Crossing over a railway bridge and passing the entrance to a builders’ merchants hugging the railway line, I turn right down the next residential road, eager to escape the exhaust fumes, figuring that if I keep turning right it will make the reverse journey easier. The houses here are bigger than ours: wide, bay-fronted terraces on one side, three-storey Victorians on the other. I keep walking, the rhythm of my trainers against the pavement spurring me on. I’m aware of a permanent sense of bated breath, anticipating a flicker of recognition, but nothing comes.
I reach the entrance to a tree-lined park set in a square overlooked by houses on all sides and walk through the gate between some metal railings. My head is beginning to ache and I look at my watch, realise I cannot take the next round of painkillers for another two hours. To my left is a children’s playground and I go inside, sit on a bench, squint against the sun and the throbbing at my temples.
A woman is pushing her son on the toddler swings, the little boy no more than about three years old. He is wearing a blue jumper with a picture of a tractor on the front, and each time the swing returns for its next push, his mother peers around the edge, says boo, and the boy squeals with delight.
I watch them, and suddenly tears are pooling in my eyes. My throat constricts and I swallow hard against it, shocked at how overwhelmed I feel. I remember the leaflets warning me that my emotions might be heightened, but this tsunami of feeling is so abrupt, so acute, that I wipe the sleeve of my jacket across my eyes, bewildered and embarrassed.
In the pocket of my jacket I find a crumpled tissue and I smooth it out, absorb the tears. After a few deep breaths, the intensity subsides, though a lingering sorrow remains, like the emotional hangover from a bad dream.
As I look back towards the swings, the mother glances in my direction, catches my eye, smiles. My reciprocation is instinctive and for a second I imagine her sitting on the bench beside me, telling me about her son, her family, her life. The sudden yearning for company is so strong that it is like being winded.
The little boy cries out for his mother to push the swing higher, and the woman turns away, propels the swing, and I am left with a feeling of profound loneliness, as though I have woken to discover the world empty of people.
A great sweep of fatigue envelops me and I have an overpowering desire to sleep even though it is still only the middle of the afternoon. Lifting myself from the bench, I cast one last look at the woman and her child as she lifts him out of the swing. He places his chubby hands either side of her face, pulls her head towards him, kisses her lips. My heart twists beneath my ribs and I force myself to turn around, away from emotions I do not understand and cannot control.
Walking out of the park, I get to the end of the street and turn left onto the main road, retracing my steps. I know I need to turn left again, down one of the streets with the small cottages like the one we live in, but I arrive at the first road and it does not look familiar, so I walk on to the next, and then the next, wracking my brain, imploring it to reveal the name of the street I exited earlier, but my mind is blank and all the roads look the same. I cannot recall any identifying feature to help determine which it is. I take a punt on one street, walk until I reach a junction, feel sure this is correct, that when I turn left, I will find my house. But I walk further, and then further still, and my house isn’t there, just a small park I don’t recall seeing before, and I know this is not right, this is not the way. I turn back, try to retrace my steps, to find the main road and help re-orientate myself, but everything looks different. Panic drums inside my chest, telling me I am lost, that I may never find my way out of this warren. My throat is tight and I feel tears pricking my eyes and I wish I had listened to Stephen, wish I’d never left the house, that I’d stayed at home until he got back. I look behind me and then in front, do not know which way to turn, where to go, shout silently at myself to focus, concentrate, remember. I close my eyes, try to picture what my street looks like, but they are all so similar, these houses, and I cannot think, cannot hear my thoughts, because blood is pounding in my ears. And then I open my eyes and I see a car coming towards me, its blue and yellow colouring so distinctive, and I step to the side of the road, wave my arms in the air, implore it to stop. The police car pulls up at the kerb and the electric window winds down, and before it is all the way open, relief is tumbling from my lips.
LIVVY
BRISTOL
Livvy stopped the pushchair outside the horses’ paddock and set the brake. Bending down to crouch beside Leo, she pointed out the horses’ long tails, hoofed feet, the way their ears swivelled to detect sound. In his buggy, Leo smiled, kicked his legs, and Livvy laughed at his joy in coming here for a sixth consecutive Friday morning.
Wheeling the buggy on towards the goats, Livvy mentally fast-forwarded to this evening, when Dominic would be home. When they’d spoken last night, he’d seemed stressed: something to do with delays to the construction and an unexpected need to revisit some of the plans. Reading between the lines, Livvy suspected that perhaps there’d been some mistakes in Dominic’s calculations, but she hadn’t asked him outright, didn’t want to compound his anxiety.
Arriving at the goats, Leo squealed with delight as one of them trotted over to the wooden fence, pushed its muzzle through the gap between the slats, low enough for Leo to reach out and stroke it. Watching her son, it was astonishing to Livvy how much he’d changed in the six months since his birth. It seemed, at once, that he had been in her life forever and yet, at the same time, that she had known him for the swiftest blink of an eye. She could no longer remember life without him and yet, some days, it seemed to her only moments since she had first held him in her arms. Friends with older children constantly urged her to savour every moment, commit it all to memory, warned her that so many of the details later disappeared into the ether, like the contrails of an aeroplane evaporating in the sky.
‘Livvy?’
Livvy turned around, took a moment to catch her breath, so unexpected was the presence of the person standing beside her, clutching a handbag to her chest as though fearful someone was about to steal it.
‘What are you doing here?’ Livvy heard the accusatory tone in her voice, did not try to suppress it.
Dominic’s mother held Livvy’s gaze for a few seconds before her eyes were drawn to Leo in his pushchair. Livvy watched Imogen hungrily devouring the sight of her grandson, eyes darting from one part of him to the next: head, shoulders, knees, toes. There was something voracious in it, as though Imogen were a character in a fairy tale who would, if Livvy were not careful, gobble Leo whole.
‘I asked what you’re doing here. Please don’t tell me it’s just a coincidence.’
Imogen’s eyes flicked up to Livvy as though, for a moment, she had forgotten she was there. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that I know you often come here on Friday mornings—’
‘How do you know? Have you been following us?’ Even as she spoke, Livvy knew the question was rhetorical. The blue Ford Fiesta skulking past their house. The knock on the door when Dominic wasn’t home. Imogen’s sudden appearance here now, her clear knowledge of their weekly visits. A cold veil of panic blindsided her momentarily.