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chapter 24
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Lottie had been unusually accommodating that morning. It was as if, in her father’s absence, she’d taken pity on me.
She ate her yoghurt and Cheerios without protest and for once she didn’t stiffen like a board when I tried to get her arms into the sleeves of her T-shirt. She even threw me a tolerant smile when I put her flashing blue trainers on the wrong feet, and had to take them off and start again. Perhaps the novelty of spending more time with each other had worked its charm on her, as it had on me.
Nonetheless, it’d already been seven-twenty by the time I got her buckled into her car seat, and I had an eight o’clock meeting on the other side of London I was never going to make.
I texted Jade frantically every time we hit a red light, and managed to get the meeting delayed till eight-thirty, but then I had to circle the block twice before I finally found a place to park four streets from the Tube station, and I sat in a tunnel for twenty minutes just outside London Bridge, unable to call or email anyone.
My stress levels were sky-high by the time I got to work. I shut myself in my office and told Jade I wasn’t to be disturbed unless it was life or death. She’d worked with me long enough to know I wasn’t kidding.
But I hadn’t meant it literally.
Wilful exposure of a child to risk of significant harm. That’s what the police officer said when they arrested me. As if I’d deliberately set out to hurt my daughter.
I’ve never pretended to be a perfect mother, but until that day I’d always prided myself I was at least a competent one. I frequently checked the straps of Lottie’s car seat, adjusting them if they’d stretched a little loose, just like you’re supposed to. I put her to sleep on her back when she was a baby and installed plastic protectors on all the wall outlets, even though it meant breaking my fingernails to get them off again whenever I wanted to plug something in. I looped blind cords out of reach and put up stair gates, ensured she was vaccinated on schedule, never covered her food with BPA-laden plastic wrap, cut her hotdogs into lengths (on the rare occasions I allowed her to have them) so that she wouldn’t choke and covered her in Factor 50 even on cloudy days. Every time I drove on the motorway, I’d lock the car doors in case one of them malfunctioned and sucked Lottie out of the car, like a movie in which a plane door is opened mid-flight.
When Luca, carefree and eternally optimistic, asked, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ I always had an answer.
It never occurred to me thatIwas Lottie’s greatest danger.
I have no excuse for what happened. I was tired and overworked and stressed, but so are tens of thousands of other mothers. I doubt I was the only one preoccupied with the fact her husband was having an affair, either.
It was the reliably appalling British summer that saved Lottie’s life. The temperature that day was only 18°C, cool for August; but even so, Lottie was sweating and dehydrated by the time a passerby spotted her, forgotten where I’d left her in the back seat of my car.
The name of the street where I’d parked was Kirkwood Place.
