She continues chattering away to herself, the way she does when she’s having a conversation with one of her dolls.
“Come on,” I say, gathering her pajamas from the end of the bed. “If you’re quick you can have two stories with Uncle Dom.”
She’s in the corner, sitting at the little red plastic desk and chair she inherited from her brother last year. The edges of the table are lined with Playmobil figures, every other square inch of it covered with coloring books, pens, bits of Lego, and chunky plastic jewelry.
But she’s not playing with any of that. Instead, she has one of her toy phones pressed to her ear, burbling away happily in the way she’s done ever since she started sitting with Jess and me on our work-from-home days.
“Yes,” she says. “I have a cat and a dog and my brother has a hamster called Mr. Stay Puft and there was a bird on our step but he died.” A short pause. “I don’t know. It was sad.” Another pause. “No. Don’t like it.” Pause. “Just don’t.”
“Daisy?”
My daughter finally turns and I notice something that hits me with the force of a slap.
She’s not talking on one of her toy phones.
She has the little flip phone pressed to her ear, the old Motorola I’d left charging on my desk earlier.
“Daisy?” I hold my hand out. “Give me the phone, please.”
“My daddy’s here,” she says solemnly into the mouthpiece. “It’s my bath time.”
She hands me the mobile, its small screen glowing.
“Who is this?” I say. The flip phone is still warm from her hand. “Hello? Hello?”
But there is only dead air when I hold it to my ear. I study the screen, the blocky visual menu of basic functions arranged in a square, three by three. Pressing the green “dial” button doesn’t seem to do anything.
“Who were you talking to, Daisy?”
“Santa.”
“Really?” When she nods reluctantly, I add: “Was there really someone there, or were you just pretending?”
“It’s secret.”
I kneel down to her level. “Where did you find this phone, sweetie?”
She shrugs her little shoulders. “Can’t remember.”
“Did you find it on my desk?”
“No.” Her bottom lip juts out. “It’s mine. Callum gave it to me.”
“Callum’s had it too?” I scroll through menus, looking for incoming calls or dialed numbers but I can’t seem to see anything that’s new. Half knowing it was ridiculous—the phone was an antique, it wasn’t even on a network, so how could it make or receive calls? Unless Charlie had rigged it up in some way so it could make calls again, unless…
No. That was absurd.
My daughter seems to have forgotten about it already.
“Do Ihaveto have a bath?” She flops dramatically onto her bed. “Callum doesn’t have to.”
I slip the phone into my pocket and lift her up across my chest, her arms and legs hanging loose like a rag doll.
“Callum will go in right after you, Daisy-Doo. Come on.”
Uncle Dom is chosen by both younger children for a bedtime story and doesn’t leave until they’re asleep.
He refuses a nightcap, insists a week of night shifts has worn him out but says—with a meaningful look at me—that he’ll call tomorrow. When Leah heads up to her room I do a sweep of the house, checking that all the doors are shut and locked. Windows in the back reception room and the dining room have been left open to let out some of the spring heat and the clean sharp smell of drying paint, so I pull them shut too before putting supper down for Coco and Steve.
