Page 83 of Close to You
‘He never told me…’
Yasmine shrugs and there’s a moment in which it feels as if we could – and maybe should – be closer. It wasn’t only me from whom David kept things.
‘Dad was a hoarder,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t get rid of anything. I can’t even bare to look at the place. David and me have been arguing about it for years.’ She stops and then adds: ‘I guess he didn’t tell you that either…?’
‘No.’
She glances towards the doorway and, I suspect, is starting to wish she hadn’t come. ‘David always was one to keep things to himself.’
‘I’ve come to realise that.’ I point towards her belly, while thinking of my own. Yasmine’s child will be a cousin to mine… at least in everyone else’s mind, even if it’s not the truth. ‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’
‘Girl. She’s due in ten weeks, but nobody seems to think I’m going to last that long.’
She turns towards the door and it feels like we’re done – not just now but for good. I suspect that, unless we run into one another in someplace like a supermarket, we’ll never see each other again.
‘I should go,’ Yasmine says. ‘I, er… hope I didn’t wake you.’
I wave it away as if it’s all fine – ofcourseshe woke me.
She starts to head for the door, before spinning somewhat abruptly. She picks up the pen on the counter and scribbles something onto the pad next to the Tigger pot.
‘That’s my address,’ she says, ‘just in case you need it.’
‘OK.’
We don’t swap numbers and I wait until I hear the sound of an engine disappearing before checking what she’s written. It’s a place in Kingbridge that I will likely never visit.
I figure I might as well go back to bed, but, when I turn, it’s as if someone has jabbed knitting needles into my midriff. I double over, struggling for breath and wheezing like an asthmatic. I have to hold onto the back of the sofa to steady myself as I stumble across the room before eventually reaching the toilet. I’ve barely managed to get myself into a sitting position when I realise the true horror of what’s happening.
There’s blood.
Lots of it.
Forty
THE NOW
Forty
There’s not a strong enough word to convey the absolute raw terror I feel as I stare across to the empty buggy. It’s such a shock, it’s like I’ve been punched in the stomach. It feels as if the ceiling is falling; that the sky itself is collapsing. I felt like this once before – and I lost a child that day, too.
I rush to the buggy and check the straps, almost to make sure it’s not some sort of illusion. The straps hang unfastened and limp, with no sign that they were ever being used to secure a child. There’s only one stall with the door closed, although I know there’s no way a sixteen-month-old could release themselves from the straps and open it. I look anyway. The hinges are wonky and noisy, and, when I shove it open, there is no little girl inside. The toilet block is far too small for someone to hide.
‘Norah?’
I’d love to hear her confident voice calling ‘tree’ or ‘duck’, but there’s silence. I don’t know what else to do, so wheel the buggy outside. I half expect someone to be there with Norah –ha ha, look who I found trying to run away– but there’s not much of anything. The sky is grey; the grass is tinted with white – and, aside from the boys playing football at the furthest end of the park, I can’t see anyone.
There is a separate disabled toilet, the door already partly open. The nappy-changing table is down and the bin is overflowing, though there’s no sign of a person.
I move to the other side of the block and the men’s toilets. There is a similar zigzag entrance as there is for the women’s and I edge along slowly.
‘Hello? Anyone in there?’
There’s no answer, so I move quicker. It’s darker and smellier than the women’s toilet. The floor is wet – but it still doesn’t take me long to figure that there’s no one here.
Back outside and the empty space in the buggy is gaping. There’s a rushing sensation in my stomach as if I’m going to be sick – but it’s not a physical thing. I thought that what happened with David was the worst thing I’d ever do – but this is worse.
‘Norah…?’
