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.