,’ I snapped, and it surged. ‘Just leave her to me for fucking once.’
Her next laugh wasn’t flimsy. ‘Oh now we’re getting to it, aren’t we?’ she said loudly. ‘The real Marc. All that nice bloke gratitude gone, then?’
She was standing up too now. ‘And don’t push me again, either,’ she hissed.
Fleur, incredibly given the raised voices, settled back down.
‘Barely a push, Loll – don’t start down that path now.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I think I’m going to leave,’ she said.
‘Not until you tell me why you didn’t go to the police,’ I replied. ‘Why you’ve been lying about it since the day she went. And what you know about my wife disappearing that you aren’t telling me.’
Loll moved towards the door. ‘The irony,’ she muttered as she walked past.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I put a hand out to the side, slammed the living room door shut.
She said nothing, lips a tight single line.
‘I said what the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ she said. ‘Why, if you think Romilly is experiencing postpartum psychosis, why you are not on the phone to the police every single day pushing them to do more?’
Silence.
‘Unless of course, you don’t believe it at all, Marc. Unless you know it’s not true.’
The drip of that tap.
‘If there’s one person round here who knows more than they are letting on about Romilly’s disappearance,’ she said, then, ‘it definitely is not me.’
I didn’t know I was going to do it; I really didn’t.
But we all know what a lockdown is like and this last five days had been my own version. The tea was always weak. Her voice grated like first-grade violin. I hated her motherfucking blouse. I knew she was lying. The light flickered. The window jammed. She and Steffie always wore Romilly’s slippers. For four days now I had been punching walls, kicking fridges, pent up in hidden corners of the room as other adults roamed and did the task and took the walk and stopped me from having any sort of an outlet.
The weather outside got angrier.
And I couldn’t, any longer, keep it in.
The front door was locked.
Loll screamed.