by C. J. Cooke
I took it for granted that her world was my world, because for a long time that was the case. But after we had Max, my world had become ten-hour days talking investment plans with corporations, business trips to Dubai, networking events. Even on weekends and holidays, I have been mentally ‘at work’. Looking at Eloïse’s calendar, it seems that playgroups such as the one I’m at now have been how she has spent much of the last four years. I can hardly imagine it.
A plump woman with an infant strapped to her chest sits next to me, and I know before she speaks that she’s going to ask about Eloïse.
‘Any word?’ she says quietly.
I clear my throat and put away my phone. ‘I’m afraid not, no.’
She gives me the same kind of pained sigh that I’m almost used to now, her face so creased with pity that it turns me inside out. She sighs contemplatively and looks on at Max as he clambers to the top of the plastic multicoloured climbing frame, shouting, ‘Aargh! Me hearties!’
‘Poor little mite,’ she says. ‘You never know what’s around the corner, do you?’
‘The thing is, so far my life has been very much about knowing exactly what’s around the corner,’ I find myself saying. ‘Everything’s been planned and worked out. I’ve never really had to deal with any disasters.’
I hear myself saying these words and wonder why I’m saying them to this woman. She nods and murmurs in agreement. Suddenly she glances up sharply.
‘Elvis! Elvis! Don’t shove your fingers in Harry’s mouth, please! You’ve got worms, sweetheart, we don’t want to pass it on!’
I have a vague sense that this kind of shouted statement might ordinarily make me squirm, possibly even motivate me to move swiftly to another corner of the room. Then again, I have never been to a playgroup before, and the chances of me having a heart-to-heart with a woman like this were, pre-disappearance, slim to none.
‘I don’t think anyone can prepare for a thing like this,’ she says. ‘It must be very hard, not knowing.’ She kisses the infant’s head, strokes the fine strands of black hair. ‘I didn’t come to this group for a while because madam here decided to develop a kidney infection and spent a while in the hospital. But I remember Eloïse. She was so lovely, especially with little Max. She lit up whenever she spoke about him. She seemed like such a good mum.’
Seemed. More and more I’m noticing people speaking about my wife in the past tense. She was always so sweet. I wonder if they realise how much it deepens my despair.
Another woman comes and sits down on the other side of me, an older woman with white hair and glasses on a chain, her face fixed in condolence. ‘Oh, you’re Eloïse’s husband,’ she says, and I smile, guilty as charged.
‘How are you doing?’
‘All right,’ I say automatically, but this only serves to make her expression droop and she flicks her eyes at Worm Lady, who sits at my right.
‘I was saying to Sandra over there how lovely Eloïse was,’ the older woman says. ‘Nicest person. Such a wonderful mother, too. Always so happy and cheerful.’
Worm Lady leans in. ‘If I’m honest, me and a few of the other mums were a tiny bit envious of Eloïse. She was so perfect! Her hair and make-up always done to perfection. And so skinny! Honestly, you’d never have thought she’d had two babies.’ She gives a shrill laugh.
The older woman nods, gravely. ‘I was a wreck after having my two. Two were enough for me. One would have been enough, but then I thought it weren’t right for Claudia to be an only child, so we had Martin. Hadn’t even heard of colic back then.’
‘Both mine had colic. Madam here has colic and reflux. The health visitor tried to tell me not to drink Red Bull if I was breastfeeding. I said, are you mental? How am I supposed to get through the day on half an hour’s sleep?’
‘I’ve been bringing me grandkids to this group for years now,’ the older woman continues. ‘Lots of mums struggling, especially during the early days. Not her. Not that Eloïse. I told the police, I said, she didn’t walk out on those kids.’
‘Frankly, some of the other mums thought Eloïse was up herself, but not me.’
I flinch at this, but Worm Lady doesn’t see.
‘I thought she was one of those lucky people who managed to have their cake and eat all of it. Elvis! My love, that’s a potty, not a hat!’
‘She had it together. Nothing fazed her.’
Max runs up to me, his Darth Vadar mask replaced by a tiara. ‘Daddy, why are you talking to Elvis’ mummy?’ He gives worried looks at Worm Lady and the older woman.
‘I was telling your dad what a big boy you are, Max,’ Worm Lady tells him.
‘My mummy smokes cigarettes!’ he announces, and Worm Lady throws me a puzzled look.
‘It’s OK, son,’ I tell him. ‘Everything’s fine. Go and play.’
He leans on my thighs and gives a sigh. ‘Want to go now.’
One of the leaders of the playgroup claps her hands and calls all the children to a table, where plastic plates of sliced apple and sandwiches are being set out.
‘There’s food, Maxie. Go and eat.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ he mumbles sadly. ‘Miss Mummy.’
‘I know. I do, too.’
‘Can we go and get her, Daddy? Maybe she would like to come home, now.’
This breaks my heart.
‘Maybe, Maxie. Maybe.’
I think back to the first day Eloïse returned to work after Max was born. He was seven months old, determined to crawl, and dragging himself around the floor like a baby seal. I’d booked some holiday time to take care of him for the first week, and then Eloïse had already interviewed and hired a nanny. She put on the new dress she’d bought and walked to her car, and I held up Max and got him to wave. He was a little perturbed by her leaving, but I think it was harder for Eloïse. She tried hard not to cry.
Later that day she phoned. ‘How’s Maxie doing?’
‘He’s having a nap,’ I told her. ‘He’s absolutely fine. Stop stressing.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I blended some carrots and butternut squash last night. It’s in the bowl with dinosaurs on it. In the fridge, remember? You have to stir his food after taking it out of the microwave. Not a couple of times – you have to stir it loads to make sure it doesn’t burn his mouth …’
‘Eloïse. I know how to stir food. I’m not completely useless …’
‘OK. Oh, and don’t use the nappies in the nappy basket, I think they’re giving him a rash. I bought a pack of new ones, they’re in the utility room …’
‘Anything else? Shall I hire a chamber orchestra? A petting zoo?’
‘Please … tell me you’ll use the new nappies.’
I laughed ruefully. Was she seriously this wound up about Max?
‘Say it, Lochlan. I’m not hanging up until you say it.’
This was the difference between the sexes, I thought. One morning at home and I was already at a loose end, bored, restless, feeling that childcare was beneath me. At work, I didn’t think about whether someone was stirring our son’s food enough or putting him in the right nappies. El, on the other hand, was clearly unable to insert herself back into her working life.
‘This is hard for me, you know,’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘I miss him so much. I know it’s silly …’
‘It’s not silly,’ I said, suddenly remorseful, though I still couldn’t quite grasp why she couldn’t simply enjoy being at work and leaving him at home. I felt guilty for snapping at her. She loved our son, and she was so dedicated to looking after him. A different person seemed to step out of her when Max was born. Yes, Eloïse had always been a 100 per cent kind of girl, hard-working and passionate, but the way she took on motherhood was unexpected. If I’m honest, I felt a little in the shadows when Max came along. And sometimes I wondered if I didn’t love him as much as she did. Perhaps I didn’t.
I shifted tack. A voice in my head nagged at me to stop giving her a hard time and reassure her, otherwise she might qu
it her job altogether when there was no need.
‘Darling, I promise you – Max is absolutely fine. We’ve had a great morning. I read him that peekaboo book he likes about fifteen times.’
‘Oh! The one with the mirrors? He loves that!’
I nodded. ‘Yep, and the little flippy-out bits where he has to open the door …’
‘Did he laugh at the end?’
‘Every time. And then I took him out to the sandpit and we played. Now he’s having a nap. He is completely fine, I promise.’
She fell silent. ‘Thank you, Lochlan,’ she said after a while, her voice shaking.
I told her to enjoy the rest of her day. I made her promise to get herself a caramel macchiato and revel in the fact that she could drink the whole thing without having to wipe up snot or poo in the middle of it, or indeed out of it, and she laughed.
But the night before the nanny was due to start, Eloïse woke me and said she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t face leaving Max with a stranger all day, every day. I tried to get her to consider working part-time, but it didn’t seem to be enough. She wanted to be at home, end of story. And so she stepped down as CEO and Danny Holland took over.
Eloïse’s absence is so much more powerful than her presence. The kids feel it. I lied to Max and made everyone else lie, too. I figured it would be best if we told him that Eloïse had gone to America for her job. He knows about Mummy’s job, she’s told him all about it with pride and even took him into her office a few times. I thought he’d buy this, but he clapped both hands on my cheeks and studied me. Then he said, ‘Are you telling troof, Daddy?’ And I tried to nod but I started to sob and now he’s more unsettled than ever.
And for all of Cressida’s short time on this planet, she certainly senses that something is up. She hates taking her bottle, fighting with it as though it’ll give in and morph into her mother’s breast. I found some of Eloïse’s clothes in the laundry basket and put one of her tops in Cressida’s crib, and she slept right through the night. But when she’s awake, she cries and thrashes and won’t be comforted. Gerda and Magnus are still staying here, filling the endless barbed hours with Max and Cressida’s routines. Magnus was crying in the garden yesterday. He was watering Eloïse’s rose bushes and trying to hide his tears. I didn’t know what to say to him, and neither he nor Gerda seem to know what to say to me. We’re all pretty civil but I can’t say I have much of a relationship with them. I don’t ski and I don’t have a massive property portfolio like they do, so we’ve never had much to talk about. In this instance I suspect that, like me, they are stunned into silence, mentally turning over every memory in case it yields a clue to El’s whereabouts.
The house has been full of visitors – my father, brothers, and Susan, my stepmother, our friends, a group of women I’ve never met but who apparently are very close to my wife from meeting at toddler groups. Events like this tend to show up the people you thought you knew in odd colours.
My father, for instance, always the person rooting for me and the one person I would have expected to understand intimately the kind of hell I’m in, gave me a manly slap on the back and muttered a few words of comfort before telling me that he and Susan were heading off to the Bahamas in the morning and to keep him updated. I suspect he believes that El has walked out and left me with the kids, just like my mother did to him. Mrs Shahjalal has popped back and forth, relaying over and over again the same story about how she found Max alone at home. Mr McWhirter, our weird, irritable neighbour from the other side of the street, who hasn’t spoken more than two sentences to me since we moved here, spent an entire morning on our sofa telling us about his life as a commander in the army. Turns out he’s a widower, bitterly lonely since nursing his wife through cancer. He was sincere in his consolation and made some solid suggestions for a search campaign.
Now I realise that the one person I really, really need to help me navigate this hell is the one who is missing.
I clip Max into his car seat and drive him to pre-school. I have to google it for the postcode and then satnav my way there. I feel ashamed that I’ve never actually dropped him off. I haven’t even met his teacher. And then Max says, ‘This is a nice car, Daddy,’ and I realise that he’s never been in my car. We use Eloïse’s Qashqai whenever we go anywhere as a family, but still.
We pull into the car park across the road from pre-school – Willowfield First School and Nursery – and Max waves to a little boy climbing out of a Range Rover next to us.
‘Hi, Wilbur,’ Max says, before turning to me. ‘Daddy, Wilbur brought his scooter. It must be Scooter Day. Is today Monday, Daddy?’
‘Yes, today is Monday.’ My phone has started to ring and I’m searching for it in my pockets.
‘Monday is Scooter Day, Daddy. It’s Scooter Day. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’
‘Hold on, Max.’
By the time I find my phone, the call has rung out, straight to voicemail. Number withheld.
Max is still going on about Scooter Day when we arrive at the front doors. An older woman greets Max and he attempts to enlist her in the Scooter cause, though mercifully she manages to cajole him with a promise of a spare scooter. She holds my gaze, and I figure that I need to mention the situation at home. I wait until the other parents have dropped off their children before speaking, but before I get a chance the woman says:
‘We’ve heard about Max’s mother. I’m so sorry.’
I shut my mouth and nod, stricken. Every time someone tells me this it feels like a condolence, and though I know it’s offered out of kindness it only adds to my fear that I’ll never see my wife again.
‘Max is very unsettled, as you might expect,’ I say, and it takes a fierce amount of effort to keep my voice from shaking. ‘He misses his mother and it’s difficult to know what to tell him.’
She has a look of deep understanding on her face. ‘You’ve done the right thing by trying to keep his routine nice and consistent,’ she says, and I breathe a sigh of relief. How much I have needed to hear someone say those words. You’ve done the right thing. This week has been one of crazy introspection and I’ve felt like all I’ve done my whole life is the wrong thing.
‘I’ll keep you informed,’ I say, and I don’t finish the sentence. She reaches out and squeezes my hand. Inside, I catch a glimpse of Max chatting animatedly with a group of friends, and my heart swells.
I’m getting back into my car when the phone rings again. This time I answer on the second ring.
‘Hello, Mr Shelley?’
‘Yes?’
‘DS Canavan speaking.’
My heart beats in my mouth. Is he phoning with news of Eloïse?
‘I have a question for you.’
‘Yes?’
‘About the baby monitors.’
I allow myself to breathe. ‘What about them?’
‘Our tech guys say that the footage was re-routed to another ISP. Do you know anything about this?’
I have no idea what any of this means. ‘“Re-routed”? I don’t know … Eloïse had it set up to her cloud, or something.’
It strikes me that neither of us really understands what we’re talking about.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’ll pass this back to the tech guys and see what they say. Meantime, we’ve received the forensic report on your back door.’
‘And?’
‘We found your prints, your wife’s prints, and your son’s. No one else’s.’
‘So that means a break-in can be ruled out?’
‘It’s unlikely. Not ruled out.’ A beat. ‘We’ve also spoken to Eloïse’s health visitor and midwives. There’s a difference of opinion in terms of her medical history, so we’ll be investigating that further. We do have some footage from the babycams, though. Perhaps you’d like to review it for anything that seems significant.’
I nod at the phone.
‘When can I see it?’
24 March 2015
Komméno Island, Greece
I spent last
night on the wooden pier at the edge of the island in front of the derelict hotel, wrapped in the smelly fisherman’s jacket that George pulled out of the pantry in the farmhouse. Still, it kept me warm. I must have fallen asleep briefly several times, and twice I woke up to the sound of an engine ripping across the waves.
It was the oddest thing: I swear I saw a speedboat pulling up towards me, the surface of the water parted by the stern as though unzipping the ocean, a man with grey hair and sunglasses standing by the wheel. I saw the glint of moonlight on the side of the boat and heard the engine roaring louder as it got closer. And both times my heart started racing and I ran to the very edge of the pier, only to find that there was no sign of a boat out there. Nothing but the sway and roll of waves.
I imagined it. It’s the only explanation.
For most of the night I sat cross-legged, looking up at the galaxies to distract me from the sounds of the island. Night doesn’t simply blanket the island in darkness; it replaces it with an inversion, an ink-dark place that seems on the cusp of another realm. The olive groves and cacti morph into grotesque figures that emit weird shouts, clicks, and cries that sound fearfully human.
So I kept my eyes on the galaxies, forcing myself to count them, describe them. Fireworks suspended at the moment of exploding. Diamonds, rubies and sapphires scattered across a black velvet quilt. The knowledge that each of them was a star or planet or constellation with a name and a gravity that I did not know, just as I did not know where I had come from or who I had left behind, was at once comforting and frightening.
Though, now it appears I know my full name. Eloïse Beatrice Shelley. I’ve said that name out loud a thousand times, as though the sound of it is a line I’m casting into the waters of memory to hook some other clues. Eloïse. Eloïse. Nothing yet, but maybe it’ll take a bit of time. When I get to Crete, I have much more of a chance of finding out where I came from. I could possibly locate myself via Google or Facebook. If only the farmhouse had Internet.
