71

ANNIE

The officer who had arrested me was removing items from my handbag and listing them out loud to a policewoman behind the desk who was inputting the data into a computer. I stared blankly ahead.

‘One mobile phone, black, Nokia. One blue and green patterned diary. One set of keys with round pink crystal frame around a mirror.’

I lifted my head and looked at the keys he was describing and I thought back to the day when I found them under the bed in Ben’s room. I had meant to throw them away, it was careless of me. A schoolboy error. Now here they were, retrieved from the inside pocket of my handbag.

I had sat in the car for long enough and watched two carefree women cackling and heading out to enjoy themselves. I was drawn to the flat that night where I knew my son lived but I had never been invited.

I watched a pair of red heels disappear around the corner and then I walked up the hill and let myself in to the flat. It was a cold night and I had on my thick coat with the big buttons. I entered the hallway pausing to take in all the paraphernalia: stacks of paperbacks, photos in mismatched frames littering the wall, shoes left where they were thrown off and then found my way into the kitchen. The kitchen counter was a mess with empty take out cartons. I saw a scrawled note above the cooker and I leant against the hob to read it. I didn’t recognise it as Ben’s writing. ‘DO NOT USE’. It was an old flat and so were the appliances. The cooker was a small gas one, the sort of one I had when I was a young woman. The kind of one that needs lighting with matches. Then I heard keys in the door and instinctively went to pull back but as I did my buttons had become caught on a knob at the front. I yanked it forcefully and stepped back against the wall of the kitchen just in time to see a pair of red shoes flash past. I had seen all I needed to see. The mess they resided in. I slipped from the kitchen and glanced into the lounge where I saw another flash of the red shoes, I could just about make out a body on all fours, reaching behind a chair. I thought it was her. I thought it was the girl who had taken my son and I paused for a brief second to imagine all the possibilities of the two of us alone in the flat.

Then I smelt it. Gas. My button had obviously forced the knob to one side and turned the gas on. Then something else took over, it was as though I was having an out of body experience. I walked back over to the oven and turned all four knobs on full so I could hear the gas hissing out. I wasn’t sure what sort of damage would be caused but I pulled back and crept silently towards the door, opening it just enough to slip through and out into the street. Later that night when Daisy and Ben arrived, I felt nothing. I just thought it was all a terrible shame. I had often brushed against my own old cooker in my younger days and seconds later smelt the gas. That’s the trouble with old appliances, I suppose if you were full of a cold and lit a cigarette many minutes later you would be none the wiser.