People LIke Her(15)

There have been times recently when the thoughts I have found myself thinking, the things I have imagined myself doing, the kind of human being into which I seem to be turning, have genuinely terrified me.

Dan

It is absolutely hideous. That’s the first thing that strikes me about the object that Coco is holding. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it is the ugliest, dirtiest stuffed toy I have ever seen. Its eye buttons are chipped. Its ears are grimy and sucked-looking. One of its overall straps is broken. Its mouth looks like a surgical scar. My immediate instinct is to snatch it out of Coco’s hands and chuck it as far as I can, slam-dunk it into the nearest bin, then see if there are any wipes or hand sanitizer in my backpack.

The second thing that strikes me is that Coco was definitely not carrying it when she wandered off.

We’ve had several conversations about not swearing in front of the kids, Emmy and I. Usually, I’d like to point out, it’s Emmy who slips up in this regard. Who drops an F-bomb when she opens a cupboard and a bag of flour leaps out and bursts on the counter. Who calls someone a wanker under her breath (not quite quietly enough to escape little ears) as they cut in front of us in a queue at an airport. Who has to wriggle out of explaining what a dickhead is at the dinner table. On this occasion—blame the adrenaline still coursing around my body, my still-jangling nerves—it’s me whose temper gets the better of them.

“Jesus Christ, Coco, where the fuck did you get that?”

There’s always that horrible moment after you snap at a child when you see their eyes widen, moisten, can see the child retreating into themselves. That moment when you feel yourself desperately wanting to recall the words, stop them reverberating in the air. She tries belatedly to tuck the toy behind her back.

“Nowhere,” she says.

“Show me.”

Eventually, reluctantly, somewhat unexpectedly, she complies.

“Thank you,” I say.

I kneel down to inspect the thing. Is it meant to be a dog? A bear? A monkey? It’s impossible to tell. If it ever had a tail, it doesn’t have one any longer. I really hope it’s not my daughter who has been sucking on its ears.

“Where did it come from, Coco?” I ask her again, a little more calmly, in a tone of voice intended to sound coaxing rather than upset.

“Mine,” she replies.

“I’m sorry, darling,” I tell her. “But I don’t think it is yours, is it?”

I’m literally holding the thing between pinched forefingers.

“Do you want to tell me where you got it, Coco? Do you remember?”

She avoids eye contact.

“Did you find it somewhere?”

She shrugs one shoulder noncommittally.

If she can remember where she found it, I tell her, we could go and put it back there again. It must belong to someone, this teddy, I point out. Another little girl or boy. And whoever it belongs to must have dropped it or lost it or maybe it fell out of the bottom of their pram, and how did she think they would feel when they got home and realized?

“Mine,” she says again.

“What do you mean, yours?” I ask her.

She does not answer me.

“If you don’t tell me where you got this thing, Coco,” I tell her in my firmest, most imposingly parental voice, “it’s going straight in the trash.”

Coco pulls a face and shakes her head.

“I’m serious,” I tell her.

No response.

“Final chance,” I say.

She shrugs.

Into the trash it goes.

Stupid move. Stupid fucking move. A real parenting misstep. As we make our way through the mall, she keeps trying to slip her hand out of mine and double back. On the escalator to the Tube platform, she keeps going floppy. I have to pick her up when we actually get to our station. There are looks. When Emmy calls back, we are two minutes from home. She asks if that’s Coco howling in the background. I confirm it is and that the amateur dramatics have been going for over ten minutes now. Her first question is what the hell have I done to her.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Is everything okay?” she asks me. “I’ve got a million missed calls—you scared me. I’ve canceled my meeting and I’m in an Uber on my way back. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say again. “There’s no need to worry. Everything is fine now.”

I really do not want to discuss over the phone the eight and a half minutes this afternoon when I managed to misplace our three-year-old daughter.

All the way home I have been replaying in my head my exchange with Coco, the questions I asked her, the way I framed them, the manner in which I spoke to her, wondering whether a different approach would have been more sensible. All the way home I have been trying to remember exactly what I saw from the escalator, the precise colors of the anorak, exactly what gave me the impression it was a woman. Was it the anorak that was pink, the patches on the back purple? Or was it the other way around? And if I can’t even be sure about that, then what can I be sure about, when it comes to what I thought I saw?

Memory being what it is, it is just as likely my brain is now embroidering facts, filling in the gaps, as it is that I am actually remembering anything useful at this point.

Every time I ask Coco what happened, where she went, why she wandered off, she just says, “Bookshop.”