When she entered the living room, her first glance was at the wall but the cat had gone. Damn. It would have to be plan B. A sweep of the room revealed that Alex was not there either and she frowned slightly, quashing her immediate tendency to panic. He must be with Grace. She had heard her voice earlier, talking to Alex.
‘Mum,’ she called as she knocked on the door. It felt strange, that word on her lips, but right.
Grace flung open the door. ‘Just coming. My word!’ Her green appraised Emily’s brown, suede trousers, cashmere sweater and a scarf in autumn shades artfully arranged around her neck. ‘Don’t you look gorgeous! I still can’t believe I have such a beautiful daughter!’
Emily was already looking over her shoulder. ‘Is Alex with you?’ she asked abruptly.
‘No.’ Grace was immediately concerned. ‘He was still playing with that garage when I went out to my car about ten minutes ago.’
Emily’s lips tightened. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, turning on her heel. ‘He must be with Jen.’
‘No,’ Jennifer responded when Emily found her coming out of her sitting room. ‘Isn’t he still in the living room? Don’t worry, Em. He won’t be far away. He can’t get out of the cottage. Perhaps, he’s playing a game of hide and seek.’
‘Alex,’ Emily called. ‘Where are you? Alex, it’s time to leave.’ Her voice was tight with suppressed panic.
‘Alex!’ All three women began calling but there was no response … then they discovered that the front door was not completely closed.
‘Oh no!’ Grace wailed. ‘I thought I had shut it when I came back in.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ Jennifer laid a hand on her arm. ‘It’s mine. That door has been sticking for a week now. I should have got it fixed.’
Emily was not listening. She had already charged out of the door and into the lane. ‘Alex!’ she shouted, ‘Alex! Oh my God!’ Trembling, she ran up the lane and round the bend towards David Brewer’s house but there was no sign of him and she sped back towards the cottage where Grace was waiting.
‘Jen’s round the back looking. Try not to worry; he’ll not have gone far.’
Emily turned to her, wild-eyed, taut with anxiety. ‘But he’s not got a coat on and he’s just in his slippers,’ she wailed.
‘We’ll find him,’ Grace said firmly. ‘Now think. Where is he most likely headed?’
‘I don’t know … the play area, maybe … or he might have followed the cat … he could have gone anywhere.’
‘He’s not around the back,’ Jennifer called as she reappeared from the right-hand side of the cottage. ‘We need to split up and search in different directions.’ She grasped Emily’s arm. ‘Grace, you go towards the village. Ask anyone you meet if they’ve seen him. He may already be sitting in someone’s shop waiting for us to collect him. I’ll head back up the hill. Emily, you take the track along the field which goes to the wood and, beyond that, the lake. We’ll soon have him back, don’t worry.’
Emily’s face was ashen. ‘The lake!’ she gasped in horror.
‘It’s all fenced. He can’t fall in and, anyway, he won’t have gone that far. Right, let’s get going. Have you got your phones with you so whoever finds him can call the rest?’ They all nodded. ‘We’ll find him, Em.’
She headed briskly up the lane, calling Alex’s name as she went. Grace set off in the opposite direction and Emily jogged along the track, criss-crossing so she could peer frenziedly into the ditches running either side of it. This could not be happening, she told herself. It had to be just a nightmare; she could not lose her son. At that thought, bile rose in her throat and she stopped to be sick, carelessly wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Where could he be? Maybe, he had wandered outside and someone had snatched him. She had read books and real-life news stories with that scenario. Cold terror sliced through her body like a knife through butter as she plunged forward, desperately scanning the terrain around her. Everything, though, was just has it should be: fields green with wheat, a few centimetres high, trees with bare branches, ditches muddy with recent rain, the track itself, rough and uneven. Surely he had not come this way, not in his slippers. She should have insisted on going towards the village; that was the most likely route he would have taken.
Then, at the edge of the wood, she saw something … something pale … a face. ‘Alex.’ She gasped his name but it was not him. The figure was too tall and dressed in black. ‘Molly,’ she breathed and then, ‘Norah.’ Was this how it was for her when Jimmy had gone missing? Was this how she spent the empty hours, searching for the child she had lost? The fates were merging the present and the past in the most horrific way possible. Was history going to repeat itself?
She hurried towards the wood, towards the waiting figure. When she was close enough to see her eyes, yearning, reaching out to her, Molly turned and drifted into the wood, with Emily following her. Suddenly, she turned off the track and headed through a narrow gap between the trees. With blind faith, Emily followed, stumbling over brambles, unshed tears burning her eye sockets.
And then she saw him, curled up, wedged against the white bark of a silver birch tree. He was not moving; she was too late. Just like Norah, she had been unable to save her son.
‘Alex!’ she cried as she sped towards him. ‘Alex!’
At the sound of her voice, he turned a tear-stained face towards her. ‘I couldn’t
