‘The sun is coming out to play,’ Sarah would warble at him whenever they were going outside to the garden. ‘Hello Mr Sun, how are you today!’ And she’d pop a sunhat on Ollie’s head, or, in cold weather, bundle him up in lots of cosy layers and a woolly hat and a hood until he looked like an adorable little maggot.
And as he’d got bigger, as soon as she started to hum it, Oliver would stop whatever he was doing and start squirming in time, his head rocking comically from side to side, his arms held out with his little palms turned upwards as if he were holding a giant invisible ball. Sometimes he would smile like the Teletubby baby, but mostly it was a serious business, his sun dance. Lately, he’d begun trying to sing along –
Oliver.
Where are you?
He couldn’t have somehow wandered off himself, could he? She couldn’t have somehow left the doors unlocked and he’d managed to get out of his cot and stomped down the corridor and into the hall and through the atrium and out on his little sturdy legs, out into the dark and the storm, his high voice happily burbling:
‘Sun as cowin ow an pay!’
His tiny chubby palms lifted to the storm –
No no no, she had locked both doors, of course she had, she always locked them, she’d had to unlock them to leave the house –
And she could feel herself, now, slipping inside her head, slipping down, like she hadn’t since the night Oliver had been conceived. And she wanted to squat there on the streaming wet concrete where a brave winter weed was peeping from a crack, and she wanted to put her arms over her soaking hair and push her face into her knees –
No.
She had to find him. She had to be stronger for him now than she’d ever been.
Oh, Evie! She needed Evie, or someone at least, but in the winter there was no one here, all the holiday people had gone and there was only Evie and stupid old bitch Margaret and
Lewis!
There was Lewis, he was a doctor and he was kind, he’d know what to do, he’d know how to find Oliver!
Sarah ran.
She ran back down the pend to the road and the harbour, and she remembered that Lewis’s house was the last one of all, the one right at the end of the road where it stopped because there was just the long line of the rocky shore and the sea after that.
‘I’m coming!’ she sobbed aloud. ‘Mummin’s coming!’
She ran into the wind, into the storm.
Lewis. Lewis would help her.
The little harbour was invisible in the dark beyond the streetlamps, but she could hear the sea sucking and crashing, she could taste it on her lips, she could feel it on her head, like a big cold wet blanket someone kept throwing over her, pressing down her hair, pressing her soaked sweatshirt down onto her shoulders and her back.
‘Lewis!’ she shouted, stupidly, because how could he hear her, inside his house?
Lewis’s cottage faced the sea, not like the others, the others that had their shoulders to the weather, as Evie put it. Lewis’s house had its garden in front of it – sea, road, garden, house – and Sarah had to open the little gate, hands stupid and fumbling, to get in.
There were lights on inside, the windows a welcoming orange glow.
Lewis must be here!
She banged on the door, she banged the iron knocker until the door opened and Lewis was standing there saying, ‘My God! Sarah!’ and ‘Come in, come in!’ and she was shaking so much she couldn’t speak, she could hardly move, she moved like an old woman into his narrow hallway and then she was able to say it:
‘Oliver is missing.’
‘You’re soaked to the skin!’ He led her down the hall, guiding her into his sitting room, where the wood-burning stove was roaring and big round copper table lamps glowed.
The warmth enveloped her, but she couldn’t sink down into it, she had to tell him:
‘I think – Evie’s – taken him. But I can’t – find her either. Not answering her phone.’ She felt so tired she could hardly think, she could hardly get the words from her brain to her lips. ‘We need to call the police.’
He was very tall, Lewis. Very good-looking, very alpha. She remembered boys like him at school who had had everything, who were handsome and funny and nice and clever, who were destined for careers in medicine or law, who were almost like a different species from the rest of them –
‘Police,’ she managed.
‘Okay. I’ll call the police. You get warm. I’ll get you a towel and some dry clothes –’
‘No, now. Call them! Please! He’s… He’s not even two years old!’ Her jaw spasmed. ‘Evie… Maybe it’s not – Evie… Why would she take him without telling me? He was in his cot. Sleeping. When – I went to check – after supper – he wasn’t there!’
Lewis frowned. ‘I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, but yes, okay, I’ll call the police right now.’ He shook his head at her, his handsome face full of concern. ‘Come here.’
He folded her into his arms, rubbing her back, murmuring, ‘It’ll be all right.’ His voice was a little bit nasal, like he permanently had a cold. ‘We’ll sort this out. Don’t worry, Sarah. Don’t worry.’
As she slumped against him, against the solid warmth of him, she felt the spinning in her brain slow, the feeling of vertigo, of falling down and down to a place she couldn’t get back up from for anything, not even her own child… she felt it all recede until she was able to take a deep breath, and pull away, and thank him quietly.
And then he was gone, and Sarah stood in front of the stove, mesmerised by the dancing flames and dripping onto the colourful ethnic rug, all oranges and browns and greens and yellows, that he’d probably bought in Kathmandu on a trip that was more like an ordeal than a holiday.
He was back more quickly than seemed possible.
‘Did you call them?’
‘Yes. They’ll be here soon.’ He dropped a large towel and a bundle of clothes onto the sofa. ‘A bit big for you, but you can roll up the sleeves and the legs.’
‘Thank you,’ was all she could say.
He left the room while she dried herself off and changed into the soft grey joggers, black T-shirt and multicoloured, slightly oily-smelling woolly jumper, which had probably been knitted from yak wool in a hill village in Mongolia. They were all much too big.
And suddenly she wanted to pull off these warm dry clothes and wriggle back into her cold wet ones, because how could she be nice and safe and warm while Oliver –
Oliver was out there –
Maybe alone –
Maybe freezing cold and wet and terrified –
And not understanding why Mummin didn’t come.
‘Are you decent?’ said Lewis from behind the door.
‘Yes.’
He came in and made her sit down on the sofa with him, and he put his arm round her and rubbed her shoulder.
‘The police –’ she got out.
‘On their way.’
They would search for him, wouldn’t they? A little boy missing would be their very top priority.
They could probably use Evie’s phone to find her. They could track people’s locations using their phones, couldn’t they? Maybe Lewis was right and there was a simple explanation – maybe Evie had taken him for some reason and left Sarah a note, but Sarah had been too panicked to see it –