Shaun Hutson: Warhol's Prophecy

If Becky realized that she had become separated from her mother, which by now she must have, how would she react? After the initial panic, what would she do? Where would she search? Would she stand obediently outside the store, just waiting for Hailey? Would she ask someone to take her to the store manager, to convince the staff to put out a message over the tannoy for . . .

( she’s five years old, for Christ’s sake! Get real. Get a fucking grip )

Get a fucking grip.

Outside the HMV store the sight that confronted Hailey was even more daunting. The wide concourses separating the rows of shops were swarming with people. At least inside the store she had a chance of finding her daughter. If she could be sure that the little girl had stayed within the confines of HMV, Hailey could continue her relentless, desperate circuit of the display racks. Just walk and walk until she finally found Becky somewhere between Metallica and Texas. But if Becky had left the store, then it was hopeless.

Hopeless.

Pointless.

My child is dead.

Perhaps Becky had retraced their steps. Perhaps she had remembered which shops they’d been in before entering HMV, and was – even as Hailey stood helplessly outside the main entrance of the store – trailing vainly around Dorothy Perkins or Next or WHSmith.

Or not.

If you can’t think straight yourself, how do you expect your five-year-old to?

Hailey tried to remember what her instructions to Becky had been, should she ever become lost in a crowded shopping centre. Surely at some time, when the child was younger, she had been told what to do. That was what responsible parents did, wasn’t it? They took their offspring to one side, and calmly and clearly told them what to do and how to behave in any emergency.

Didn’t they ?

And while their kids were behaving calmly and collectedly, the parents sat around and waited for them to return safely. That was what happened, wasn’t it?

Hailey tried to swallow, but felt as if someone had filled her throat with chalk.

She scanned the mass of shoppers.

So many faces.

So many expressions.

Hailey wondered how many, passing her by, looked with puzzlement at her own tortured features. Not that she cared. She just wanted to scream Becky’s name. That if she bellowed her daughter’s name aloud, it would be heard in every corner of this vast shopping complex and that, as if by magic, the child would appear at her side.

Shout? Scream? Run back and forth? Retrace your steps?

She had no idea what to do.

Hailey felt like a child.

The thought of what Becky herself must be going through now only intensified that agony.

Please God, let me see that red coat.

Her voice cracking, Hailey spoke her daughter’s name.

She spoke it again, slightly louder this time.

Then again, with growing volume. She was close to shouting it now. And then, after that? Shrieking uncontrollably?

Hailey knew that she was close to breakdown. Tears of panic and fear were just seconds away. Becky was probably already sobbing somewhere else, running helplessly back and forth, calling for her mum, unable to find her in that vast amoebic flow of faceless shoppers.

My child is dead.

Hailey felt the first hot tear cut its way down her cheek, burning the skin as fiercely as if it was acid. She realized there was only one thing she could do now. And she had to do it before it was too late.

Then she saw the red coat.

2

THE CHILD WAS standing alone, looking towards the entrance of a café.

She had her back to Hailey, who had already set off towards the little blonde figure, sometimes politely weaving in and out of knots of shoppers, sometimes barging straight through them in her haste to reach the child.

Red coat!

That was the one thing she saw: the beacon drawing her like a moth to a flame.

God, she loved that coat: that beautiful, incandescent piece of craftsmanship that was about to reunite her with her daughter. The daughter she had feared was dead! And how ridiculous that thought now seemed. How could she be dead? She’d been momentarily lost. For a moment of terror and extreme anxiety admittedly, but only a moment.

Hailey was mere feet away from the child now.

The child who was standing stock-still outside the café entrance.

That must have been the instructions Becky had been given. The instructions that Hailey herself, as a responsible parent, had at one time or another given her.

‘ If you ever get lost, stand outside a café and wait for Mum. ’

God, it was simple. So wonderfully, transparently simple.

And Becky was doing as she’d been told, and everything was all right in the whole twisted, stinking world, and there was nothing else now but to sweep her daughter up in her arms and hug her and kiss her, and they would both cry with relief and then they would laugh.

And then . . .

And then?

The child turned around.

The little girl was older than Becky by a year or two.

She stared with bewilderment at Hailey, who had already dropped to one knee close by, looking into her face – searching that alien face, that strange, unfamiliar visage.

The child took a step back, as if shocked by the sudden approach of this insane-looking woman. The kind of woman her own mother had always warned her to keep away from.

Hailey gazed into the child’s eyes.

Frightened eyes?

The little girl took another couple of paces back. Hailey straightened up and advanced towards her, as if reluctant to believe that this red-coated figure was not her daughter after all. The child suddenly turned and ran into the café, and Hailey could see her pushing her way through the maze of tables towards two women inside. The child was now pointing out towards Hailey, that one index finger fixing her almost accusingly. Hailey could see the women’s lips moving, could see their expressions darken as they stared angrily back at her. She turned and walked away from the café entrance, tears now flowing freely down her cheeks.

Becky . . .

The sight of that red coat had raised her hopes. The identity of its wearer had shattered them. And now she felt a sense of crushing despair unlike anything she had ever felt in her life before. Fear, anxiety, hopelessness and thousands of other emotions swirled around inside her mind, and that unthinkable, monstrous thought resurfaced with renewed venom.

My child is dead.

Hailey trudged robotically through the shopping centre, eyes occasionally flitting right or left, but there was no longer conviction in the thought that she might yet catch a glimpse of her missing daughter. And now other thoughts began to intrude with equally unwanted force.

Perhaps Becky hadn’t just wandered off on her own in the crowds. What if she had been snatched?

Whoever had taken her could have been trailing them all morning, waiting for a split second when they became separated. You couldn’t keep your eyes on your kid every second of the day, could you?

Justifying yourself now?

No one could – especially not in a crowded shopping centre. You could hold their hands, you could keep an arm around their shoulders if possible, but at some point there would be a break in contact, and in that split second it would happen. Once you were physically separated, the child could be snatched. Whisked away into the crowd, their screams muffled by a strong, determined hand across the mouth. And who else would interfere? Who would do anything more than look on with bemused or irate disinterest? And, while those blank looks registered their indifference, the child could be bundled effortlessly out of the centre and into a waiting car.