He Saved Her Child, Abandoned Ours novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Burns Form
In A&E at midnight a nurse photographs Tilly's scalded arm. Home, Rhiannon makes her husband watch the footage and leaves with their daughter. In the taxi Tilly says Daddy sleeps at Posy's house too.
The burns nurse photographed my daughter's arm at twenty to midnight, then wrote on the form: no adult present at time of injury.
I read it upside down from the plastic chair.
She sat on the paper-covered bed with her bandaged right arm held out straight in front of her.
She was four years old.
She had not cried once since I carried her into A&E.
"Does it hurt, sweetheart?" the nurse asked.
"A bit," my daughter said. "It's all right. I'm resilient."
I had come home from my charity trip at nine that night.
I had pulled up her pyjama sleeve to kiss her goodnight and found the blisters.
My husband had told me he would be abroad until Friday.
He had told me the new nanny would start on Tuesday, and that I should enjoy my gala in Paris.
"Is there someone we can call?" the nurse asked me. "Her father?"
"He's abroad," I said.
In the taxi home, I opened the camera app for our living room and watched two nights of my own daughter.
She slept curled on the edge of the sofa with no blanket.
She slid off it in her sleep and hit her head on the brass table, and she put both hands over her own mouth so nobody would hear.
Then I watched Wednesday morning, and the kettle.
I put the tablet in my bag and carried Tilly upstairs asleep.
I did not take off my coat.
I waited in the foyer in the dark.
At ten to two the lift opened, and Rafe walked in.
He had his overcoat over one arm and his phone in his hand.
He didn't look at me.
"You're up," he said. "I told you, Rhiannon. Zurich ran long."
"Zurich," I said.
"Move. I'm exhausted."
He put his hand on my waist to shift me out of his path.
I smelled it then.
It was not the air of a private jet.
It was tuberose, heavy and sweet, and I knew exactly whose it was.
I knocked his hand away.
There was a small round sticker on the lapel of his overcoat, with a cartoon tooth on it and the words I WAS BRAVE TODAY.
He saw me looking.
He peeled it off and folded it into his palm.
"Posy's dentist," he said. "She insisted."
"Watch it," I said, and pushed the tablet into his chest.
His hands came up and caught it.
The first clip ran.
Tilly on the sofa, small and shivering, alone.
Then the head against the table, and the hands over the mouth.
"The nanny's visa ran out," I said. "She flew home on Tuesday. I told you that before I left."
"I thought the agency sent someone," he said.
"You didn't check. You didn't ring. You didn't come home once to open the door."
I swiped to the next clip.
A chair dragged across the kitchen floor, and a little girl in dinosaur pyjamas climbing it to reach the kettle.
I watched his face while the water went over her arm.
His fingers whitened on the edges of the tablet.
On the screen, Tilly got down, went to the sink, put her arm under the cold tap and sat on the floor beneath it.
She made no sound at all.
"She didn't cry," I said. "Do you know why?"
He said nothing.
"Because you told her that Posy never cries."
"Stop," he said.
"Where were you?"
He looked toward the lift.
"There was an emergency. Cressida's ex-husband turned up at her house and Posy was terrified. I took them to Hallam Court until security sorted it."
"You took another woman's child somewhere safe," I said.
"While yours boiled her own arm in an empty flat."
"It was a mistake!"
He stepped into me, close and furious, and I did not step back.
"I didn't know she was alone. If I had known..."
"You swore you'd stopped seeing her three years ago."
His hand closed around my upper arm, hard.
"Don't twist this into something it isn't," he said. "I was protecting a friend."
I looked at his hand until he let go.
Then I went down the corridor and woke my daughter as gently as I could.
I put her rabbit in her good arm.
The night concierge was already at the lift when I came back, holding it open and not looking at anyone.
"Rhiannon," Rafe said. "It's two in the morning."
"She's been in that bandage since eleven," I said. "It was two in the morning a long time ago."
So I took my daughter and left.
In the taxi, Tilly woke on my shoulder and looked out at the wet streets.
"Mummy," she whispered. "Is Daddy at Posy's house again?"
"Again?"
"He sleeps there too," she said. "Not just when it's scary."
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