My Cardigan

A woman opens my door with my son in her arms.

And she's wearing my cardigan. The grey one, the one my mother knitted the winter before she died, with the fifth button in mother-of-pearl, the replacement, not like the others. She's buttoned it right up to the top. Like I do.

Sacha is in pyjamas I've never seen before and his cheeks are pink from his nap. He has his thumb in his mouth and his other hand on the mother-of-pearl button. He's turning it. He turns it the way he does when I'm the one wearing it.

“Yes?” says the woman.

She smiles. A polite smile, lips closed, the kind you give the postman when he rings twice.

I rehearsed what I'd say the whole way here. Not a word of it is left.

“Sacha.”

His name comes out on its own, under my breath, the way it does at night when I check he's asleep.

He looks up. The pyjamas are green, with foxes on them. He looks at me for a long time, his thumb gone still, and I can see something searching inside his head. Something that doesn't find what it's looking for.

He turns away and hides his face in the woman's neck.

I do the sum without meaning to. Counting is my job. Twenty-one days, out of the four hundred and twenty-one he's been alive.

“You must have the wrong house, madam.”

She calls me madam. A soft voice, no accent, a waiting-room voice.

“No.”

I point at the floor behind her.

“That tile, just past the threshold. It's cracked diagonally. You put your foot next to it so you don't hear it creak.”

She doesn't look down.

“And the coat rack. The third hook is crooked. My husband's been meaning to screw it back in since September.”

She doesn't look at the tile or the hook. She looks at me. She starts with the anorak.

It's navy blue and two sizes too big. The hospital's clothing store gave it to me this morning, with a grey sweatshirt and a pair of trainers that aren't mine.

Her eyes travel down to my wrist.

The wristband is white plastic. I haven't taken it off: you need scissors, and nobody offered me any.

UNKNOWN F. — born 01/01/1990.

I was born on 3 May 1990, in Toulouse. As far as Lille University Hospital was concerned, for three weeks, I was born on the first of January.

“I'm going to close the door now,” says the woman.

Still just as soft. She's talking to me, but it's Sacha she's looking at, and she lays her hand flat on his back. A hand that knows how.

“Wait. I'm…”

The door closes. It doesn't slam. It closes the way a draught would close it, and I hear the deadlock turn twice.

---

I stay on the first step. The bluestone is wet with drizzle.

I ring.

The bell plays its two notes down the hall, the high note and the low. Sacha always looks up at the second one.

Nothing moves behind the fanlight.

This morning, at ten, I signed a form discharging myself against medical advice. The junior doctor wanted to keep me until Monday, for the social worker.

I ring again and keep my finger on it. The two notes, the high, the low, the high, the low.

I told the junior doctor I had a house, a husband and a son. He sighed and handed me the pen.

I let go of the bell. I bang the flat of my hand on the wood.

The front door is teal. I'm the one who wanted this house, because of the door.

I go through the anorak pocket, out of habit. It's empty. On 17 October, when I went out running, my keys were on a lanyard round my neck.

Nobody gave me back a lanyard.

---

I hammer with my fist.

On Thursday the doctor sat on the edge of my bed, which they never do. “The police say Mrs Castan is at home.” I laughed.

I hammer harder. The wood sends the blow back up into my elbow.

I thought it was two people with the same name. A line typed wrong in a database. It happens every day.

“Grégoire!”

My voice carries down the street. I've never shouted in my life. Not even at the counter, the day a man smashed the sun-cream display over some codeine.

“Grégoire! It's me! Open the door!”

On Thursday and Friday I called his mobile nine times, from the beige phone by my bed.

Nine times, voicemail. Grégoire Castan, I'll call you back very soon. He never calls back withheld numbers. I used to give him a hard time about it, before.

I take a step back to look up at the first-floor window. Sacha's room. The moon night light is off, the curtain half drawn.

It's ten past eleven. At half past eleven Sacha has his lunch. Peas, if there are any, and he spits out the ham.

Does she know that?

I climb back onto the step and hammer with both fists.

“Grégoire! It's Nadia!”

My skull starts to throb, at the back, where they put the stitches in. I pinch the bridge of my nose. I count to five. At three, the deadlock turns.

---

The door opens again.

It's him.

Grégoire, in jeans and a navy jumper. In grey socks. He looks rested. He's clean-shaven, as he is every Saturday, because on Saturdays he does things properly.

For three weeks I've wondered what I'd say to him first. My mouth opens and nothing comes out but air.

He looks at me the way you look at a delivery driver who's come to the wrong floor. Patiently. With a sort of kindness, even.

Behind him, at the end of the hall, the woman is standing by the stairs. Sacha is still in her arms, his face in her neck. His little hand has found the mother-of-pearl button again and is turning it.

“Grégoire,” I say. “It's me.”

He doesn't answer. He turns his wedding ring with his thumb. He does that when a client haggles over the price.

“Look at me. It's me.”

He looks at me. He looks at the band on my wrist, at the side of my head where they shaved it. And he turns to her, very gently.

“Nadia, call the police.”