Did I Mention I Won The Lottery? (31 page)

Kate stood
perfectly still, staring at the empty space he had filled seconds
before. Millie grunted indignantly as no one retrieved her cup,
gave Kate a moment then yelled a little louder to get her mother’s
attention.

‘Sorry Millie
darling.’

Blindly Kate
reached out and stroked her daughter’s silken head.

‘Daddy’s being
silly sweetie. He said he’s leaving!’

She looked down
into Millie’s big blue eyes staring back, listening to her mother’s
words, waiting for her cup.

‘He wouldn’t
leave us Millie,’ Kate laughed. ‘He would never leave you. That’s
just silly isn’t it?’

She picked up
the cup, kissed Millie’s head and stood staring at the sink. She
wasn’t sure how it managed to get so full each morning. She washed,
dried and put everything away every night so she could start with a
clean kitchen the next day. But by the time Alex left for work it
invariably looked as though they’d had a party with the detritus
spread across every surface.

Why on earth
would Alex say such a thing? It wasn’t at all funny.

Kate was ever
so slightly smug in the knowledge that they had a perfect marriage.
They had fallen head over heels in love eight years before and
nothing had changed since. They had been taken somewhat by surprise
the previous year to find that a new member of the family was
expected but Alex adored his daughter, even if he did complain that
for a tiny being she took a huge amount of time, space and
attention. But he wouldn’t leave her. He wouldn’t leave Kate
because they still loved each other.

So why Alex
would come out with such a strange statement on a normal Monday
morning was beyond Kate and shaking her head she rolled up her
sleeves and set to work on the mountain of things in the sink. He
must have been teasing decided Kate, although she found it very
unamusing and it was an elaborate tease to actually bring two
suitcases downstairs.

And why did he
say he’d tried to explain things? What things? Alex wasn’t unhappy.
Neither of them were. They were both tired, most definitely tired.
Life was always hard with the arrival of a new baby but they were
still very much in love and eventually things would get easier,
they both knew that. When Kate had left work to have Millie they’d
both decided that she would not return until Millie was at school.
They wanted Millie to have a stay at home parent and Kate wanted to
be that person. It had resulted in a strain on their budget that
took some juggling, leaving Alex working harder than ever. There
were days when in a fog of exhaustion and mind numbing baby
orientated activity, Kate wondered if perhaps they would all be
better off if Millie spent a couple of days a week at nursery and
Kate found a part time job somewhere. Anywhere really – as long as
she was with adults who didn’t have an overwhelming need to turn
everything into a song. But they had decided it was best if Kate
stayed at home so they stuck with the plan.

Alex had
occasionally complained about spending every evening in the house,
listening to the sound of Millie’s soft breaths through the baby
monitor. Why couldn’t they have the occasional night out he had
mumbled? But Kate had thought about the effort of washing her hair,
finding clothes that weren’t covered in dried porridge or sticky
fingerprints, the effort of finding a baby sitter and decided that
a night cuddling in front of the TV was just as acceptable.

But they were
still happy. Very happy.

Millie was
grizzling. She had abandoned the cup and was rubbing her eyes with
her tiny fists as she whimpered. Scooping her out of the highchair,
Kate headed upstairs where she ran a bath full of sweet smelling
baby bubbles, washed Millie until she gleamed, fluffed up the
blonde baby curls and dressed her in a clean, fresh vest, pink
woolly tights and soft pink dress

She breathed in
the delicious aroma of clean baby.

‘Why would he
say such a hurtful thing Millie? Why on earth would he say he was
leaving?’

Millie shook
her head fractiously and Kate held her close, feeling the warm
little body relax and go loose. She laid her down in her cot,
watching for a moment as Millie struggled to keep her eyes open
briefly before giving in to the demands of sleep, her eyelashes
resting like smudges on her cheeks.

Wandering back
into her bedroom, Kate stood in the doorway staring at the
wardrobes against the far wall. She really couldn’t understand why
Alex would say such a thing. Perhaps he was actually going
somewhere with work this week and he was angry because she hadn’t
remembered. She did try to listen but when he came home tired, a
little grumpy and wanting to tell her the minutiae of his day, she
did sometimes find it hard to be enthusiastic. What Kate really
wanted was for Alex to come bursting into the kitchen with a huge
smile at the sight of his wife and child and a kiss on the lips for
Kate. Then he would take over the making of the evening meal and
leave Kate to get Millie bathed and in bed using both hands and her
full attention. Or perhaps he would scoop Millie into his arms and
insist on carrying out her nightly ritual so Kate could pour a
glass of wine and relish the idea of cooking a meal without having
a tired baby stuck to her hip. What actually happened was that Alex
would throw his briefcase into the corner of the room and follow
Kate round the kitchen telling her about his day and watch her
prepare their meal while Millie grizzled in her arms. Then he would
sit and catch up with the news while Kate bathed Millie and by the
time their daughter was in bed and Kate and Alex sat at the table
to eat, she was often too exhausted to bother with any further
conversation. Alex had suggested that Kate should put Millie to bed
a little earlier but Kate had been outraged at the idea he was
happy not to see his daughter each evening. Most fathers, she told
him firmly, would welcome the chance to spend an hour at the end of
the day with their new child. So Kate continued to keep Millie up
until Alex came home, acknowledging that exhaustion was an
inevitable side effect of a baby in the home and she tried to smile
and listen to Alex’s tales of office life and murmur the right
things in the right places to show that she supported him.

Kate thought
hard about the last few days. Could Alex have said that the meeting
had been moved and she hadn’t paid attention? Or maybe he was just
trying to catch her out. Alex did that sometimes if he didn’t think
Kate was listening, properly listening. He would throw some
outrageous comment into the conversation and see if she picked up
on it, sending an accusing ‘I knew you weren’t listening’ in her
direction. Like the day he told her that Athens had frozen over and
everyone had been evacuated and Kate had replied ‘I see’.

Maybe she’d not
been listening and he was teaching her a lesson. Of course he
hadn’t actually left, that was a ridiculous thought.

But she carried
on staring at the wardrobes. One door was slightly ajar, Alex’s
door. Kate nibbled at her nails and walked over to stand a little
closer. She couldn’t really see much, just a dark space and taking
another step forward she stretched out a hand, pausing slightly
before letting her fingers curl around the handle and then slowly,
carefully, pulling open the door.

It was empty.
Kate felt her breath catch. She felt the air leave her body in a
sudden whooshing movement that left her dizzy and breathless. She
stared in the empty wardrobe and felt her heart hammering inside
her chest so loudly that it hurt her ribs.

She stepped
back, still staring at the wide open doors and the empty space. She
tried to breathe but oxygen didn’t seem to be reaching her lungs
and she gulped for air. Shaking her head, she looked around. The
book Alex was reading was no longer on his bedside cabinet. The
bits and pieces that he always left on the dressing table were
gone. She walked into the bathroom. His toothbrush was missing, his
shaving foam and the old fashioned shaving brush she had bought him
for his birthday – gone. She threw open the bathroom cabinet. The
second shelf down was empty. His indigestion tablets, his migraine
tablets, his aftershave, the nose hair trimmer she had slipped in
his stocking the previous year and he had laughed at but secretly
used – gone.

She walked into
the spare room on unsteady legs and checked the wardrobe where he
kept his older clothes, some of his suits, his jackets. Gone.

There was
nowhere else to look. All traces of Alex had disappeared and Kate
was left with only one conclusion. That when her husband had
announced that morning he was leaving her, maybe he was telling the
truth.

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