The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald

there to get pregnant to that man. I should have warned her. She wouldn’t have listened, I told myself and still tell myself. It would have been impossible for her to listen, just as it was for me when Dad suggested I should play the field before settling down with Alistair. How can you listen to such negativity when a gorgeous sexy man has you on a pedestal, when he’s telling you you’re the most intriguing and beautiful woman he’s ever known, when he’s calling you his best friend and his soul mate, making mind-blowing love to you twice a day, smothering you with adoration, writing beautiful love letters, fixing things, organising things, making things happen? God, those early days were wonderful. No, she wouldn’t have listened.
    I’m not saying we are sisters in arms, definitely not. She’s part of him. They are Team Enemy. Letting her in would be the same as letting him in, and I will never make the mistake of doing that. But sometimes the guilt nudges the anger from below and I worry for her, especially at night. I worry about the day she discovers him betraying her. I’ve imagined her coming to me, years hence. I might be ninety or so, in a home, and she’ll come to say sorry, and to cry about the pack of lies her life turned out to be.
    I have to admit, I find myself smiling when I imagine this meeting.
    ‘That your car in the drive?’ the female one asks.
    ‘It is.’
    ‘A Ute, yeah?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘What colour would you say it is?’
    The male cop has gone outside and is touching the bonnet as if he’s taking its pulse.
    ‘I’d say it’s dark grey.’
    ‘How much do you hate him?’
    ‘Who?’ Her change of tack is so abrupt it confuses me.
    ‘Your husband.’ She leans in. ‘How much would you like him to suffer for what he did?’
    ‘Ex-husband. We divorced a year ago. I don’t want him to suffer . . .’ I lean back, a liar.
    ‘I bet the anger you feel for him is nothing compared to the anger you feel for her?’ she says. ‘I can tell you’re filled with bad ugly shit-on-you hate.’ She moves away, and points to the coat rack in the hall. My waterproof jacket. ‘Is this your jacket?’
    ‘It is.’
    ‘Japara, yeah?’
    ‘Yep.’
    She touches it. Her colleague comes in from the driveway and stands to her left, nodding as if to say: she’s touching that, just like I touched the bonnet of the Ute out in the drive, and that’s ’cause we’re the law, missy.
    ‘It’s not wet,’ the female one concludes.
    ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
    ‘Your ex saw someone in a Japara – it was raining.’ They’re playing annoying-cop/annoying-cop. It’s the male one who said that.
    ‘You have a clothes dryer?’ Female.
    ‘Off the kitchen.’
    The female cop heads to the laundry, leaving the male cop to cop a feel of my jacket, which he does, then gives me a look that says: I am not telling you if it is hot or not!
    ‘Can we look around your house?’ the male one with the sideburns, dimple and wedding ring says.
    I don’t object. I’d sound guilty.
    As they search, I fidget on the couch and worry that they’ll find him here, in the cupboard in the laundry or something, as I do when anyone accuses me of anything. Maybe I did do it. Maybe I did wear the Japara earlier tonight and get it wet stealing a child and then dry it in the dryer and hang it up on its hook in the hall. Maybe the baby’s in the laundry cupboard. I blame Alistair for the paranoia. I was paranoid that he’d try and take Chloe from me, that he’d tell everyone I was an unfit mother even though he used to say I was the most wonderful mother in the world. Alistair built me a solid foundation for paranoia.
    He’s not in the cupboard. Of course he’s not. And the car engine’s cold and the dryer’s not been used and the jacket’s not warm. I let them look on my computer and find out I have a fake account and that I stalk her. That’s how I knew he’d gone missing, I explain. And they