‘Not happening. You are not getting dragged any further into that drama. Hasn’t she got any friends she can ask?’
After a brief back and forth, my big sister refused to debate with me any more.
‘I’ll go. You get home to your kids.’
‘You’ve never met Silva.’
‘The chances are whichever community midwives are on call on a Friday night have never met her either. If I take over from Dad, Mum will come too. We can’t spring that on him.’
‘Ugh. Fair enough. I’ll message you her address.’
The second I hung up, my phone rang. Dad again.
‘Are you on your way?’
‘About to be.’ I checked the clock. Nine-fifteen. The cottage was a twenty-minute drive. He could wait an extra five minutes.
‘Only… Finn overheard our previous conversation and woke up your sister to tell her the baby was coming, without me realising. They crept downstairs while I was explaining the situation to Janet.’
I didn’t think it was possible to feel more flustered than I had a couple of minutes ago, but my anxiety took great pleasure in proving me wrong.
‘Filling her in on what?’
‘Um. On Brayden being missing.’
‘Please, no. Are they upset?’
Dad didn’t need to reply, as the all-too-familiar sound of Isla crying grew louder in the background.
‘She wants to talk to you,’ Dad said, and a couple of seconds later the wails died down to gulping sobs.
‘Mummy?’
‘Hello, darling. You sound quite upset.’
‘Grandad said that Daddy is lost and no one can find him!’
‘He’s gone away for a few days, that’s all. Like a holiday.’
‘That’s not what Grandad said!’ she shrieked. ‘He’s run away or got hurt or is dead! And now the baby is coming and I don’t want a new baby, I want my daddy!’
‘Darling, please try to listen?—’
‘You have to find Daddy!’
‘I really don’t think that?—’
‘You have to find my daddy!I need my daddy!’
And in my crappy parenting panic, knowing that Silva and her baby needed him, too, accepting that I probably had as good a chance of finding my ex-husband as anyone, I made the kind of stupid promise that I regretted the moment it slipped out of my mouth.
‘Okay. Okay, I’ll find him.’
‘And you won’t come back until he’s stopped being lost!’
‘Don’t worry. It will be okay. You know how good Mummy is at finding things.’
Before I’d finished speaking, Dad was back on the line.
