Lullaby by Claire Seeber

morning,’ she said, and I started to do the maths. Almost two whole days since I’d seen Louis. Forty-eight hours: a lifetime.
    ‘Why didn’t you call me, babe? I saw you on the news last night and I nearly had a bloody heart attack.’
    I stared at the ceiling. Then I looked at her. ‘Because you were the one person I knew who’d have no idea where Mickey was.’
    She smiled a rueful kind of smile. ‘That’s true enough.’ A beat. Then before I could ask: ‘They haven’t found Louis, but apparently the phones have been ringing off the hook. That tasty copper’s going to come and see you soon. Hundreds of calls they’ve had, he reckons. Char man, someone’s gotta know where the lovely Louis is.’
    ‘Don’t suppose you’ve heard from my mum?’ I askedquietly, and I tried to sit up in the bed. ‘Ow! God, my belly hurts.’
    ‘Yeah, well, it will, it’s been pumped.’
    ‘Pumped?’
    ‘Yeah, pumped. As in overdose.’
    I looked away. From my bed I could see the corner of the London Eye, like an enormous Ferris wheel. ‘Nice view. You’d pay a lot for this in a hotel.’
    ‘Jessica.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You know what.’
    ‘I didn’t take an overdose, Shirl. I didn’t. I just took—you know. A few too many pills.’
    ‘Come on, babe. I don’t think I’ve seen you take a pill in my whole life.’
    ‘Yes, well. You know. Needs must.’
    A nurse bustled in with a vase of flowers. ‘Aha!’ she said, all false jollity and skinny little plaits. ‘Awake at last, Miss Sleepy-head?’
    Yes, I thought, awake at last. Unfortunately. ‘Nice flowers,’ I murmured politely. Then I looked at Shirl.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You don’t really think he’s tasty, do you?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Silver.’
    ‘In that sort of—what would you say? Debonair sort of a way. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it, my girl.’
    ‘I’ve got more important things on my mind, actually, Shirl.’
    ‘Yes,’ she sighed sorrowfully, ‘I suppose you have.’
    *

    The night that Louis was conceived Mickey and I fucked with a ferocity that threatened to overwhelm me; a savagery I’d never experienced with anyone before. We’d been eyeing each other for weeks, unsure since that first and last time, after the Emin exhibition, pacing the office floor between us like the cagey tigers in that song. I wanted him and yet he scared me; I wanted him but I wasn’t giving in to it. He filled me with a strange dread I couldn’t face; he reminded me of sorrows that I’d fought to escape. He skated on a surface I couldn’t pierce; something darting beneath—something too dark to fathom. He chose to hide his vulnerabilities, and he did it very well—most of the time.
    That second night Mickey took me to the ballet in Covent Garden. We saw something called
Coppelia
, which was about dolls and a toyshop and was what Mickey called ‘frothy’, and I thought it’d be silly and I’d be bored stiff, but actually I loved it. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were old favourites of mine—how many wet afternoons had Leigh and I spent dancing around the cluttered living room to ‘Singing in the Rain’, sending my mum’s glass animals flying with our umbrellas. Old musicals were one thing, though—I thought Fonteyn and her crowd were way beyond my ken. But once I’d overcome the nerves I dared not show, I really enjoyed the sheer splendour of the whole event—the over-dressed posh people, the champagne in the interval, the novelty of the plush red theatre. Mickey by my side, so handsome, so charming and attentive now.
    Afterwards he took me to a restaurant so expensive they didn’t bother with prices on the menu, where women whispered through the door in silken clothes more costly than my rent, where the men were swollen and sanguine in their wealth, clicking for the waiters. Mickey hand-fed me oysters, which I hated, and caviar, which I loved, the salty eggs popping across my tongue—food I’d really only dreamed of. Asparagus and rare