Just for Fun

by Rosalind James

  They waited, not talking, after Zoe made the call. Emma stared at the phone on the desk, willing it to ring with the news that the police had found Zack, safe and sound, at home. But it remained resolutely silent. Then there were two police officers in the doorway, a man and a woman, faces serious under the familiar caps with their checkered bands.

  Emma jumped up. “Did they find him?”

  “Sorry.” For a horrible moment, she thought the man was telling her something else. “We haven’t found him yet. Not at your flat, not on the route. We’re calling in a search team now.”

  “Oh, God.” Emma put a hand out to the back of the chair, and the female officer came forward.

  “Why don’t you sit down,” she suggested. Then turned to Zoe. “Maybe a cup of tea. Because we need to ask some questions.”

  “Who’s looking?” Emma asked desperately. “What search team? Who?”

  “We’ve rung the right people,” the man assured her. “They’re looking now, near the center. Going door to door and asking if anyone’s seen him. But in order for us to direct them, we need some answers from you.”

  Emma answered their questions automatically, pushing down the terror that lurked just below the surface. No, there was nobody else who could have come to collect Zack. Noplace else she could think of that he would have gone. Nobody who knew he was meant to be leaving early.

  “Why was he leaving early?” the female officer asked.

  “He’d been fighting,” Emma explained.

  “Was he unhappy?” the officer asked Zoe. “Upset? Would he have thought he was going to be in trouble?”

  “Yes,” Zoe confirmed. “Very upset. I don’t know about in trouble.”

  “No,” Emma protested. “I mean, yes, he’d have been upset, I’m sure. But he wouldn’t have thought . . . he wouldn’t have been worried about what I’d do. I don’t think so.”

  “What about his dad?” the male officer asked. “He wouldn’t have collected him? Did you ring him?” he asked Zoe.

  “Oh.” Zoe looked confused. “No.”

  “His dad’s in England,” Emma explained. “With the All Blacks. His dad’s Nic Wilkinson.”

  Both officers sat up straighter at that. “But the boy’s name isn’t Wilkinson,” the man said.

  “No. Zack has my name.”

  “Would anyone else know who his dad was?”

  “Yes,” Emma said, a new wave of cold fear engulfing her. “Anyone who read the Herald yesterday could know.”

  “And come here to kidnap him?” Zoe protested. “We do have precautions. People can’t just walk in off the street and abduct a child.”

  Emma froze at the words. Kidnap. Abduct. Then turned her anger and fear on Zoe. “Like you had precautions against Zack walking out? How do we know nobody took him? Has anybody asked? Is anybody asking?”

  “Do you have security cameras?” the male officer asked.

  “No,” Zoe said. “We’ve never needed them.”

  “I need to ring my sister,” Emma said abruptly. “And Zack’s dad. I need to ring Nic.”

  Ringing Lucy was harder than she could have imagined. Saying the words. Missing. Gone. Emma found herself choking on the story.

  “Please come,” she finally begged. “Please come be with me.” She rang off. Looked at the mobile again, then took a breath, picked it up to ring Nic.

  Four rings. Five. It was . . . what was it? Two o’clock? Three? She couldn’t think. Then his voice, fuzzy with sleep. “’Lo? Emma? What?”

  The tears, then. “Zack,” she got out. “He’s gone, and they can’t . . . Oh, God, Nic. They can’t find him.”

  “What?”

  She explained in halting sentences, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Saying it didn’t get any easier. It just made it more real.

  “Who’s looking? Where?” he demanded. “What are they doing to find him?”

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “They say they’re looking. And they asked about . . .” She swallowed, forced herself to go on. “About security camera footage. In case somebody . . . in case somebody took him.” She was shaking so hard, she nearly dropped the phone. “Oh, God, Nic. What if somebody took him?”

  “Emma,” he said sharply. “No. Nobody’s going to have taken him. He was in the center, right? Somebody would’ve had to come in. That won’t have happened. For ransom? Not in En Zed. He’s walked someplace, is what it is. But why?”

  She explained about the fight. “Shit,” he said, his voice shaky with emotion. “Bloody hell. He’s run away. Because he thought . . . Bloody hell. But they’ll find him. They’re going to find him. Let me talk to the police. Is somebody there with you?”

  Emma handed the mobile to the female officer, heard her answering Nic’s questions about the search team.

  “I’ll be escorting your . . . Ms. Martens to her home shortly,” the woman said. “If the boy’s wandering about, he could arrive home at any time. She’ll be more comfortable there as well.”

  “Yeh, I’ll be staying with her,” she confirmed. A few more sentences, and she handed the phone back to Emma.

  “Nic,” she said, hugging herself with the arm that wasn’t holding the phone, rocking back and forth in distress. “Oh, God. Zack.”

  “I’m coming back,” he said. “I’ll find out when I can get a flight. But it takes so bloody long.”

  “No,” she said at once. “Please. I need you to be there. I need to talk to you. I can’t have you be gone, not be able to ring you, for more than a day. And they’ll find him before that, won’t they? They have to find him.”

  “Ring me when you’re back at the house, then,” he commanded. “Tell me what’s happening. I’ll check flights, but I won’t leave now. Because of course they will. They’ll find him. ”

  The next hours were an endless fight against panic. Sitting in the lounge, holding her sister’s hand, her body stiff and frozen with fear and dread. Trying to force her thoughts away from images of Zack, of what could be happening to him. Images she couldn’t bear to entertain, but couldn’t keep from her mind either. Waiting for the phone to ring, and fearing the call at the same time. Lucy ringing their parents, explaining. Leaving Emma periodically to step outside and ring them again, only to tell them that there was still no news of Zack. Waiting, with Nic ringing for updates that she couldn’t give him. And, to her surprise, his parents’ arrival.

  “Oh, darling.” Ellen folded Emma in a hug as both women’s tears flowed. “Nothing yet?”

  “No,” Emma got out around the lump in her throat. “No.”

  “What do you know?” George asked, face set and grim. “What have you heard?”

  “Nothing,” Emma told him shakily. “They’ve been out looking. But nothing.”

  “Who’s out looking?” George demanded of the female officer, still sitting patiently in the side chair. “What are they doing?”

  “We have a team out,” she assured him. “And volunteers as well. They’ve fanned out from the center, searching.”

  “Right. I’ll be helping with that,” he decided. “I’m no bloody use here. Ellen’ll stay with you, Emma. Make you a cup of tea, or something. But I’m going out to look for Zack.”

  Emma nodded stiffly. Ellen on one side of her, Lucy on the other. Praying. And waiting.

  When the call finally came over the police radio, all four women in the room jumped. Emma’s heart was beating so hard, it seemed as if it might actually leap from her chest. She couldn’t breathe as she listened to the woman answering. Saw the relieved grin flash on her face, the thumbs-up. And dissolved in racking sobs, was folded into Ellen’s arms, Lucy hugging her from behind, as they all cried together.

  “Onopoto Domain,” the policewoman said briefly as she finished the call. “Lost. But they’ve got him. I’ll take you. All of you.”

  “Nic,” Emma got out through her tears. “I need to tell Nic.”

  “In the car,” Lucy said. “Ring him on the way.”

  He answe
red on the first ring, as he had every time. “They found him,” she said, her entire body shaking with the release of tension. “They found him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s OK. He’s safe. Thank God. He’s safe.”

  His ragged, indrawn breath, then a choking sound. And another voice on the line.

  “Emma? It’s Koti. What’s happened?”

  “He’s OK. Zack’s OK. They found him at the Domain. We’re here now. I see him. Oh, thank God. I’ll ring Nic back. Tell him.”

  Then she was out of the car, running through the darkness to her son. She vaguely registered George, standing in the little group of police around the small figure, before she was pulling Zack into her arms, sinking to the ground with him. Crying, and taking his sobs, his tears, into herself.

  “Oh, baby,” she finally got out. “I was so worried. What were you doing? What happened?”

  “It was my . . . s-s-stone,” Zack stammered through his tears. “I w-w-wanted to . . . chuck it back in the sea. But I couldn’t find it,” he wailed. “And I thought you’d be angry, so I tried to . . . I tried to go home. I just wanted to go home,” he sobbed. “But I kept getting loster, and then I got scared because it was dark, and there might be animals, so I hid behind a tree so they couldn’t get me. And I was so scared, Mum!” He buried his head in her side as he wept.

  “Oh, baby.” She smoothed his hair again and again with a trembling hand. “What stone, though? Why?”

  “The one Nic gave me,” Zack said, his lip quivering. He put his hand into his shorts pocket, pulled out the white oval. “From the beach. I had it in my pack. And I wanted to chuck it away.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he doesn’t want me.” The tears, starting again.

  “Oh, sweetie. Yes, he does. He does. He’s been so worried.”

  “No, he doesn’t! Liam and Connor said! I said it wasn’t true, but they said it was in the paper. They said he did wrong things. I said he didn’t, but they said it was news, and news is true. And they said . . .” He broke off, crying hard now. “They said he . . . he didn’t want to be my dad. I told them he gave me an All Black bedroom, and I have a jersey, and everything! But they said he didn’t want me. They said he said.”

  “They were wrong,” Emma told him fiercely. “Nic’s your dad, and he does want you. He loves you, and he wants you. That’s true.”

  “But it’s news,” Zack sobbed.

  George had been standing nearby with Ellen, but now he squatted on his haunches next to Zack. “Mate,” he said. “You know I’m your Grandpa, don’t you?”

  “Yeh,” Zack said doubtfully, his woebegone face turned up to his grandfather’s.

  “That means I’m your dad’s dad. And it means I know your dad. And I can tell you. Your dad wants you, and he loves you.” His voice was gruffer now, but he plowed on. “Just as much as I love him, that’s how much your dad loves you. And that’s heaps.”

  “Really?” Zack asked uncertainly as he sniffed.

  “Really,” George assured him. He put out a work-hardened hand to tousle his grandson’s hair. “Just that much. I’m his dad, and I know.”

  “And right now,” Emma said, standing up, holding her son to her, feeling weak with relief and emotion, “we need to ring your dad. So he knows you’re OK, and he can talk to you himself.”

  Chapter 38

  Ellen and Lucy fixed dinner while Emma ran Zack a bath and sat with him while he took it. She couldn’t bear to leave him, not tonight. He recovered quickly under the influence of warm water and hot soup, and was soon showing his grandparents his Legos and All Blacks poster. Emma’s own recovery, though, wasn’t nearly as quick. By the time she’d got Zack off to sleep with a story and a song, she didn’t think she’d ever been more exhausted in her life. Lucy offered to stay, but Emma knew she needed the quiet, time alone to recover.

  She’d thought she had no more tears left, but they’d started again in earnest once she had shut the door behind the others. Tears of remembered terror, of relief and gratitude. For what she’d feared, and for not having to endure it. And in the midst of it, the ring of her mobile. She groped for it. Nic. She took a deep, shaky breath, pushed the button to answer.

  “Hi,” she said, the tears welling up in seemingly inexhaustible supply. “Aren’t you . . . aren’t you at training, or out with the team, or something?”

  “You’re joking, right?” His voice didn’t sound much firmer than her own. “I’m buggered. All I want is to be there with the two of you. How’s Zack?”

  “Asleep at last.”

  “And how’re you?”

  She laughed a little, and was amazed to find she still could. It seemed like so long since she had laughed. “Better than I was. That was . . . it was the worst. For you, too, I know.”

  “And we haven’t even—” He stopped, started over. “There was something else in the Herald today. I just heard about it, since . . . since Zack. Since I found out he was OK. It hardly seemed to matter, when I heard it. But then I started worrying that you’d seen it. And that you would’ve believed it. Because it isn’t true. None of it.”

  “It isn’t?” She wanted so much to believe. Thoughts of Zack had driven everything else from her mind for hours. But once he was safe at home again, the remembrance of the story had seeped back in, a niggling unease at the edges of her consciousness. “I did see it. And I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that.” His voice sounded pinched and tight, far from his usual deep, controlled tone. “I didn’t cheat on Claudia, ever. Even with you, however tempted I was. And you know nobody else could’ve tempted me as much as you. I sure as hell haven’t cheated on you.”

  “Why would she say it, then?”

  “I don’t know,” he said in frustration. “Publicity? Her moment in the spotlight? I barely recognize her. Couldn’t have told you her name. One of those girls who hangs about when we’re celebrating after a match. I won’t say she hasn’t taken anyone back to her place, any of the younger boys. But I don’t do that anymore. I was a fool and lost you once. I wouldn’t risk that again.”

  She was silent, digesting what he’d said, not sure what else to say. What to ask.

  “If you need somebody to vouch for me,” he went on hurriedly. “My roomie during any of those trips, any of the other boys. Everyone knows who goes after what’s on offer, and who doesn’t. And I don’t. I realize there’s no way I can prove it. I’m gone too much. All I can ask you to do is believe that I love you, and I don’t want anybody else. I need you to believe that.”

  “Lucy said that Cooper’s is talking about canceling their contract with you,” she said slowly. “And that some of the others were considering it too.”

  “Yeh,” he admitted. “Because ‘mums buy bread,’” he mimicked savagely. “And I’m not looking good to mums just now. That’s what my agent told me. But that doesn’t matter. That’s the least of it. What matters is you, whether you can still trust me. Don’t give up on me, Emma. Please. I need you to believe in me.”

  “I do,” she said, the tears coming again now. “It’s going to take a lot more than that for me to give up on you. I believe in you, and I love you.”

  “Oh, God.” She heard the ragged sound of his indrawn breath. “Give me a sec here.”

  He came back a minute later. Exhaled down the line, a long breath. “All this. I just . . . I can’t do this. I’m buggered. This was too bad, today. It’s too hard, being here alone. I need to see both of you, to have you here. Would you come be with me?”

  “What? Now?” she faltered. “To London?”

  “I need you here. It’s not the reputation thing, or the endorsements,” he hurried on. “Everyone else I care about, everyone who knows me, my teammates, my family, they’ll know what to believe. It’s not about that. It’s about you and me, and Zack too. I know it’s a big ask. It’s so far. And I know it’d be a leap of faith. But . . . can you?”

 
; It was a leap, she realized, that she’d already taken. “If you need me,” she promised, “I’ll come. I’ll bring Zack, and we’ll both come.”

  “You will?” He sounded startled.

  “Of course I will. That’s what loving someone means, doesn’t it? Being there for you, when you need me?”

  “I don’t deserve you,” he said, his voice shaky again. “I know I don’t. But I’m going to do my best to try.”

  “I just don’t know . . . what.” She tried to think, but her mind was mush. “How to do it.”

  “I’ll do it,” he promised at once. “There’s a flight at twelve-thirty tomorrow afternoon. I know that, because it’s the one we took. If you can get to the airport tomorrow by ten-thirty, I’ll email you the tickets, for you and Zack. Don’t be late,” he warned her. “Don’t leave it to the last minute, not this time. I’ll get someone to find a room for you, too, and send you the booking. All you need to do is email me your passport info. Numbers, full names, expiration. You do have them, don’t you?” he asked in sudden alarm. “Passports?”

  “Yeah. We both do. Tomorrow morning? I’ll have to go into work,” she realized. “I can’t do it on the phone. It’s going to take some time to sort all the projects out. And I don’t know what Roger will say. I don’t know what’ll happen.”

  “Whatever happens, it doesn’t matter. Because I’m here for you. You know that.”

  “I do,” she said. “I know. And I’m here for you too.”

  Lucy was asleep already, when Emma rang. “What?” her sister asked fuzzily. “What happened? Zack? Something else?”

  She was alarmed at Emma’s recital. “I know it’s been a bad day. It must be hard to even think straight. But . . . you believe him? Enough to drop everything and go there? How can you?”

  “Because I do,” Emma said helplessly. “Because I love him, and he loves me, and I believe that he’s telling me the truth. And we need to be together right now.”

  “He has no track record,” Lucy reminded her. “OK, I believe that he cares about Zack. That was obvious, today. But he told you once before that he loved you, remember? What did that count for?”