I put the pram down and fish my hand sanitizer and phone out of my bag. I have seven missed calls, all from Dan. Christ, I think to myself, picturing Dan trying repeatedly and with increasing irritation opening and closing the same three kitchen cupboards in search of a jar of pesto while Coco whines for her lunch. What’s the crisis this time, Dan? Oh, you can’t find the fucking colander.
Then, a microsecond later, it occurs to me that something really might have happened, and for every second that Dan does not answer his phone, my panic escalates.
It keeps ringing. I tell myself it is fine and I am being ridiculous.
It still keeps ringing. I tell myself that he has probably just locked them both out or is checking whether he needs to pick up anything for dinner.
Still ringing. Probably, I tell myself, it was just a pocket call and that is why he is not picking up now. I’m sure they are at the playground and having a lovely time.
His phone keeps ringing.
His phone keeps ringing.
The name of a pub. Three letters. An r, a d, and a capital N. It’s lucky I’ve always been good at crossword puzzles. Come to think of it, Grace used to enjoy them too. The funny thing with crosswords and that sort of business is that even when you think you are stumped, even when you have put the paper aside and gone off to do something else, your brain is still working on the answers you didn’t get, ticking away, making the connections that had your conscious brain perplexed. Then when you pick the paper up and sit down with your pencil again a few hours later, there they are, the answers, just waiting for you to write them down.
I strode off confidently down a blind alley at first. As far as the r and the d were concerned, they surely—in a pub name—had to be the second half of Lord. Lord N____?, I thought. Why, it must be Lord Nelson, of course.
My mouth was dry. My heart was thumping.
From reading Mamabare’s posts, from reading Emmy’s interviews, from listening to her talk to other people like her on podcasts, I have accumulated over time a little treasure trove of information about where she and her family live. I know, for instance, that they live east. I know they are only ten minutes from the Westfield shopping center. I know they are close enough to a big park to walk there with a buggy, and that when Emmy worked in magazines she sometimes used to cycle to work along the canal. I know there is a Tube station and a Tesco Metro and where they live is equidistant between two schools (the good school and the other place, as Emmy always calls them). I know they do not live in any of the places I have seen or heard Emmy complain about being priced out of. I have heard her say at least twice how much she wished they lived closer to a Waitrose. I know there is a petrol station just around the corner where she sometimes used to go for nappies and/or magazines and/or emergency chocolate when Coco was first born.
Not much to go on, until now.
According to Google, there are eight pubs called the Lord Nelson in London. Three are too far west. One is too far south. One is way, way out, practically in Middlesex.
That left three. The first looked promising, when I typed the postcode into Street View. The road looked like the kind of place I could imagine someone like Emmy living. It was just around the corner from the Tube. There was a petrol station in walking distance and a Tesco Metro. It was the house itself that was all wrong. There was no way Emmy Jackson lived behind those greying net curtains, in a house with a front door painted with red gloss paint. Neither of the places on either side of it were any good either. One had a load of posters in the window for an animal welfare charity; the other had a load of weeds growing out of the cracked concrete of the front garden and a car on bricks on the driveway.
The second Lord Nelson was next door to a high-rise.
The third Lord Nelson had metal shutters up on all the windows and appeared to have been out of business for some time.
I was genuinely stumped. I actually retrieved the magazine from the recycling pile to look at it again and check I hadn’t made some kind of mistake, that I had not missed some crucial detail. There it was: definitely a pub, definitely directly opposite their house, and those were definitely the letters visible through their front window. It did not make any sense. Unless everything Mamabare had ever said and written about her neighborhood was an elaborate act of misdirection? Unless they actually lived in a completely different part of London to the one they claimed?
But none of the other five Lord Nelsons in London fitted the bill either. One was opposite a park. One faced onto a dual carriageway. None of the frontages of any of the pubs matched with what was visible through the photographed window of Emmy and her husband’s house.
I turned off the computer in frustration and went through to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. It was almost ten o’clock. What had started as an evening of great excitement had gradually turned flat, then curdled. I went through to the living room and turned on the news. It was all bad. After about five minutes I turned it off and went to bed.
I had switched the bedside light off and checked my alarm and was thinking about something else entirely, about a couple of things I needed to do in the morning, when it hit me.
Lord Napier.
There was a pub opposite the railway station in the town where I grew up called the Lord Napier.
I switched the light back on. I went through to the computer. As it warmed up and turned on, I drummed my fingers impatiently on the edge of the keyboard.
There are three pubs called the Lord Napier in London. There is only one in east London. I looked it up on Google Maps.
It is five minutes from a Tube station. It is around the corner from a petrol station. It is a quick stroll from a Tesco Metro. It is nearish to the canal.
I checked how long it would take to get from the pub (or opposite it) to Westfield. The answer: exactly ten minutes, on the Central line.
I clicked on Street View. I entered the postcode. I reached across for the paper. I looked from screen to photograph and from photograph to screen again. We had a match. I scrolled the screen around until I was looking at the house opposite. It had new curtains, a freshly painted dark grey front door, shutters.
Hello, Emmy.
Dan
Answer your phone. Answer your phone. Answer your fucking phone.
It’s definitely ringing. Ringing and ringing and then going to voicemail. Emmy must be above ground by now. Why is it still going to voicemail?
Jesus Christ.
I suspect every parent has experienced this at some point. That feeling, that gut-twisting, pore-prickling feeling, your throat tightening and your pulse pounding in your temples and your breath catching in your throat and your eyes frantically scanning the crowd at waist height, at child height—and the child who was holding your hand literally two seconds ago nowhere to be seen. And even as half of your brain is telling yourself not to be so silly, that she’s just slipped off to have another look at something in the window of the toy shop you passed a few minutes ago, has just seen something that caught her eye (a poster, a snack stand, something shiny) and wandered over to investigate, the other half of your brain has already leapt to the worst possible conclusions.
We are in Westfield, the mall, the one near the former Olympic Park. Coco and I have already been to two shoe shops and are now in a third. Having finally found a pair of proper, sensible shoes that fit and which she does not entirely hate, I let go of her hand just for a second to pay and to take charge of the bag, and when I turn back to ask if she fancies an ice cream she’s gone.