Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

I looked at my watch and with a burning spurt of real sickness in my throat I realised it must have been just over an hour.

‘Ages, an hour and a half. At least.’ I wanted to exaggerate because I sensed she wasn’t taking it seriously enough, that she didn’t have a daughter and thought that kids just ran off all the time.

She was shifting a foot around and suddenly became conscious of the paper stuck to her heel. With a movement like a ballerina she forked a leg behind her, holding her foot with one hand and peeling off the paper with the other.

When she was done she said, ‘I can put out an announcement.’

‘Please. Could you? Her name’s Carmel and she’s wearing a red duffel coat.’

‘How old is she?’

‘She’s eight. Eight years old.’

So she walked off to where a tannoy system was set up on a trestle table and the man with cornrows looked at me with kind big eyes and said, ‘Don’t worry too much. It’s got a bit chaotic because of the weather.’ I nodded at him dumbly.

I heard an electric gasp as the machine was switched on and then the woman’s voice booming from the outside.

‘Public announcement. Lost child. There’s a lost child. Name of Carmel. Red coat. Eight years old. If you find a lost child please bring them to the large tent at the back of the field. Lost child …’

I ran outside and tried to scan the field, though it was hard to see much. I went back in and the woman was busy moving boxes now, stacking unused programmes away.

‘Do it again,’ I shouted.

‘You don’t have to …’ A sharp spike of a frown had popped up between her eyes. The man in patchwork could see it was going to get nasty so he stepped in.

‘You keep on the tannoy. We’ll go and look round the field,’ he told her. Then to me, ‘My name’s Dave.’ He took my hand and his brown fingers felt hard and strong. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Beth,’ I mumbled.

Outside the ground was churned up into mud — a thick cakey mix of lolly sticks, leaflets and broken plastic cups. The smell of the mud rose up, dark, sweet and cold, with the odour of something uncovered that should have been left alone. I heard the announcement again from outside the tent but no one seemed to pay much attention. Dave helped me to retrace our steps, holding onto my arm. Back to the sales tent — he called Carmel’s name in a deep booming voice and looked under tables and I did the same.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now we’ll work our way round the field.’

After every lap round the tents we went back to the walkie-talkie woman to check if Carmel was with her. Each time I was willing myself to see the bright little spot of red waiting for me by the boxes, or peeping out anxiously through the gap in the doorway, and felt a sickening panic when it wasn’t there. The panic rose in stages, so it was like someone singing the same note but at a higher and higher pitch.

Time was getting jumbled up and I found it hard to think if a long time or a short time had gone. I tried to look at my watch as we raced round the field again, but I was walking too fast, running really, and my brain was in such a state of shock I had trouble deciphering what the golden fingers meant.

Back again. Nothing. Headlines again, wasn’t there … No, no, no. Yes, there was — nearby, about five years ago. I don’t remember if she was found. I think she was, how terrible I don’t remember. Paul, I need to speak to Paul. To tell him, get him to help. He’ll be so worried, angry that I’ve lost her. I can’t think about that, though, I just want her …

‘… back.’ I didn’t realise but the word came out of my mouth in a wail.

‘What?’ asked the walkie-talkie woman, confused.

‘D’you have a phone?’ It was just before the time when everyone possessed a mobile phone and I’d held off because of the expense.

‘Yes.’

‘Call the police, it’s been too long,’ I said over my shoulder as I pitched out once again to look. Then in again and she hadn’t — some problem with the signal. A hole in coverage she called it — though I was sure I’d heard somewhere that emergency-service calls went through anyway and I imagined she hadn’t bothered, thinking I was just a hysterical woman. But then she realised it was her battery that had run out so she made the call on one of the box-packers’ phones.

The field was almost empty and I looked at my watch and focused. The time crystallised sharp and clear: nearly two hours. Really two hours, not the made-up time I’d given her before.

‘Tell them it’s been nearly two hours, tell them that,’ I said.

‘Yes, the mother’s here with me, right here,’ she said into the phone. ‘Yes, that’s right …’

I snatched it from her. ‘Please, please, get here as quick as you can. It’s been ages since she’s gone — ages. And she’s not like that, she’s really not,’ I said, not entirely truthfully. It was anything, anything I could say to make them take it seriously. My voice was rising higher and higher into a painful squeak so the woman took the phone back and gave the details of where the festival was and how to find us when they got here.

The atmosphere in the tent had changed. A few people carried on packing stuff up around me, but quietly, averting their eyes, like there’d been an accident they were now trying to ignore. I felt my legs trembling underneath me and I collapsed on the chair Dave had put out. The woman squatted next to me. She didn’t look bad-tempered any more.

‘They’re on their way,’ she said.

*

By evening the field had emptied of people, but the only way I knew that was because it was silent now. The fog held its stranglehold over everything: its white noise sliced up by powerful police torches. There didn’t seem to be enough police cars; I wanted a whole fleet, an army there.

Sometimes the cars had their lights playing and that cut through the fog too and lit up the air with a crackle of blue lightning. The white-out made it a dream state: the strange sense of being underwater or wading through glue; the feeling that once the fog lifted she would be revealed, standing in the middle of the field, motionless with fright and with drops of moisture clinging to her coat. The feeling that this was a drama, using us as characters, unfolding on a roll-down screen made of fog and air in the middle of a dark field — the red of Carmel’s coat flickering across the screen.

‘I should go home.’

Soothing voices around me. There were three or four of them, ready to contain my terrible anxiety. To direct operations in the way they needed to go.

I found it hard to stand still so I perched on one leg. ‘I need to go home, in case she’s there. She doesn’t have a key. She won’t be able to get in.’

One soothing voice now. It was the tall bony man with ginger hair who had arrived a bare half hour ago and now seemed to be in charge. What was his name? My mind fumbled — Detective something … Andy.

‘What we’ll do, Beth, what we’ll do is we’ll send someone over there. You let us have the keys and we’ll send someone over and if you tell us where we might be able to find a photograph of Carmel then that’s all the better, isn’t it?’ He smiled encouragingly, like he’d had a bright idea and wanted me to be part of the plan. His face looked waxy in the dim light; maybe it would melt away and I would wake, with a jolt and then flooding relief. Instead, a terrible surge of anxiety shot through me.

‘Oh, please. Please find her. Please, please find her.’ My voice was babbling in my ears. I looked at my watch — four and a half hours. But he was going on again about photos. ‘Recent ones. As recent as possible. We’ll take you home but we’ll stop at the station and take a proper statement.’