After Anna. Alex Lake
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was a rustle in a thick rhododendron bush to her left. Julia stopped and pulled back the branches. The inside was cool and smelled of wet earth.
‘Anna?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’
There was another rustle, deeper in the bush. Julia pushed her way in; her heart thudding.
‘Anna’ she called. ‘Anna!’
The rustle came again, then a blackbird emerged from the other side of the bush. It looked at Julia, then took flight and vanished into the branches of a sycamore tree.
Julia stood up. To her left was a driveway leading to a covered porch. A man in his sixties, with grey hair and walking cane, was standing in the doorway, looking at her.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked. ‘I heard you shouting.’
‘It’s my daughter,’ Julia said. ‘I can’t find her.’
The man frowned. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘What does she look like?’
‘She’s five. Dark hair. She has a pink rucksack and she’s in uniform.’
‘Is she at the school? Westwood?’
Julia nodded. ‘Have you seen her?’
‘No. But I could help you look?’ He lifted his walking stick. ‘I’m not very mobile, but I could drive around and look for her.’
Julia looked at him, suspicion clouding her mind. Did he have Anna? Was this some double bluff? She caught herself; he was just someone trying to help, and she needed all the help she could get at the moment. Probably, anyway. She’d mention him to the police later, if it came to that.
‘That would be wonderful,’ Julia said. ‘Maybe I should drive, too.’
‘You can probably look more closely on foot. I’ll take my car, though. And my wife is home. She’ll take the other car. What’s her name, if we do see her?’
‘Anna. Just stay with her and call the police.’
‘OK,’ the man said. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you,’ Julia said. She pulled herself out from the bush, wincing, as a twig or thorn or branch scratched her bare calf, then carried on towards the village.
As she ran, she examined everything – every hedge, every fence, every parked car – but felt she was seeing nothing. She didn’t trust her eyes, didn’t trust that Anna might not appear where she had just looked, and so she found herself checking the same places two, three times before allowing herself to move on. Part of her knew it was unnecessary and irrational, but she couldn’t help it; the stakes were just too high, the consequences of missing her daughter – who must be somewhere nearby – were too awful for her to allow herself to make a mistake and miss what was – what might be – in front of her nose.
She’d heard that when the police searched for evidence, when they got one of those lines of people to sweep a field or moor or wasteland, they never let the people who were involved – that is, the people who were looking for their loved ones – join in. Apparently, if you were too close to whoever was lost your searching abilities were compromised in some important way. Perhaps it was that you wanted to find whatever it was too much to maintain the calm, patient detachment required.
Whether that was true or not, she certainly did not feel calm or patient. What she felt was panic, a panic that threatened to overwhelm her and leave her in a heap on the pavement. It took a monumental effort for her not to put her face in her hands, sink to her knees, and start to pray.
‘Oh my God,’ she muttered. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’ Then, for a moment, the panic rose and did take over and she stopped, her head craned forward, her gaze sweeping from left to right.
‘Anna!’ she screamed. ‘ANNA!’
She began to sprint. She had an image of Anna in The Village Sweete Shoppe, sitting on a stool by the window with a black liquorice stick staining her hand, her lips blackened with its juice. That was where her daughter was, she was sure of it. That was where Anna would have gone. There was nowhere else: Anna didn’t know anywhere else, really. At five, her world was the house and garden, school, the houses of some friends, and a few places that she visited with her parents. One of those was the sweet shop.
They went there sometimes after school. Julia didn’t give her daughter too many chocolates or crisps or ice cream or other junk food, but for some reason the stuff in The Village Sweete Shoppe felt different, more wholesome. It was the experience as much as anything: talking to the proprietor, weighing the various choices – pear drops, Everton mints, cola cubes – and counting out the price. It was old-fashioned, the way it had been when Julia was a child, when she had taken her pocket money on a Saturday morning and gone with her dad to the local newsagent and chosen the sweets she wanted, and she liked the thought that her childhood and her daughter’s shared something.
They went there, once or twice every month. They left the car parked outside the school gates, walked down the hill, and went to buy sweets. It was about the only thing they ever did straight after school, the only thing that Anna knew. And she loved it.
So she was there, Julia knew it and as she sprinted she knew she was going to get there and find her daughter and sweep her up into a protective embrace from which she thought she might not ever let her go.
The bell above the door jangled. Julia took a couple of quick steps into the shop, looking wildly from corner to corner.
‘Hello,’ the owner, a retired postal worker called Celia, said. ‘Can I help?’
‘Has my daughter been in?’ Julia asked.
The owner thought for a second, trying to place Julia. ‘Your daughter’s Anna, isn’t she? A dark-haired little girl? Likes chocolate mice?’
‘That’s her. Has she been in?’
The owner shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘She’s a bit young to come in on her own.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve been here all afternoon. Hardly anyone has been in, and I’d remember her, especially if she was alone.’ Celia leaned forwards. ‘Is everything OK?’
Julia looked past the foot-long lollipops and chocolate rabbits to the street outside the shop window. Anna wasn’t here. She was somewhere out there.
Somewhere. Out. There.
Now the panic did take hold. She turned back to Celia, her legs weakening.
‘I’ve lost her,’ she said. ‘I’ve lost my daughter.’
iii.
It happens to every parent, one time or another. Perhaps in a supermarket, perhaps in the library, perhaps in the back garden.
You look around and your child is not there.
‘Billy!’ you shout, then, a little louder. ‘Billy!’
And Billy replies, and comes toddling into view, holding a bag of flour, or a book, or with a worm in the grip of his pudgy hands. Or maybe he doesn’t, and you have that sudden lurch of fear, that tightness in the back, and loose feeling in your stomach, and you look around a little wildly, before running to the end of the aisle or to the kids’ books section or to the back gate, and there he is. Little Billy; safe and sound.
And you swear you’re going to make sure you don’t let them out of your sight again, not for a second, because a second is all it takes.
And a second is all it takes. In one second, a kid can step out from behind a parked car or be shoved into a van or even just walk round a corner and get lost enough that it takes you ten agonizing minutes to find them, which, although agonizing, is the best possible outcome. You find them sitting on a bench chatting to a kindly stranger or playing with some kids they met or just wandering about absorbed in all the things they are seeing