sleep very deeply – always have done. I often don’t hear the alarm in the morning. My boyfriend has to wake me up.’
‘Really?’
Yes, really, she thinks. Lewis says she could sleep for England, although now Mabel has been taken, she doubts she’ll ever be able to sleep again.
Ruby walks out of the police station in a daze. She has spent the last two hours going over everything again and again in minute detail, and now she’s exhausted. The more she talked, the less clear and more unreal it seemed. There were moments when it felt like she was making the entire thing up, recounting somebody else’s tragedy about an abducted baby called Mabel and a negligent babysitter by the name of Ruby. Part of her brain still believes this kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like her.
A taxi is waiting to take her home. She climbs onto the back seat and confirms her address. The car pulls away, leaving the police station car park and joining the sluggish Sunday traffic. Switching her phone back on, Ruby texts Lewis to tell him she’s on her way. They only managed a brief conversation earlier. He sounded utterly grief-stricken, which surprised her. Not because Lewis is an uncaring person – quite the opposite – but she hadn’t expected him to be able to process the news so quickly, or to respond with such emotion. She still feels outside of herself, not properly in touch with how she must surely feel within.
She cannot, will not, imagine the worst. Mabel will be returned, like a parcel that’s gone astray. Very little post is actually lost forever. It may be delivered to the wrong address or not have enough stamps for its weight; it may sit on a sideboard for a few weeks before someone bothers to put it back in the postbox. But it always turns up eventually – maybe a little bent and creased, but safe nonetheless. Things don’t vanish into thin air, as her mother used to say in an exasperated tone every time Ruby lost something. It’s the same with people. They are always somewhere, waiting to be found. You just have to keep on looking.
The journey passes without her being aware of it, and suddenly the driver is drawing up on the double yellow line outside their block. She pays him then gets out and stumbles towards the large metal gate. Suddenly unable to remember the entry code, she has to press the bell. The gate clicks open immediately and Lewis comes out to meet her on the path.
‘Oh Ruby,’ he says.
She lets herself be enveloped in his embrace, and they stand locked together for a few moments, not saying anything, just listening to each other breathing. ‘Come on, let’s go inside.’ He guides her gently into their flat.
As soon as he shuts the door behind them, Ruby lets out a long howl, like an animal caught in a trap.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she wails.
‘That’s it, let it all out,’ he says, helping her into the lounge and lowering her onto the sofa. He lifts her legs up and puts a cushion behind her head.
‘Mabel’s gone and it’s all my fault!’
‘That’s not true, you can’t say that. It could have happened to anyone.’
‘A stranger took her and I didn’t hear a bloody thing.’
‘You were fast asleep.’
She picks up a cushion and hugs it to her as the tears run down her face. ‘I should have stayed awake all night, I should have had her in the bed with me, I should never, never have left her downstairs on her own.’
‘Amber and George do it.’
‘That’s not the point – I was looking after her and she wasn’t safe.’
‘You weren’t to know …’
She throws the cushion to the floor. ‘And this morning, I completely messed up! When someone goes missing, the first hour is the most important – the golden hour, they call it. I should have rung the police straight away, but I spent time looking for Amber. I thought she’d taken Mabel without telling me. I didn’t think, it didn’t occur to me that …’
‘No, of course it didn’t,’ he soothes. ‘I’d have made the same mistake.’ She cries out in pain, and he quickly corrects himself. ‘I mean, I would have done exactly the same thing.’
She looks up at him with liquid eyes. ‘Really? You mean that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. Thank you,’ she whispers.
‘Do you want a glass of wine? I know I need one.’ She nods. He fetches a bottle of