‘Where’s Nelly?’ I shout at Aimée, who appears alone at the kitchen door. ‘She’s not even had breakfast yet.’
‘She’s not there,’ says Aimée, looking worried. ‘She’s gone.’
Chapter70Gone
‘She’s not in her bed?’ I ask.
‘There are two pillows under the duvet,’ says Aimée, as if it’s not her entire fault.
I rush upstairs to confirm that my six-year-old daughter has run away. I’ve all but secured her place at Adams. All she needs to do is turn up. She doesn’t have to write a word. Her lack of marks will be attributed to Hero. I told her it was all in the bag, and she does this to me, to her own mother.
‘Nelly’s run away,’ I say to Stephen as I arrive back in the kitchen.
Stephen’s face indicates in that tiny moment, not concern or fear for his firstborn but censure.
‘Oh, I see,’ I say. ‘You think it’s my fault.’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘I can see what you think, Stephen, and if you think that I’m to blame, say it.’
‘No one’s to blame. I just don’t think Nelly responds well to pressure.’
‘No one likes pressure, Stephen, but without pressure we can’t breathe. We’d be in a vacuum; we’d lose consciousness and die. Is that what you want for Nelly? To be starved of oxygen in the state sector while you continue to breathe the air of undeserved privilege?’
‘We should look for her,’ he says.
Argument won, I think.
We search the house, top to bottom. Nelly has won every single game of hide-and-seek she’s ever played and has an ability to enclose herself in the most extraordinary places. An hour into our search and we’re all frantic. Stephen has called the police, who are keen that we update them in the next half hour if she’s not found.
Aimée searches like you’d expect her to, by pretending to look, and not pretending very well at all. She glances into each room and sighs, which doesn’t amount to looking, as I tell her on more than one occasion.
We extend our search into the garden, including the shed, but to no avail, and regroup in the kitchen. Nelly will miss her exam if we don’t find her, and her place will be lost. Stephen is shaking his head. I’m not sure why. I send him to check the cellar but he’s afraid I’ll lock him in again and refuses.
We start phoning friends. If Nelly left the house by the back door, to avoid triggering the Ring doorbell, where else could she go? One by one, we tell our friends the news, and they respond with shock and fear. No one can do enough for us, which is nice, but no Nelly anywhere.
Nathan sleeps through the whole affair, even when we lift his bed off the floor to look underneath. He finally appears, looking like he’s still half in the land of dreams, his pyjamas all wrinkled, clutching his toy bunny.
‘Nelly’s missing,’ I say.
‘She’s in bed,’ he says, yawning.
‘No, darling, that’s just pillows.’
He shakes his head, opens the cupboard in search of cereal, and says, ‘She’s in the pillow.’
As Stephen tries to question Nathan, I run up the stairs and open the bedroom door.
‘Nelly!’ I shout.
I hear giggling from the two pillows lying together on her mattress. Nelly has carefully concealed herself by pushing her legs in one pillow case, and her body in the other, and flipping herself upside down.
‘You are... annoyingly good at hiding,’ I say, and she appearswith a smile. She likes winning. If she’d have shown anything like this level of application to her non-verbal reasoning, I might not have had to blackmail my good friend’s daughter out of a school place.
We arrive at Adams with minutes to spare, but the school has yet to open its gates. This is presumably to assert their power and create an impression of market demand. I’m not impressed as it’s freezing, and we pass hordes of parents and children shivering in the cold. Parking is impossible, so I double park and put my hazards on.
I drag Nelly from the car and stand near the back of the queue until the gate finally opens. We shuffle forward, observing the ballet of parental expectation and ambition being metamorphosed into affection and love as they say goodbye to their darlings, most of whom are trembling as they have prioritized fashion over comfort and are not wearing coats.
