security guards for the mall? Better monitoring?’ I tried. ‘Have you lost a lot of money?’
A wail echoed down the hallway. She didn’t seem to register it. Judging by her breathing and the whir of vehicles in the background, it sounded as if she was hurrying across a car park.
‘Oh, heaps. The insurance excess wipes me out each time. I’m too scared to work late here by myself.’
I swallowed. ‘I’d love you to raise awareness of the problem.’ I had to get the words out before she came up with another excuse to put the phone down. ‘Maybe stop other business owners getting caught out.’
‘I guess.’ The line went silent again.
Thomas howled from the next room. I cringed. Could his father not handle one bedtime alone? ‘Have you any footage? We could post it on social media, see if anyone IDs the guys?’
I nudged the door open with my foot and stuck my head through, gesturing frantically at my husband, Stephen, to reduce Thomas’s noise output by a couple of thousand decibels.
He strode past, throwing Thomas over his shoulder and marching him out of the kitchen, toothbrush clenched in one hand and pyjamas in the other. He shot me a pleading look as he rounded the corner, which I pretended not to see.
‘Just imagine how good it would feel if you found them. Plastered their names and photos around the place a bit.’
A few minutes later Stephen’s voice reverberated through the walls. ‘No more stories. I’m going to sit at the end of the bed while you go to sleep, okay?’ Then more forceful. ‘Thomas. Get back into bed. Right now. I’m not joking this time, buddy.’
I rolled my eyes. Perhaps if my husband hadn’t styled himself as the fun parent, he might not find the process so tough. But then, bedtime wasn’t a breeze for boring-strict-Mum when I did it every other night of the week, either.
The office door opened, and Thomas strutted in. Grabbing my leg, he tried to pull himself up, mountain-climber style, into my lap. Stephen appeared behind him, grabbed the neck of his dressing gown, bundled him up and carried him away. I heard a thump through the door as Stephen dropped him back on his bed. ‘Water!’ Thomas wailed.
‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to call me back.’ The woman at the other end of the phone cut off the call.
I dropped the phone on to my desk and shifted in my chair. A rivulet of sweat gathered between my maternity bra and the top of the stretched skin of my stomach. All I wanted to do was lie on the couch and eat my way through the rest of the packet of chocolate biscuits I had hidden from Thomas in the top of the larder. I checked the desktop calendar lying open beside my notebook. Eight working days until my maternity leave started.
Somehow, less than half an hour later, the story was filed. I tried to push the image out of my mind of the store owner trotting to her car, wielding keys positioned between her fingers. There was still a continuous rhythm of bangs and thuds reverberating from Thomas’s room as he rolled around in his bed, his knees colliding with the wall. I gathered the empty glasses and plates from around my desk and carried them through to the kitchen.
As I placed them in the soapy suds still stewing in the sink, I became aware that Stephen’s phone was buzzing on the counter, the vibration moving it across the shiny surface. It was a rare sighting of his phone in the wild. Stephen’s phone was normally either at his ear, in his hand or his pocket. He had even taken a brief call while I was in labour with Thomas – apparently, there was something more pressing happening that afternoon at the building firm he owned. I hadn’t let him forget that one.
I kept my hands in the water, idly picking away at determined blue playdough under my nails. How long should I hang back before I ventured down the hallway and relieved Stephen? At some point, all kids have to fall asleep, right? Even with dads who were no doubt giving in to requests for one more story or an extra bedtime song.
The phone buzzed again. I turned it over. It was a message, not a call, and from a number that I didn’t recognise.
‘Miss you,’ the message blinked. Surely a wrong number. I swiped to unlock the phone, putting in the date of our wedding anniversary as the security code. It brought up a text exchange with the unsaved contact. Odd.
‘What are you up to?’ Stephen had asked on Monday night. Monday night? I had been contorting myself at a prenatal yoga class, trying to maintain my zen. I’d dragged myself down for a rare class at the studio, though it would have been much easier to just stay home and do another YouTube workout on the LEGO-strewn lounge floor. Stephen had said he was working late, that night. I remembered because I’d had to send Thomas to my parents, where he’d wreaked overtired havoc.
‘Just lying on the couch,’ the mystery number replied.
‘Lucky couch.’ He signed the message off with a heart-eyed emoji. An emoji! Was that meant to be cute?
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sitting here, thinking about you. See you soon?’
‘Of course.’ Whoever the other number was, the message was ended with a heart in return.
Then the exchange had fallen dead for a couple of days. I lowered myself to the kitchen floor, the too-trendy square handle of the cabinet sticking into my back, the cold metal of the phone in my hands. Lucky couch? Thinking about you? I could not get my thoughts to run in order. It was like watching television when Thomas had the remote, zipping forward then doubling back. The blood had retreated from my fingertips, and my stomach had started somersaulting. The tiles were cold under my shins. What was going on?
I shut my eyes. Stephen had been away from home more than usual, blaming work. I’d assumed he was doing extra hours so that he could take some time off when the baby arrived. It had never occurred to me to question whether he might have been somewhere else.
It had been a long time since he had said anything that flirty to me. And what if there was more to it than just messages? On the one hand, the idea was preposterous. This was my clueless Stephen. He once tied himself in guilty knots when a woman at a party gave him her number. Later, we discovered she only wanted him to advise which type of steel she should use for her fence. But on the other, he wasn’t the type to message anyone for the fun of it. I had had to show him how to set up reminders to reply to his work emails, and it had been months since he bothered to respond to any of my texts.
Thomas had finally fallen silent in his bedroom, and I could hear Stephen plodding back down the hallway towards me, blinking like he’d returned from a disappointing all-night dance party. He rubbed his eyes as he emerged into the white LED light of the kitchen but stopped in the doorway when he clocked his phone in my hands. He looked at the illuminated screen, then my face and back again. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Who is this?’ I rose to my feet.
I had to grip the cold floor with my toes to keep myself upright. ‘Who are you texting?’
He spluttered, a mottled flush spreading over his face. He looked as if he’d just swallowed something rancid. ‘What? No one.’
I thrust the phone at him. He snatched it from my hand and looked at the open conversation.
‘What is going on?’ My words were harsh in the balmy evening air.
He
