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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.
I run. The metallic taste of blood fills the dry cave of my mouth. Past the Parkers and the Smiths. The chap with the camper van has left. Outside my own house yet again, I stand with my hands on my hips, panting, trying to think. Next door’s Mercedes has gone. She works in Surbiton, leaves early; he works in town, takes the train. The other-side neighbours’ Porsche has gone; they leave together, kids in the back. Lovegood, I think their name is. I think of our own rusty Volkswagen and Neil’s big white van:Johnson’s Quality Buildswritten in green on the side, and I think of how Neil, Bella and Matt are more a part of this town than anyone here, though they seem like the outsiders now – their cars, their voices don’t match, and I think: why am I thinking about that now?
And here, in this tortured present, what I’m thinking is: why aren’t you running to the river, Ava? Why, when you were going to feed the ducks? Why haven’t you thought of that?
But I do not run to the river. I am for the moment rooted to the spot. Abi will be somewhere, is what I’m thinking. She’ll be in the front garden or in the house. Playing a trick. Boo! she will say. You didn’t see me, did you, Mummy?
‘Abi!’
Too many minutes have evaporated now into the steam of my boiling panic. Too long, too long. She should have appeared by now. I am running again. Up to the end, back again, the sense that I have done this too many times now, that I’m repeating the same action with the hope of a different outcome. Past number 76, 78, 80. Second by second. Beat by beat. The beats get louder, a pounding, drumming rhythm. My heart. My little girl’s heart. Hearts beating. Clocks ticking. A metronome keeping time, a melody accelerating. Sand slipping, slipping away.
Sweat pricks on my forehead. She must be around here somewhere. She couldn’t have walked as far as the main road. There’s no way she’d have made it, no way she would have dared to go as far as the river.
No way.
I’m outside our house again. When did I go upstairs? Let’s be logical. Let’s slow this down. Eight? Five to? I clipped her into her buggy and I went upstairs. She won’t have made a bolt for it immediately. If she became bored and unfastened that clasp, it would have been ten, fifteen minutes later. So she’s probably been missing for maybe twenty-five minutes, maybe longer…
Crying fat rolling tears, I call Matt. Second by second, beat by beat. The long discordant ringtone. The silence. The ringtone. The silence. My own sobs bang against my ribs. The ringtone. He won’t hear it. He’ll be at work by now. He had a meeting at 9.30. A new project, a factory conversion somewhere in the East End. He won’t hear his—
‘Ava?’
‘Matt!’ My voice is high and shaky, my breath short. I am gasping for air, marching through the house, pulling open the kitchen cupboard doors.
‘Ava? Are you OK?’
The broom cupboard is empty, the store cupboard empty.
‘Matt! I can’t find Abi!’
She’s not under the kitchen bar. She’s not under one of the stools pretending to be a lion in a cage.
‘What d’you mean, you can’t find her?’
‘She’s not under the couch!’
