She pulls open her laptop and googles ‘Saffyre Maddox’.
The papers all run a story about her disappearance, they all use the same photograph of her. None of them has any extra detail.
At around 2 p.m. she gets a reply from Roan.
It says, simply:Oh my God.
She replies:I know.
But the ticks remain grey.
He’s gone already.
The card that arrived on Valentine’s Day for Roan still sits in the kitchen drawer in its ripped envelope. Cate had tucked it firmly away between a pile of tea towels, hidden from prying teenage fingers. She had categorically not looked at it after their lovely Valentine’s night in Hampstead, and then not the following day either. Then it had been the weekend and now it was half-term and, strange as it sounds, she has stopped thinking about the card. It bears no relationship to the harmonious atmosphere in their home, to the soft exchanges between them, the sex they’ve had twice since then, both times initiated by her. The card has become metaphorical dust, of no consequence or interest to her.
But now.
She claps her hands to her ears as something passes through her thoughts, a high-speed train of a notion. The feeling takes her back to last year, to when her whole life had felt like this, when every minute of every day had been spent potholing through doubt and paranoia and distrust. She had not been happy in that place and she does not want to go back there. She is happy here, right here, in this rose-hued world of Valentine’s cards and snatched hugs.
She decides to strip the beds. Cate is not usually the type of person to use domestic drudgery to take her mind off things, but now she sweeps through the three bedrooms of the flat, trying toput as much space between herself and the drawer in the kitchen as possible.
In Georgia’s room she pulls off the crystal-white sheets that her daughter insists upon; long gone are the days of pink and lilac fairies. White sheets, white lamps, white sheepskin rug. When Georgia was younger, thirteen, fourteen, Cate would find it virtually impossible not to rifle though her daughter’s things when she was in her bedroom, desperate for clues to the person she was turning into. Now she has no need; Georgia shows herself to Cate crystal clear, every minute of every day. She hides nothing.
Cate moves efficiently around her bed, balls the sheets together and leaves them on the floor in the hallway. Then she goes to Josh’s room.
Josh is a tidy boy; he always has been. She pulls the blue chambray sheets from his bed, then puts on a fresh green sheet. His laptop is tucked underneath his bed, plugged in and charging. She is half tempted to open it, to see what her mysterious son does when he’s alone in here, but for some reason her son’s privacy seems more sacred, more fragile than her daughter’s. She doesn’t ponder for too long on why she might feel like this, she just does.
Then she goes to her bedroom, her marital quarters, where, for the last five days at least, marital things have been happening. She snatches up the grey bedding and creates another ball, adds it to the pile in the hallway, stretches a pale blue sheet over their mattress, puffs up the duvet inside a fresh cover.
The curtains in here are still drawn; at this time of the year it sometimes seems futile to open the curtains in a room which wasdark when you awoke and will be dark once more when you return.
She pulls them apart and is startled by the reminder of the world beyond. There is her street, there is the man with the white dog, there is the bin on the corner that only gets emptied once a fortnight when its contents are spilling on to the street, there is a Sainsbury’s delivery van, an Amazon delivery van, there is the house across the street with the armchair on the driveway and …
She stops. She remembers. Remembers standing right here. It was night-time. There was something …What was it? When?
She shakes her head slightly, trying to locate the source of the half-formed memory.
Was it that night? Was it Valentine’s night? Drawing the curtains, readying herself for the possibility of sex with Roan, a figure, out there? Movement. Muted voices. A sense of being under surveillance? Or was she imagining that?
She had not been sober, after all. There had been champagne, followed by beer, followed by more beer in the Thai restaurant. No, she had not been sober, not at all.
She turns, as if someone has just called her name.
But they haven’t of course; she is alone.
It’s the card in the kitchen drawer calling her. The card telling her that there is something she’s not seeing, that maybe she’s not mad or bad or wrong.
Before she can check herself or think herself down, she strides back into the kitchen, pulls open the drawer, flips through the tea towels and pulls it out.
Her hands shake as she takes the card from the envelope.
The card has a pink bird of some description on the front, a watercolour, rather insipid. Inside, in a very childish script, are the words:
Dear Roan
Thank You for being my therpist.
Please be my Valntine.
