The Harder They Fall

by Debbie McGowan

  Jess left without hesitation, the priority now to get out looking for little Oliver Brown as quickly as possible. Kris grabbed his coat and George went to put on his shoes; Josh followed him into the bedroom and unhooked his jacket from the back of the door.

  “I’m sorry about before,” he said. “I over-reacted. There’s something I need to tell you, but it will have to wait.”

  “It’s OK. I’m sorry too, for pushing you. I shouldn’t have.”

  There was much more to be said, but for now it was put on hold, as they joined the others gathered in the lounge of their cabin, the printout of the site spread out on the table. It wasn’t a particularly detailed map to work from, but it at least gave them some idea of the main forested areas and footpaths. Andy marked off the map with a grid of squares, pencilling in darker lines to indicate which area each of them would search. They all took pictures of it with their phones and headed out to their respective zones, keeping an eye on the time so that they could make check-ins every half an hour. As James and Eleanor made their way back towards the playground, the three boys on bikes came up to meet them, and for a moment, James dared to hope that they’d seen Oliver, but they hadn’t. They did, however, offer to search downhill, and alert their parents to what had happened so they too could join the search if necessary.

  Half an hour passed and still no sightings; each of the group checked in with Andy, and moved on to their next area. It was starting to get dark, and Shaunna and Adele had arrived back to find all three cabins deserted. After several attempts, Shaunna got through to Kris’s phone and he explained about Oliver’s disappearance.

  “What can we do?” she asked.

  “Wait at the cabins, just in case he comes back.”

  She hung up and went outside to sit with Adele. Casper was locked inside the other cabin, barking and scratching to be let out, but they didn’t have a key. He started howling, the eerie sound piercing the petrified silence.

  “Surely he can’t have gone that far,” Adele reasoned. “He’s only four. How far can someone so small go in a couple of hours?”

  They, like all of the other adults, didn’t want to consider the possibility that he hadn’t simply wandered off, but that someone had taken him, although they hadn’t seen anyone other than the three boys at the playground in the entire time they’d been staying here, so it was, thankfully, the least likely of the two possibilities.

  “Kris said they’re all heading back now. The police should be here soon.”

  “Oh God. This is awful,” Adele cried.

  Kris was the first to return, closely followed by Andy, then Dan. They’d found nothing. Kris let Casper loose and he went tearing around the place in circles and greeting everyone—a trait they usually found endearing, but not today. Shaunna called him over and told him to stay, whereby he sat next to her for a couple of seconds, but then he was back on his feet, pushing his nose into her hand, wagging frantically and wriggling to break free. He was picking up on the anxiety and she only just caught him by the collar as he got set to start all over again.

  Eleanor and James walked up to the cabins and stopped in front, so worried by now that neither of them could even speak. Toby was hungry and Eleanor sat on the wooden steps to feed him. They too had found nothing; nor had they heard from the boys on bikes.

  In the dulling twilight, the sudden illumination of the police car headlamps was blinding. James took the two officers inside and explained the situation, as best he could. Torchlight shone through the trees up ahead, and George and Josh came into view a minute or two later. George shook his head. Eleanor started to cry and Josh sat next to her on the step, pulling her close and stroking her hair; all the while Toby suckled noisily and contentedly. Adele was putting little Shaunna to bed, and Dan and Andy were sitting in the 4x4 with the lights on full beam, shining them along the path and through the trees towards the playground, for this was the most likely route Oliver would have taken. Shaunna’s feet were aching from traipsing around the shops, and she’d popped inside to put on a pair of flip-flops, which sounded so ridiculous in the awful, black silence of the situation. She flip-flopped her way over to the 4x4 and stopped.

  “Ouch!” She leaned down to remove one of the thin rubber shoes and plucked out the sharp object with her finger and thumb nail, passing it to Andy.

  “Ooh. Nasty! I got one in my hand before,” he said sympathetically. “I went flying on the wet grass. It didn’t half hurt.”

  “I bet it did.”

  The others were paying little attention to their conversation, for it only existed as a fleeting distraction.

  “Yeah,” Andy continued. “I found a few more on the steps.” Carefully, he groped around in his pocket, and deposited the evidence in Shaunna’s hand. She frowned.

  “Hmm. I wonder how they got there?”

  Josh and George had gradually tuned into this dialogue and now looked at each other in disbelief.

  “Drawing pins!” they said in unison.

  “Pardon?” Eleanor asked.

  “When we looked after Ollie before the wedding, he was playing with drawing pins,” George explained.

  “Ah, so that’s where they got to! My mum was going mad looking for them.”

  “Well, obviously we confiscated them, but then we found a couple on the floor, went to put them back in the pot, and Ollie had taken it again. Maybe if he’s still got them, he might’ve…”

  “You do realise how crazy that sounds?” Kris interrupted. “You think there’s going to be some gingerbread style trail of drawing pins leading the way to Oliver? Even if there is, how the hell would we see them? Casper’s got more chance of finding him than…” He stopped, as his brain did a double-take, then sped off in overdrive. But it was absurd, or was it?

  “You don’t think…” Shaunna said, running the possibility through her mind.

  “What are you two on about?” George asked.

  “Casper was bred to be a search dog, but he failed the training.”

  “That’s not a lot of good, is it?”

  “Is it more or less stupid than your drawing pins idea?”

  “That’s cool,” Andy said, trying to keep things as positive as possible. “One time I went snow-boarding they had to call out the dogs for some skiers buried under an avalanche. It works by tracking human scent, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Basically we present him with a piece of clothing and then we command him to seek out the owner. The thing is, although there’s not much wrong with his nose, he doesn’t quite get what he’s supposed to do.”

  “I bet George could get him to do it,” Josh said. George turned to him, aghast.

  “Are you mental?”

  “Think about it. What did that horse whisperer say? You could sense their fear?”

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help.”

  “And then there’s Sphinx. Do you have any idea how much of a psycho that cat is? But you! You just walk in there and he sits right on your knee!”

  “Come on, George. It’s worth a try,” Kris egged him on.

  “Ellie?” George was hoping for a bit of sense, even if she was out of her mind with worry. She shrugged.

  “What’ve you got to lose?”

  George looked around him at all the hopeful faces, and opened his mouth, about to refuse, when the two police officers came outside and got back in their car. James reappeared a moment later.

  “They’re going to call out the helicopter,” he explained. “It should be up here within the hour.”

  “Within the hour?” Ellie repeated. “Oh, James.” She pulled herself upright and they held each other, enveloping Toby between them. Josh looked away, struggling to cope with seeing her in so much pain.

  “Right then,” George said, “I guess I’ve got no choice. Let’s do this thing.”

  Kris nodded and asked James to go and get Oliver’s pyjamas: the ones he’d been sleeping in this week. James wasn’t sure why he needed them, but went and
got them anyway. Meanwhile, Shaunna brought out Casper’s running lead and attached it to his collar. George took the lead and knelt on the floor next to the dog, stroking his head and taking deep breaths, trying to tune in to that sense of connection he’d felt with the horses. It was so hard, with everyone watching him, and he closed his eyes to concentrate. Casper had been panting and wagging, but now he stopped and sat quietly and calmly.

  “Wow!” Shaunna whispered, not to anyone in particular. “How did he do that?”

  “I know! It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Josh whispered back.

  George took the pyjamas and held them in front of Casper, turning them over so that he could sniff all aspects of them (this part he’d got straight off the TV).

  “What command do you use when you want him to fetch his F-R-I-S-B-E-E?” George spelled out so as not to break Casper’s calm state of mind.

  “We don’t usually have to,” Kris said. “He just does it. But if he doesn’t, ‘go find it’ should do the trick.”

  George nodded and held the pyjamas to the dog’s nose again, then swiftly moved them out of the way and hid them in his jacket. “Go find it,” he commanded and Casper shot off, almost ripping George’s shoulder out of its socket as he reached the end of the running lead. Down the path towards the playground they went, with everyone in pursuit, other than Adele, Eleanor and James, the latter of whom was under strict instructions to wait at the cabin for confirmation from the mountain rescue team.

  “Go on,” George goaded, panting for breath. “Go find it.” Casper pulled onwards. He was a tremendously strong dog and it was a real struggle to keep up. They were now entering the playground area, and Casper toured each and every piece of equipment, correctly identifying the swing Oliver had been on most often, sniffing the slide and climbing halfway up the steps. It was apparent that Oliver wasn’t here, and his residual scent was causing confusion. George took the pyjamas from his jacket and held them to the dog’s nose again.

  “Go, Casper. Go find it.”

  On they went, down the dirt track where the boys on bikes had ridden, back towards home. They were going at such a speed that George kept losing his footing, and he tripped, but saved himself, as Casper suddenly veered off to the left. Here, the footpath was less well trodden, low branches and brambles snagging on George’s clothes as he careered along behind the determined Labrador, the canopy so dense now and the path so winding that he kept losing sight of Casper as he rounded corner after corner, the running lead alternately becoming slack and almost being pulled from his hand as he momentarily caught up, then fell behind again. George’s arms were aching from the effort of keeping a grip on his flashlight and the lead, and once again he tripped, but this time it was over Casper, as he came to an abrupt stop, barking, yelping and wagging his tail. And there, on a ledge six feet below where they were standing, was Oliver, curled up and shivering, his leg glistening in the harsh beam of the torch.

  “I falled down, Dorge,” he said, looking up at the light. “Carry me please.” He held his arms up in the air and George swallowed back the tears.

  “He’s here,” he shouted, assuming the others were somewhere nearby, although it was now too dark to know for sure. “He’s here and he’s OK,” he said, crouching down and rubbing Casper’s ears. The dog nuzzled into his hand and George felt tears roll down his cheeks.

  “Good boy, Casper. Good boy.” The dog licked at his face and it made him cry all the more, but he pulled himself together again, for Oliver’s sake.

  “OK, Ollie. I can’t carry you, because your leg is hurt. I’m going to come and sit with you, though. And soon, you’re going for a ride in a helicopter.”

  “Why?”

  George climbed down onto the ledge and sat next to him. “So they can take you to a hospital and fix your leg.” The way it was bent under him, it had to be broken, but otherwise he seemed fine.

  “I don’t want to go hospal,” Oliver said, blinking up at him with anxious, round eyes. “I want to go home with Enna.”

  “You can, soon,” George promised.

  Immediately on hearing the shout that Oliver was OK, Dan and Andy had doubled back to tell Eleanor and James. Adele took Toby from Eleanor and she ran, with James, all the way down the hill. They were both standing above the ridge now, tears flowing freely in relief. George was shivering, from the shock and the cold, having wrapped Oliver in his jacket, and when the helicopter arrived, it took some persuading to get the terrified little boy to let go of his hand, but he did so as soon as they winched him up and his dad gave him a huge cuddle.

  “I sorry, Daddy. I wanted to play bikes. I be a good boy.”

  George turned away and collapsed into Josh’s waiting arms. Together they made their way through the trees and up to the playground, from where they watched the helicopter until it was nothing more than a distant dot of light blending into the stars. The others had already started walking back to the cabins, but they stayed a moment longer so that George could get his legs working again.

  “You ready?’ Josh asked. George buried his head in Josh’s jacket. “Hey.” He gently lifted George’s face so he could look him in the eyes. “You were awesome.”

  George tried to laugh it off. Josh wiped the tears away with his thumb.

  “Can you show me how to do that?”

  “Yeah,” George said, stepping unsteadily. “See page sixty-eight of your module guide: ‘Animal Psychology for Amateurs’.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:

  LAST AND FIRST

  Cuts, bruises and a broken foot: little Oliver Brown had got off fairly lightly, and was so enthralled with his blue plaster-cast and crutches ‘like Granpad’, as he called Eleanor’s dad, that he’d forgotten all about swings and slides and bikes. This temporary amnesia was being helped along by a visit from the older boys, who brought him sweets, followed up with a hefty dose of paediatric pain relief once his visitors had left, with the other welcome side effect being that he was drowsy and somewhat more compliant than usual, which was a good thing, for a sleepless night at the hospital had made James ill-tempered. He began the phone call to Oliver’s mother with a gentle and, Eleanor thought, very convincing reassurance that everything was well; he remained silent during her scathing indictment of his capabilities as a father, interspersed with frequent reference to the likelihood that Oliver’s schooling, due to commence on his fourth birthday two weeks from now, would undoubtedly have to be delayed, with disastrous and somewhat overstated consequences; he even managed to utter a polite farewell at the end of the conversation, such as it could be called that. However, the terms in which he referred to her after he hung up were far from polite and so unlike James that they left Eleanor agape. When she recovered, she ushered him off to bed, promising (with fingers crossed) to wake him if he were needed.

  Fairing just as poorly, in the cabin next-door-but-one, was Jess, who had woken with nausea and a banging headache and at first assumed it was due to the vodka, thus refused to give voice to what she believed was yet more self-inflicted suffering. An hour later and Kris was sent for the ‘doctor in residence’, even though the sum total interactions Eleanor and Jess had engaged in since the wedding came to less than one. Kris stayed with Oliver and Toby (both fast asleep) whilst Eleanor tended to the patient, whose high temperature, muscle stiffness and general state of lethargy could mean only one thing.

  “Flu,” Eleanor announced, stripping the cover from her thermometer.

  “Terrific,” Jess groaned. “And there was I, thinking it couldn’t possibly get any worse.”

  “At least it waited until almost the end of the holiday.”

  Jess didn’t say what she wanted to say to this. It had been a truly awful week, with no contact from Rob for three days and the whole thing of pussy-footing around Andy. She was staving off telling him, in the hope that, in spite of the evidence, she was wrong; that she hadn’t been ripped off.

  “So, how is Rob?” Eleanor asked without a trace of sympathy or interest.
“I’m assuming he’s still alive?”

  “How would I know?” Jess responded, trying to sound equally uninterested and failing miserably.

  “He’s not been in touch?”

  She shook her head, the dizziness combining with the irrepressible tears and making it impossible to hold back any longer.

  “Oh, Ellie. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I wanted to do the right thing and I messed up and I’m so sorry for everything.” Each sob was making her wheeze, and each wheeze was hurting her chest so much that she didn’t know what to do with herself. For all that she had done, Eleanor couldn’t stand by and watch her suffer like this.

  “Oh dear. What’s happened?” She sat down and Jess collapsed against her.

  “I think Rob’s conned me,” she gasped, struggling to catch her breath. “I gave him everything in my bank account and now he’s disappeared.”

  “Why did you give him money?”

  “To pay for his operation. How could I have been so stupid?” Jess was breathless and doubled up in pain, but there was little more Eleanor could do than rub her back and wait for her to stop putting herself through this.

  “OK, honey. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to help you get into bed and make you comfy with some painkillers and a cool flannel. Then I’m going to ring Lois and ask her to get him to call you. How does that sound?”

  Jess nodded listlessly. Eleanor helped her to her feet and escorted her to bed, making sure she had plenty of cold water nearby and forcing her to take paracetomol. She located Jess’s phone and made the call.

  “Hi, Lois, it’s Eleanor. How are you?”

  “Oh, hello, Doctor Davenport, oh. I mean, Doctor Brown. I’m much better, thank you for asking. I’m so sorry to have missed your wedding. Did you have a lovely day?”

  “It was wonderful, Lois, thank you. Please don’t apologise. As long as you’re on the mend now.”

  “Very much so. I felt so awful, leaving Miss Lambert without any assistance.”