Just as she reached the grey damp stones of the pedestrianised street outside, Amanda saw the back of Brenden’s rucksack disappear into a WH Smith’s. She dashed over to the store and, as she was paying little real attention as to what was in the way of her goal, she almost slammed into a twentysomething man in a baseball cap who was coming the other way. She hissed an apology after the man cried out “look where you’re going, love,” but she had no time to turn back; who knew if there was another exit to the shop, who knew if another child had the same bag. After this latter thought came to her mind, and just before she entered the shop, she quickly scanned the people milling around on the street to see if she could see anyone else who might resemble the boy. With no obvious alternative candidates for Brenden in sight, she made her way in.
Amanda hurried past the shelves of magazines, books, cards, drinks, snacks, sandwiches, sweets, paper, pens, files and plastic covers, apologising to whoever she had to push past to get through as she went. Then, after making two rounds of the store without catching sight of the boy, she finally found him carefully inspecting a packet of Haribo.
She came up to the boy as cautiously as she could so as not to startle him, but she need not have worried. When she came to his side, he just casually turned to her and gave her a look that suggested her being there made no real difference to him at all.
“Do you think I can still eat these?” he remarked.
“Brenden,” said Amanda in a voice that she considered a little too harsh to properly engage with the boy. She gave herself a moment to compose herself and then she tried again. “Brenden, what are you doing out of school?”
The boy shrugged his shoulders and then returned the sweets to the shelf.
“I was going to go back home,” he said flatly, “but I didn’t have enough to get there. Even the coach was too much.”
For the first time, he looked up at her and a flash of emotion passed across his face; as quickly as it emerged he pushed it down. Amanda placed her hand on the boy’s shoulder, not sure what else to do. She was keenly aware that despite his money troubles, Brenden might still not want to return to the school. What was worse, if he was determined not to go back, she was not sure if she would make him, not only as he could just cry out that she was a stranger trying to abduct him, but because part of her believed that he should choose what path he should take.
“So what do you want to do?” she asked.
“Am I in much trouble?”
“No, Brenden, no. They were worried more than anything. They wanted to know where you were. That’s why they sent me, to see if I could find you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “For finding me, that is. I guess I might be ready to go back.”
Amanda gently led Brenden away from the sweets by resting her hand on the boy’s back and making him lead the way. Without any conscious decision to do so, she heaved a sigh of relief and, as she heard the breath escaping from her body, she recognised how glad she was that the boy had decided to return to the school without any need to be persuaded to do so.
“Hold on, Brenden,” said Amanda. “Why don’t I get you a pack of Haribo for the journey back. I don’t know what they’ve told you over there at the school, but it’s fine to eat a bit. Just try not to overdo it. Wait here a sec, okay?”
Brenden smiled a little and nodded eagerly.
As soon as Amanda picked up the packet of Tangfastics that Brenden had been inspecting so carefully, she heard the boy cry out. She dropped the bag and ran over to the entrance of the shop where she had left the boy to find an unknown short, stocky man, who was dressed in a cream suit, with a tight grip on the Brenden’s wrist.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” called out Amanda, only drawing more attention to a scene that had already caught the eye of most of the shoppers in the store.
“Oh my,” said the man, who instantly released the boy when he saw Amanda. “Do excuse me, I was looking for a lost boy, but clearly this young man is nothing of the sort.”
Amanda pulled Brenden towards her to get him away from his recent captor, and at the same time, Brenden started to curl into a ball while rubbing at his wrist. With an easy grace and freedom of movement that seemed incongruous with his portly figure, the man swept up his fallen cream fedora and ivory cane and then proceeded to exit the store while ignoring the stares of all around him. As Amanda tried in vain to pull Brenden up from the floor, the idea blazed into her mind that perhaps she had just seen the very person she had been looking for in Radcliff.
“Was it him Brenden? The man?”
The boy looked up into Amanda’s expectant face, tears rolling down his cheeks, and then relaxed as the moment of his attack, which had just been so
