“Of course they’re bloody well sure. They sign the children in; they sign the children out. Your daughter isn’t there.”
He could see Cahill bent over the desk, scribbling something. “I’ll ring Cathy now,” he said.
“You think I haven’t tried that? I’ve been ringing this past hour.”
“She might be upstairs. She mightn’t have heard the phone. Sometimes she takes her bath while Gracie’s at daycare.”
“I told you,” Martha said — and he pictured her knuckles growing white as her grip tightened on the handset—“Gracie’s not at daycare.”
“I’ll give it ten minutes and try her then.”
“Well, let me know how you get on.”
“I will,” he said, “and thank you, Martha,” but she had hung up.
He dialed Cathy’s mobile but it went to voicemail. The landline also rang out. When he returned to his desk, the woman in the next cubicle appeared again above the partition. “Cahill,” she said, nodding at a Post-it stuck to his computer screen. He peeled it off and read it. He was to bring last month’s figures to the lunchtime meeting about Manchester. He crumpled the note into a ball and dropped it into the trash. He tried Cathy’s number again. He thought of ringing the daycare, asking if Gracie had arrived in the meantime, but decided against it.
He took the stairs to the third floor to collect some documents, and, when he got back, he saw he had a missed call from Martha. He looked around the office. Cahill was standing a little way off, talking to one of the IT people. He went back out to the lobby and dialed Martha’s number and, when she didn’t answer, Cathy’s. When there was still no reply, he returned to his desk, took his jacket from the back of his chair, and left the office.
He drove out of the city, past tourists shivering around the war memorial statue, past the park where mothers in hats and scarves chatted over buggies, and took the exit for the dual carriageway. Shortly after he turned onto the river road, Martha rang but the line was patchy, interspersed with bursts of static, and then there was nothing. It was not raining, but drops from overhead branches fell in an insistent patter upon the windscreen. Nature had swung on its hinges: The thaw had started, and once it had started there was nothing that could stop it. Frost was melting from the trees along the riverbank, revealing strips of torn plastic and other debris wound around their trunks in times of flood. There had been an unsilvering: The whiteness had receded, leaving soiled browns, mildewed greens. From a low-lying branch, a plastic bag hung heavy with river water. He remembered a summer at his grandparents’ farm as a child, when he had found a bag, a knotted pouch of water, by the edge of a stream. Opening it, he had discovered half a dozen slimy, hairless pups, their eyes tight shut.
—
THERE WAS AN INCIDENT the previous November that he had kept from Martha. Cathy, he guessed, had kept it from her, too, because if Martha knew, Cathy and Gracie would be living in Castleisland now, and he would be living by himself in the house above the river. He had arrived home one evening to find the front door open, leaves blowing about the hall. “Cathy?” he called, putting down his briefcase. In the kitchen, a bag of flour had been pulled from a cupboard and upended. Gracie was under the table in just a nappy, digging jam from a jar with a fork and smearing it on the floor. She was utterly absorbed, the kitchen quiet apart from the sound of the fork striking the tiles. It was only when she looked up and saw him that she began to bawl. “Where’s Mummy?” he tried, picking her up and going from room to room, but she had only cried louder.
He dressed her in clothes pulled from the laundry basket, and got a flashlight from under the stairs. Cathy’s phone was on top of the kitchen table, her car parked in the driveway. He searched the garden first, quickly, because he did not expect to find Cathy there. The shed, when he checked it, was padlocked on the outside as usual. Gracie had stopped crying, distracted by the novelty of being outdoors in the dark. She waddled ahead of him, chasing the flashlight’s circle of light, jumping on it, shrieking when it slid from under her feet. He climbed over the ditch into the farm next door, lifting Gracie in after him. He hoisted her onto his shoulders, steadying her with one hand, his other hand sweeping the flashlight across the shadowy grass as they made their way from field to field.
From the farm, they crossed the road to the stretch of marshy ground beside the river. The countryside at night was a different creature, the soft ground sucking at their shoes, the air thick with midges. As they got closer to the river, he noticed movement ahead, black, lumbering shapes at the edge of the trees. It was a herd of cattle, the white patches of their hides emerging like apparitions from the darkness. They were gathered in a circle, heads dipped low, steam billowing from their noses. “Moo!” Gracie shouted. “Moo! Moo!” and they stumbled apart to reveal Cathy sitting on a metal feeding trough, the ground all around her pulped muddy by hooves. She was dressed in a skirt, a short-sleeved blouse, and slippers, and when he got nearer he saw that her arms and legs were torn by briars and she was bleeding from a cut on her ankle. She looked up at him and then she looked away. Later that night, after he had bathed her and dabbed antiseptic on her cuts, after he had put her to bed and placed Gracie, sleeping, in the crook of her arm, still she wouldn’t look at him.
—
PASSING THROUGH LINDON’S CROSS, the car slid and crossed the center line before he managed to right it again. A heron spread its wings and rose up, flying low through the trees, toward the road. It flew so close he feared it might strike the windscreen, but it rose higher and for a moment flew ahead of the car, a silent outrider, before rising higher again, higher than seemed plausible for such a large bird, and disappearing behind a copse of trees. He touched a hand to his face and realized that he was crying. If he got home and they were safe, he would never leave them again. He would stay with them. He would not go to the office, and Cahill could do what he liked. It didn’t matter anymore what Cahill thought or didn’t think; it was impossible to imagine anything that mattered less than Cahill. They would manage. He would find a way. He would talk to Martha.
When he turned into the driveway, he saw that the ground surrounding the pond had been disturbed. Sods of red clay had been hacked from the lawn, their scalps of white grass run through with blades of green. A number of wooden posts had been brought from the shed and lay in a pile beside a pickax and a roll of wire mesh left behind by the builder. He stopped the car and got out. The pond itself was a mess of earth and grass, too muddied to allow sight of any fish. Part of the concrete surround was cracked, the ground beside it swampy where the water was slowly seeping away. He looked toward the house and realized that Cathy’s car was missing.
He became conscious of the sound of his own breathing, of the ticks and shudders of the settling car engine. He had the sensation of being underwater, of straining against some vast, sucking tide. And then Gracie came barreling around the corner of the house. She made her way across the lawn, slipping on the wet grass, falling, getting up again. She was wearing a red dress with pink puffy sleeves, the belt flapping around her, and her Tinker Bell sandals. He ran to her and swung her up into his arms, this child he had driven away from this morning, this child he was entrusted to protect from everything and everyone. He clasped her tight, so tight that her chatter was muffled against his shirt. When he lifted his cheek from her hair, he saw Cathy walking up the garden toward them. She was carrying one of Gracie’s sandals that had come off when she fell.
“Why are you home?” she said. She was wearing Wellington boots and a dress she had bought for a cousin’s wedding the year before, a summer dress in flimsy material patterned in blue and yellow parrots. He saw how much looser it hung on her now, how her collarbone pressed sharply against her skin, as if it might break through.