C.J. Cooke - I Know My Name

We have run out of expressed breast milk. I’m so out of sorts that Cressida shrieked for an eternity until it dawned on me that she was probably due another feed. An hour ago I phoned a taxi company and paid them fifty quid to go and buy some formula milk at a supermarket and bring it here. Cressida was a little confused at first, both by having to suck a plastic teat again and by the weird taste of formula, but finally she relented and drained it in one sitting.

Mrs Shahjalal has gone home. She lives alone at number thirty-nine, across the road. She has offered to come again in the morning and help in any way she can. Right now, I’m mired in bewilderment and can’t think straight.

On the train from Waverley I set about contacting Eloïse’s friends to see if anyone had heard from her. Of course, they’d seen neither hide nor hair of her since yesterday or the day before. My Facebook post was met with weeping emojis and well-wishing; in other words, nothing of any use. With great reluctance, I texted Gerda, Eloïse’s grandmother, to ask if El had gone to their place in Ledbury. It was a long shot, of course, given that the kids were still here, but I had quickly run out of possibilities.

I’ve searched the whole house four or five times in total. Wardrobes, the bathroom closet, that weird space under the stairs, even under the beds and in the loft, then running around in the back garden with a torch, checking all the bushes and the shed. I guess I thought she might have got stuck somewhere. I felt like I was going insane. All of this whilst Max was running around after me asking if we were playing a game and could he hide, too, and whilst Cressida realised she was being held by someone other than her mother and wanted half of London to know all about it.

Gerda rang back to say no, she hadn’t seen El since last week, though she spoke to her on Sunday night. She started to ask questions and I stammered something about El not being home when I got back this afternoon. There was a long pause.

‘What do you mean, El’s not home? Where are you, Lochlan?’

‘I’m back in London.’

‘And where are the babies?’

‘They’re here.’

‘Lochlan, are you saying Eloïse has left?’

‘I’m saying she’s not at home. Her car is still there, her keys and her mobile phone. Everything.’

‘Call the police.’

‘I’ve already done it.’

I checked El’s mobile phone, examining all her messages in case there was some unforeseen emergency she’d been called away for, but all I found was an eBay enquiry about a high chair, emails from Etsy, Boden, Sainsbury’s and Laura Ashley, as well as Outlook reminders about Max’s parent-teacher meeting at nursery next Friday and Cressida’s jabs at the health clinic.

At eleven o’clock Max came downstairs, bleary-eyed and wrapped in his Gruffalo robe, his blond hair longer than I remembered it being, dandelion-like with static.

‘Hi, Daddy,’ he said, yawning.

‘Hey, Maxie boy. How are you doing?’

He padded across the room and climbed up on my lap. I kissed his head, flooded with a sudden tenderness for him.

‘Is Mummy back?’

How much it pained me to tell him that she wasn’t.

He curled into me. ‘Did Mummy have to go to the shops? Did she forget that me and Cressida were in the house?’

‘I don’t think so, Max.’

‘Did she get lost coming home?’

I shook my head, and he started to grow upset.

‘Want Mummy, Daddy. Where’s Mummy?’

When I began to feel overwhelmed at my inability to console him – and by the thought that he might well wake Cressida – I told a fib.

‘I think maybe she’s gone to take her friend some flowers.’

‘Which friend?’

‘Uh … the lady with the long black hair from playgroup.’

He straightened. ‘Sarah?’

‘Yes, Sarah.’

‘No, it can’t be Sarah, ’cos Sarah got her hair yellowed.’

‘Niamh, then.’

‘Why is Mummy taking Niamh flowers? Is Niamh sad?’

‘I think so.’

‘What kind of flowers?’

‘I don’t know, Maxie.’

‘Can you call Niamh on your mobile and tell her that we need Mummy to come back to us now, please?’

‘Soon, darling, soon. Let’s go back to bed.’

In a fleeting moment of clear-mindedness I remembered the high-spec baby monitors that El had installed when Max was born – seriously, they’re like surveillance cameras – and checked El’s phone to see if any footage had been recorded. But no, the recording facility had been switched off ages ago. Of course it had.

I bribed Max to go to sleep without Mummy bathing him and reading him his favourite story by promising to take him to Thomas Land. Even so, he insisted on staying downstairs with me and cried himself to sleep.

It’s almost two in the morning when a police car pulls up outside and two uniformed police officers appear at the door, a man and a woman. I show the officers into the living room and attempt to console Cressida so that I can actually hear what they say. Her face is beetroot-red, tears rolling down her cheeks, and she punches the air with her fists. Max has fallen asleep on the sofa, holding the quilt Eloïse made for him up to his chin and murmuring occasionally.

‘When did you last speak with your wife, Mr Shelley?’ the male officer asks as I rock Cressida back and forth.

‘I already gave all this information on the phone,’ I say. I want answers, resolutions, for the police to wave their magic wands and materialise my wife.

‘Sorry, but there’s some information we’ve got to confirm. We’ll ask a few additional questions before we begin enquiries.’

‘I’ve been in Edinburgh since Monday but I spoke to her around seven on Monday night via Facetime,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Sometimes I call during the day as well, but it’s been really busy at work. I didn’t get a chance.’

‘Where do you work?’

I shift Cressida into a different position, away from my ear. She’s still tiny at three months so she fits along the length of my arm. I bounce her there and she lets out a huge belch. I say ‘Good girl!’ but she starts to cry again.

‘I work at a company called Smyth and Wyatt. Four days a week I’m based in Edinburgh, the rest of the time I’m at the London branch on Victoria Embankment.’

The male officer jots this down as ‘ Smith & White South – a bank ’.

‘It’s not a bank, it’s a corporate finance firm.’

He scores out his note. ‘OK. Did you and your wife have any disagreements? Anything that might have made her leave?’

‘Look, I’ve already explained this. My wife has not left . Cressida’s only twelve weeks old. El’s still breastfeeding.’

I’m mad as hell, frustrated, but above all I’m anxious. I can’t help but feel that El must be worried, wherever she is, because she’s fought to breastfeed Cressida after some difficulties with Max and ensures she feeds on demand. This is hard to put across – my wife hasn’t left, you see, because she wants to breastfeed. They ask about El’s line of work, and I explain that she’s a stay-at-home mother but still goes on TV to talk about her work.

‘She set up a small charity some years ago for refugee children and it’s become quite successful,’ I say. ‘She gets asked to do the occasional media event. I guess I’m worried that, maybe … I don’t know. A lot of nutcases out there.’ I know I’m clutching at straws, but my mind is racing, my body buzzing with adrenalin. I keep glancing at the front door, waiting for her to walk in.

‘Did she mention anything of that nature? Threatening letters, stalkers, that kind of thing?’

‘No, nothing.’

He gives me a moment in case something comes to mind, but it doesn’t.