Free The Missing One by Lucy Atkins Page B

I’m coming home. Just wait there. I’m coming now.’
    But I didn’t wait for him to come home and explain to me that he’d fucked her because I was preoccupied with our baby. Or that he loved her – and had never really loved me. That he was leaving.
    I hung up, then slotted Finn into the baby-carrier, and hauled him up onto my back. I hooked my bag across my body, and then I left, bumping the case behind me down our front steps.
    Doug, presumably, got home soon afterwards. I wonder how he felt when he saw that I had gone – furious? Upset? Confused? Guilty? And that’s without knowing how much of our savings I have just spent.
    I kept my phone switched off after that. The only way is not to think about this, and not, under any circumstances, to read his texts or listen to his voicemails.
    I reach over Finn’s sleeping body and delve gently into my bag for a book. I wish I’d worn yoga pants rather than jeans. I feel as if my whole body is swelling. My hand closes around my mother’s notebook and as I pull it out, the wedding photo flutters onto my lap. I forgot that I slipped it in there as I packed our things in Sussex. I catch it before it slides off. Then I hold it up to the yellowy cabin light.
    My mother is wearing a long seventies-style dress with flowing sleeves, and she is laughing up at my father. Her hair is loose and hangs in thick dark waves around her shoulders, in a middle parting, and she’s holding a bunch of wild flowers.
    You can’t see my father’s expression because he’s cut in half by the crease and obscured by the shadow of abuilding. All you can see is flared trousers and a narrow, floral shirt. He looks sportier; surprisingly cool. They are standing outside a red-brick building. It is frustrating not to be able to see his face with the crease and the shadows, but from his thrown-back shoulders I feel sure he is grinning back at her.
    I am not in the picture but I must have been there somewhere, in someone’s arms. I wonder who held me during the ceremony. It is odd that in all these years my mother never mentioned any friends from school or university. She didn’t even mention the woman who sent her a postcard every year for thirty-seven years. She was a student in California for – what – six years? It is astonishing how easily she cut herself off from her American life. But then, she always was excellent at cutting off.
    The pilot dims the lights. All around me people shift and murmur. Another baby lets out a high-pitched wail and Finn’s arms twitch, but he doesn’t wake up. His eyelids flutter. I wonder what he is dreaming about – I imagine him in there, right now, perched on the backs of dragons, or diving headlong into a giant chocolate cake. He is so beautiful, with his tawny fringe and his perfect Sistine-baby mouth, the dimple on his chin. I stroke the hair gently away from his eyes and remember how, when he was born, and I breastfed him day after day, I watched his eyelashes grow.
    I look at my watch, still on British time. It is 9.45 p.m. I should be on the sofa with Doug, all the toys cleared away, the washing-up done, the dishwasher trundling throughits cycle and Finn asleep upstairs in his cot under his car mobile. Doug and I should be drinking a glass of wine and watching TV. I didn’t buy dishwasher powder. Or butter. I forgot to tell Doug to turn off the electric heater in the basement. I forgot to tell work that I won’t be back this week, after all.
    I should tell my father what I am doing too. When I woke up this morning he’d set off for London, leaving a note in his elegant handwriting:
    I have gone to the office. Please stay as long as you wish
(though lock up if you leave). I will be back on Friday
.
    I left him a note in reply.
    Thanks Dad, I had to go, but I’ll see you soon
.
    He will be alone in his London flat now, shattered – but working. I