I went out into the burning sun. Meena would already be at the park now. It seemed that all the houses opposite us had become smaller and larger at once. I walked down the steps from our house and crossed the road, almost being hit by a boy on a bike.
I knocked quietly at the front door of the house opposite, which, like ours, had been purchased by an industrious landlord and turned into several bedsits. When nobody came to the door following my almost inaudible knocking, I was relieved that I could honestly tell Meena I had tried. I repeated the pattern on the houses to its left and right, until I came to a door and was about to knock, only for a tall man in a camel-coloured suit to appear. He held the door open for me, and I thanked him and went in.
The hallway smelled of other people’s cooking – of onions and peppers and toast. Everything was quiet, and I just stood for a moment, wondering what it would be like to live in this building instead of my own. I could be a person who lived here, instead of across the road. I could walk across this floor and unlock the door to 2A and call it home. If I lived here, Meena would just be a woman from across the road I saw occasionally. I’d see her float by in one of her long dresses and I’d wonder about her, but I’d never know.
——
About three days after we brought Davey home, Johnny went back to work. Up until that point, I hadn’t felt any great sense of dread or fear over the little pink thing in a bundle of blankets in my arms, but as I watched Johnny trudge through the darkness from the living-room window, I felt this incredible sense of weight. I looked at Davey who was sleeping, a bubble of saliva on his lip, and I saw this deep dark space. How could I have had a baby, I wondered, when I didn’t know how to drive a car? When I didn’t know how to pay any kind of tax? When I didn’t know how to roast a chicken? How could I have a baby when I didn’t know how to be a mother?
——
A woman in an orange sundress came down the stairs.
‘Have you seen a chicken?’ I asked her. She gave me a baffled smile, put her sunglasses over her eyes, and said nothing as she opened the door and went out into the world. She left behind her a sweet powdery perfume scent. I followed her out into the sunshine.
I wandered down the road.
——
When Davey first got ill, Johnny didn’t want to take him to the doctor.
——
I walked for about ten minutes, and then dipped out of the sunshine of the chicken-less day and into the newsagent’s on the corner of our road. The newsagent was watching cricket on the grainy black and white television that stood on a chair – its antenna being given a boost by a wire coat hanger.
He groaned at a caught ball and then turned.
‘Margot, my dear,’ he said, ‘what can I do for you?’
‘Have’ – I cleared my throat, but my voice still came out strangled – ‘have you seen a chicken?’
‘Sorry, dear. We can’t sell meat until we get the fridge unit fixed.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘our chicken. Me and Meena have a pet chicken and he’s gone missing.’
‘You have a pet chicken?’
I nodded.
He gave me a bemused smile and wrinkled up his nose. ‘If he comes in trying to buy seed, I’ll let you know.’ And then he wheezed out a laugh.
——
Two days after Davey passed, I woke up in the middle of the night, hit with the sudden feeling that he had just been crying and then suddenly fallen silent. I raced to his cot but he wasn’t there – where had he gone? He was too young to be able to climb out of his cot. I could hear the echo of his cry in my ears. I ran back to our bedroom. Johnny was sleeping, one arm hanging out of the bed, his knuckles on the carpet.
‘Johnny, Johnny, wake up!’
He stirred.
‘The baby’s gone!’ I cried.
‘I know,’ he murmured, thick with sleep.
‘Someone’s taken him!’ I looked at the closed window. ‘We have to call the police!’ I pulled the telephone in from the living room, the cord straining and eventually pulling out of the wall altogether. I held the phone in my hands out to him. ‘We have to call the police!’
Johnny sat up then, staring at me with such contempt that I could feel it in my stomach. ‘What?’
The veil of sleep lifted and I put the telephone down on the end of the bed.
——
Beside the newsagent’s was a hair parlour, with a row of those whole-head driers used for setting perms. I couldn’t go in there, I couldn’t face the embarrassment. I walked onwards to the end of the road, but when I reached the junction it felt like I’d found the junction at the end of the world.