and I’d tried to scrub it off.
‘Yes,’ I say again.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she says. ‘Get back to me if there’s anything you need, anything you want to ask.’
‘Thank you.’
Stupefied, I close the cover on my phone.
‘Shit,’ Nick says.
I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. ‘We’ve got to find her,’ I say.
‘We will,’ he says, but I read the flicker of doubt in his eyes.
‘Can you ring Tom?’ I say.
There’s a moment’s pause. How can he hesitate? He gets out his own phone. I’m wiping my nose and trying not to beat myself up for crying. What’s the point of bottling it all up? Of course I should fucking cry. What sort of mother am I? What mother wouldn’t?
I sit on the floor while Nick talks to Tom. From his side of the conversation I can tell Tom’s asking a whole lot of questions, none of which Nick can answer. Then Nick covers the phone and says to me, ‘He wants to come round.’
The thought exhausts me but who am I to shut him out? We have things to do, things to prepare, like the detective said.
I nod to Nick, blow my nose and wipe my face.
‘These ones.’ Finn comes up the stairs holding posters. ‘And Isaac has four, not three. But I don’t mind.’
I can’t speak for a moment, still full of tears. Finn watches me. Can he tell I’ve been crying?
‘Get the Blu Tack,’ I say, as brightly as I can, ‘and we’ll put them up now.’
Once he is out of earshot I ask Nick to do it with them. I don’t want to. I don’t want to cover up her lovely riot of pictures.
The GP is new to me. We never seem to see the same one twice. It’s a group practice, and although we have a named individual as our primary carer, she only works two days a week and her appointments are like gold dust. So Dr Munir has never met Isaac. He listens while I go over our worries, the run of fevers, the vomiting. Choosing my words carefully, I also talk about his outbursts, the anger and biting.
To his credit the doctor talks directly to Isaac, too, asking him if he has any pains, if anything is worrying him. Isaac shakes his head each time.
‘What about school?’
‘Sit quietly on the carpet,’ Isaac says, ‘or Miss gets cross.’
‘Do you get cross?’
‘Sometimes,’ Isaac says.
‘Why?’
‘If Finn is naughty or Sebastian hits me.’
‘Does Sebastian hit you a lot?’ Dr Munir says.
A toss of the shoulders. ‘Not really.’
Dr Munir asks Isaac to stick his tongue out and say aaah, which he does, grinning at the cheek of it. He examines Isaac’s ears and feels under his neck. ‘Slight swelling of the glands here but nothing to be concerned about. Sometimes an infection presents with vomiting and that would account for the swelling too. Any toilet problems – constipation, diarrhoea?’
