GRACE

Thursday, 12 April 2018 Two Days Earlier

‘GOD DAMN IT. WE’RE OUT OF MILK.’ I CLOSE THE FRIDGE and cast around for my keys. ‘I’ll nip out to the shops. Can you finish the peeling?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll go.’

‘But you’ve only just got in.’

Nick scoops up the dog, averting his face as Toffee tries desperately to lick him. ‘No problem. I need to get some more steps in. You want to go out too, don’t you, boy? Yes you do!’

I laugh. ‘Put him down, you’ll get hairs all over your suit.’

He leaves, Toffee beating him to the door, wild with excitement, I go back to the potatoes and Lottie makes a start on her homework. Not that she appears to be tackling it with much enthusiasm. A maths book is open page-side down on the table while my ten-year-old daughter’s fingers fly across her phone, her head bent, fine brown hair falling forward.

‘Who’re you talking to?’ I ask.

No response.

‘Lottie.’ I pause. ‘I’ve decided to get a tattoo.’ No reply. ‘On my forehead?’

‘Oh, Mum. Shh.’

‘I thought you were doing your homework.’

‘I’m having a break.’

‘Your life is a series of breaks.’

‘Ha ha.’

I cut myself a triangle of Cheddar to nibble. The mince is simmering in the oven, the sun is dropping, and I feel chilled and content. I reach for my phone, as bad as my daughter, and tap the In-Step app. Six thousand seven hundred and thirty-four steps today. Two hundred and ten calories burned. Almost four kilometres walked. Not as much as I’d like to have achieved, but not bad; better than Cassie or Mara. My avatar on the app is a dog; Nick’s is a bird.

I watch Nick’s numbers rising; two thousand four hundred and fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six. I help myself to another wedge of cheese. He stops, and I wrinkle my nose, imagining him waiting while Toffee has a pee, then they’re off again.

I forget for a bit, and get on with the supper, then pick my phone up a few minutes later. Anna Foreman, one of the new school mums and a recent addition to the group, is on the move too. I don’t know her well, but Cassie added her, to make her feel welcome. Her avatar is a cup of tea.

I keep half an eye on their stats, sipping my wine, occasionally glancing at the garden. We’re halfway through April and my flower beds are already full of colour, grape hyacinths mingling with yellow-green euphorbia. The foxgloves are showing hints of new growth in the depths of their thick leaves. I love foxgloves. There’s a flurry of activity around Nick’s newly refilled bird feeder. Two goldfinches and a couple of tits fly in and out, while beneath them a pair of ring-necked doves peck the grass for fallen seed. Having been brought up in a gardenless flat, I don’t have a clue about birds, apart from the obvious. Nick tells me who’s who.

I glance at the app. Both Nick and Anna are still walking, although Nick must be nearly at the shops, even if he did loop through the Common. When his numbers stop rising, I imagine him at the till, handing over the milk, tapping his card. Anna isn’t moving any more either. A minute passes, and another. The oven beeps and I open it, take out the mince and give it a stir. It’s stuffed with this week’s leftover veg, everything tinged orange by the sweet potato. Five minutes later, when I check again, their numbers are still in stasis. I find that I’m holding my breath. Then Anna moves and a second or so later Nick moves too.

I put the phone down slowly. Probably a coincidence. I look out of the window, follow the arc of a goldfinch as it flies between the holly tree and the feeder. And I feel odd, weighted down and queasy, with a strange sense of urgency and a low-level hum in my brain.