After Anna. Alex Lake

her – that he suspected his headmaster father had been having an affair with a younger member of staff and had run away with her. He wasn’t sure – his mother never talked about it – but he had managed to piece that much together over the years.

      Still, he had no idea where his dad had gone, nor why he had never got in touch with him.

      Julia had an idea. Not of where he was, but of why he hadn’t been in touch. She suspected it was the price he paid for his freedom: Jim had an affair and Edna gave him an ultimatum: get out of her life and start again with his girlfriend somewhere far from her, and she’d let him go quietly. Let him avoid the disgrace. The catch was that he had to stay away, from both her and Brian.

      Or he could stick around and she’d make his life a misery. And Edna would be good at that.

      So off he’d gone, probably to some beach in Spain or chalet in Switzerland, where he spent his days hiking and reading and skiing while his young bride taught in an international school and had discreet affairs of her own.

      Maybe, anyway. Julia didn’t know for sure. All she knew was that it had hit Brian hard, and now, from his point of view, it was happening again.

      ‘We’ll want to get in touch with him,’ DI Wynne said. ‘Any information you have would be most helpful.’

      ‘I don’t have any,’ Brian said. ‘I can ask mum.’

      ‘Thank you,’ DI Wynne said. ‘I appreciate it.’

      She wouldn’t get much from Edna, Julia thought, but she could try.

      ‘Right,’ Brian said. ‘And that’s enough standing around. I’m going to look for my daughter.’

      Julia watched him leave. She looked at DI Wynne.

      ‘I’m going too,’ she said.

      DI Wynne nodded. ‘Of course. I’ll be here.’ She wrote down her phone number. ‘Call if you find her.’

      As she picked up her car keys, her phone rang.

      It was Edna. She lifted the phone to her ear. Before she could speak, she heard Edna’s strident tones.

      ‘Julia, what’s going on? Brian left me a message, about Anna. I tried to call him but he didn’t answer.’

      Julia swallowed, hard.

      ‘She’s missing,’ she said. ‘She’s gone missing.’

      There was a pause. ‘What do you mean, missing? When?’

      ‘After school. She wasn’t here when I came to pick her up.’

      ‘How’s that possible? The school has policies. They have to—’

      Julia interrupted her. She was going to have to say this sooner or later, and it was better to get it out of the way.

      ‘I was late,’ she said. ‘I was stuck—’

      ‘But the school know to hold the children back, if a parent is going to be late.’

      ‘I didn’t call,’ Julia said. ‘My phone was—’

      ‘You didn’t call?’ Edna said. ‘Julia, what on earth got into you?’

      ‘I was telling you, my phone—’

      ‘Never mind,’ Edna said. ‘There’s no time for talking. We need to act. I’m at home, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. Twenty minutes, at the most.’

      DI Wynne caught Julia’s attention.

      ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

      ‘My mother-in-law,’ Julia said. ‘She’s coming to help.’

      DI Wynne nodded. ‘Could I talk to her?’

      Julia passed her the phone.

      ‘Mrs Crowne,’ she said. ‘This is Detective Inspector Wynne.’

      Julia heard Edna’s voice on the other end, faint, but still recognizably Edna. It sounded as though she was giving orders, taking charge.

      ‘Thank you for the suggestions, Mrs Crowne,’ DI Wynne said. ‘We have everything in hand. What would help us most is if you could go to your son’s house and wait there. There is a possibility Anna will find her way home and we need someone she knows to be there if she does.’

      It seemed Edna agreed. DI Wynne handed the phone back to Julia.

      ‘I’ll be here,’ she said. ‘Good luck.’

      Ninety minutes later – ninety minutes that felt like nine hundred, or nine thousand – Julia was back.

      She had driven every minor road she could think of, climbed out of her car and looked under hedges and in ditches. There was no sign of Anna.

      She took out her phone and dialled Brian’s number. It rang through to his voicemail.

      ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m back at the school. Call me if … if anything happens.’

      Julia ended the call and stared out of the window.

      She’s out there, she thought. She’s somewhere out there. I have to find her.

      Julia had never considered the limitations of time and space. Sure, she’d wished for more hours in the day or had to prioritize one party over another because, like everyone, she couldn’t be in two places at once, but she had never really bothered about it. It was, at worst, an inconvenience; a fact of the universe that might have been an occasional pain, but which there was no point complaining about because there was nothing you could do about it.

      For the last two hours, though, it had been the only thing that mattered. She wanted to be everywhere at once. It was the only way she could be sure she would find Anna.

      But that wasn’t possible. You really can’t be in two places at once. You can occupy only one patch of earth, one volume of air. And the one she was in was not the same one as Anna.

      And might never be.

      She couldn’t keep that thought away. It forced its way into her consciousness, trailing hysteria not far behind.

       What if she’s gone for good? Dead? Sold into slavery? Locked in a madman’s basement? What if I never see her again?

      In the moments after she thought this way, before she was able to grab some small measure of control over herself, she was filled with an emotion so strong that it stopped her doing whatever she was doing. If she was drinking water, the cup would fall from her lips, the contents spilling over her hand and onto the floor. If she was walking she would sink into the nearest chair or against the nearest wall; if she was talking to someone she would stop, mid-sentence and clutch her hands against her stomach.

      And it was all the worse because she was to blame.

      It was incontrovertible. Yes, she may have some kind of paltry excuse – her meeting ran over, her phone was dead – but if you stepped away from the details, it was clear. If she had been there at two fifty-five, waiting for Anna outside the school gate, then Anna would be with her now. They’d be at home getting ready for Anna’s bedtime, maybe reading The Twits by now.

      She definitely wouldn’t be here, at the school, sitting in the head teacher’s office with DI Wynne and a cup of coffee while, through the thick glass of the window, the sun dipped slowly over the horizon. And Anna wouldn’t be – well, Anna wouldn’t be wherever she was.

      The door to the office opened and two police officers came in. They were both men, both in their twenties.

      ‘Did you find her?’ Julia asked, even though she knew from their expressions that they hadn’t.

      ‘No ma’am,’ the one on the left said. ‘Not yet.’

      DI Wynne followed them in. She had her phone to her ear. ‘OK,’ she said.