Hindsight.

 It’s a wonderful thing.

I think, given my life, I should be honoured a doctorate in hindsight. 

 

In recall, the first half is neon like in my memory. It’s slow, that memory. Like millions and millions of still shots, a slow motion replay. Every second took an age, the day I remember clearly, second by second.

It is afternoon, he comes home from work early. As always of late, he looks tired, harassed. Absently, he starts folding the washing as I clean up the spilled sugar on the floor, from master 8.

 

I can see his face; it’s frozen in time, he stares at a fitted sheet like it has sprung from an alien.  I see the puzzlement on his face, as he attempts to put the elasticised ends together… the frown, the crease, then…

 

 I am upside down in the pantry. I am cursing the sweet granules as they continue to escape my efforts. It’s 3.15 PM, and I hear the gate give it’s soft, bell like clink that it does as it closes, or when the cat jumps over it.  A flittered thought of the cat, off for an adventure. Crunch crunch – more granules. I look up. He has gone from my sight, I think perhaps to the shed, to the yard, to the garden?

The elasticated sheet lies abandoned on the island bench.

I don’t bother looking for him. Men wander off whilst doing ‘stuff’ all the time, yes? 

I had no idea at that stage that my life was about to change – for always.

 

At 6.30 PM it occurs to me that I have not seen him in a while. Unaccustomed to having him home, it just didn’t occur to me that he was anywhere. I am used to the space shared with a child, not an adult.  But yes – it has been a few hours…  I call his name, no answer. I feed master 8, thinking, as oft I do, how he has wandered off to a neighbours, the man over the back, or to Mr Fisherman across the street.

 

I sigh, feed the child, put a meal in the refrigerator.  The nightly ritual of bathing, reading a story, feeding animals and  cleaning the kitchen occupies mind space for a while.

7.30 PM.   Child is settled, I am showered… and from somewhere deep in mind I acknowledge there is just a niggle of worry.  If only I had started working in that PhD about then.

 

It’s 8.30 PM. I am starting to get cross. 

For some reason, my eyes move to the front door.

There, neatly together side by side, are his work boots and socks.

I ring his mobile – and as I hear his mobile ringing back at me from the office down the hall, I start to feel scared. I walk to the office – and this is where the freeze frames really slow down – I can almost see myself walking there, slowly, receiver in my hand listening to the ringing tone, and the sound of his own phone ringing at me from the office. There, in the office, in a pile, I find his phone, his watch, his keys, and neatly bundled together, all his ID.

 

Sitting underneath it, is a pile of his paperwork, his diary, his notes. My husband has vanished, and anything that links him to me, to master 8 or to our life is sitting here looking at me.