He looked, as my partner cruelly observed, like a rag with a head. But my daughter adored him and that made him priceless

I t was 8.10pm and I was running through the dark streets, desperately searching. Just as I was about to concede defeat, I spotted him. He was near the corner pub, lying lifeless on the nature strip. I looked upward to thank the heavens, then messaged my partner: “I’ve found Teddy.”

Teddy was my child’s, well, teddy. The two were inseparable. He did all that a good “transitional object” should do – helped Holly get to sleep and soothed her when she was upset. But Teddy was much more than that; he was her confidant, cub, dance partner, hanky, sunshade, plate, mop and weapon.

A couple of years on the job had taken its toll. Once a handsome, light brown bear, he’d become matted and filthy. He looked, as my partner cruelly observed, like a rag with a head. But Holly adored him and that made him priceless. If we couldn’t find him, Holly wouldn’t sleep. If Holly didn’t sleep, neither could we. And that is why a ragged bear became the central figure of our family.

Understanding the precariousness of our situation, we bought backup bears – a gaggle of understudies if we were to lose the main man. None fooled Holly. They were too fluffy, too odourless or their eyes were too close together. And although we tried to age them (rolling them in the dirt and squishing them under mattresses), she knew.

Holly was our only child then, although it was like we had two. When we hired a babysitter, we emphasised that while Holly was important, so was Teddy. He should be included in any head count. When the babysitter returned from taking Holly to the park one day, she burst through the door. “Is Teddy here?” she asked frantically. We assured her that he was, and relief washed in.

Unhelpfully, Teddy was a master of camouflage – especially at bedtime. His nondescript ratty colour ensured he blended perfectly into bathmats, carpets and upholstered dining chairs.

It also didn’t help that Holly would habitually fling him out of the pram – maybe she was practising the adage: “If you love them, set them free.” More likely she was testing us. We found him in the library, the cafe, the gutter and even on the road. That time he was clearly a hit-and-run victim, even flatter than before with a tyre mark down his front.

Somehow Teddy always found his way back to us. Until the day he didn’t.

It was winter. Teddy wasn’t in the pram. Or at home. Or the park. After so many false alarms, I was confident he’d show up. We just had to look harder. We retraced our steps, looked in bushes and wrote a “Lost Bear” post in our neighbourhood Facebook group (all we got was 22 sad-face reactions).

None of it worked. He was gone.

Holly was inconsolable, and so were we. In desperation we pulled out the backup bears. That failed. We tried other, similar soft toys. She wouldn’t have it.

A few weeks later, something odd happened. She chanced on one of the spare bears in her toy box.

“It’s Teddy!” she cried. “He’s back.”

He clearly wasn’t, and I studied her, trying to work out what was happening.

“Er, yes … he’s back!” I said, playing along. “And he’s so fluffy! He’s been … out in the rain?!”

I wouldn’t have won an Oscar for that dialogue, but I didn’t need to. I padded out the story, adding in bits about where he’d been, how he didn’t have a hairdryer to tame his wild fur.

With Teddy’s “return”, I thought we would slip back into the swing of things, but it was never quite the same. Our enthusiasm for the new guy felt a little forced. Holly knew that we knew, but perhaps she was just trying to create an alternative, more comforting reality. Or maybe she was finding a way to leave Teddy on her own terms, as she gradually shifted her attention to a little mauve unicorn.

Now we have a second child, and her chosen cuddly toy is an owl. We’ve learned our lesson and bought five birds. We diligently rotate them so that each one is worn down equally, infused with the scent of home. We’ve lost three already.

I should probably sew a GPS tracker into the two that remain.