Gone Missing

by Jean Ure

  I set off up the platform, determinedly not looking back. After a few seconds I heard the familiar slap, slop of her sandals and she appeared, a bit breathless, at my side.

  “Is it all right to be together now?”

  I said, “Yes, OK.” There were loads of people around, even though it was a Sunday. I didn’t think anyone was very likely to notice us.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We have to find the Underground and get on a tube.”

  I knew the Underground was somewhere about, cos I could remember using it when I came with Mum and Dad. I’d just forgotten the station was so big. Well, I don’t expect it’s any bigger than New Street, which is pretty vast, but I know New Street. I didn’t know Euston. It was all a bit confusing.

  “There’s got to be a sign,” I said. “Just keep walking!” People would notice if we hung about. We had to look like we knew where we were going.

  “Do we have to get on a tube?” said Honey.

  I said, “Yes! Why?”

  “Nothing. I just wondered.”

  “We’ve been through all this,” I said. “It’s what we planned…we’d get the tube. What’s the problem?”

  Honey hung her head. “There might be bombs.”

  “Bombs could be anywhere,” I said. “This is London! It’s where it’s all at.”

  “We should have gone to Glasgow.”

  “We couldn’t go to Glasgow! I already told you. Just shut up! Look, Underground.” I pointed. “Over there!”

  Honey trailed dismally after me. I said, “I could do with a bit more support here. We are supposed to be in this together.”

  “Sorry.” She flailed wildly with her rucksack and almost sent a nearby couple flying. I said, “Honey!” You couldn’t afford to go round biffing people with rucksacks. Not in London. I’d read about it! You could be knifed or even worse, just for looking at someone. “Just watch it,” I said.

  “Sorry!” She scuttled after me, down the steps. “I don’t think I like it here!”

  “Why not? It’s exciting,” I said. “Things happen! You just have to get used to it. Let’s go and find a map.”

  Even when we’d found the map it took me ages to find Stonebridge Park. Even when I’d found Stonebridge Park I couldn’t figure out how to get there. Stonebridge Park was on the brown line while Euston was on the black one and the pale blue one. How did we get on to the brown one??? All the time I’m trying to work it out, Honey’s jittering at my elbow and saying that she doesn’t think this is such a good idea, and why couldn’t we get a bus?

  “I like buses! I don’t like being underground. I don’t feel safe! I want to get a bus!”

  That was when I lost my temper; just slightly. I knew I shouldn’t, but I was under a lot of stress and Honey really was not being helpful. I snapped that we couldn’t get a bus cos I didn’t know where they went from.

  “Darcy never said anything about buses! She said to use the tube. If there’d been a bus, she’d have said. Obviously there isn’t one.”

  “There could be,” said Honey. “Why don’t we ask?” She tugged at my sleeve. “Jade…let’s ask!”

  “No.” How many times did I have to tell her? We couldn’t afford to draw attention to ourselves.

  While Honey’s jittering and I’m trying to trace different coloured lines on the map, a man comes up to us and says, “You look as if you’re in trouble. Need any help?” Before I can stop her, Honey’s like, “Oh, thank you! Yes! Please! We want to find out about buses.”

  The man laughs at that. I think he looks shifty, though maybe that’s just me being suspicious. He tells Honey that she won’t find any buses down here. “You’ll have to go out to the Euston Road. That’s where the buses are. Come on, I’ll show you!”

  He turns and Honey turns with him. She’s actually going to go off with him! A man. A total stranger. I grab at her and yank her back.

  “It’s OK,” I say. “We can manage, we’re getting the tube.”

  I turn back to the map and begin tracing lines with my finger. What we need to do is get on the pale blue line, which is the Victoria line, as far as Oxford Circus, and then change on to the brown line, which is the Bakerloo line, to Stonebridge Park. I feel quite proud of myself! Tube maps are pretty simple, once you get the hang of them. But I’ve always been good at map reading. It’s a sort of gift I have.

  “OK!” I swing round to tell Honey. “While you’ve been wittering on about—”

  Honey’s not there. She’s not there!

  “Honey?” I shriek, at the top of my voice.

  Where has she gone? I can’t see her! This is like a nightmare! She’s totally disappeared.

  And then I catch a glimpse of something blue…Honey’s T-shirt. She’s going back up the steps with the shifty man. I yell, “Hunneee!” and go charging after her, banging and barging and crashing into people.

  “HunnEEEEE!”

  I finally manage to attract her attention. She’s already on her way out of the station. The man is pressed right up next to her.

  “Honey, stop!” I shout.

  Honey looks at me, surprised.

  “What’s the matter? I’m just finding out about buses.”

  “We’re not getting buses!” I seize her by the arm and haul her back with me, down the steps. Away from the man. She protests, loudly.

  “What are you doing? I wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to come back!”

  I say, “That’s what you think,” and scuttle off as fast as may be towards the ticket machines, towing Honey with me.

  “That was so rude,” she says. “He was only trying to help! If you’d just let me find out, we could easily have got a bus. There’s loads of them!”

  Very slowly, I spell it out for her. “We are not–getting–a bus. Read my lips: no bus. We are getting the tube.”

  Honey mutters that she doesn’t want to get a tube. I say well, too bad, cos we’re getting one.

  “And don’t ever do that to me again!”

  “Do what?” says Honey.

  “Go off with some stranger!”

  “He was only going to show me where the buses were.”

  “How do you know? This is London, he could have abducted you. You could have ended up in a dark alley with your throat cut. Then how d’you think I’d feel?”

  This frightens her, so that for a few seconds she is humble and silent, but perks up again as we buy our tickets.

  “Shall I get a child’s one?” She giggles. “I could be under sixteen!”

  I nearly say yes, cos I can’t see anyone’s likely to challenge her. She really does act young for her age, specially when she’s not sure of herself. I, on the other hand, have always acted far older than I am. It’s one of the things that Dad and I have had some of our most bitter rows about.

  “Shall I?” says Honey. “It’d save us money!”

  I’m tempted, but in the end I tell her no, it’s not worth it. I remind her that we can’t afford to take any unnecessary risks.

  “Oh, well, OK,” she says, and giggles again. “I’ll be sixteen!”

  She gets another dose of the wobbles when we discover that there’s a Victoria line southbound and a Victoria line northbound and we can’t immediately decide which one to go for, but then I read the list of stations and find Oxford Circus on the southbound bit, so that’s all right. I do believe that I am quite a practical sort of person. I enjoy finding my way round strange places, I look upon it as a challenge.

  I slip my arm through Honey’s. I suddenly feel incredibly fond of her, and protective.

  “See?” I give her a squeeze. “Everything’s working out really well!”

  five

  It was seven o’clock when we got on the brown line at Oxford Circus. We had been gone for almost five hours, though it actually felt a lot longer. Mum, and Dad, and home, seemed like really far away. I could have found it a bit scary, if I’d let myself. I knew that I had to keep focused. So long as I concentrate
d on getting us to Darcy’s, I was OK; I had something to aim for. It was when I stopped to look back that little shivers of doubt came creeping in. I couldn’t afford to have doubts! I had Honey to take care of.

  She was sitting next to me, clutching her rucksack tightly with both hands.

  “It’s going to be OK,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Honey. “So long as we’re together.”

  No one was going to separate us, that was for sure.

  I knew, when we got to Stonebridge Park, that I would have to break the rules and ask someone for directions. I really didn’t want to, cos it was almost Rule no.1, Don’t talk to anybody, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how to get from the station to Darcy’s place.

  “You didn’t ask her?” said Honey.

  I said, “No, how could I? I haven’t spoken to her!”

  Honey turned slowly to look at me. “You haven’t even told her we’re coming?”

  “I didn’t have a chance! It was all such a rush. Anyway, I don’t know her telephone number.” Her mobile had stopped working ages ago, and if she had an email address she’d never given it to me. She’d texted me a couple of times, when she’d first gone down to London, but after that it had just been postcards. Well, just one postcard, actually, saying how cool it was, being only thirty minutes from the West End.

  “It’s all right,” I said, “there’s no problem. She told me, if ever I wanted a place to crash-like if ever it got too heavy at home and I had to get out–she told me, I could always just turn up.”

  “That’s you,” said Honey. “What about me?”

  “Both of us! It’s OK, she won’t mind.”

  “If she’s still there,” muttered Honey.

  “Look, will you please just stop being so negative all the time!” I stamped my foot, in a way I now see was rather childish. I mean, Honey did have a point. For all I knew, Darcy’s sister could have moved to the other side of London, taking Darcy with her. They might not even be in London; they could be anywhere in the country. I’d been purposely not thinking about it. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from worrying yourself to a frazzle about things which might never happen. Cross your bridges when you come to them, is my motto. It was distinctly annoying that Honey, of all people, should start carping and criticising. She couldn’t plan her way out of a paper bag.

  Urgently, she said, “I don’t want to go home again!”

  “We’re not going home again.” Not yet, anyway.

  “If I went home, I could be done for stealing!”

  I reminded her what she had said. “You told me it wasn’t stealing.”

  Honey munched on her lip. “They’d say it was.”

  “Then we’d tell them it wasn’t. Come on, this is our stop!” I jumped up. “Another ten minutes and we’ll be at Darcy’s.”

  There weren’t very many people about, not like at Euston, but I saw an old lady coming towards us and I thought that she would be a good person to ask. Old people don’t always see too well, and they don’t always remember things, either. Like one of my granddads, who can’t remember names. He says things like, “You know wotsisname? That chap who’s on that programme on the telly. The one about wotsit. Thingummy and wotsit.” Sometimes it’s quite funny; even Granddad has a laugh. But just to be on the safe side, cos some old people can be quite sharp, I told Honey to go back into the station and wait.

  “I’ll just find out where to go. Don’t move!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Honey. She said it with this air of injured dignity, like I’d insulted her. But sometimes you had to treat her like a child; she’d be just as likely to go wandering off and get herself lost.

  The old lady wasn’t as old as I’d first thought, so it was just as well I’d told Honey to wait. I asked, in this really posh voice, if she could tell me where Durden Way was. I can do a posh voice, no problem; I can talk like the Queen, if I want. If anybody asked her, the old lady would probably reckon I was one of those sophisticated London types. She wouldn’t ever connect me with a fourteen-year-old girl gone missing from Birmingham! She told me how to get to Durden Way, and I thanked her and went whizzing back to collect Honey, who was waiting obediently inside the station.

  “Come on!” I said. “It’s not far.”

  We set off, up the road.

  “This isn’t a very nice place, is it?” said Honey.

  I said that it was all right. I said, “Anything’s better, I should have thought, than being back home with your mum.”

  “Or with your dad,” said Honey.

  “Yeah, or with my dad. Quick, before the lights change!”

  I snatched at her arm and dragged her with me across the road. It was a wide road, with traffic thundering in both directions. I know it sounds pathetic, but I wasn’t used to busy roads. Only when I went in to Birmingham, which didn’t happen very often. I guess I misjudged it. I shouldn’t have hustled her, I knew what Honey was like. As we reached the kerb on the far side she tripped, and went sprawling. I thought, “Oh, God, why does she have to be so clumsy all the time?” But it wasn’t her fault. It was mine, if anyone’s.

  “Honey?” I took her hand, to pull her up. “Are you OK?”

  “No.” Her eyes filled with tears. She was always someone who cried easily, but it did seem like she was in real pain.

  “What is it?” I said. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve hurt my ankle!”

  “How bad? Can you walk?”

  She shook her head.

  “Try!” I said.

  “I can’t, it hurts!”

  She wobbled, and I put out a hand to steady her. I bent down, to examine her ankle. It was quite swollen and puffy. As I straightened up, a voice said, “That looked nasty, that did! Everything all right?”

  “I think I’ve sprained my ankle,” said Honey. She said it in this woeful, tear-laden voice.

  “She’ll be OK,” I said.

  We weren’t supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves! And now this boy was looming over us. Not that he was threatening, or anything. He was a rather pudgy, slob-like boy, wearing a baggy T-shirt and old crumpled jeans that looked like they’d been thrown out with someone’s rubbish. Distinctly uncool. Not the sort of boy you’d want to encourage, even at the best of times.

  I took Honey’s arm and hauled it over my shoulder. “Try now,” I said.

  “I can’t!” wailed Honey.

  “She can’t,” said the boy. “Let me!” He put his arm round Honey’s waist and half carried her across the pavement. “You’d best come in and sit down,” he said. “Have a cuppa tea, make you feel better.”

  “Oh, yes, please! I’d like that,” said Honey.

  Talk about playing up! She doesn’t even drink tea. I followed, fretfully, as the boy helped her through the door of this greasy spoon type café that he’d obviously come out of.

  “You sit yourself down,” he said, “I’ll get you a cuppa. Hot and sweet! Do you good.”

  Honey gave this tremulous smile. I could see the pudgy boy practically going to jelly. Honey had this effect on boys. Some boys; not all of them. Soper, for instance. Soper liked girls that were sparky and fought back. But soft boys, like old Slobbo in his crumpled jeans, they just melted. I don’t think Honey was even aware of it. She was a true innocent.

  I parked myself impatiently on the edge of a plastic chair. Old pudgy Slobbo asked me if I would like something to drink, and I told him–not quite as graciously as I might have done–that I didn’t want anything, thank you. We were in a hurry!

  “I’ll try walking again in a minute,” said Honey.

  Slobbo had come back with her cup of tea. The colour of engine oil. Yuck! I don’t know how people drink the stuff. He told Honey to “Get that down you. Stop you going into shock.”

  Oh, please! All she’d done was just trip over her own feet.

  “I’m Joe.” He beamed at her; a big sloppy beam. Honey t
winkled back at him. “I’m H—”

  Just in time, I banged my rucksack on to the table. “She’s Harriet,” I said loudly. “I’m Lucy.”

  I don’t know why I chose those particular names; they were just the first that came to mind. Honey’s mouth fell open, and she turned slowly scarlet. Then, in a rush, she said, “Yes! I’m Harriet and she’s Lucy.”

  “Do you think, when you’ve drunk that tea, we’ll be able to get on?” I said.

  Honey munched on her lip. “I don’t know!”

  “Depends how far you’re going,” said Joe.

  Honey turned to look at me. “Not far,” I said. And then, reluctantly, since there didn’t seem to be any alternative, I added, “Durden Way.”

  “Doubt she’ll get that far,” said Joe. “Not without a bit of help.”

  Desperation made me bold. “Maybe you could help her?” I said.

  “Have to give me half an hour,” said Joe. “Can’t leave the caff. Got to wait till my nan comes back.”

  I sat there, fuming. Like I said, I am rather an impatient kind of person. I waited till Joe had gone off to serve someone, then whispered urgently to Honey, “I need to go and check that Darcy’s there! Will you be OK if I leave you and come back?”

  “Yes!” Honey smiled, bravely, at me.

  “You sure you don’t mind?”

  “No, I’ll just sit here and drink my tea.”

  “OK, well–don’t tell him anything. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I didn’t see how even Honey could get into trouble sitting at a table in a café, in full view of anyone who happened to pass by. Plus there were other people in there. Plus I’d only be gone about half an hour.

  I shot off up the road. I was suddenly terrified in case Darcy wasn’t there. Why hadn’t I written to her, to find out? I’d told Honey it was because everything had happened in such a mad rush, but that wasn’t strictly true. It might have been a bit of a rush, just at the end, when Dad had been so cold and hateful, but the idea had been buzzing about my brain for ages. If Dad didn’t stop picking on me, I was getting out! I was leaving home! But right up until the actual moment when I wheeled the bikes out of the garage, it had been more of a game than anything else. A way of getting back at Dad; of plotting my revenge. Now, pounding up an alien street all by myself, it had become reality, and I wasn’t quite sure that I liked it.