Don't Come Looking by AJ Campbell (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

And that wasn’t all I found.

Twenty-Five

Sasha eases Hannah away, her hands still grabbing her daughter’s slumped shoulders. ‘Calm down. What did he say?’

Hannah sobs uncontrollably. Tears cascade down her face in an unbroken stream as if they’re trying to extinguish her pain. I fish in my bag for a tissue and hand her the whole packet. ‘Nothing... he… gone… time.’

‘You have to calm down!’ Sasha says, shaking her daughter’s shoulders. Her voice trembles along with her bottom lip. Her growing troubles sprouting into fear. ‘What did he say to you?’

Hannah removes a tissue from the packet and blows her nose. ‘He didn’t say anything,’ she says as she tries, but fails, to wipe her nose clean.

‘Nothing at all?’

Hannah sniffs loudly. Fresh tears spring out of her eyes and onto her cheeks. ‘I went to go over to him, but it was busy. The bell had rung, and everyone was leaving. He was standing by the entrance to the music block where you always meet us when you come to sch… school. But by the t-t-time I got over there, he’d disappeared.’

Sasha glances at me, confused. ‘What? You didn’t even speak to him?’ She shakes Hannah’s shoulders harder than she realises.

‘Mum, he wasn’t there when I got to where I saw him.’

Sasha swings around to George, who has remained silent the whole time, trying to decipher Hannah’s words like the rest of us. ‘Did you see him?’ Sasha asks.

‘I had to go and collect a book from my locker for homework, so I was about five minutes later coming out. All I saw was Hannah crying by the music block.’

‘Are you sure it was him?’ Sasha asks Hannah.

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘I’m asking if you could’ve been mistaken, that’s all.’

‘It was him, Mum.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘More than sure. He had that blue top on. The one we bought him for his birthday.’

Sasha wrenches her head back, and her glassy eyes stare to the sky. Her lips move as if mumbling a prayer.

We can’t miss Joe’s performance. He’ll never forgive me, and I’ll never forgive myself. ‘I’m so sorry to leave you in the middle of all this, but it’s Joe’s school play,’ I say. ‘I’ll call you later.’

I start the engine. ‘I’m going to have to put my foot down to make it there on time in this traffic.’ I say to Jim. We can’t be late. We can’t. Especially since Joe has got the main part. I feel a prickle of panic. Joe will be looking for us in the audience. I imagine him centre stage in his amazing technicoloured dreamcoat, standing on tiptoe, scanning the audience for his mummy and daddy. He will be flustered if he can’t see us. I know all too well what it’s like to land the lead role in your school play only for no one to turn up to watch. I rarely cry at anything, but the thought of putting my Joe through this is killing me.

‘The fun never stops around here, does it?’ Jim says, sarcastically, as I pull out onto the main road.

‘Do you think it was him?’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘You missed the commotion about the body found in Cambridge when I went to get a drink of water.’ I fill him in.

‘I heard it on the radio in the studio. This is getting more complicated and more abstruse by the day. You sure you can’t go to Arthur?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What’s Marc doing outside the school if he doesn’t want to be found?’

I shrug. ‘If it was him.’

‘She was quite specific about the blue top. Watch it!’

I slam on the brakes as red lights blaze from the back of the car in front of us.

‘You’re doing a lot of slamming of those brakes lately,’ he says, the palm of his hand pressing against the dashboard.

‘This is all we need, a damn traffic jam,’ I say. I open the window and poke my head out to try and see what’s going on, but I’m none the wiser. My fingers tap on the steering wheel, forcing myself not to look at the clock. ‘She only saw him from a distance. Maybe it wasn’t blue. Maybe it wasn’t him. Just saying.’ The car in front starts moving, but slowly. I can only crawl behind it. ‘Damn congestion.’

‘I keep saying it. We need to move out of London.’

‘Where would we go?’ I ask, irritated.

‘Somewhere quieter.’ He points to the windscreen. ‘Somewhere with less traffic.’ His hand reaches across and squeezes my knee. ‘Someplace where you are not constantly rushing around. The beach.’

I turn and stare at him. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘Let’s move somewhere where we can spend the time you usually waste seething in traffic jams, taking daily walks along the beach instead.’ He takes his hand off of my knee and reaches for his phone. ‘Let me see where the hold-up is.’ He pulls up Google maps. ‘I’m serious, you know.’

‘Whoa.’

‘What do you mean, whoa?’

‘What about my job?’

‘You could get another one anywhere.’

‘But our home. I love our home. I couldn’t leave it.’

‘We could make a new home.’

‘What about our friends?’

‘We can find new ones.’

What about our support network? The Mels and the Micks, and all the special people in our lives who form our backup plan, take time to find. I couldn’t trust just anyone with the kids.

‘Think about Joe and Isabella,’ says Jim. ‘Do we really want them growing up in London?’ He elbows me. ‘Here, turn left up the next road, it’s a shortcut.’

‘Yep, I know. I’ve got it.’ I slow to make the turn before picking up speed again. ‘Harry, Hannah and George are doing OK.’

‘They’re at private school. We could never afford the fees. At least give it some thought.’

No. No, London is my home. I’ve lived here for most of my life. Most people want out by the time their kids reach school age. I’m not one of them. Things bug me about it, that’s for sure – the constant traffic slowing me down all the time, the stress, the pollution