Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

Not that the cottage was my ideal destination either, even without Nicky’s family to contend with. Left to both Nicky and me by our Aunt Esther, who raised us, it was small and damp and held slightly uncomfortable memories for me. I would have sold it years ago, I could certainly have done with the money, but Nicky remained very attached to it and she and Simon had long since taken on its maintenance costs entirely, largely out of guilt, I think, that she wouldn’t let me release the capital in it. She encouraged me to make more use of it but somehow time spent there left me feeling odd, as if I somehow had never grown up properly, never shed my teenage self.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I’d reached the start of the path that led to the rope swing. Ben wasn’t there so I assumed he’d gone ahead of me. I made my way along in his wake, squelching through mud and batting away brambles. When I came to the clearing where the rope swing was, I was smiling in anticipation of seeing him, and of enjoying his triumph at having got there himself.

Except that he wasn’t there, and nor was Skittle. The rope swing was in motion, moving from left to right and back again in a slow rhythm. I pushed forward to give myself a wider view of the clearing. ‘Ben,’ I called. No reply. I felt a flash of panic but told myself to stop it. I’d given him this little bit of independence, and it would be a shame to mar the moment by behaving in an overanxious way. Ben was probably hiding behind a tree with Skittle, and I shouldn’t wreck his game.

I looked around. The clearing was small, no bigger than half a tennis court. Dense woodland wrapped around most of it, darkening the perimeters, although on one side a large crop of medium-sized saplings grew, spindly and brittle, leafless. They dispersed the light around them, lending it a quality of strangeness. In the middle of the clearing stood a mature beech tree, which overhung a small brook. The rope swing was tethered to one of its branches. I reckoned that Ben was hiding behind its thick trunk.

I walked slowly into the clearing, playing along with him.

‘Hmm,’ I said, throwing my voice in the direction of the tree so that he could hear me. ‘I wonder where Ben is. I thought he was meeting me here, but I can’t see him anywhere, or that dog of his. It’s a mystery.’

I stopped to listen, to see if he would give himself away, but there was no sound.

‘I wonder if Ben has gone home without me,’ I continued, dipping a booted toe into the brook. The motion of the swing had ceased now and it hung limply. ‘Maybe,’ I said, drawing the word out, ‘Ben has started a new life in the woods without me, and I’ll just have to go home and eat honey on toast by myself and watch Dr Who on my own.’

Again, no response, and the flutter of fear returned. This kind of talk was usually enough to make him emerge, triumphant at having tricked me for so long. I told myself to be calm, that he was upping the stakes, making me work hard. I said, ‘Well, I guess that if Ben is going to live on his own in the woods then I’ll just have to give away his things so that another boy can have them.’

I sat down on a moss-covered tree stump to wait for his response, trying to play it cool. Then I delivered my trump card: ‘I just wonder who would like to have Baggy Bear…⁠’ Baggy Bear was Ben’s favourite toy, a teddy that his grandparents had given him when he was a baby.

I looked around, expecting him to emerge, half laughing, half cross, but there was absolute silence, as if the woodland was holding its breath. In the quiet, my eyes followed the lines of the surrounding tree trunks upwards until I glimpsed the sky above, and I could feel darkness starting to push in as surely as fire creeps across a piece of paper, curling its edges, turning it to ash.

In that moment, I knew that Ben wasn’t there.

I ran to the tree. I circled it, once, twice, again, feeling its bark scrape my fingers as I went round. ‘Ben!’ I called. ‘Ben! Ben! Ben!’ No response. I kept calling, on and on, and when I stopped to listen, straining to hear, there was still nothing. A sickening feeling in my gut pinched harder as each second passed.

Then a noise: a wonderful, glorious crashing sound, the sound of someone rushing through undergrowth. It was coming from the glade of saplings. I ran towards it, picking my way through the young trees as quickly as I could, dodging low, whippy branches, feeling one of them slice into my forehead.

‘Ben,’ I shouted, ‘I’m here.’ No response, but the noise got closer. ‘I’m coming, love,’ I called. Relief surged through me. As I ran, I scanned the dense growth ahead of me to try to catch a glimpse of him. It was hard to tell exactly where the noise was coming from. Sounds were ricocheting around amongst the trees, confusing me. It shocked me when something burst out of the undergrowth beside me.

It was a dog, and it was big and happy to see me. It bounced at my feet, eager to be petted, its mouth wide and dark red, startlingly so, its big fleshy tongue lolling. A few yards behind it a woman emerged from the trees.

‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘He won’t hurt you, he’s very friendly.’

‘Oh God,’ I said. I cupped my hands around my mouth. ‘Ben!’ I shouted and this time I yelled so loudly that it felt as if the cold air was scorching my throat when I drew breath.

‘Have you lost your dog? He’s not that way or I’d have come across him. Oh! Did you know your forehead is bleeding? Are you all right? Hold on a minute.’

She fumbled in her coat pocket and offered me a tissue. She was elderly and wore a waxed hat with a wide brim that was pulled low on her head. Her face was creased with concern and she was short of breath. I ignored the tissue and instead I grasped her, my fingers sinking into her padded jacket until I felt the resistance of her arm beneath. She flinched.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s my son. I’ve lost my son.’

As I spoke, I felt a bead of blood trickle down my forehead.

And so it began.

We hunted for Ben, the lady and I. We scoured the area around the rope swing and then returned to the path, striking out along it in opposite directions with a plan to converge at the main car park.

I wasn’t calm, not a bit. Fear made my insides feel as if they were melting.

As we searched, the woods were transforming. The sky became darker and overcast and in places the overhanging branches were dense enough to form a solid arch, and the path became a dark burrow.

Leaves gusted around me like decomposing confetti as the wind began to build, and great masses of foliage shuddered and bent as it whipped through the canopy above.

I called for Ben over and over again and listened too, straining to decipher the layers of sound the woods produced. A branch cracked. A bird called, a high-pitched sound, like a yelp, and another answered. High overhead was the sound of an aeroplane.

Loudest of all was me: my breathing, the sound of my boots slapping through the mud. My panic was audible.

Nowhere was the sound of Ben’s voice, or of Skittle.

Nowhere did I see a bright red anorak.

By the time I reached the car park I felt hysterical. It was packed with cars and families, because there were teams of boys and their supporters leaving the adjacent soccer field. A fantasy role-play enactment group loitered in one corner, bizarrely costumed, packing weaponry and picnic coolers into their cars. They were a regular sight in the woods on Sunday afternoons.

I focused on the boys. Many of them wore red kit. I moved amongst them looking for him, turning shoulders, staring into faces, wondering if he was there, camouflaged by his anorak. I recognised some faces amongst them. I called his name, asked them if they’d seen a boy, asked them if they’d seen Ben Finch. A hand on my arm stopped me in my tracks.