David was tired. Obviously. It was clearly to be expected with a seven month old but still. He hadn't thought he'd be able to do it at first, not really. It hadn't been easy in the slightest, he'd practically given up for a while. Left Ivy with various caretakers while he was at work. David was distant from her for a while, it just didn't seem possible to fit a child into his life. Not with, well, the way he was. The kind of father and man that he was in general. Siobhan wasn't even remotely in the picture, nobody could track her down and he had no idea why she'd suddenly up and disappeared but he supposed she'd always been a bit unpredictable and flighty. It was half the reason he'd gravitated towards her in the first place. She'd injected excitement into his life. Something Karen had stopped doing a long time prior to his indiscretion... which sounded horrible. He had loved Karen once but it had faded rather quickly. Even when he'd slept with her after coming back to town... that was just old memories surfacing. Not feelings. Habit and memory. Nothing else. He was slightly pleased that she'd lost that baby, awful as that would sound. Not that he'd wished the suffering on her, he was just glad there hadn't been a baby at the end of it. He was still reeling from the first, that unborn baby he'd murdered. He was glad barely anybody knew about that.. it was horrible. There was still a large part of him that thought Ivy would have been better off suffering the same fate. To have been relieved of the hell she'd endure with him as her father. As her sole guardian. David seemed like he was doing a good job but most of it was pretend. He was still struggling with this whole thing. In fact, he'd been tempted to try and guilt Michelle into taking her but Michelle was probably less likely than him to want to raise a child.
So here he was. Ivy in the backseat of his car while he tried Karen's front door for the umpteenth time that week. He'd told Gemma he'd check in on her, he knew she was worried, but... he couldn't check in on someone who was never at home. It wasn't like he kept missing her either. Nobody had seen her, everyone he asked just shook their head and said she'd turn up soon. No one seemed overly concerned and he wondered if they even remember the suicide attempt. They hadn't walked in on her just about to off herself like he had. They hadn't heard the things she'd said. The longer she was unreachable, the more worried he became but there wasn't a lot he could do. He'd tried work but she hadn't been in and he'd come to the conclusion that he wouldn't be able to find her. She'd done a disappearing act like Siobhan and left him to pick up the pieces. Why did people always do that? They knew it was only a matter of time before he made a mess of it. David sighed as he got back into the car, made sure Ivy was still asleep, and drove towards the Ford's house. He'd made Gemma's doctors appointment and was taking her whether she wanted a check up or not. All these headaches meant something wasn't right, surely. Plus... he hadn't seen her properly in ages and he felt a tiny bit safer doing so without -A's constant harassment. He pulled up outside the Ford's and honked the horn to signal his arrival.
