Page 36 of Special Delivery
At 4.40 pm, he didn’t pick up.
She tried again at 5 pm, but he still didn’t pick up.
At 5.15 pm, he didn’t pick up.
At 5.30 pm, he didn’t pick up.
Poppy pinched the bridge of her nose, determined to stay optimistic. She’d give him until 6 pm. It was time for Maeve’s bath anyway.
As she ran her hands under the water to test the temperature, Poppy forced herself to attempt some yogic breathing.Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four. There was no reason to get upset. It wasn’t even that late. It wasn’t Patrick’s fault that she’d been up since 4.45 am with a clingy baby. Lots of people’s days—Patrick’s included—only started oncethe sun went down. Poppy lowered her daughter into the bath, cradling Maeve’s head on her forearm as she filled a cup with bathwater and poured it over her daughter’s belly. It wasn’t Patrick’s fault she was already thinking about bedtime routines. He had no idea their days began winding down now.
At 6 pm, with Maeve in fresh pyjamas, she tried again. The ringtone pitter-pattered up and down and up and down, like her rollercoaster of a day, then abruptly cut out.FaceTime Unavailableit said.
Breathe. Poppy punched out a text.
Hi I thought we were going to FaceTime? Maeve is about to go to bed.
Instantly, three dots appeared. Proof of life! Poppy waited, but the three dots disappeared.
Swallowing hard, she punched the green button and called him. It rang out.
Breathe, breathe, breathe. It was proving hard to exhale through her rigid jaw. Sheknewhe had his phone with him. Why couldn’t he just pick up? Why was he forcing her into this obsessive version of herself? She couldn’t give two shits if he wanted to ghost her, but this was about her daughter—theirdaughter. Maeve’s future self-worth depended on it.
Her phone beeped with an incoming text: FT not gonna work today. At Ryan’s.
Poppy’s neck muscles went stiff.We don’t mind. Just call us from the beer garden
Nah—will call later
When?
The air outside was now liquid black. Poppy waited and waited. No three dots appeared.
Screw it. She called him again. This time it didn’t even ring. She tried him again and again and again. She carried Maeve to her bedroom and lay her gently in her cot, kissed her goodnight, closed the door, and she called him again.
A text arrived.FFS Poppy! I’m meeting with clients.
Poppy barked a bitter laugh. Of course—so-called ‘clients’ appearing on the very day he’d agreed by singular consonant to meet his daughter. How convenient.
She stormed to the kitchen. She needed to do something with her hands—squeeze the life from a broom, scrub the bench till her elbows ached, scrape a cloth against the oven racks until her fingertips bled—but her house was already spotless. For him.
A fat tear slid down the curve of her cheek. She’d wasted a whole day worrying about this FaceTime call, wilfully ignoring the fact that Patrick had never—not once in the last three months—shown any interest in contacting his daughter. She’d buried that truth bomb in the unused part of her brain (the maths part) and pretended she was being optimistic when, really, she was being a naive imbecile.
Poppy wiped her cheeks roughly. There was no-one she could call about this. Dani would declare that Patrick was an arsehole who deserved to have his balls chopped off in a speed-boat accident. Her mum would insist Patrick had the potential to be a great dad. The problem was, depending on the speaker and audience and time of day and astrological moon patterns of Venus and Saturn and the NASDAQ, Poppy could agree with both of them, which confirmed her theory that when shewas in Patrick’s orbit, she became a spineless idiot, incapable of autonomous or rational thought.
A familiar pressure was building in her rib cage, squeezing her organs and tightening her throat. The gleaming benchtop jeered at her. The stovetop sparkled in pity. Everything was too clean and too shiny, her gullible face reflected off every surface and she couldn’t stand it a second longer. Poppy grabbed her phone and ran for the door.
The air outside was white-hot ice. It scalded her bare feet, the freezing chill warping her toes, but she would run until she couldn’t feel them. She would run until her sweat soaked into the fabric of this stupid ironed shirt. She would run until the voices in her head dissolved like steam in this chill-ridden air.
A bat flew overhead, its wings spread wide. Poppy stopped abruptly and a sob heaved from her chest as she sank onto the kerb of her driveway. The concrete beneath her was an arctic tundra, but that seemed inconsequential at this point. Sports bra or no sports bra, she couldn’t run further. This was the outermost edge of her bubble and she already felt guilty for being so far from Maeve. If the police found her now—crying like a madwoman in her gutter, neglecting her daughter who slept peacefully inside but could wake at any moment due to any number of life-threatening issues—they could whisk Maeve away and hand her to Patrick. He knew how to play the game. He’d definitely pick up calls from the police.
‘Poppy, is that you?’ The voice came from across the hedge.
‘Mary? What are you doing outside?’
‘I could ask the same of you, love.’
‘I was …’ Poppy looked at her bare toes, already blueish in the cold.I was losing my mind. ‘I was just going back inside.’ She stood up and pulled her sleeves over her hands. Her toes were a lost cause.
