Page 5 of The Housewarming

‘Not yet. I’m in the house. Abi! Love? She’s not in our room… she’s not in her room. She’s not under the bed. Oh God, oh my God, it’s been ages. Do you think I should call the police?’

‘God, no, she’ll be somewhere. Have you checked the garden?’

‘Yes, but the back door was locked. She’s not in the bathroom. Abi, love? She’s not in the washing basket. She’s not here. She’s nowhere, just nowhere, like she’s vanished.’

‘She won’t be far.’

The phone is hot at my ear. I run back downstairs, back out of the front door. Sweat trickles down my forehead, down the sides of my body. No sign. There is no sign of her. There is no one on the street.

‘Oh God, Matt. I feel sick. I’m going to be sick.’

‘Ava?’

‘I’m outside.’ I can barely get the words out. ‘I can’t see her. I can’t see her.’ A pain in my sternum like the end of a broom. The rain is falling more heavily now. I shield my eyes with my hand. ‘There’s no sign of her. She’s vanished. She’s disappeared into thin air. I think I should call the police.’

‘She’ll be somewhere. Has she gone to Neil and Bella’s, do you think?’

‘She wouldn’t do that. Well, she might, but I knocked and there was no one in. And if she was there, one of them would’ve rung me by now or brought her back. I just don’t think she’d wander off like this, not for this long.’

‘What about that time she wandered out of toddler group? She went miles.’

‘I know, but she wouldn’t do that again, would she? I was so cross with her. I shouted at her. She was really upset. I think… I mean, I don’t think—’

‘Look, I’m coming home,’ Matt says. ‘I’m not far. I got a puncture on the towpath so I’m this side of Richmond. Just keep looking, yeah? I’m turning round, OK? I’m heading back.’

Two

Ava

Second by second. Beat by beat. A metronome keeps time for the frantic melody of my life’s unravelling. I watch myself from above. I shout out the things I should have done, places I should have looked, the order in which I should have done it all. Really, I can be very abusive towards myself, that stupid cow there, that idiot woman who can’t hear me, who is blind, blind, blind to logic, deaf to reason, numb with fear. That morning. Look at her. Look at me. Rain soaks my hair, my clothes. My dumb feet thudding on the paving stones, running to nowhere, on a wheel. I have been getting my fitness up, leaving the house with Matt when he goes to work so that I can go for long walks with Abi. Stale bread in a bag, feed the ducks, across the lock to Ham, to the little park. The German bakery, pretzels as big as her head. Fresh air makes you feel better, no matter what.

‘Why don’t you tell Mr Sloth what we’re going to do today?’ I say, clipping her into her buggy. Yes, I clip her in. I know I do because I can see us, there in the hall. I am crouched in front of her. I’m smiling at her. I’m putting Mr Sloth in her lap and I’m thinking that the silver name bracelet Neil and Bella bought her is getting a little snug around her wrist.

‘Tell him we’ll feed the ducks. Don’t let Mr Sloth eat the bread, OK?’

She giggles. That’s the last thing she does.

I only pop upstairs.

Things I would do differently. The door I would have checked before going upstairs. The two and two I would have put together. The ducks. The river. The obviousness of it all. I would have run in the right direction immediately. I would have found her hurrying towards the river, chin out, full of her own mischief, the little minx. I would have closed the damn door. I would not have scrolled through Facebook. Had I known, I would not even have looked at my phone – of course I wouldn’t. God knows, I have to look at myself every day and see in my haunted reflection the ghost of my ignorant self. That morning. Almost a year ago. I see so plainly that I didn’t know what was about to happen, what was happening, what had already happened. I didn’t have the smallest clue and yet a prescient dread flooded my every vein. I watch myself, from here. I watch that woman sit on the loo and scroll through her phone and I shout at her, at me: ‘Do not do that! Run, Ava! Run to the river! You were going to feed the ducks – why can’t you think of that?’

‘You need to stop shouting at yourself, Ava.’ That’s what my counsellor, Barbara, says. ‘Try not to punish yourself. Try to forgive yourself as you would someone you love.’

Barbara is helping me limit how many times I check the front door when I get in. She tells me I didn’t do what I should have done that morning because I am not psychic.

‘But I should have checked the door,’ I tell her.

‘Sod should.’

Sod should, that’s what Barbara says. There is no should. I went on my phone because since Abi was born and I cut my hours to part-time, my phone is my lifeline. My phone made me feel like I still belonged to the world. My friends were on it. My social life. My clients – the parents of the kids I teach piano to. I didn’t, I don’t, spend my days interacting with other professionals in a funky office space; I am no longer in a staffroom with other teachers, exchanging stories about kids in our classes or arranging to go for a drink on Friday. I don’t kick off my shoes at night and sigh with the relief of not having to talk to anyone for the rest of the evening. I am often stuck at home. And yes, there are times when I have felt trapped.

So yes, I would go on Facebook or Instagram and guarantee myself a few laughs, a bit of banter, God forbid, an interesting news article, a well-articulated opinion piece.

I got lonely. I got bored. There – there’s the dirty truth. I get – used to get – bored, sometimes, while I was with Abi. I would crave adult contact. While Abi was having a snack or her dinner, instead of talking to her, I would chat to my mum, too far away to pop over for a cup of tea. At the park, I got bored. I got bored with baby talk and endless domesticity and children’s programmes. I got bored with nursery rhyme CDs blaring out of the car stereo. There were times when I longed to put on Chopin or Springsteen or Björk and turn the music up, up, up to drown out Abi’s whingeing.

‘Yes. All of that,’ Barbara tells me. ‘But that doesn’t mean you didn’t, or don’t, love your little girl. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t, or can’t, look after her.’ She includes both tenses. She knows that if she talks about Abi in the past tense, I lose it. She knows I’m not ready for the past tense.

‘The problem is,’ I reply, ‘I didn’t shut the door, did I? It all comes back to that and that feels pretty insurmountable.’

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