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‘Again,’ she would say. ‘Again, Mummy.’
Never again. Or maybe, maybe one day… She might still be out there, after all. There’s a chance, isn’t there? The tiniest chance? In faces of other little girls I search for her every day, but even now, her features fade from me, her smell, her warmth, the sharp arc of her paper-thin nails on my cheeks, the weight of her on my hip, the strange swing of us both when I leant forward to stir the spaghetti sauce, the anticipation on her face, waiting while I blew on the end of the spoon, her little body fraught with anticipation, knowing that in seconds she would be allowed to taste the sauce, to tell me if it was good.
That morning.
I watch myself: face full of dirty linen. I can’t see my own feet.
‘Abi?’ I say, as yet no presentiment of disaster. ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you speaking, missy?’
The curved bar of her pushchair. The mesh back. Her head is not there. Her soft curling ringlets, thickening now from baby to child hair, are not there.
Sheis not there.
Ava, don’t be a lunatic, she’s leaning forward.
No, she isn’t. She’s not there. She’s not in the buggy.
Abi is not there.
Second by second, beat by beat. A clock. The metronome that sits on my piano top, keeping time. The washing drops from my arms. I stumble, fall down the last few steps.
‘Abi?’ I call out, righting myself, rubbing at the pain in my hands. ‘Abi?’
Another second. The prickling rise of the hairs on my arms.
‘Abi? Love?’
I can see the house opposite.
I can see the house opposite.
The house opposite—
The front door is open. Oh God, I have left the front door open.
‘Oh my God. Abi!’
I am on the street, scanning right, left, right again. I am calling her name, my ribcage tightening around my lungs. ‘Abi? Abi? Abi!’
My heart fattens in my chest. I left Abi in the hallway and I popped upstairs.
‘Wait there, darling,’ I said. ‘Won’t be a tick.’
I did not, can’t have, closed the front door. Abi was fastened into her buggy. She doesn’t know how to undo the clasp. She didn’t know. Yesterday she didn’t know how to undo the clasp. She wasn’t making any noise so I… I…
A few paces. She is nowhere on the pavement, in either direction. I have no idea which way to head. One way precludes the other, and what if she’s still inside…
I dash back into the house, hearing the watery tremble of her name as it falls from my mouth. The house is held in an electric stasis. I make myself stand completely still. My ears prick. Eyes wide. The house sounds empty. It looks empty. Itfeelsempty.
‘Abi?’ I call up the stairs. ‘Abi, love? Are you in the house? Where are you? Where are you, darling?’ I fight to keep the hysteria out of my voice but I,Ican hear it.
I stride into the kitchen. The patio doors are closed. The air presses in.
‘Abi?’
Silence.
I run back into the hall, open the little door under the stairs to the downstairs loo. She isn’t there.
