Alex Lake - The Choice

They had three already, which was quite a handful, but he had managed to persuade her to add one more. Norman, seven, was named after her late father, a physics teacher and one of the most creative and inspiring people Matt had ever met. Keith – named after the Rolling Stone, if anyone asked – had come next, followed by Molly. Each kid had brought with them worse morning sickness and harder labours: Norman was nine pounds, Keith ten, and Molly eleven. As far as Annabelle was concerned, that was nature’s way of telling them to stop at three, but the years passed and the memories faded and, after a while, she had agreed to try for another.

His friends thought he was crazy, but he liked having kids. It was chaotic and busy, for sure, but he enjoyed it. More than that: he loved it. At work he daydreamed of sitting on the couch watching a movie with the three of them snuggled up to him and Annabelle, or of coming home and reading them a book.

And even though Norman was only seven he felt the time slipping away. He couldn’t bear the thought there were only eleven years to go until he left for university or a career or whatever came his way, to be followed swiftly by Keith and Molly.

The first seven years had vanished in the blink of an eye, so eleven more was nothing. He wasn’t ready for it, and the only way to stop it was to have more kids. Five, maybe, or six.

Annabelle might have something to say about that, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

He looked out of the shop window at the car. The doors were still closed. The front doors were unlocked, but the rear doors were child-locked so, even if they tried, the kids wouldn’t be able to get out. They’d have to climb into the front and go out that way, which was unlikely.

Still, he’d be as quick as he could. He didn’t need a police officer walking past and seeing them and questioning where their mum or dad was. He was pretty sure it wasn’t against the law to leave them there but he still didn’t want to discuss whether it was good parenting or not to do so.

He grabbed a basket and moved around the shop. Milk, skimmed. A block of Irish cheddar cheese. A bag of pasta – fusilli, he noted, whatever that was. Coffee, not a brand he recognized and probably awful, but it would have to do. Bread, brown, unsliced – they had surprisingly good loaves here – and a warm baguette. He paused at the wine shelf. Maybe he would have a glass after all. Red, perhaps. It was cold, the nights drawing in. He picked up a bottle of Cabernet. That would do.

The checkout was at the far end of the shop. He carried his basket over and put it down.

‘All right, mate.’ The man behind the counter was in his fifties and had a Liverpool accent. ‘Got everything you wanted?’

‘Yes, thanks. Just grabbing a few bits.’ He glanced around. ‘Got any wipes?’

‘We’re out. Toilet paper’s all gone too.’ He shook his head. ‘Load of fuss about nothing, if you ask me.’

‘You never know,’ Matt said. ‘There’s quarantine in parts of Italy.’

‘Won’t happen here, mate. But I’ll sell people whatever they want to buy.’

The man punched in the prices, one by one. Easy to fiddle the take. Perhaps this place was a front for a gang, a place to quietly wash clean their ill-gotten gains.

‘Twenty-seven fifty,’ he said.

Matt hesitated and looked at the basket. Seven quid for the wine. A fiver for the coffee. He’d looked at the price of those. Which left fifteen-fifty for the bread, milk, baguette and pasta. How much was bread? Three pounds? Milk and pasta? The same probably. Which meant the baguette was outrageously expensive.

Or they all were.

The man looked at him, his expression questioning. For a moment Matt thought about asking for the prices of the bread, coffee, milk and pasta, but then the man interrupted.

‘Everything OK, mate?’

He nodded, and handed over two twenties. If this was a front for a gang they didn’t need to use it to launder any money. They were robbing people in plain sight.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and picked up his change and his shopping. It was definitely the supermarket next time.

As he left, Matt noticed the local newspaper had a story on the front page about a new signing for the rugby league team. It was the photo that caught his eye, a picture of a famous Australian playing for the Australian national team.

That would be quite the coup.

He was about to pick up a copy and go back to the counter – even this shop couldn’t charge more than the cover price for a newspaper – when he glanced out of the window. A quick check on the kids, that was all; make sure they were still safely in the car.

He blinked, then looked left and right.

There must be some mistake.

The car was gone.

That was impossible. He had left it there only a minute ago.

But there was no car there. As if to make the point, a blue Mercedes pulled up and parked right where his car had been.

He must have parked it further up the street. It was strange; he would have sworn he’d left it almost exactly outside the shop. Maybe he had, and it was the angle from which he was looking out of the window that meant he couldn’t see it.

Still. There was a church on the other side of the road, the main gate directly opposite the door.

And when he had got out of the car he had looked at that gate. He remembered it distinctly: his sister had got married there and a memory had come to him of her wedding day. It had been pouring with rain – a real deluge – and when Tessa and Andy came out all the guests had been holding umbrellas over the path to make a tunnel. They had walked through them to the main road and into the vintage silver Rolls-Royce that had taken them to the reception.

He had looked at the gate and remembered that day.

And when he had done so he had been standing more or less opposite it.

Which meant the car had moved.

His palms prickled with sweat. The kids must have taken off the handbrake, or somehow started the car and driven it off. He patted the pocket of his jeans. The keys were in there, so at least that was off the table.

He forgot the newspaper and jogged to the door. He needed to sort this out, right away. The man behind the counter coughed.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes. Just – I can’t remember where I left my car.’

‘Happens all the time, mate. People forget where they park.’

‘It’s not exactly that—’ He stopped talking. There was no point explaining. He opened the door and looked up and down the street.

The car was nowhere to be seen.

He took a deep breath. His mind was starting to swim and he needed to concentrate. He couldn’t afford to panic. He had to be methodical, but it was almost impossible to fight back the desire to scream and set off at a sprint in some – any – direction.

He looked left, to the village centre, and then right, to the swing bridge over the ship canal. In both directions the street was more or less straight, so he would have seen his car if it was there.

It wasn’t.

‘Where’s the fucking car?’ he murmured. It couldn’t just be gone.

But it was. His car was gone, with his kids inside. He began to lose the battle against the fear and panic, because either they had moved it, or it had moved itself, or someone else had moved it. None of them were happy thoughts. As the thought sunk in, he clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. He had to think .

It couldn’t have been driven away, because he had the keys – there was no way the kids had jump-started it – which meant it had rolled away – hard to imagine on a flat road, and even harder to imagine it had rolled out of sight – or it had been pushed away.