I could hear a wood pigeon outside in the trees and that fucking tap in the bathroom, drip, drip, drip, as I held Loll up against the living room wall.
She didn’t even struggle.
Instead, she smiled at me. Composed.
‘Now we get to it,’ she said, like she was pleased. ‘Finally the acting stops.’
A surge of rage.
Oh, the front. This woman who bleached my toilet and burped my baby in lieu of my wife because she was so worried about us being without her when in actual fact she was the one who pushed her out of the door.
I’d figured it out, over the last four days.
How I just put dealing with the police in her hands; too much else going on to question it. Too exhausted for my brain to process that there were gaps. Why had they never called me? Why were they happy to do everything through Loll? Why did they not need anything from me, when I was Romilly’s husband? When I was the first one to see she was gone?
Once that happened, the floodgates opened.
Glances I caught her sending in my direction. Not the warm kind.
Then she would flick it back on: teammate mode.
Romilly, I knew by then, had help from someone close. Who do you go to, when you need help, if not your surrogate mum?
A bow hung from Loll’s collar, lilac and mumsy.
My fingers itched to pull it tight.