by Jane Renshaw
Oliver Oliver Oliver.
Her feet seemed to beat out his name on the road as a sort of invocation, a prayer, an entreaty to whatever gods there may be, whatever forces for good there may be that had the power to keep him safe.
Oliver Oliver Oliver as she ran through the dark, through the funnels of light under the streetlamps that illuminated, briefly, the rain that stung her face and hands, as she ran through the foaming sea that crashed onto the road, flung against her by a wind so strong it was like a solid thing, a thing she had to push through, breathe against, somehow.
Let him be safe.
Let him be there.
Let him be safe as she ran past all the empty blank windows of the empty cottages to the one she needed, the one where he must be.
Oh please.
Oliver.
It was so narrow, the pend between the fisherfolk’s cottages, that she could almost have reached out and touched the wall of Evie’s house and the wall of the house opposite at the same time. In the shelter of the buildings, in this shelter from the storm – please let this be his shelter from the storm – it was possible, finally, to breathe.
She filled her lungs and she shouted:
‘Evie!’
She tried to put her finger on the doorbell but her hand was shaking so much it slipped off the little plastic nub and she had to hold that hand with the other one, she had to focus focus on pressing that white plastic nub and she was still shouting and why was it so dark in there? And please please Oliver.
Why weren’t there any lights in the windows?
She banged on the door and she kept shouting her sister’s name.
‘Evieeeee!’
Where was Evie?
Why would she have taken Oliver? Without even telling her?
A widening triangle of yellow light shone on the rain as a door opened but not Evie’s, it was the door of the next cottage and it wasn’t her own face looking back at her, it wasn’t her own twin’s face, it was an old woman, it was Margaret who lived next door and
‘Where’s Evie?’ Sarah shouted into her saggy face and Margaret just stared at her, she stared and then she shook her head and said something but Sarah didn’t know what she was saying, there was too much noise from the wind and the crashing sea and Margaret was standing back inside her house and
‘Oliver!’ she shouted and ‘Oliver’s missing!’ and
‘Who?’ said Margaret with a funny pursed-up face and
‘Oliver!’ and
‘Who’s Oliver?’ said Margaret and
Oh God and ‘My son, my son!’ and please let Margaret not have dementia, surely Evie would have said if she had, but Sarah hadn’t seen Margaret for months – no, years – so this was possible, this could be, because sometimes Evie didn’t tell her things she thought might upset her but
The stupid old bitch!
It wasn’t her fault, she knew it wasn’t poor Margaret’s fault, with her staring eyes, her frightened eyes but
‘My son!’ She pushed the words out. ‘You know – my son – you know – Oliver! He’s missing! I just – checked. His cot. He’s gone – someone’s taken –’ She dived at the closing door but she was too late, the old woman had slammed it and when Sarah tried the door handle and pushed she met the resistance of a lock, the bitch, didn’t she care, didn’t she care that a little boy was missing? That Oliver was gone? He was out here somewhere –
And suddenly she couldn’t move, she couldn’t do anything but stare at the locked door. There was a tightness in her chest, as if her lungs were shrinking and shrinking and every time she breathed out they shrank a little bit more. Soon she could only get sips of air, tiny sips, before her tiny shrunken lungs pushed it back out again.
Oliver.
She shut her eyes and made herself not breathe. Made her lungs be still, as Evie had taught her.
Oliver loved being outside.
He wasn’t afraid.
It wouldn’t even occur to him to be afraid.
She heaved in a breath.
The sun is coming out to play...
When he was born, when Evie had seen him for the first time, she’d whispered, ‘Rah-Bee!’ – the twins’ childhood codename for Sarah, Sarah Booth, Sarah B., Rah-Bee – ‘Rah-Bee, he looks exactly like the sun in Teletubbies! You know, the sun with the baby’s face in it!’ Evie had started watching children’s TV, even before Oliver was born, to select the programmes she thought would be suitable for a child prodigy, which of course he was going to be. Oliver’s red little newborn scrunched-up face didn’t really look like that Teletubbies baby, or, indeed, any kind of prodigy, but that was where it had started, with Evie saying that.
‘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 was 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 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 at 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 –
But why would Evie do that? Why leave a note, when she knew that Sarah was right there in the house?
‘Someone – I’ve been thinking... Someone could have got a la-ladder...’ She stuttered on the word – ‘They could have used a ladder to get onto the roof, and pulled it up, and lowered it down into one of the courtyards, and climbed down and got in that way – I often don’t lock the sliding glass doors into the courtyards, which is so stupid, I know, but they’re secure, they’re safe, that’s what I thought. The house is safe...’
It had always felt safe, with its blank outer walls and its internal courtyard gardens, onto which all the rooms faced. A modern take on a Roman villa; that had been her ‘vision’, as Evie called it.
‘I think that’s pretty unlikely, don’t you?’ said Lewis gently.
He was rubbing comforting circles on her shoulder with his thumb, and it felt so nice, but she didn’t want to be comforted. She pulled away from him, and in the same moment the doorbell jangled.
Lewis stood. ‘They’ve made good time. You wait here in the warm, Sarah, and I’ll bring them through.’ He left the room and closed the door behind him.
She sat on the sofa for three seconds.
She couldn’t sit.
She went to the door and opened it and she could hear their voices and smell the drift of wet salty air, and she could hear Lewis saying, ‘....remitting/relapsing delusional disorder. She’s also severely agoraphobic. She’s very confused.’
‘You’re her GP, sir, is that right?’ It was a woman’s brisk voice.
‘Yes. Dr Lewis Gibson – here’s my photocard ID. I’m going to have to authorise an emergency detention, I’m afraid, under Section Two of the Mental Health Act. I’ll come with you to the hospital – to Marnoch Brae. We can do the paperwork there.’
‘And social services?’ This was a man’s voice, deep and calm.
‘Yes, I’ve called them. An AMHP – an approved mental health professional – will meet us there.’
‘Will she require restraint?’
Sarah barrelled into the hall, she barrelled past Lewis, she grabbed the woman in her bulky black uniform and she screamed at her: ‘My eighteen-month-old son is missing! I don’t need you to take me to a hospital! I need you to find my son! My child who’s missing! Who’s been taken!’
From behind her: ‘She doesn’t have a child,’ said Lewis.
Sarah stared into the policewoman’s carefully blank face.
Had she heard that right?
Or had she imagined it?
When she turned, when she rounded on him, when she said ‘What?’ he repeated it, over her head:
‘She doesn’t have a child.’
And now he looked down at her, his handsome face full of sympathy and understanding and pity.
Why was he saying that?
‘Of course I have a child! Lewis! What –’
‘Sarah.’ He reached for her arm but she pulled away, she backed away, she turned to the policewoman.
‘I have an eighteen-month-old son and his name’s Oliver, Oliver Booth, and he’s disappeared! I don’t know why he would say –’
‘All right, Sarah,’ said the woman, finally, looking at Lewis. ‘Does she have shoes?’
Sarah ran.
She ran the other way, into the kitchen, making for the back door, but she could hear them behind her, the policeman saying, ‘This isn’t helping anyone, is it?’ and she felt herself grabbed from behind and then she was smack down on the floor, her face pressed to the wood-effect vinyl, her arms yanked up behind her back, cold metal handcuffs snapping on her wrists.
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From Jane
Thank you very much for reading No Place Like Home.
It was a new challenge for me to write a whole story from a male point of view, but I loved spending time in Bram’s head – he was in touch with his feminine side, which made it a bit easier! This one was tricky for me, though, in terms of plotting, and would never have seen the light of day if it hadn’t been for Brian Lynch’s expert guidance and help with all aspects of the plot.
I must also thank Brian’s colleagues at Inkubator Books for all their work in preparing the book for publication and giving it the best chance of being read out there in the world. Thanks in particular to Sara J. Henry and Shirley Khan for their detailed editing of the manuscript and to Garret Ryan for working his magic on the marketing side.
For encouragement and support of my writing efforts generally, many thanks to my mum Grace and sister Anne, Auntie Witty, cousins Barbara, Catherine, Mary and Morag, and friends Adam and Ali Campbell, Maria Davie, Jocelyn Foster, Abi Grist and Helen Ure. As ever, my writing friends Lesley McLaren and Lucy Lawrie were always at the end of an email to provide any help needed as well as the welcome distractions of non-writing-related chat and fun. Thank you all!
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