Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

‘Rachel!’

It was Peter Armstrong, single dad of Ben’s best friend, Finn. Finn stood behind him in football kit, mud-streaked, sucking on a piece of orange.

‘What’s happened?’

Peter listened, as I told him.

‘We need to phone the police,’ he said. ‘Right now.’ He made the call himself, while I stood beside him, shaking, and couldn’t believe what I was hearing because it meant that this was real now, that it was actually happening to us.

Then Peter organised people. He rallied the families in the car park and got some to stay behind with the children, others to form a search party.

‘Five minutes,’ he said to everyone. ‘Then we leave.’

As we waited, raindrops began to speckle the front of Peter’s glasses. I trembled and he put his arm around me.

‘It’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll find him.’

We were standing like that when the old lady emerged from the woods. She was out of breath and her dog strained at its lead. Her face fell when she saw me.

‘Oh my dear,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I was sure you would have found him by now.’ She laid a hand on my arm, for support as much as reassurance.

‘Have you called for help?’ she asked. ‘As it’s getting dark I think you must.’

It didn’t take long, but even so, by the time everyone had mustered, the shadows and shapes of the trees around us had lost their definition and merged into indistinct shades of darkness, making the woods seem impenetrable and hostile. Anybody who had one brought a flashlight. We were a motley crew who gathered, a mixture of football parents, re-enactors still in costume and a Lycra-clad cyclist. Our pinched faces told not just of the deepening chill, but of the darker and growing fear that Ben wasn’t just lost, but that he’d come to harm.

Peter addressed everybody: ‘Ben’s wearing a red anorak, blue trainers that flash, jeans and he’s got dark brown hair and blue eyes. The dog’s a black and white cocker spaniel called Skittle. Any questions?’

There were none. We broke into two groups and set off, one in each direction along the path. Peter led one group; I led the other.

The woods swallowed us up. Before ten minutes had passed the rain worsened and great fists of water broke through the canopy. Within minutes we were wet through and large spreading puddles appeared on the path. Our progress slowed dramatically but we carried on calling and listening, the beams of the torches swinging wide and low into the woodland around us, eyes straining to see something, anything.

As each second passed and the weather pressed in around us my fear built into a hot, urgent thing that threatened to explode inside me.

After twenty minutes I felt my phone vibrate. It was a text from Peter.

‘Meet car park’ it said, and that was all.

Hope surged. I began to run, faster and faster, and when I emerged from the path and into the car park I had to stop abruptly. I was in the full glare of a pair of headlights. I shielded my eyes.

‘Rachel Jenner?’ A figure stepped into the beam, silhouetted.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m WPC Sarah Banks. I’m a police constable, from Nailsea Police Station. I understand your son is lost. Any sign of him?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing at all?’

I shook my head.

A shout went up from behind us. It was Peter. He had Skittle cradled in his arms. He gently laid the dog down. One of Skittle’s delicate hind legs was at a painful, unnatural angle. He whimpered when he saw me, and buried his nose into my hand.

‘Ben?’ I asked.

Peter shook his head. ‘The dog hobbled onto the path right in front of us. We’ve no idea where he came from.’

My memories of that moment are mostly of sound, and sensation. The rain wet on my face, soaking my knees as I knelt on the ground; grim murmurs from the people gathered around; the soft whimpering of my dog; the wild gusting of the wind, and the faint sound of pop music coming from one of the cars that the kids had sheltered in, its windows all steamed up.

Cutting through everything was the crackle of the police radio just behind me, and the voice of WPC Banks calling for assistance.

Peter took the dog away, to the vet. WPC Banks refused to let me go back into the woods. With her sharp young features and neat, white little teeth she looked too immature to be authoritative, but she was adamant.

We sat in my car together. She questioned me closely about what Ben and I had been doing, where I’d last seen him. She took slow, careful notes in bulbous handwriting, which looked like fat caterpillars crawling across the page.

I rang John. When he answered I began to cry and WPC Banks gently took my mobile from me and asked him to confirm that he was Ben’s dad. Then she told him that Ben was lost and that he should come right away to the woods.

I rang my sister Nicky. She didn’t answer at first, but she called me back quickly.

‘Ben’s lost,’ I said. It was a bad line. I had to raise my voice.

‘What?’

‘Ben’s lost.’

‘Lost? Where?’

I told her everything. I confessed that I’d let him run ahead of me, that it was my fault. She took a no-nonsense approach.

‘Have you called the police? Have you organised people to search? Can I speak to the police?’

‘They’re bringing dogs, but it’s dark, so they say they can’t do anything more until morning.’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘There’s no point.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘They’re doing everything they can.’

‘Shall I come?’

I appreciated the offer. I knew my sister hated driving in the dark. She was a nervous driver at the best of times, cautious and conservative on the road, as in life. The routes around our childhood cottage, where she was staying for the night, were treacherous even in daylight. In the depths of rural Wiltshire, on the edge of a large forested estate, the cottage was accessible only via a network of narrow, winding lanes edged with deep ditches and tall hedges.

‘No, it’s OK. John’s on his way.’

‘You must ring me if there’s any news, anything.’

‘I will.’

‘I’ll stay up by my phone.’

‘OK.’

‘Is it raining there?’

‘Yes. It’s so cold. He’s only wearing an anorak and a cotton top.’

Ben hated to wear jumpers. I’d got him into one that afternoon before we left for the woods, but he’d wriggled out of it once we were in the car.

‘I’m hot, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘So hot.’

The jumper, red, knitted, lay on the back seat of my car and I leaned back and pulled it onto my lap, held it tight, smelled him in its fabric.

Nicky was still talking, reassuring, as she usually did, even when her own anxiety was building.

‘It’s OK. It won’t take them long to find him. He can’t have gone far. Children are very resilient.’

‘They won’t let me search for him. They’re making me stay in the car park.’

‘That makes sense. You could injure yourself in the dark.’

‘It’s nearly his bedtime.’

She exhaled. I could imagine the creases of worry on her face, and the way she’d be gnawing at her little-finger nail. I knew what Nicky’s anxiety looked like. It had been our constant companion as children. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she said, but we both knew they were only words and that she didn’t know that for sure.

When John arrived WPC Banks spoke to him first. They stood in the beam of John’s headlights. The rain was relentless still, heavy and driving. Above them a huge beech tree provided some shelter. It had hung on to enough of its leaves that its underside, illuminated by the lights from the car, looked like a golden corona.

John was intently focused on what WPC Banks was saying. He exuded a jumpy, fearful energy. His hair, usually the colour of wet sand, was plastered blackly around the contours of his face, which were pallid, as if they’d been sculpted from stone.