With that, I retreated inside to stare at a screen under the guise of work. Well, I told them I was ‘working’. In actual fact I was googling ‘cool interview outfits’ (all of which seemed to involve alarming high heels and very thin people in amazing jackets that I don’t think I could get my tits into) in an effort to present myself as ruthlessly professional but also Down With the Youth at my interview. I was also fretting because all the women in the photos were carrying takeout cups of coffee – is this now a required accessory? Might they not take me seriously if I don’t turn up clutching a cardboard cup of a grande soy latte? Is that even the order the words go in? Also, I thought all the big coffee chains were frowned upon as unethical tax dodgers. Maybe if I bring the wrong sort of coffee I’ll be off the shortlist before I’ve even opened my mouth. Perhaps I should just take the free coffee from Wholefoods. Is Wholefoods considered ethical? I DON’T KNOW! I only know it is middle-class! All these, and other worries, were swirling around in my head when after half an hour or so, I realised I could hear something terrifying. Silence. There is never silence from my precious moppets unless Something Bad is happening. I flung open the back door to find a disconsolate Jane trying to disentangle a yoyo string.
‘Where’s Peter?’ I demanded.
Jane shrugged. ‘I dunno.’
‘Well, isn’t he out here with you? Didn’t you notice him going somewhere?’
Jane shrugged again, and mumbled he was probably inside and that wasn’t fair, if he was on his iPad then, she, Jane, who had not defied my instructions, deserved EXTRA iPad time to make up for Peter’s getting time just now and also even more extra time to reflect her obedience. I cut short Jane’s lengthy argument about her screen time and dashed inside to look for Peter. I bellowed and shouted, to no response. He wasn’t in his bedroom, he wasn’t in the sitting room, he wasn’t in the loo, he wasn’t even in Jane’s bedroom stealing things to annoy her.
‘JANE!’ I shouted. ‘Are you SURE you didn’t see where he went?’
Jane insisted she had not, adding a hasty disclaimer that whatever fate may have befallen Peter, it was definitely not her fault.
That icy dread started to grip me. My rational brain was churning out statistics, reminding me that the chances of him being absolutely fine were really very high, while the rest of me was screaming silently inside because my baby boy was missing, and I didn’t even know what he was wearing to give a description to the police because he had changed clothes so many times today already due to bloody water fights.
WHY hadn’t I just let him play on the Slip’N Slide? Better an afternoon at the ER with a mildly mangled limb than the scenarios now playing out through my head – the treacherous ponds; the unmarked vans screeching to halt and speeding off again, unseen by anyone; the boy racer, flying down a suburban street slightly too fast to stop for the small figure darting out to chase a ball. For a fleeting second, I wondered whether there were any disused mine shafts around that he could have fallen down. Would Judgy Dog be able to track him? Probably not. He hates Peter with a vengeance, and the feeling is mutual.
By the time all those thoughts had run through my mind I was out on the street, yelling Peter’s name at the top of my voice and trying not to sound too hysterical. He could only have been missing for fifteen minutes at the very most – it was too soon to call the police, I told myself. Hearing me shouting, my neighbour and kindred spirit Katie appeared from across the street, and I gabbled out what had happened.
‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘I’ll help you look. Let me grab my girls, then I’ll go down that way and you go down the other way, and if he doesn’t hear us shouting, we’ll start knocking on doors. We’ll find him, Ellen, don’t worry.’
I nodded, too afraid I would cry if I had to actually speak, and set off, bellowing for Peter, Jane trailing behind (I could not let her out of my sight. It was bad enough I had mislaid one child; to lose another would doubtless cause Lady Bracknell-esque pronouncements upon my parenting).
I got to the end of the street, still shouting, and was working my way back up, my voice now hoarse and the fear held at bay by the thinnest of threads, when Karen Davison up the street opened her door, looking surprised.
‘Peter’s here!’ she said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘No!’ I choked. ‘I thought he was in the yard and then he was gone.’
‘He’s here, playing on that bloody Slip’N Slide with my grandsons,’ said Karen. ‘He was playing in your front yard when we came past on the way home from the shop and the boys asked him if he wanted to come over. I told him he had to check with you first, and he went inside and came out with his swim trunks and said it was fine, so I assumed he had told you.’
I was too relieved at finding Peter alive and intact and not trapped down a collapsing mine shaft to even be angry at him for waltzing off without telling me. I grabbed him and hugged him tightly (a bad move in hindsight, as he was soaking wet), and then rather embarrassingly burst into tears and sobbed, ‘Don’t you EVER, EVER do that again. I was so worried!’
‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ said Peter. ‘I thought it would be OK because I wasn’t going very far. I didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘I was only scared because I love you,’ I wept.
‘I love you too, Mummy. I won’t scare you like that again, I promise.’
Oh God, I nearly lost my son because I was too busy worrying about what sort of coffee to take to an interview! What sort of mother am I? Maybe I should give up all thoughts of going back to work full-time and just become an earth Mother, and do crafts with them – even though I hate crafts – and devote every moment of my existence to them to make up for my previous abject failings, in the hope that they are not too scarred by my selfishness. I mean, they seem unscarred – the only person who seemed to be traumatised by this afternoon is me, but maybe the damage is deeper and will only be revealed in their thirties when they enter therapy and realise that everything that is wrong with their life can be traced back to my dubious parenting?
Both Jane and Judgy Dog were unimpressed by Peter’s safe return.
Monday, 5 September
Argh! The job interview is THIS FRIDAY! I still have nothing to wear, but I think I need to stop worrying about that and start thinking about what I’m actually going to SAY. I haven’t been to a job interview in years. What do I tell them? Oh God, I’ll have to pretend to have hobbies and be a proper person and try not to gabble at length and fall back on my favourite conversational gambit of telling people about the interesting fact that otters have opposable thumbs. I’m pretty sure the only reason one could have to legitimately discuss otters in a job interview is if one was applying for a job as an otter wrangler or something. (Actually, that really would be my dream job. I love otters and have frequently expressed a desire to keep one in the bath. Simon does not even dignify this suggestion with a response, but I have seen Ring of Bright Water many times and think keeping an otter in the bath would be perfectly feasible – I could get cut-price salmon from the supermarket for it to eat. And tangents like this are exactly why I get so nervous about interviews.)
I also always come out of an interview with absolutely no idea what I might have said in response to the questions and all I can do is hope that when asked, ‘Why do you think you would be the right person for this job?’ is that I replied something about my skills, qualifications and interests, and threw in something about being a team player and didn’t actually answer, ‘Because my lord and master the Dread Cthulhu thinks it would suit me. I slaughtered a black cockerel and inspected the entrails for portents and signs, and he spoke to