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‘Abi? Abi, lovey? Abi, where are you?’
My mouth dries.
Gone half past eight. When did I go upstairs? When did she leave the house?Hasshe left the house?
She wasn’t making a fuss. She was contented. She was quiet. If she’d wanted me, she would have called out.
‘Mummy!’ she would have called. ‘Mummy! My waiting!’
But she didn’t. She was quiet. I was only on Facebook for a few minutes. I needed the loo, so I did a quick wee – you do, when your little one is quiet, everyone does. I sat on the loo and scrolled through Facebook, but not for long, not for that long. I only commented on a couple of threads. I only stripped the beds, emptied the washing basket. Every mum does a few quick jobs when their baby is settled and quiet, in front of the TV or in the playpen with a few toys or in the high chair with a rusk to suck on. Abi was in the hallway. She was clipped into her buggy. She had Mr Sloth to talk to. She’d had enough to eat. She was comfortable. She was fastened in. She did not know how to undo the clasp. Yesterday, she did not know.
Second by second. Beat by beat.
How unbearable it is to watch myself from today, caught in this quickening rhythm, to watch my growing despair, over and over, like an ink-black blossoming rose caught on a time-lapse film: replayed, replayed, replayed. Myself, that woman in chaos; myself, not thinking straight. But I do watch. I watch her all the time. Sometimes I admit to that moment on the toilet seat, scrolling through social media, sometimes I don’t. Today I do. Today I admit that I sat there and thought: oh good, she’s quiet. I’ll just sit here a second. My eyes were sore. Abi wasn’t a great sleeper and she could be difficult, headstrong, argumentative, even with her limited vocabulary. Tiredness weighed in my bones and I thought, she’s quiet, I’ll just sit here. I’ll sit here until she starts making a fuss. I’ll take this break. I need this break.
Today I can look that in the eye.
But not always. Not always.
A loop. A beat. A building, building dread. I watch myself. There I am, half running a little further down our street now, head turning left, right, looking behind, in front, no clue, no clue at all which way to go for the best, mindful of the fact that my front door is open, that if Abi is hiding in the house she is now alone in there, she can now escape, and if she does, she might wander into the road looking for me. She’s two. She doesn’t know how to cross a road safely.
The thought of calling the police comes to me, of course it does. But no, I think. No. Be logical. It’s probably only a few minutes since she actually left the house. She’s round here somewhere. She escaped from the church hall toddler group once; I nearly lost my mind. Twenty minutes she was missing. Twenty. I felt every second. She’d walked all the way to Carluccio’s at the far end of the high street before someone stopped her and asked where her mummy was. Children don’t just disappear. They wander off, distracted, oblivious to the annihilating terror they cause. You see them sometimes: blank-faced toddlers bobbing placidly in the tight wrap of their mothers’ arms, their mothers’ faces still etched with the slow-fading lines of marrow-melting dread.
Logic nudges in. She might have toddled along to see Uncle NeeNee and Auntie Bel. She knows not to but she’s a little tyke. In the best way. The best, best way. And my God, for such a tot, she can move fast when she wants to.
I run towards Neil and Bella’s house.
‘Abi?’ I peer under their side gate. ‘Abi! Are you there?’
Nothing. No little feet. She’s wearing her red lace-up ankle boots. Kickers, ridiculously expensive for a fast-growing girl, but another gift from Neil and Bella. She loves those boots. But there’s no sign of them. No sign of her little cream woolly bobble hat, her pale-blue Puffa coat.
I knock on Neil and Bella’s door, ring the doorbell. Neil’s van is on the street but there’s no one home, of course there isn’t. They’ll both have left for work.
A silver Prius drifts past. I try not to wail in despair at how silent it is, how silent electric cars are. She’d never hear it. She wouldn’t turn around until it was too late. The Prius turns left into the busy road. Cars are on the move. A few more minutes and the traffic will be heavier – local commuters, the school run. About a third of the cars have gone already. Many of them are big, too big – great suburban safari trucks designed to keep precious children safe inside. But what of the children on the outside? What of unthinking little ones dawdling into the road?
My breath quickens. I run back. The new neighbours will be long gone, their progeny spirited away – one to nursery, one to some private school elsewhere. At least that’s what Matt and I have assumed. They only moved in a month or two ago. Their younger daughter looks to be about Abi’s age. The older one, I’ve no idea – don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl.
Adrenaline sends bitter saliva to my mouth. I cross over. I am on the pavement directly opposite our house now. That’s a risk. If Abi is still inside, if she wanders out now, she might see me, she might see me and run across the road – Mummy! One of those safari trucks might come speeding round the corner. One of those silent electric cars. A motorbike. She wouldn’t see it until it was too late. I run as far as I dare down this side of the street, calling her name.
‘Abi! Abi?’
Hedges, front patios, side gates. No sign. Nothing. Where is everyone? Gone to work. The sweet spot between city commuters and the school run. Nausea churns in my gut, rises in my throat. I cross back to our side of the street, head towards home. I’m going round in circles. I’m wasting precious time. Seconds are becoming minutes, are already minutes, minutes are becoming… I think I need to call the police.
My hairline is wet with sweat, my armpits, my back. Abi will be somewhere – that’s what’s happened here. She’s a wanderer. That’s why I always clip her into the buggy. I thought I’d closed the front door. I’m sure I did. But I’m so tired; my brain is fog, more so these last couple of weeks. It must have banged against the catch. It does that sometimes. But I am careful. I am very careful. Even when she walks, I make her hold on to the buggy with one hand. Abi can walk all the way along Thameside Lane, all the way over the footbridge to Ham and all the way back, jabbering away, little legs going nineteen to the dozen. Cute little knees my mother has already claimed for our side of the family. Strong knees, my mum says. The Woods are excellent walkers. Can walk for days, like camels. Abi loves to walk. But she wouldn’t go to the ducks on her own; there’s no way she would…
‘Abi?’ I shout, hands a loudhailer around my mouth, turning a slow circle. ‘A-a-abi-i-i-i!’
I picture the local geography in my mind’s eye. Float above it. The riverside roads, parallels connected by the main artery that links my small town to the larger commercial centre of Kingston upon Thames, and the quieter Thameside Lane, a lesser road that passes the tennis courts on the way to the river, to Teddington Lock. That’s the way we always walk, to the shallow slope between the chandlery and the path up to the footbridge, where the river laps and climbs when the tide is high, where ducks gather in the hope of titbits. It takes five minutes to get there, ten at most. Sometimes we head over the bridge to Ham, to the little park there, sometimes calling at the German bakery for apple cake, a big treat.
I grab my key and close the front door. If she’s inside, she can’t now get out.
And I’m running, calling, calling, calling her name. Flailing around, caught in the white heat of my own burgeoning panic.
At the same time, here I am, watching myself from the present, watching myself over and over, screaming at that woman, myself:Run to the river, Ava; run to the damn river, I am begging you.
But I don’t hear my own voice. I don’t hear it shouting at me from my desolate, devastated future. I don’t hear it.
‘Abi!’ is all I hear: my own blind and desperate cry.
