sluggish with fatigue. Slowly, I replace the handset in its cradle. It’s only just gone 5 a.m., too early to disturb Tara and wake her boys with a phone call. She gets little enough sleep as it is. Instead I check the chain across the front door, the deadbolt, the patio door and the back door, then check them all again before heading upstairs.
I try to sleep, dropping my clothes in a ragged line across the bedroom floor and crawling under the duvet. But it’s already too late, the sun creeping into the bedroom, slanting through the edges of the curtains, rush hour traffic starting up its low hum nearby. I’m alert to every other sound, every creak of the house slowly warming up, every set of footsteps on the street outside, every car passing by. Try as I might, I can’t seem to drift off, even for an hour of sleep. My body aches with tiredness, with the throb of injuries, but my brain is still going a hundred miles an hour and refuses to stop. I’m still wired from a day and night full of confrontation and unanswered questions. The strange black-clad man on the train; Dominic, with his anger and paranoia; the two detectives with their questions.
And now home. Or at least, my house. Our house, as it had been until three months ago. Richard and I had given up our one-bedroom flat on Highbury Park Road five years ago – the flat where we’d first lived together, where we’d dreamed and made plans and returned from honeymoon – in favour of a sensible family home a few miles further out. Five years in this modern end-terrace with its small garden and two-and-a-half bedrooms and a decent primary school nearby, a dozen Tube stops further out of London. Five years waiting for the arrival of a child that had never come. Richard increasingly distant and evasive over the last year, spending more time working late in the office, more time avoiding life at home. More time with the woman who was now carrying his child.
After an hour I give up on sleep and shuffle into the bathroom, standing under the shower for fifteen minutes, letting the hot water pound the back of my neck. I think about Mia, the last time I saw her. The thin, bird-like woman from social services who had taken her away, who had made Mia cry as she manhandled her into the scuffed plastic car seat. Eventually I put on old jeans and a sweatshirt and a fresh bandage on my foot.
It’s Wednesday. It’s supposed to be a normal working day but I’m owed some time off in lieu so I take the day off, emailing my boss to apologise for the short notice. What else is happening this week? Shopping delivery arriving tonight, Pilates tomorrow, work drinks on Friday night – someone’s leaving do that I already know I won’t be able to face. As for next week, next month? I can’t think that far ahead anymore.
I call my bank and credit card company to cancel all my cards and have new ones reissued. I dig out my old iPhone from the bedside drawer and walk the ten minutes to the high street to buy a new SIM card. Back home I log into my iCloud account, saying a little prayer that the automatic backup has worked as it was supposed to. I feel a little thrum of happiness in my chest as the saved images begin to drop in and there is Mia, tiny and perfect, sleepy and content after the bottle I gave her in the café. One picture. This is all I have of her. But it lifts me, warms me, a bright spot on a dark day.
I call my mobile provider to get my old number transferred to the new SIM. All this practical everyday stuff seems ridiculous, meaningless, set against the last twenty-four hours. I keep flicking back to the picture of Mia, just to remind myself that it’s still there and that she really exists. I set it as the new screensaver on my phone, then remove it again, feeling like a thief, a fraud, for having someone else’s child on my screen. I’ll just keep it in the phone’s gallery instead. A secret.
At noon, I give Tara a call. The conversation is full of noise from her three boys, fighting and shouting and screaming in the background all at once, a wall of yelling