tears from a handful of children as they say goodbye. I wonder if their parents look at Sophia and think, Lucky mum, just as I look at the kids clinging to their mothers and think the same.
Back home, I leave a note for Becca, the teenager who looks after Sophia from time to time. I leave lasagna defrosting in case Adam’s not back by suppertime, and I dump a clean towel on the spare-room bed, even though he knows full well where the airing cupboard is. It’s hard to break a decade of looking out for someone.
“Why can’t I just sleep in our bed?” he said the first time.
I spoke quietly. Not just because of Sophia but because I didn’t want it to hurt either of us any more than it had already. “Because it isn’t our bed any more, Adam.” It hadn’t been our bed since the day Katya left.
“Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“So cold. Like we hardly know each other.” His face crumpled. “I love you, Mina.”
I opened my mouth to reply that I no longer felt the same, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
We tried counseling, of course. For Sophia’s sake, if not ours. Her attachment issues were deep-seated, a muscle memory from the months when crying didn’t summon comfort. What would it do to her if we separated permanently? Sophia was used to Adam working nights—to my being away for several days at a time—but we always, always came home.
Adam was monosyllabic at best, as evasive with the therapist as with me. In July, he agreed to move out.
“I need time,” I’d told him.
“How much time?”
I couldn’t say. I didn’t know. I saw him hesitate over the suitcases, nestled one inside the other like rectangular Russian dolls. Optimism made him pick the smallest. Human Resources found him a room in a house with three police recruits, full of enthusiasm and cheap beer, outdoing each other with their newfound uniformed exploits. “I can’t have Sophia there,” he told me. “It wouldn’t be right.”
So I made up the spare bed, and when I go to work, Adam stays here, and I don’t know which of us finds it the hardest.
I change into my uniform and double-check my carry-on bag. Today’s flight is a big deal. The last nonstop flight from London to Sydney was in 1989—a PR stunt with twenty people on board. Commercial flights haven’t been possible—it’s taken years to develop an aircraft that can handle the distance with a full passenger load.
I leave a note on Sophia’s bed—a felt-tip heart with love from Mummy underneath, something I’ve done every time I fly, ever since she learned to read.
“Did you get my note?” I said once when I was video-calling to say good night. I forget where I was, but the sun was still high, and the sight of Sophia fresh from a bath sent a wave of homesickness through me.
“What note?”
“On your bed. I left it on your pillow. Like always.” Homesickness made me unfair, wanting Sophia to miss me simply because I was missing her.
“Bye, Mummy. Katya and me are making a den.” The screen wobbled, and I was left looking at the kitchen ceiling. I ended the call before Katya could feel sorry for me.
I turn up Radio 2 as I head for the airport, but guilt knocks hard enough to make itself heard.
“People have to work,” I say out loud. “It’s a fact of life.”
I told Adam there’d been a shift change, that I’d tried to get out of it, but I’d be away for five days, and what could you do, really? Work was work.
I lied.
TWO
9 A.M. | ADAM
“The boss wants to see you.”
Acid gnaws at my insides as I fight to arrange myself into something resembling normal. Has anything good ever come of those six words?
“Oh. Right.” I sit at my desk, my hands suddenly too big, too awkward, as if I’m in front of a huge audience instead of just Wei’s curious gaze.
“She’s in with the chief at the moment.”
“Thanks.” I frown at my screen. Flick through the papers on my desk as though I’m looking for something. I’ve got a charge file to put together for a robbery; statements to take for an assault that could end up as murder if the guy doesn’t pull through—work I need to focus on, that demands my attention—only instead I’m sweating into my collar and wondering if this is it. If this is the end. I sense Wei