the exhaustion of everyday life, but her mind hadn’t stopped working since the minute she’d woken up to an empty bed and a silent house.
Silent as the grave. That was the saying, wasn’t it? She should have been ecstatic. Noah’s first full night’s sleep since the day he was born meant an entire nine hours’ rest for her, and she hadn’t even woken in a cold panic in the middle of the night to check his breathing in the way she had on the few occasions he hadn’t woken every three hours. She’d obviously needed the rest, and had she woken lazily and reached out to find Adam snoring gently beside her; moved over to snuggle under his armpit like the days before a tiny demon had infiltrated their lives, it would have been the perfect start to her morning. Instead she’d woken with a start, unable to put her finger on what had disturbed her. It must have been Adam heading to the toilet, but when she reached out to snuggle up to his pillow, his side of the bed was cold and his mobile phone was gone from his bedside table.
She had dragged herself out of bed and cracked open the curtains to see that his car was missing from the drive. Shit – was it later than she’d thought? Her breasts ached with the weight of stored milk, but it was still quite dark outside – though it always seemed to be dark these days, what with winter making its imminent presence known. Maybe Adam had snuck out to take Toby for breakfast, leaving Eleanor and Noah to have a well-deserved lie-in. The thought was so glorious that she’d been gutted to check her phone and see that it was only 7.05 – there’s no way they would have got themselves up and out that early. Gutted, then worried. Where was Adam? He hadn’t mentioned an early start the night before, and it was so unlike him to be up before his alarm went off at 7.45. The number of times she herself had still been up at 6 a.m. from a 2 a.m. feed and prayed he would somehow psychically wake from his slumber and take Noah while she clawed back an hour and a half of the night, but not once had he opened his eyes before that alarm.
She’d thrown on her dressing gown and slippers and padded across the landing and down the stairs, one eye on the monitor as the third step from the bottom let out its trademark groan, half hoping, despite the missing car, to find Adam with a full English breakfast laid out on the table. But the bottom of the house was as quiet as the upstairs.
Trying hard to control her rising panic, she had tried Adam’s phone twice whilst going about her normal morning tasks – making toast, pouring cereal for Toby, the whole time cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear. When she gave up and threw the handset on to the kitchen counter, she heard grumpy little noises crackling from the monitor like angry static.
Typically, Adam had called back just as Noah hit full-blown panic mode at waking and finding himself alone and probably starving after a full night without milk. Where the bloody hell had she left the phone? It had only been about four minutes since she’d last had it … Yes, the kitchen. Lugging Noah with her, she got to it just as it stopped ringing. Immediately her mobile started upstairs. By the time she’d answered, Noah was puce in the face and Eleanor was already exhausted and livid.
‘Where are you?’ She’d tried – and failed – to keep the annoyance from her voice.
‘I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Thought I’d go to the gym rather than risk waking you and the kids.’
‘The gym?’ Adam hadn’t been to the gym in over twelve months, and suddenly this morning he was Mr Motivator?
‘Well I told you I wanted to start up again.’
He’d mentioned it. Once. Eleanor had told him that if he wanted to start back at the gym, he’d have to go before work – the kids missed him enough in the evenings as it was. She’d just never expected it to actually happen.
‘And you didn’t think that if you were up early you could have done some of the housework, or got the kids’ stuff ready for school like I would have had to do?’