Peter Lovesey: The House Sitter

“She’s OK. Over to the right.”

Haley and the others were playing with a Frisbee.

“We must tell her if we go for a swim. I don’t want her coming back and finding us gone.”

“We’ll do it, then.”

On the way down, Olga interrupted the Frisbee-throwing to tell Haley they wouldn’t be long. The child was so involved in the game that the words hardly registered.

The conditions were ideal. The waves had reached the stretch of beach that shelved, so getting in was a quick process, and the water coming in over the warm sand wasn’t so cold as she expected. After the first plunge, the two of them held hands and jumped the waves and it was by far the best part of the day. Once when a large wave swept them inwards, Mike lifted her and carried her back to the deeper water. There, they embraced and kissed. The tensions rolled off them like the beads of water.

They stayed in longer than they realised. The people closest to the incoming tide were gathering their belongings and moving higher up.

“Where’s Haley?”

Mike didn’t answer. He took a few quick steps higher up and looked around.

“Mike, can you see her?”

He said with his irritating, offhand manner, “She’ll be somewhere around.”

“I can’t see the girls she was with. Oh, God. Mike, where is she?”

“She won’t be far away.”

“We’ve got to find her.”

“You told her we were going for a swim. She saw us.”

“But she isn’t here.”

He began to take it seriously. “If she’s lost, someone will have taken her up to the lifeguards. I’ll check with them. You ask the people who were sitting near us.”

She dashed back to their spot. No sign of Haley. The woman with copper hair was lying on her side as if she’d been asleep for hours, so Olga spoke to the teenagers.

“No, I’d have noticed,” one of them said. “She hasn’t been back since you ate your sandwiches. Pretty little kid with dark hair in bunches, isn’t she?”

“You’re sure you haven’t seen her?”

“We’ve been here all the time. She went the wrong way, I expect. Not surprising, is it, with all these people?”

Olga asked the French family. They seemed to understand what she was saying and let her know with shrugs and shakes of the head that they hadn’t seen Haley either. She looked up to where the lifeguards had their post, a raised deck with a wide view of the beach. Mike was returning, looking about him anxiously.

She felt the pounding of her heart.

“They’re going to help us find her,” he said when he reached her. “It happens all the time, they told me. All these sections between the groynes look the same. They say she’s probably come up the beach and wandered into the wrong bit.”

“Mike, I don’t see how. I told her several times to look for the flags.”

“Maybe there’s another flag further along.”

“She’ll be panicking by now.”

“Yes, but it’s up to us not to panic, right?”

Easy to say.

“You stay here. This is the place she’ll come back to. One of us must be here,” he said. “I’ll check the next section.”

She remained standing, so as to be more obvious when Haley came back-if she came back. Appalling fears had gripped her. A beach was an ideal hunting ground for some paedophile. Her Haley, her child, could already be inside a car being driven away.

“She’ll be all right,” one of the teenagers said. “Little kids are always getting lost on beaches. It happened to me once.”

Olga didn’t answer. She was shivering, more from shock than cold. Supposedly a non-believer, she started saying and repeating, “Please God, help us find her,” out there on the beach. All around her, people continued with their beach activities, unaware of her desperation.

Mike came quickly around the edge of the groyne shaking his head. He wasn’t close enough to be heard, but it was obvious there was nothing to report. The worry lines were etched deep. He pointed as he ran, to let Olga know he would search the section on the other side. She folded her arms across her front. Her teeth were chattering.

“Why don’t you cover up your shoulders?” one of the teenagers suggested. “There’s a wicked breeze since the tide turned.” She got up and brought a towel to Olga. “Try not to worry, love,” she said, wrapping it around her and sounding twice her age. “Someone will bring her back.”

Olga couldn’t speak. She wanted to be doing something active towards finding Haley, organising search parties, alerting the police. Instead, she had to stand here, gripped by fear and guilt. How selfish and irresponsible she had been to go for that bathe and stay so long in the sea. She’d put Haley completely out of her mind while she and Mike enjoyed that stupid romp in the waves.

“Isn’t that your little girl?”

“What?” She snapped out of her stupor.

The teenage girl who had brought her the towel was still beside her. “With the man in the red shorts on the bit above the beach.”

“Oh, my God!” Haley, for sure. She was holding the hand of a strange man, the pair of them standing quite still. Olga screamed Haley’s name and started running up the beach towards them. “She’s mine! That’s my child! Haley!”

Haley shouted, “Mummy!” and waved her free hand. The other was still gripped by the man, a shaven-headed, muscled figure in tight-fitting red shorts that reached to his knees. He didn’t attempt to leave.

Continuing to shriek, “He’s got my child! That’s my child!” Olga scrambled up the steep bank of pebbles, nightmarishly slipping back with each step, yet oblivious of the pain to her bare feet.

As soon as she was close enough she shouted, “What are you doing with my child?”

He called something back. It sounded like, “Easy, lady.”

“Let go of her!”

She stumbled the last steps towards them and heard him say, “I just found her. I’m the lifeguard.”

She had to play over in her brain what he had said because it was so clear in her mind that he was evil, a child-snatcher.

But when she reached the stone embankment above the pebbles, the man released Haley, who flung herself at her mother with arms outstretched.

“Oh, Mummy-I was lost.”

“What happened? Are you all right, darling?”

“This man found me.”

He said, “Did you hear me, Mrs? I’m the lifeguard. She was in our hut. One of her friends went there for first aid.”

“One of those girls I was playing with was hit in the face by the Frisbee,” Haley said. “It wasn’t me that threw it. Her eye was hurt, so we all went up to get some help. She’s all right now. Her mummy came and took her and her sister away. I was left. I couldn’t see you anywhere.”

Olga felt tears streaming from her eyes. She apologised to the lifeguard, and thanked him all in the same sentence. Haley was still in her arms, gripping her possessively. She’d had a big fright. Olga carried her back to their spot on the beach. Mike hadn’t returned, but the people around smiled and asked if Haley was all right.

Olga explained what had happened. She looked in the picnic bag and found a can of drink for Haley. “We’ll be leaving as soon as Daddy gets back,” she said. “The tide’s coming in, anyway.”

People were packing up all around them. The French family dismantled their windbreak and folded their towels. The teenagers said goodbye and carried the loungers back to the store. Of those around them, only the copper-haired woman appeared intent on staying until the tide forced her to move. It was practically at her heels.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He went looking for you. He’ll be back soon.”

“We’ll have to get up soon, or we’ll get wet.”