The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

kitchen. She felt paralysed, unable to do anything. It was every mother’s fear. This identical sense of hopelessness must have gripped Elaine Duncan when Dora had failed to come home all those years ago. Perhaps she had even been in this very room when the realization hit. As if in the midst of some terrible nightmare, Wendy watched the two older girls moving swiftly about the yard, with Katie trailing in their wake. As they returned, she overheard Joanne saying, ‘already looked under all the beds,’ and Tara saying, ‘we’d better look again, just to be sure.’

‘It’s not in Jamie’s nature to stay hidden,’ Wendy said. ‘He’s never still for five minutes.’

‘Could he have gone to a friend’s house?’ asked Joanne. ‘Someone who lives nearby?’

‘Jamie never goes anywhere on his own.’

‘Maybe we should try at Andrew Webster’s house, just in case,’ Tara said.

Joanne was dispatched to enquire, with Katie to show her the way.

‘We have to call the police,’ Wendy repeated. ‘We mustn’t waste any more time.’

Tara capitulated. ‘Shall I do it?’

Her mother nodded, head in hands. It was like one of those dreams where you urgently need to move but cannot. A nightmare, in fact, where you become an onlooker, trapped in the path of whatever horror is approaching. She heard Tara asking for the police, providing names, addresses: ‘Yes … yes … six years old … missing for several hours … no, nothing like that. No … never been missing before … Not allowed out on his own, no …’ Then Tara reappeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘They’re sending someone,’ she said.

Bruce’s arrival almost coincided with the police. Tara had only just admitted two uniformed officers when his car turned into the drive. Noting the presence of the police car in Green Lane, he leapt out and sprinted the few yards required to join everyone in the increasingly crowded kitchen, where one of the two police officers, after a glance encompassing the teenage girl who’d let them in, another teenager who was in the process of making a pot of tea, and a much younger girl who appeared to be white-faced and frightened, was just suggesting that it might be better if they spoke with Wendy somewhere more private.

Jamie chose this moment to emerge from the cellar. He stared at the assembled company and was clearly startled by his mother’s abrupt rush in his direction and the way she started to sob all over him.

‘I went to hide in my den,’ he said, in response to questions fired from all sides.

‘But you must have heard us calling you?’

‘No. I was hiding from Katie. I got under my covers and I waited for ages and then I fell asleep.’ He looked from one face to another. ‘In my den,’ he repeated, as if this clarified things.

‘What den?’

‘I built it myself. It’s a secret den. In the cellar. I knew Katie wouldn’t look for me down there, because she’s frightened of the cellar, but I’m all right, because I can leave the light switched off and have my torch.’

‘And apparently no one else thought to look down there either.’ Bruce’s disparaging glance was mainly directed at his wife.

‘But how could you possibly have gone to sleep in the cellar?’ Wendy asked. ‘It’s so cold down there.’

‘I’ve got blankets.’ Jamie glanced up at the policemen. ‘I took them from the airing cupboard when no one was looking. That’s not really stealing, is it? Not when they’re things from my own house?’

‘It’s true, look at this.’ Tara had gone to the cellar door, switched on the light and descended a couple of stairs.

Some of the others followed her. Jamie’s secret den was admirably elaborate. He had utilized an old clothes horse and some abandoned boxes and packing cases, over which he had draped a couple of redundant curtains from Jasmine Close, which had found their way into the ‘to keep’ pile by mistake during the move. This had created a tent-like structure which Jamie had furnished with a bed made from a variety of pillows, cushions and blankets purloined from the family stock. There was also a child-size plastic chair and play table, which Katie had outgrown and donated to her brother some time before. Part of a child’s plastic tea set was on the table, alongside a part-eaten packet of Maryland cookies.

Bruce managed to contain his fury until the police had departed.

‘Have you gone completely mad? What on earth possessed you to get Tara ringing the police before you’d even searched the house properly?’

‘We did search. All of us.’

‘Not thoroughly. The child was found inside the house, for God’s sake! The police probably think you’re deranged, calling them out and saying your child is missing when he’s hidden in the house all along. They’ll think you’re an attention-seeker. If we ever call them out in a genuine emergency, they probably won’t attend.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Once Jamie had explained everything, they understood perfectly how it had happened.’

‘Oh, they did, did they? Because I can’t understand how it happened.’

‘Please, Bruce, do stop shouting. No one thought of the cellar, that’s all. Not just me, we none of us did.’

‘Never mind the others. They’re just children. You are supposed to be the adult. You’re supposed to be the one in charge and you didn’t even know Jamie had a den down there.’

‘Well, did you?’

‘I am at work all day.’

‘I don’t think you understand what I’ve just been through. I was terrified, Bruce. I imagined all sorts.’ For a moment she considered raising the spectre of Dora – that previous disappearance involving a child and a bicycle – but she knew it wouldn’t help. It would probably make things worse.

‘And you don’t seem to understand that you are entirely responsible for this whole charade. Did you see poor Katie’s face? It can’t do a child’s confidence much good to see her mother go to pieces like that.’

‘I didn’t mean to. I was so scared that something had happened to Jamie.’

‘Do you know what scares me,