Daniel Isn't Talking Read Online Free

distressed. I call for Daniel but, of course, he doesn’t answer. He never answers. I am hoping that he will reappear, drawn by my voice, but he does not. I look in my bedroom, in all the closets and cupboards. It feels as though the house has swallowed him. He is Houdini, disappearing before my eyes. Downstairs, I search behind chairs and curtains. With every second that passes my panic rises. I cannot find him. I am searching for open windows, for some part of his body lying on the floor, dead from choking or poison or a sudden, inexplicable collapse. My mind is a kaleidoscope of unspeakable images: small, still limbs; eyes like marble, like glass. He is dying, my baby, and I cannot find him no matter how fast I run through the house or how loud I yell his name.
    â€˜Daniel! DANIEL!’ I still can’t find him, but now it’s Emily who has my attention. She wears an expression as though she’s been scolded, sticks out her lower lip,preparing for tears. I scoop her up, balance her on my hip and keep searching. After many minutes I find Daniel inside the shower, rolling his Thomas the Tank Engine along the ledge of the pan. His face does not register surprise when I fling open the shower door. Parking Emily on the sink ledge, I reach into the shower for Daniel. When I pick him up he does not look at me, but stretches toward the train, his hands clasping and unclasping.
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    â€˜You said you’d talk to me, so talk to me !’ I tell Stephen. I’ve sat both children in front of the television to watch Teletubbies , an inane programme that I am sure is not good for them, but Emily likes the way the custard machine flings pink glop, not to mention all those oversized French rabbits. Daniel, on my lap, sits with a fixed expression, staring at the television, often leaning forward so that his face is way too close to the screen. Emily, taking my advice to sit further back, occupies the armchair along with a dozen or more plastic ponies from her collection. Between episodes she sings the Teletubbies theme tune while her ponies dance in her hands.
    â€˜I don’t understand the problem,’ says Stephen, speaking to me from his office. ‘You looked for him, you found him. He was in the shower but there was no water running, so no danger of drowning –’
    Among my many fears is that our children will drown in the tiny, ornamental pond in our garden. Before I consented to move into this house I insisted workmen arrive and cover it with three layers of metal wire. They did as I asked, but kept sneaking glances at each other. When I made cups of tea for them they said, ‘This is just tea, right? Nothing in it?’ Similarly, I had the lid for the septic tank in our summer cottage buried under half adozen paving stones. I was told by the septic tank emptying service that this was not folly on my part. It would take thirty seconds for a child to die in a septic tank, the lid opening easily with one finger. He, the man from the septic tank service, drank his tea without any questions at all.
    â€˜Please,’ I beg Stephen. ‘Come home now. Turn off the computer, get up from your chair, put on your coat.’
    My socks don’t match and there’s a split in my jeans, along the seam of the crotch. I haven’t washed my hair in two days and my eyeglasses are so gunged up that the world through them seems to have grown a skin. Meanwhile, Daniel needs a new nappy, but I’ll have to change it in here because if I take him away from Teletubbies now he may not get back into it, which will mean I have to chase him around the house to keep him from endlessly flushing the toilet, which he will only play with like a toy but will not consider sitting on. Then I will have to stop him climbing up the curtains, or stacking the books like a ladder so that he can reach the glass-encased clock on the fireplace mantel. He will not play with me, although every day I try. I get